Haaaave you met Ted?
Oh dear god and fuck. My house is a war zone. This is some bullshit, y'all, seriously. (I can't pull of "y'all" can I? Nevermind).
Saturday morning. Get home from Bootcamp (more on that later - short version is it's hard, I suck at it, and I love it) nice and early. Shower, change, eat, do some housework, go to Mum's to do washing. Go home, do some uni work, get tired and decide to veg for the rest of the day. After all, I can dedicate all day Sunday to sleeping in and studying, can't I? Yes, I totally can.
Watch some NCIS. Watch some Friends. Watch some HIMYM. Go to bed at midnight.
3am. That rain sounds awfully loud. Was I really stupid enough to leave the kitchen window open? Get up to investigate.
No. No I was not stupid enough to leave the kitchen window open - the rain is inside. Water is pouring down my dining room wall, and the dining room light fitting is gushing like a tap. Stand there swearing loudly, doing the WTF dance for a minute or so. Snap out of it, immediately go to rescue new digital camera from soaking wet table. Am so, so glad I paid a little extra for the waterproof model. Dry camera on pjs, test it out - all ok. Put camera on bench, assess table. Items on table are swimming in water. Drag table into kitchen, water sloshes everywhere, re-drenching the already saturated carpet. Rummage around for bowls, containers, anything to catch the downpour. Put mixing bowl under the light, try to decide what to do about said light - it's off, but it's flickering. That's not a good thing. I'm no electrician, but I know electricity and that much water don't mix.
Search entire flat for after-hours real estate agent emergency number. Find it, call them, no answer. Contemplate purpose of after hours emergency number if one cannot utilise it in case of said emergency. Bowl has already filled, switch it for another one. Consider going upstairs to ask neighbour if his house is a waterfall too, remember he's not home. Terrific.
Switch bowls again. Ring Telstra directory, ask them or the number of omfg-my-flat-is-flooding-at-3:30am-please-fix-it number. Apparently no such number exists. They give me the number of a 24 hour electrician, who may be able to at least tell me what to do about the light. Try electrician, no answer. Try real estate again, no answer. Switch bowls. Swear lots.
Scour yellow pages for 24 hour repair places, no luck. Switch bowls. This is getting old. Ring more electricians, leave messages. Check online for possible omfg-fix-my-leaking-flat numbers. No luck there either. Try council 24 hour line, they won't help me. Swear more. Dance more. Ring 24 hour plumbers, no luck. Leave messages. Switch bowls.
4am, success! A sleepy sounding electrician calls me back. He tells me to turn the power off. I explain that I can't switch water bowls/deal with plumbers/dance and swear in the dark. He agrees, tells me to leave the power on for now, turn it off as soon as I can, and he'll be there asap, but that could be ages away, as the whole city is similarly fucked up at the moment. Ages away is better than never, so I thank him, and go back to bowl switching. The carpet is fucking splashing when I walk on it. This sucks.
More success - a plumber calls back! I explain the woe, he says he'll be there in half an hour. I attempt to dry some of my stuff, then post an angry facebook update. Plumber arrives. "Oh, you're joking!" he says when he sees the pouring light fitting. I am, in fact, not joking. He clambers around on the balcony for a while, then comes back and tells me he's cleared a blocked pipe, so the water should stop "eventually". Resist the urge to throttle plumber. Thank him, he leaves, I switch bowls, call real estate agents, still no answer. I dry more things, and swear a little bit more.
Bright idea strikes ... perhaps I could get one of the recycling bins and use it to catch the water? At least then I could go back to bed, instead of having to switch fucking mixing bowls around every 90 seconds. Go outside into end-of-the-world type weather. One bin is full, the other has inexplicably vanished. Idea deemed failure, trudge wearily back into indoor waterfall.
5:30am. Water is still there, but is dripping now instead of gushing. Dripping is rapid, noisy and annoying, but at least now I can put a bucket under it and go to bed for a while. Remember I'm meant to turn the power off. Turn it off, try real estate agent again, go to bed. Will deal with flooded mess after a bit more sleep.
6am. Am freezing - decide to put electric blanket on. Oh wait, I FUCKING CAN'T. I guess it's the heater then ... or not. Too tired to sleep. At least the dripping has stopped. Imagine all the nasty things I'm going to say to the real estate agent later. Go to sleep.
8am. Real estate agent calls back. I explain the ordeal - shes "so sorry all that happened!" Yeah, I'll fucking bet. I tell her the plumber has been, the water has stopped (though for how long, who knows), but the place is satched and there's still no sign of the electrician. She says she'll get an electrician and carpet cleaners out to my house asap. I go back to bed.
Midday. Dad calls, Gab has shown him my angry facebook update. He wants to know if there's anything he can do. I say thanks, but no. I go back to bed.
2pm. Weird crashing noise. I assume the phone book has fallen off the back of the couch, I decide to go back to sleep.
3pm. I get up. Survey damage in light of day - it sucks just as badly as it did 11 hours ago. Put towels on floor, they soak through right away. Carpet makes unpleasant squelching noise when I walk on it. Dry table, and more possessions. Sulk over several ruined books, watermarked Chicago programme, smeared Lush catalogues, unreadable work roster, soaking camera instructions. Open curtains - source of crashing noise is revealed. Front of the carport has fucking collapsed. I start to laugh, because what the fuck else can I do?
Ring real estate agent back. She says "Oh no, don't tell me something worse has happened!" I explain that it depends on her definition of "worse", and tell her about the carport. She says she'll add it to the list of things that need fixing, and oh btw, carpet cleaners probably won't get to my place today. Whatev.
Go outside, attempt to clean up ruined bits of carport. Neighbour gets home and helps me with it - it's a good thing neither of us were under it at the time, or we'd be talking skull fractures. We go up to the balcony to look at his place, his carpet is soaked too. I thought the water was coming in from the balcony and only destroying my place, but he says it's the guttering above his place, so it's soaking both flats. We've both complained about it a million times, real estate agents haven't done anything. We agree to knock some fucking heads together if that's what it takes.
Go inside, attempt to salvage waterlogged uni notes, no success. Resolve to email lecturers and beg for extensions. Shower, decide to make food. Realise I can't access the kitchen, because half the dining room furniture is crammed in there. Go out for takeaway, diet be damned.
Get home, turn power back on - there is no way I'm sitting around in the dark, freezing, unable to use treadmill/tv/computer/stereo, while the food in the fridge goes off, the fish die from their filter not working, and not even be able to cook anything. Decide to just avoid using dining room light. It makes a weird noise for a second, then is ok. I'll risk it. Watch more tv, go to bed.
8am today. Real estate agent calls, when can electrician/carpet cleaners come over? I tell her I'm going out at 11:30, so if it's after that, they'll need her to give them a key. She says ok. I say btw, you guys need to pay for my books. She says no, call your insurance company.
I call insurance company. They dick around for ages trying to find my policy number. Eventually one of their callcentre muppets finds my policy and says sure, they'll pay for my books, but only if I pay a $100 excess. I tell him that's how much the books are anyway, so screw it. I ring the estate agents and tell them that. They say (and what a fucking surprise this is) "your property manager isn't here at the moment, can someone call you back later?" Ah, that old chestnut. That's how we got into this mess in the first place. I agree anyway, and go to uni (after dragging all the remaining furniture out of the sodden dining room and into the lounge/kitchen, thereby rendering those rooms unusable. Good times.).
At uni. Lecture is so boring I want to eat my own hand. Luckily it finishes early. I know how the real estate agents operate - they're going to "forget" to call me, then when I call them, my property manager will have "just stepped out - can she call you later?" So, I decide, AMBUSH. I go to the office, ready to kick ass and take names. Owner, property manager, and receptionist all listen to my laundry list of complaints - I want the wet stuff dried, I want the broken stuff fixed, I want the ruined stuff replaced, and I want the rent reduced until it's all sorted. They ask me to write a letter. Translation: We know we're losing here, but we don't want to deal with you right now. I agree, even though I'm ready to beat a bitch down. I leave.
On the way home: phone call from real estate agents. Electrician couldn't get in because I wasn't there. I know, I tell them, that's why I asked you to give him a key. They said they couldn't because the carpet cleaner still has the key, so they'll reschedule the electrician for a time when I'll be there.
Get home. Huge, noisy fucking fan is under the carpet in the corner of the dining room, making it ripple over the floor. Carpet is still soaked. No business card from carpet cleaners, no note, no indication whatsoever of how long this fucking thing will be there for. Ring estate agents and ask WTF. They say the carpet cleaners will be back in a few days to get the fan. DAYS? DAYS?!?!? Do I have to leave it on the whole time? Yes, estate agent says, if I want the carpet to dry. I explain to her that I have arseloads of uni stuff to redo because it got wet, and the reason it got wet was because they failed at fixing the house, even after neighbour and I complained a million times. I can't concentrate on redoing uni stuff with the world's noisiest fan in my house. I want the rent reduced even more now, as compensation for all the inconvenience. They ask me to put that in the letter too. I agree to do that, and tell her this is going to be a very long letter. She gives me the number of the carpet cleaner, so I can ask them WTF too.
Ring carpet cleaner, he says I can turn the fan off when i go to bed. OH REALLY, CAN I NOW. I CAN TURN THE FUCKING FAN OFF WHEN I GO TO BED, HOW ABOUT THAT. Otherwise, I just have to deal with the gale force wind that has taken up residence in my dining room (well, I guess since the waterfall vacated...). I ask him how much the fan is going to eat into my electricity bill, because the estate agents are going to be paying for that too. He says they'll check the fan tomorrow to make sure it's in the right place, but it could be days before they take it away.
I write my angry email. I send my angry email. The fucking fan is driving me nuts, so i come over to Mum's house to wash the soaking towels and update LJ with my whinery.
And now I get to go back. To the fan, the carpet, the broken carport, the crowded kitchen/lounge, and the general fail.
This sucks.