Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Attack of the Killer Split Level

The Rookery does not like houseguests. It's not us; we don't mind having family over for a weekend now and again. It's the house itself, and it is quite insistent on that point. My parents tried to visit shortly after we moved in, and I don't even remember all of the things that added up to it taking nearly a year and a half for that trip to happen. SuperDad planned a stopover on the last leg of a trip, only to have one of his in-laws die while he was on the first leg, cutting the travel plans abruptly short. Emp. Peng.'s mom had to have emergency quadruple bypass surgery a week after buying a plane ticket to see us last April. She has re-booked her travel plans for this week. As near as I can tell, the house has decided that homicide and attempted homicide is no longer an effective deterrent, so it is changing tactics and going suicidal.

Yesterday, my first glance out of the window in the morning showed that the back yard was a bit boggy in places. Given the amount of rain we've had lately, that did not surprise me much. I took my coffee downstairs to get a closer look at the state of the yard through the bathroom window. About three feet from the wall was where I discovered the leak--with my feet. T-minus 52 hours until mother-in-law, and the carpet was squishing between my toes. Water was also seeping into the utility room, too, but that is all concrete, so it dries quickly enough. Carpet, on the other hand, is slow to dry, especially when all you have to work with is newspaper and a travel hair dryer propped up in a broken mason jar.

But wait. It gets better. The new knob on the other bathroom door now resolutely refuses to latch if the strike plate is fastened on. When we came back from noontime errands yesterday, the garage door opener decided now would be a good time to stop closing. While I was up there having the gear box fall off in my hand, I happened to notice that a 2-foot by 1-foot chunk of my garage ceiling is no longer, in the strictest sense of the word, attached to my ceiling.

Leaving the ceiling for another day, after we get the chimney flashing fixed, I headed out to the garage door shop to find out how much of the garage door opener needed replaced and when I could get the parts. The parts will be in Thursday, and for a while there on the way home, it seemed like that would be about how long it would take me to get the 5 miles from the shop back to the Rookery. Seems I'm not alone in experiencing some water-related woes. At least three feet of water covered parts of every possible route from the shop back home, unless I wanted to drive home by way of Indiana. The one road that wasn't under water is under construction. Nothing quite like having every single bit of traffic in the city funneled through one lane.

We are now at approximately t-minus 20 hours until Emp. Peng. Mom. The carpet is down to being merely damp, but I think I may have discovered just how long a travel hair dryer can go before it gives up. The bathroom door still won't latch and EPM will definitely beat the garage door parts here. If anyone else gets finalized travel plans out here, I'll be sure to post a warning so you all can stock up on nonperishables to get you through the apocalypse that will surely follow.

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