Fresh pipe

Wherein You Learn From My Mistakes, Hopefully, But Probably Not Because I Never Did (should be the name of this blog).

Well, for several hours this morning our kitchen sink got needed attention from the landlord and his helper, G. (who I call the Super and for all intents and purposes is). Turns out there were several problems. Yes, seems a few of H.o.p.’s straws had slipped down there (sorry about that, blush) but the main culprits were a significant mass of cat hair from our apartment neighbor’s pipe that had caused a big clog at a juncture, and there was found also a hole in our pipe. Then while they were replacing our pipe the trap broke so we now have a new trap and pipe. That’s good. No more plunging the sink several times a week to try to get it to drain.

As for the bathroom ceiling, where all that sawdust whatever is coming through. Well, the ceiling already had problems (we knew) as before we moved in there lived above several women (there are always several women living above) and something happened with water left running that flooded their bathroom and partially collapsed the ceiling in our future bathroom. So our ceiling I guess was partly replaced but it had a…well, it has always had kind of an obvious limp to it. We have a gimpy ceiling, yes, but I figured it must be solid. Anyway, the ceiling has lowered a bit now very recently, enough to push down about an inch of flex-acrylic-paint on the neighboring window (excuse me while I sneeze numerous times from all the work done this morning because the foam caulk spray that was used to seal the holes in the wall left from the replacing of the kitchen sink pipe is getting to me as I’m allergic to all kinds of crap like that). The landlord looked at the bathroom yesterday and he and the super cleaned up the mess, and observing the sawdust like stuff and everything else slowly crumbling into our apartment from somewhere above said ceiling, he offered maybe there was a mouse up there (rat, I said, big rat, makes lots of noise) and that he thought the current women up above (very nice he said, very nice girls) weren’t using the shower curtains and that water from above may be crumbling the ceiling in.

You see, we have old oval tubs, not the kind with feet, no, but old old heavy steel and porcelain (what’s left of it) tubs that are kind of oval, that weren’t built for showers, and there’s no tile on the walls, so the tubs have been rigged so above you have to hang four shower curtains all around to protect the walls. The landlord makes available four white shower curtains but everyone who moves in, y’know, they don’t like white shower curtains and they’ll buy one nice one and take down the others and the walls and floors suffer. We always buy four shower curtains when replacing but we also have ended up never using the shower because it’s such a pain to hook up and Marty and H.o.p. prefer baths and I don’t care one way or another.

“So you’ll be working on the bathroom ceiling next week?” I asked.

“What’s that?” the harried landlord said leaving today.

“The bathroom ceiling.”

“Oh, oh, right. We’ll take a look at it and do a little caulking. Let me know if you see any water from above.”

“I’ve never seen any water coming down.”

“Well, let me know if you see any.”

“I don’t want the ceiling falling in.”

“I don’t either but it could if water keeps getting in there.”

“So you’re going to do what to fix it next week?”

“We’ll take a look and do some caulking.”

“I don’t want the ceiling falling in.”

“I don’t either but it could. It’s fallen in before.”

“I don’t want one of us to be in the bathtub when the ceiling falls in.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want that either. You let me know if you see any water coming in.”

“I’ve never seen any water.”

“Well, it only takes a few drops.”

“So you’ll be doing what to fix the ceiling? I don’t want it falling in,” I said, hopeful that if I kept asking this then it might magically alter the words coming out of his mouth to something more reassuring than caulking a ceiling that has lowered about an inch, at least.

“We’ll take a look and do some caulking.”

Oh, ok, and I let it go because, y’know, I didn’t want to be overly demanding and because I like our landlord who is very harried.

Excuse me while I sneeze twenty more times. Man, that’s some potent foam caulking though I can’t even smell it. H.o.p. wanted to go in the kitchen while the landlord was spraying and I said no and H.o.p. said why and I said I didn’t want him around the aerosol, and the landlord said it wasn’t so bad, just had a little smell, and I didn’t bother to say that I’m allergic to all kinds of nonspecific allergen things that’ll set me off, but I kept H.o.p. out of there and kept myself distant during the spraying. Man, sneeze, sneeze, sneeze. Time for some Benadryl.

Sneeze, sneeze some more. My lungs and sinuses are starting to feel like someone scraped them with steel wool.

So, as it stands, for the time being, is I’m supposed to keep an eye on the bathroom wall to make sure I don’t see any water coming through from above.

“The girls above, they really are very nice girls, and good housekeepers too, like you,” the landlord said.

I am not an exemplary housekeeper. This old building and the Atlanta pollution make this place a dust magnet and it’s hard to keep up with it. I try to keep things picked up and sometimes I dust regularly and sometimes just when I notice, and try to vacuum regularly, and I keep the paint on the walls touched up, or try to, and I oil the wood floors and keep laying down more and more cheap Persian rugs from Ikea to protect things, and keep putting up Ikea bookshelves to absorb overflow of materials, but I’m not a great housekeeper I assure you. Still, if the landlord is willing to say I’m a good housekeeper, I’ll accept it and make myself a trophy and get my name etched on it because if that’s going to be my life’s big reward and recognition then I want to be able to enjoy lobbing spit balls at it before dying, and H.o.p. as an adult will at least be assured his mother succeeded in something. “She had a great aim with the spit balls, as I remember,” he’ll say. Eliciting a good housekeeping remark from the landlord is about as much accomplishment as this lifetime will probably afford me other than that. And my mother-in-law says I did a nice job fixing up the apartment so it doesn’t seem as small as it is.

Trophy. There’s a trophy in the building’s first floor foyer and a nonfunctional broken television and some candlestick holders. I thought they were just dumped there and picked up the nonfunctional television for H.o.p. to use in his stop-motion movies because it looks like a toy (and he loved using it) but I learned from the landlord it’s all part of another tenant’s intentional altar and they were upset that someone had stolen the television. “Oh, that was me!” I told the landlord. “I thought it was just dumped there by someone moving out so I took it.” (I’m a sometimes scavenger.) But no, no, it’s part of a kind-of altar. So we quietly put the television back.

As I can’t filch that trophy for my own use, as it is part of some altar, I may have to buy one. And that’s sad. Buying a trophy so you can yourself have etched on it that you have won a good housekeeping compliment from the landlord.

As the landlord and super were leaving on Monday, the super mentioned something about carrying out someone’s washer. And someone else’s washer.

A washer??? People have washers???? The landlord said, when we moved in, no that washers and dryers weren’t done here–and, besides, we didn’t have room.

“I want a washer!!” I exclaimed. “I want a washer!” Because I’d quite willingly replace the stove with one at this point and make do with carry out Chinese.

I think our stove will be staying where it is though and we’ll continue losing towels at the laundromat.

Because of the activity around here, and H.o.p. accidentally getting his toe caught in a wire letter holder (how he managed that I don’t know), which was frightening to him though it wasn’t going to eat his toe, as he said it was, and was salved with ice and is fine now, homeschool today has been put off for a few hours until things settle down, which is the nice thing about homeschool, choosing your hours. And, besides, H.o.p. is working on another movie now. So we’ll fit our necessary hours in a little later and in the meanwhile I may work on something beneficial to society, like a post on “Queen of Outer Space”, which the news forced me into blogging last night. Fox refashioning Foley as a Democrat and Tom Reynolds shielding himself with preschoolers in order to keep the press from querying him on Foley, telling the press however to ask him whatever questions they wanted…well, all that on top of global warming and the trash-canned Constitution and the big fence going up on the Mexican border and Future Fear In General, well, what can I say but I needed to escape for a bit, but don’t expect to see the post on “Queen of Outer Space” any time soon because, as it turns out, I’m at a loss for explaining Zsa Zsa Gabor.