The Day the Ceiling Fell Down…

It was a dark and stormy night in October.

I woke into the cold, grey dawn to head out on the road, the start of two months of pretty intense book-ish stuff. But…what was this? My ceiling was suddenly sporting a whole new look, part of which involved a fairly decent section if it lying on the floor.

[Not coincidental that this shot also incorporates a nearby skylight….]

Naturally, this leak would make itself known on the morning I leave on a book tour.

But what’s a little leak, you say? Plug the leak, slap a coat of spit and polish on it and good as new.

Right?

Right?

Uh…

This is what my house looks like now:

 

 

My bedroom. [Missing walls AND windows…]

 

 

 

 

 

The freshly repaired ceiling in the kitchen and livingroom

 

 

The current state of the livingroom [missing just about ALL the walls and windows. But newly framed!]

 

 

So, the upshot is, when you live in the rainforest, sometimes you’re gonna get wet.

This particular leak wouldn’t have been so bad on its own, but it exposed — a kitchen ceiling completely black with rot, rotting siding, a deck that was directing water toward aforementioned siding and a few other minor details.

My mother suggested I solve the problem the old-fashioned way — with a match.

Considered it….

The good news is the house will end up with new siding and deck on the outside, and new doors and kitchen on the inside. The timing was not great, but when is it ever? For the past month, I’ve moved into my office downstairs [with the dogs, who do love to cuddle…], which is the only remaining room with heat in the house. The cats are carousing in a room jammed with furniture upstairs, and are a bit lonely but not doing badly. The offspring are mostly lodged offsite, when possible. And the very great guy who is overseeing the reconstruction tells me that I may even have heat back by next week.

I wrote a short story last week about a construction guy who stepped through a rotten floor into nowhere.

Grist for the mill?

Perhaps.

As always, I continue to live in interesting times.

 

More soon!

 

~kc