Looking Up
The early mornings just before the end of Daylight Savings Time are magical. I found this out when I was finally able to coax (read that as carry) the dogs out to the back yard around 6 AM so that they could do their business, bark at shadows, and wake up the neighborhood.
The first morning I looked up, my jaw dropped. What an amazing starscape! Bright pinholes of light scattered across the sky, suspended in black velvet, little peepholes to Heaven.
Looking up was an accident. I stopped looking up about a month ago when I realized I wasn't going to like what I saw, so I decided to keep my nose in the mud.
That decision started the morning after a huge downpour. (It was the first day of a 3-day rainstorm that gifted Buffalo with more rain than Los Angeles gets in a year). I walked into the dark kitchen early to make coffee. The floor was wet. That was strange. I turned on the kitchen light. Puddles of water floated on the stove top. That was stranger.
I looked up. Bad idea. Water was dripping steadily out of the kitchen cabinet above the oven.
Tony decided to investigate. At the back of the attic, he found a bunch of old rags strategically placed to sop up the water from a leaky roof. Since nobody wanted to fix the leak when rain was falling on a slanted metal roof, two buckets occupied the stove top for a couple of days, and we ate out until the storm was over.
After the storm, Tony decided to re-caulk the window next to the downstairs bathtub. While removing the old caulking, a big clump dislodged on the side where shower water collected (a design flaw in the angle of the sill), revealing a large hole. A contractor confirmed that the wood in the window frame had rotted.
While we were waiting for the contractor to replace the window frame, we used the upstairs shower. One morning, while standing in the living room, I looked up. Bad idea. I saw a grayish stain on the ceiling tile.
Tony decided to investigate. When he touched the ceiling tile, his finger went right through - it was wet. The contractor had to remove part of the living room ceiling so that the plumber could replace a shower drainpipe that was installed incorrectly.
I'm happy to report that the SS Fox is no longer taking on water from the roof or the upstairs shower. The caulking around the chimney is replaced, the living room ceiling is repaired, and the bathtub window now sports a maintenance-free and waterproof outdoor window frame. So maybe I'll look up at the stars tomorrow morning.
