Gloomier, Leaky Monday

The rain continues to pour as though we’d suddenly been moved, house and all, to Oregon. Today is colder which pleases me…slows down the spring flowering process, making the dogwoods bloom last longer. The woods are filled with flecks of white.

And because the precipitation is soft and incessant this rain doesn’t run off; it moves through the clay all the way down to the ground water, --i.e., all the way down to the well. In all our years here, the well has never gone dry – except for the time I left it on the roots of some new trees while I went into the house for “a moment”, which turned into forgetting to go back to the hose until…. Voila, the kitchen faucet was dry the next morning. I was darn lucky I didn’t burn out the pump in the well house. And you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a lecture by the Baron. Guys worry about the infrastructure more than women do. We just want it to “look nice.”

The only problem with the rain is our new tin roof. There is a persistent leak now, which runs from the corner of the ceiling in the kitchen over my desk and fills the cabinet above it before thoroughly soaking anything lying on the desk. It is a recalcitrant hole that refuses to be fixed.

The roofer, who has been putting on metal roofs since the 1950’s, has come out twice. Last time, he was “positive” it was taken care of. Grrr…I am giving him the bill for the carpenter who will have to fix all the damage once the roof is really repaired. Meanwhile, pieces of the ceiling kerplunk into the bowl below; I can’t see the damage because a corner cabinet is installed on that wall…I try not to think about what it’s doing to the insulation in the crawl space.

I really like this man – can’t believe a guy in his 70’s can scoot up a ladder like he does and then move so nimbly on that steeply angled, smooth metal. Besides, I want to maintain cordial relations if we can. He takes great pride in his work and our cottage now represents one of his significant failures. I am determined that we not end up solving our problem the American way: in court.

Because of his age, Mr. W. has a genuine “Southside Virginia” accent. I enjoyed listening to it, and he sure does enjoy talking – he has the old Southern habit of settin' and talkin' for a spell. But I think that part is ending; he hates coming back, trying vainly to find the @#$%^&# darn hole. What a bummer…sure is a pretty roof.

I wish we had our old one back, though. It wasn’t “pretty” but it was solid and must have been at least fifty years old, with patches here and there. It may have even been older. What it did NOT do, which this one does in the least little old wind, is rattle. You’d swear there were trashcans rolling off the roof on the south side of the house (where the fig trees are). You know the way live theater makes those sound effects for thunder by rattling thin tin sheets? Well, that’s the noise we will have to live with when the wind gets up. I keep reminding myself that it could be worse. We could live in Corpus Christi and be forced to listen to the darn thing 24 hours a day…the wind in CC in unrelenting.

It’s most fortunate that I’m a procrastinator because I hadn’t gotten around to having the gutters installed. The first time I called Mr. W about this mess, he immediately did a gotcha: “I bet y’all had them gutters put on, didncha?” For once, my tendency to put things off worked in our favor. Besides this darn leak is nowhere near the edge of this noisemaking nuisance.

Time to go empty the plinkety-plink bowls…