Parting Shot

Just when you think it's safe to start ringing in the New Year, the ground falls out from under you. Or, in our case, the ceiling drops on your head. OK, so not the entire ceiling, but even a small piece of it crumbling above you is not a good thing. Here's the best part: I'm not being metaphorical. At all. Shall I explain?

For a month or so, Mark and I have noticed a slight ring on part of our bathroom ceiling. Like the shower in the apartment above ours had been leaking or something. We didn't get too worked up about it, just added it to our list of things to eventually ask the apartment complex to fix. You know, right next to "repair cracked fridge shelf" and such. And what with the holidays, we never got around to putting in the maintenance request. This morning's observations did much to light that fire under us.

There's a hole in our bathroom ceiling. It's small. Maybe half an inch in diameter. But it's a hole. And I likely wouldn't have noticed it were it not for the fact that it was created when I turned on the bath faucet and saw what used to be our ceiling crumble into the water. That'll wake you up in the morning. And make you extremely grateful that you have two bathrooms. Into the Alternate Bathroom I went for my shower.

I'll be calling the apartment complex office shortly (they don't open for a few minutes and I don't feel like dealing with the incompetent folks who run the emergency line - you should've heard the conversation I had when our door wouldn't shut one night; "OK, so your door is locked and you can't open it?" "No, it's locked and we can't shut it." "OK, I'll send someone over to come open your door." "No, I said we can't get it to shut. Something's wrong with the lock and it's stuck." "Oh, I see. We'll send someone over with a key." etc). I wonder if I should call with the cracked fridge shelf and finish up with, "Oh yeah. And there's a hole in the master bathroom's ceiling." Might as well make the last day of 2003 entertaining for as many people as possible.