It's Only a Model, Part 1

The following is a post I wrote up on Sunday. There's more to the story, but I haven't been able to write anything up yet. Stay tuned.

I was all set to hop on-line Saturday evening and type up a quick writing update post. My company, for some reason, decided to give us President's Day off, and I realized that I would be able to get a decent chunk of draft creation done for SoD on Saturday and Sunday and then spend Monday revising Carson's Learning (a novella set in The Masque universe) for submission to an anthology. Seemed like a great plan. Just a few minutes before I was ready to write said post, I heard an alarm coming from outside the apartment, but close by. At first I thought it might have been the tornado siren (it being the only outside alarm nearby I could think of), but a quick reminder that not only was it below zero outdoors, there was also a good few inches of snow out there too. A tornado seemed a bit unlikely. So Mark went checked and discovered an alarm on our apartment building was going off. I immediately thought "fire" and go into a panic trying to bundle up the boy, bundle me up, and figure out how to grab what I could of my writing before it went up in smoke.

That's when I heard the water.

Standing in the nursery, I hear what sounds like a lot of water dripping, and not just going through the pipes like you can hear when the folks upstairs flush. I'm holding Andrew and his jacket and Mark is half in a shoe and half out of one as we try to figure out just what the hey is going on. Then water starts pouring from the lights, vents, and sprinkler in the bathroom off the nursery. Drew goes into his bassinet in the living room as we dive for towels and get everything off the floor in the bathroom. Then it starts coming through the sprinkler in the nursery and the living room and the light fixture in the hall. By this point, someone from the office is helping us move shit out of the flood.

That's when I remember the closet in the nursery also has a sprinkler--and that's where I keep ALL OF MY PAPER ONLY WRITING NOTES AND MY TWO BACKUP COMPUTERS.

Cue Andrew crying inconsolably unless Momma's holding him.

I go to the master bedroom with The Boy, keeping him from going nuts, while everyone else dashes around the place like mad rescuing my notebooks, our videotapes, the computers, etc.

That's when I remember that my wedding dress is also in the now-flooding closet.

At this point, I just hug Andrew and stop thinking about everything, waiting for the water to stop and for the insanity to ease to a low boil. I watch as maintenance men arrive with buckets and wetvacs and hear pounding feet in the apartment above ours. The lady from the office tells me that they forgot or just plain didn't set their automatic thermostat to stay above 64 before they left for vacation, which wouldn't have been a problem until we hit frickin' 13 below that day. She hands me a key, telling me we can stay in the complex's model apartment, which is pretty much our same layout.

So I bundle up Drew and manage to find shoes for myself before heading over to the model across the drive, and Mark begins making multiple trips with stuff we'll need for a couple days and nights out of our place. This includes two very irate cats. We get Andrew bathed, fed, and to bed and then finally we order some take out and pour ourselves some rather strong margaritas.

The tequila helps us as we discover that our temporary digs is most certainly a model: maximum looks, minimum function. The plentiful TVs and stereos are all plastic. The master bed has a ton of pillows, none of which are suitable for sleeping. The king-size bed has a gorgeous bedspread--and nothing else but the crazy 80s fabric of the mattress itself. There is not a single square of toilet paper. The stove isn't hooked up. And so on.

But we have my laptop and Battlestar Gallactica Season 1, so we snuggle under the bedspread, trying to convince ourselves that the slippery feel of the mattress is kinda like satin and therefore luxurious, and settle in for some tipsy viewing of good SF.

We're one episode in when Andrew starts to cry. Poor little thing is congested and keeps waking himself up to breathe. Cue yet another trek back to the now extraordinarily humid apartment with many industrial fans blowing under the carpets so we can get the "What to Expect" book, a humidifier (yes, the irony is appreciated), and Drew's Little Noses Saline Drops. By the third episode, we think we've managed to get Andrew breathing well enough to sleep somewhat longer than an hour at a stretch.

Most of today has been spent keeping The Boy occupied as he is fussy after his night of so-so sleep. He's slept on Mark. He's slept on me. Hopefully he'll sleep better tonight. And tomorrow he goes to daycare so Mark and I can check out the apartment for damage, start the cleanup process, and get much needed naps.