Tuesday, November 25, 2003
 

Guess what?

My new apartment? It flooded.

::begins laughing hysterically::

That's right, folks: flooding, round two! Wherever Elvisette goes, the flood waters go! After last May's watery extravaganza, I thought I'd done my time. But no, Fate had other plans.

Excuse me. I'm punchy.

I came back from CVS around two. I walked into my apartment, and the small entry parquet square was flooded. And the carpet squished. And there were several inches of water in the bathroom floor. Etc. It was clearly seeping in from next door, so I went over there and stuck my ear to the door. Sure enough, I hear gushing water. I run two doors down and grab my friend who lives over there, and she confirms that I'm not nuts [no comments from the peanut gallery, please]. We bang frantically on the neighbors' door, even though we're more or less sure that they've gone home for Thanksgiving. We call our landlord, who's over here in fifteen minutes flat (compare and contrast with last May's incident). He opens the apartment next door, and we see that there's so much water that it's standing on the carpet. It's pouring from the ceiling, which is on the verge of falling down. They have two sofas, both soaked. TV, VCR, DVD player, soaked. Armchair with remote-control massage pad, soaked. CD case, full of CDs and their leaflets, soaked. Tables, lamps, everything. Water standing in kitchen and bathroom. A complete disaster, in other words. I was the lucky one this time.

The landlord calls out the calvary, and our lot is soon full of vans and trucks of various maintenance people. They get started in my apartment, since the other one's obviously not getting any worse. So I've currently got two industrial fans and an industrial dehumidifier going. Sounds just like old times. Carpet peeled back to the concrete flooring, etc. Everyone's been great, though; they couldn't have done any more, any faster.

But those poor people next door. Yikes. All that stuff ruined. I sure hope they have renter's insurance. The landlord says that they'll have to redo the ceiling, carpet, and ductwork, at the very least. I feel sorry for him, too; I know this isn't what he wanted to be dealing with two days before Thanksgiving.

The funny thing: Alice had a spell this morning of sitting and staring at the wall. I thought she was just in one of her usual feline nutso phases, but she must have heard the water. I was never able to hear it from in here, even once I knew what was going on. So I guess that I should have listened to the cat, huh?

So all my furniture in the den is shoved to one side of the room, and some of it's in the kitchen. At least I have an upstairs now and can just get away from it all.

Which I will now proceed to do. If you'll excuse me . . .

Elvisette philosophized at 6:22 PM