money pit

So. Grey Gardens almost did me in last night.

I woke up yesterday feeling a little puny, and figured that I had contracted some sort of bug. Cape Croup, I think they call it. My other theory was that the toxins in my body from weeks of Tea Dances and Wave Bar and “oh…let’s just have one more” were released into my bloodstream after my massage on Monday, only to make me achy and irritable and unable to sleep. Who knows…

I turned in early last night, shooting a quick blast of NyQuil and hoping for a good night’s sleep. What I got was a thunderstorm of Shakespearean scale: cracking thunder, bolts of lightning, torrential rains – the works. It was neat, but I was trying to sleep, which I was just about to do until the ceiling in my room started leaking onto my bed.

Apparently, the door to the widow’s walk above my room was open, and the tempest had washed water into the attic, causing the leak. There it was, after midnight, I’m sick, and I have no way to stop the leak (since the house in which I’m staying is “bare bones” to say the least). I glanced out the window to the Benchmark Bed and Breakfast across the street, its “Vacancy” sign teasing me in the storm.

But, necessity is the mother of invention. I propped a chair under the doorknob to the offending door, stuffed the cracks with old towels, and spread sheets around the attic floor to absorb the thin layer of water. Amazingly, it did the trick. And today I went to the hardware store for anti-tempest supplies: Gorilla tape and 6 mil black plastic sheeting. I sealed the door with the sheeting and again sealed the cracks with towels. We got another blast today, but my plan seems to have held.

I will NOT be defeated by a cranky old house. I will NOT.