What a night and day we had last week!
4am and I awake to a wicked thunder and lightning storm, and the persistent drip drop of water coming down the bedroom wall, soaking and staining my nan’s antique chair. Jumped out of bed, rolled up the carpet, got out the towels and buckets (yes buckets as water found a seam and was travelling) and moved that beautiful chair to safety. 4am…please!
Obviously leak from the terrace roof is happening, but I’ll save that for daylight. Back to bed for the drip, drip, drip till 7am dogwalk time. Another downpour and the roof terrace is filling fast with water…it’s a workday…but plan B is now afoot. Spent the day phoning property manager to get someone out and cleared the terrace so drain could run more freely (I think we’ve found the problem). Ben, our great management guy pays us a visit, we all look down the drain hole and say…ah, of course, the pebbles are blocking the hole and it’s all going over the flashing down the walls….Sherlock has nothing on the 3 of us.
That’s the storm and bucket sorted. To the nose…cleaning the terrace and removing plants so the drainage engineer(?!) can do his thang! I was putting away gardening tools in the benchseat on the landing, started to stand up and the benchseat attacked my forehead, glasses and bridge of my nose. I saw stars (not the celebrity kind), felt dizzy and just wanted to lie down. My nose came up swollen, black and blue and I thought it was broken for sure. No it wasn’t luckily.
Of course, this Burnout Queen heard not broken, so didn’t stop trying to clean up and get some work done. (can someone say burnout approaching!). Just paced it slow and steady. Then the headache and swelling got worse so I gave in (this is definitely something I don’t do easily) and hit the sofa where I lay for the rest of the day with an ice pack over my face (looking fab with the black on the nose, under the eyes and all swollen!)
WHAT A DAY. Often we say expect the unexpected. (note to self: be careful what you say)
ps: terrace being fixed this week. True test comes with next downpour! Life by the seaside.
pps: so busy catching drips I didn’t look out the window to see mother nature’s event!
