Back in college, pipes burst in the apartment above ours and poured torrents through our ceiling. Then I was subject to a lawsuit for having my own apartment obliterated, but that's a whole other story. The day that lawsuit settled, I got a phone call from my downstairs neighbor in Boston to ask whether I wouldn't mind checking to see if there was as much water trickling through my bedroom as there was in hers. Guess what! There was.
So, I got a new garden-level apartment, and within a month a flash flood had spread itself all the way through my living room and kitchen. When the maintenance man finally arrived, he found me eating a cold breakfast perched on a couch I had thrown across the room, staring like a zombie at the damage.
We figured out the mulch from our garden had been pushed over the drainage hole by water pouring from a neighbor's gutter. A reservoir was dug, the gutter was cleaned, and the mulch was removed. No more problems, even while I was in India and Boston received flooding of Biblical proportions. That whole time, my digs were nice and secure.
Then summer came, the mulch reappeared and, despite an immediate call to the landlord, I stood in my doorway tonight and watched as it, again, overpowered the drain and sent yuck streaming onto my carpet. The maintenance man arrived a little late this time, or else he could have feasted his eyes on me standing over the drain, scooping mud out with my hands, swearing bloody murder into the cell phone tucked between ear and shoulder.
Almost kind of makes a girl miss the desert. Anyone know a good realtor? How about a good ark-builder?
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