Lastnight

It was sunday night that our ceiling in our living room began to leak. We were worried and we leaped to our feet to grab buckets and figure out what the problem was. Little did we know it was only the beginning of even bigger problems. After we saw the ceiling leaking we went to the people above us and discovered they were having problems with their sink. We let them know we were feeling it downstairs and the next day a plumber came out. By this time the leaking had calmed down quite a bit and we thought it would be a quick fix. After the plumber left a new leak appeared in a whole nother location. To help you understand the picture better- we had a good 4 or 5 buckets in different places in our living room catching kitchen waste dripping from our ceiling. While the smell wasn't pleasant we still didn't anticipate it to get quite as bad as it did. Lastnight we took a walk to coffee to get out of the house, ditch the smell and get some internet time. We got back around 10pm to a whole new leak. (Thank goodness we got to it when we did.) However, this leak was really pecular in that there were several holes in a straight line. We placed another bucket, called our Land-lord one more time and decided to read in our bedroom for a little while. After I started to get tired we decided to close up the house and get ready for bed. As we go out to the living room to check on the leak Wes discovers that our ceiling is ripping. A good quarter of the living room ceiling was breaking away from the rest of it. As we looked closer we noticed that the paint was the only thing holding it up. Wes reached his arm up to hold it up while I begin to move everything from beneath it. As I am doing this, the ceiling breaks in the middle and collapses on top of our end table. In complete disbelief we try to carry the ceiling out to the sidewalk and it crumbles in our hands. Now, the slow drips have turned into a pretty steady stream and we decide to set an alarm for every two hours to get up and empty the bucket. It was a rough night sleep to say the least and yet this still wasn't the half of it. Wes woke up to a crash at 4am and I soon followed. Another quarter of our living room broke away and now we have half of our living room ceiling gone. I think the best part of this story is what Wes found on the living room floor this morning. As I was getting ready for the day Wes comes into the bathroom with an interesting look on his face. I say "what's wrong?" and he says "There's a dead rat." Yes. There was a dead rat. The

most disgusting part about it was it didn't just die. This rat looks about as old as our house. With eyes rotted out and a hole in it's stomach... we even took a picture just to share with you how disgusting it was. So, today the plumber came back and looked into our big gaping hole of a ceiling and poked his finger right through our pipe. He declared that the people above us had been dumping their grease down their sink and it has built up over time. He replaced the pipe. After the plumber left Wes and I were left to sweep and vacuum up all the rat poop+ceiling crumbs+ insolation fluff. And we rented a carpet cleaner/steamer machine and steamed our carpets. More workers will be coming by tomorrow to rip out the rest of the ceiling and rebuild everything. It was a pretty funny experience- we are thankful that it isn't raining outside and that we aren't very busy with jobs yet. All in all this will make for a good story to tell our kids someday... We do miss our living room though. Forget the shelves falling last week! That pales greatly compared to our current condition. ha ha