A Leaky Boat

It's a rough night here at the Treeboat. I got a couple of "heads up" text messages from L while I was at the Story Slam: maintenance had needed to go into our apartment to fix a water leak affecting our downstairs neighbors. I heard water dripping earlier in the day, but only half-investigated -- everything seemed fine in my office, where I thought I heard the drip.

So I expected to come home to a torn-apart apt., because there's no way you can get to the utility section without wading through a bunch of stuff on the floor of my office. Luckily, there was no sign that maintenance people had come in, just a note on the door saying they needed us to call them and not lock the deadbolt. I quickly figured out that the water was dripping into the utility closet from the air conditioner, so I put a mixing bowl under it and worked on cleaning up my office for when they inevitably come in tomorrow. I have way too much stuff in that office, and lately, in spite of my organizing efforts (mostly done in short spurts after watching episodes of Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC), it's not looking too good.

LukeGyver came home and fixed the leaking problem (temporarily) with a paperclip. But I'm guessing we should keep the AC off until tomorrow, and here's where part of the trouble lies: I've had a cold all week, but it seemed like it might partly be allergies, because the chest congestion originally appeared when I was rooting around in the back of the closet under the stairs, stirring up a lot of dust. I started to lose my voice yesterday, but the cold has mostly been mild and only slightly annoying. Until tonight. I went to bed at about 12:30 and woke up at 2, feeling terrible. I think the cold is intensified by plant/pollen allergies from having all the upstairs windows open. So I was coughing and miserable.

To get away from the open windows, and keep from bothering L too much with the coughing, I came downstairs to sleep on the loveseat. Well, one problem with that is that the downstairs neighbor apparently has a really loud friend over. They're starting to settle down now, at 2:45, but they were really yelling back and forth to each other earlier. Another problem is that it's a loveseat, not a couch, and certainly not as comfortable as a bed.

Hopefully I'll be able to get to sleep soon, because now it looks like tomorrow will involve maintenance people coming into the apt., something we go out of our way to avoid. This is complicated by many things: the sickness; the fact that next week is the last week of classes, so I have a bunch of work to do; and the fact that we're going to Maine tomorrow.