The Ceiling Fell, My Clothes Shelf Broke, and Then I Trapped a Rat

 

All of the above has happened since Friday.  Am I being tested? 

Two weeks ago my landlord decided to have the air conditioning unit serviced for the first time in three years.  I had never had any problems with the AC. 

As is usually the case, the Tucker AC guys showed up in pairs.  One did all the talking – and by that I mean yammering on and on and on and… while the other one mutely did all the grunt work.  Of course, I needed a “teeny tiny bit of Freon, just to top off the tank.”  There was something very “weird about the way that unit is installed – there’s no filter shelf.”  So they fixed that.  And they cleaned the coil.  

Now, I’m no HVAC technician, but over the years I’ve learned to become very wary of in-house technicians.  They all seem to follow the same suspicious protocol:

1) Bash the work of the previous technician and/or installer.

2) Find something they have “never seen it done like that before.”

3) Declare the problems fixed and I’m “good to go.”

4) But they lie.  Instead of the original problem being fixed, it is not and an additional, new problem emerges.

So, the Tucker AC guys leave and I go about my business as usual for two weeks.

Last Thursday, as I walked through the dining room toward the kitchen, I noticed a small puddle on the floor.  I immediately looked at Coqui, my nearly perfect but aging Bichon Frise.  “Did you pee on the floor?!?!?”  She stared at me with those enormous black eyes as if to ask “What the hell are you talking about?”

I made a pit stop in the downstairs bath and headed back toward my perch on the sofa.  A drop of water fell on my head.  We were in the midst of our obligatory daily thunderstorm, so I surmised that rain water was somehow leaking into the house. 

I called the landlord and told him about the leak. 

Two hours later, I walked to the powder room again – I’d been drinking lots of water and eating watermelon, okay? As I walked back toward the living room water was dripping in a catchy rhythm from the ceiling onto the floor.  Aha!  It’s not raining anymore, so the leak has to be connected somehow to my flushing the toilet.  

I tell the landlord, who has called somebody called Atlanta Fix-it Guy to troubleshoot the problem.  Mr. Fixit arrives, inspects the premises, listens to my amateur diagnostics and promises to get back to the landlord with an estimate.  He instructed me to refrain from using that toilet until he could get back. No problem.  I have another one upstairs.

I tell the landlord I am afraid the ceiling will collapse under the weight of the water, but because of my MS, I am not supposed to get over-heated, so I’ll have to run the AC once in awhile.  He brings in a giant plastic bin to catch the water.

The next day, Saturday, I make the connection between the AC turning on and the beginning of the leaks.  By this time there are cracks in the sheetrock and brown water spots emerging by the hour.  If I turned off the AC, the dripping would stop within three minutes.  Aha!

Just before that eureka moment, I had been stacking newly folded laundry on my closet shelf.  Apparently, I have too many clothes.  The shelving fell when a screw pulled away from the drywall.  I had no more angst to give it, though.  I  just closed the doors and walked downstairs.

A large chunk of the ceiling had fallen to the dining room floor five minutes after Coqui and I walked under it to go upstairs to bed.  My luck is holding out, however.  None of my furniture was hit.  Yet.

Atlanta Fix-it Guy has never called with an estimate.  A follow up call to him resulted in his taking a pass on the job because “he was booked for the next two weeks.”

A local AC company was called and arrived bright and early Monday morning.  “Easy fix,” said the one-who-does-the-talking.  His mute partner was outside staring at the condenser.  The next words out of his mouth?  “That guy from Tucker shouldn’t have left it this way.”  Uh-huh.

Fifteen minutes and $150 later, this dynamic duo leaves and says “You’re good to go, Ma’am.”

The leak was twice as fast as it was before.  The landlord and I were mopping up and stuffing absorbent materials into the hole in the ceiling, emptying my china cabinet and moving it to the other side of the room, sweating like two pigs and swearing to ourselves under our breaths at 9 p.m. Monday.

Just before that, I was standing at the patio door staring into space.  I tend to do that when I get overwhelmed.  Something moved in my peripheral vision.  I glanced down and spotted a pink-eared, fat bellied RAT!  Still depleted of angst, I pulled out the rat trap from the closet, loaded it with peanut butter and put it in the exact spot I saw Ratatouille shading himself under the daisies.

This morning?  Well, the local AC people who failed to fix my “easy fix” are supposed to be calling me when they are about to come out.  It’s 11:30 a.m.  No call yet.  The late Ratatouille is resting in peace in the dumpster outside.  My folded clothing is still sitting in neat stacks all around my bedroom.  And the clouds are gathering, once again, for our daily gully-washer. 

It’s been one of those times when the only thing left to do is laugh.