Tuesday, March 30, 2010

NOT A GOOD DAY

It's 6am and Anna shouts from upstairs 'Daddy, I want a pee'. Daddy replies 'Zzzzzz' from my side. Grrrr. I jump out of bed onto the frozen floor and leg it upstairs. I've still not got round to changing the clock on the boiler - bugger. I take Anna to the loo and she pees for what seems like five minutes solid as I shiver, then begs to get back under her warm duvet.
I go down and fall asleep. Around 7am I move my right leg. Something on Thomas's side is cold and wet. Surely 38 is too old (or too young) to be peeing the bed? The wet is too cold anyway. I lie awake and hear 'drip'. 'Thomas! Something is dripping on the bed!!!!' We turn on the light. Our bedroom is in the bottom corner of the house in the extension. Our heads are beneath the office but our feet are in the bungalow half of the extension. The lintel separating the two halves has two little drips hanging from the edge of it. It is snowing outside. Waking up with slush in your bed on the second day of British Summertime isn't the ideal way to start the new season.
It has to be a hole where the one storey extension meets the two storey one, or something to do with the central heating pipes directly under the office window. Option one is bad, option two is even worse (it would necessitate the removal of all the office furniture and the ripping up of the new hardwood floor on a week when Thomas is up to his eyes in three different projects).
We turn off the heating for an hour to test theory two. It continues dripping. He's relieved. I'm still stressed. He takes up a kettle of water to test theory one. He opens the window and pours the kettle onto the outside window ledge. Niagara comes instantly to the bedroom ceiling. Option one is confirmed. We decamp with our wet duvet into the cold living room and leave a basin on the bed. At least we can now try to reheat the house given we have 10cm of snow outside.
We know if we can just find the hole now we can plug it with concrete or tar first time there's a dry day...
First time there's a dry day? Oh shit it is Scotland! Thomas has plugged it temporarily with playdough! The drip has subsided but I'm still considering a night on the most uncomfortable futon in the world in my living room as a better option than another rude awakening to a foot in the slush in the bedroom :-(

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