My bathroom ceiling just caved in. I was just sitting peacefully at my kitchen table typing on my computer when…
BOOM BA BOOM BOOM!!!!
Uh oh. I didn’t budge. I knew what had happened and I didn’t want to see it. Would it look like a bomb just dropped in my bathroom? It was weird because I wasn’t even freaked out. Maybe because I’d been preparing for the fall since Saturday when the split appeared in my ceiling and water drop-drop-dropped from the apartment upstairs.
I thought about what my father would say: “That’s the problem with condo living.”
And I would say, “The roof of a house could cave in too, dad.”
And he would say, “But you have full control with a house – you can fix it yourself. In this case, you have to wait for the owner upstairs to have enough time in his/her schedule to check out the problem, call the plumber and have it fixed.”
And I would say, “It’s so frustrating because I called her early Saturday morning when I saw the split in the ceiling and she said she would come that afternoon. But she didn’t come until 8pm! I had to go somewhere and I had been waiting around for her all day.”
And he would say, “See, that’s the problem with condo living.”
And I would say, “There’s always something you gotta deal with in life, I’m starting to learn, though. Isn’t everyone always dealing with some problem or other in this adult life? I mean, unless you’re Paris Hilton? But even she’s got her issues. Apparently it’s difficult for her to trust people. Makes sense. When you have a lot of money, you attract a lot of vampires.”
OK, so I’m obviously exaggerating when I say I know how civilians, who lost their homes on the Gaza Strip, are feeling today. I couldn’t even begin to understand how they feel. They lost entire homes. Their children. I’ve got a hole in my ceiling. Big deal. It will get fixed. It will cost money. I’m hoping the owner upstairs will pick up the bill, but it doesn’t seem fair. It’s not necessarily her fault. She didn’t know there was a leak. And I didn’t know how serious the leak was.
Perhaps it’s not until disaster do we react. As much as I want to be a responsible homeowner, I am focused on my job and relationships most of the time, and if there is some kind of homeowner thing I have to take care of, I really have to focus hard. Is this part of becoming a full-grown adult?
It really sucks sometimes being a clueless American princess.