August 13, 2013: Some good thing will happen to you soon!

“It’s wet here!”said Akemi as I was preparing to head downstairs to do my workout.

Uh oh, I thought.  Poor Lulu.  My gal was up (meaning I was also up) at 3:00 a.m. this morning for over an hour, dry-heaving and vomiting, and I assumed she’d had “an accident”.

Lulu – feeling under the weather.

“Uh oh,”said Akemi, seemingly reading my thoughts.  I glanced over and followed her gaze, not to the floor but up, to the ceiling where I finally noticed THIS -

Yep, that’s water damage alright.  I headed upstairs to locate the source of the leak.  In office directly above, I noticed THIS -

Yes, MORE water damage!

The area above is a labyrinth of pipes accessible through a tiny closet hatch -

Seriously, it looks like that little access panel in the Japanese version of The Grudge.  I imagined poking my head up amongst the shadows and casting my flashlight about before being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the darkness.  It’s next to impossible to get up there. You have to stand at the very top of my stepladder, then step on to a wall mounted shelf, hope it holds your weight, and worm your way up and in.  No way I was testing my luck.  Besides, even if I did go up, what the hell would I do?  I’m not a professional.

So, I called one, finally locating a plumber who could come today.  In retrospect, I should have requested someone young a wiry to negotiate access to the overhead crawlspace.  Fortunately, while not young, the guy who came over was wiry and managed to squirm his way up there.

I waited for about twenty minutes, preparing myself for one of two, maybe three, worst case scenarios: 1. He never comes back down because he falls victim to the serial killer living in my house, 2. He comes down – crashing through the water damaged section of the ceiling and 3. Lands on top of me.

Finally, I heard him grunt and scuffle as he lowered himself back down and into daylight.  So, what was the issue?

“I think it’s the air conditioner,”he informed me.

“You think?”

“For sure it’s the air conditioner,”he said after presumably consulting with his alternate personality.

“So, what do we do?”

“I don’t know.  I’m a plumber.  You need someone who services air conditioners.”

Fine.

I phoned up a couple of air conditioning experts and finally got an appointment.  For tomorrow.

To cap off the day, I picked up Jelly from the animal clinic where she received a stem cell boost for her arthritic/dysplasiac hips -

Jelly

As I was carrying her back to the car, she peed on me.

Akemi, as always, looks on the bright.  ”Some good thing will happen to you soon!”she said.

Whatever this “good thing” is, it’ll have to happen to me without air conditioning.