From this afternoon, the last day of the year, the towering oak above my garden plot. I went down to say hello and think about spring.
One of our former board members from “my” arts nonprofit asked yesterday for a photo and a poem for the latest “Peace, Love, Happiness and Understanding newsletter as Walt is off to Mexico for two months next week. She wanted something that looked towards spring. I had the photo I took of blooming but battered daffodils in the snow some years back as I had used that recently in a reminder email for my in-person class.
The poem was harder.
I had noticed weeks ago that it seemed odd that my bathmat was wet in spots. Spots I had not stepped on recently with wet feet or spilled anything and if it was something Carlo had done, I would have smelled that and he is (blessedly) still very good about using the box.
The idea was to experiment. I dried it out and put it back down. Then I began to notice that there was just a little bit of water seeping up between the joins in the fake wood vinyl flooring intermittently. As soon as I noticed this I freaked out.
I am still traumatized by the displacement from two years ago. It was such a big deal and so disruptive and I was thinking, if it is a leak, maybe in the wall, what am I going to do. Carlo is still traumatized. He used to always greet visitors, now he hides. Even visitors he knows.
Here it was the holidays and I didn’t want to deal…
Monitoring it is the ticket, I told myself. There was a little puckering of some paint on the wall just above the baseboard across from the toilet. I laid down paper towels and could ascertain no recognizable pattern of seepage and water usage. Toilet, shower, sink, upstairs use.
So much stress about other things. But concern started to affect my sleep and so I promised myself I would address it as soon as Christmas was over. At the train station as we were waiting for my train home, I told Most Honorable. He was quite reassuring. He said the wax seal on the toilet had most likely degraded. I had also intermittently been smelling a kind of sewer smell, (which I attributed to my heavy-footed somewhat strange upstairs neighbors, that are I think moving out, yay!) that he said could be explained by the seal being compromised.
So, Monday I let the management company know. Yesterday after class a tall soft spoken young man showed up and took a look. He was also reassuring. He was pretty sure it was exactly what Most Honorable said, the toilet was slightly off kilter, and I mean slightly, and fresh water from flushing was seeping over the rim of the top of the connector of the toilet to the floor. He said he had anti-microbial stuff he could deploy once the leak was sealed and the floor (and small part of the wall) began to dry.
6 hours later with the water to all seven apartments in my building turned off during that time, he put the toilet back with a proper connection to the floor and a substantial wax ring. I had to go to the gym to pee.
It was the guys that worked on putting the toilet back 2 years ago. They did a slapdash seal job that wasn’t up to code. I wasn’t the only one that desperately wanted the repairs finished back then.
Now I am monitoring the seepage. It has been minor today. Issac, the young man’s name is Isaac, told me that that management usually doesn’t pull up the flooring until “move out”. I am not going anywhere. I am nervous about all this because seepage into the walls from a slow leak from the upstairs dishwasher is what caused the displacement before. He did check the moisture content in the wall and said it was not traveling.
Fingers crossed. I am proud of myself for facing my fear and dealing with it and will continue to do so. But drat. It is always something.
In the middle of all that I sent the following poem to Walt… He replied, “ Beautiful, Thank Yew”.
The Robin and You
Extravagant in praise he bows to her.
Tells her she is a falcon-ness, a phoenix
and in his quiet moments a swan.
She knows she is a plain woods robin
and what matters is her song.
Early before the worms, she practices her art.
Her flash of red breast a surprise
only to those who have no feel for the natural world.
Wrapped inside themselves, amidst their suffering
she sings for them.
Her beak is the vessel, her mate the morning dew.
Her only audience, the wise and patient yew.
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