the joys of apartment living

Last Wednesday while I was doing some baking in the kitchen I kept feeling something splashing on my toes. I thought that was a little weird as I was not doing anything with liquids and wondered where it was coming from or if I was just imagining it. But it kept happening and I finally noticed a small drip coming from our ceiling. So we called the landlord who then called the handyman who came over the next day to check it out. He went upstairs but couldn't find a leak anywhere but they did reseal their sink in case that was the problem. He said that if it got any worse to give him a call. So everything seemed fine, no more dripping for the next couple of days. Well, on Sarturday while I was cleaning the kitchen I noticed that there was a water bubble on the wall and when you looked up you could see where the water had run down the wall. I just figured it was leftovers from Wednesday so I poked a hole in it and drained out the water. Well, later that night while I was out with friends, my roommate Ruby called and said that there was a steady stream of water coming out of our ceiling. She had called the landlord who called the handyman but because it was 10 o'clock at night they couldn't come until the next morning. So we put a trash can under the stream and went to bed in hopes that the dishwasher upstairs wouldn't come crashing down in the night or that our sealing wouldn't burst open as now there was a whole rectangular area that had water sitting in it. When I got home from church on Sunday this is what I found....



Turns out that my really smart neighbors who live upstairs knew that their washer leaks, or should I say sprays water, when they turn it on and knowing this they keep the water turned off until they need to use it. Problem is that they don't do anything to fix it and didn't tell the handyman about it when he was checking things out earlier. Needless to say, the water has been pooling up. So we had to rip out the ceiling and now it has to dry for a few days which means that we have to live in this mess. Ironic that it had to happen right after I had vacuumed and mopped the floor. The joys of apartment living and not so smart neighbors. If they're not flooding us out next door and making us rip up carpet to dry then they are causing our ceiling to drip and making us rip it up to dry. Grrrrr... maybe it's time for me to get serious about buying a place of my own that's not a crap hole...