My Very Own Indoor Wading Pool

Yesterday I awoke at 3 a.m. to the sound of an intense rainfall seemingly all around me. From the sound of it, it was raining on my ceiling and in my walls. I got to the lightswitch just in time to see water streaming out of the electrical outlet in one of my internal walls. It eventually stopped, and it dried quickly, so I went back to bed.

An hour later, the adventure repeated. This time, I thought to take pictures and video with sound. I wanted the plumbers (or whoever) to understand what had happened. Now there was also water seeping through the top of the wall at the ceiling in three locations.

When it seemed to be slowing or even stopping, I grabbed some bedding and went to snooze on the couch in the wonderfully dry and quiet living room. Instead, there was a knock on my door. My downstair neighbor wanted me to come look at the water streaming down her walls. I told her it wasn't necessary; I had my own interior rainstorm, thank you very much. So she came in and looked at mine.

I let my upstairs neighbor sleep in until 8:15 a.m., then I went up to make sure he knew about this (his bedroom is on the opposite side, so he might not be aware until he went in to make coffee). I imagined the worst - skylights broken, buckets around to catch the drips, pools - but his apartment was A-OK. Great.

All day at work, I waited to hear when the contractor could be there. Finally heard at 5 pm that he'd be here today at 8 am. I worried that maybe I'd made a big deal over nothing -- it could have been a one-time thing due to the unusually intense rainfall.

This morning at 4 am, it sounded like water was simply pouring through my interior wall. I got up and checked the floor - just a small stream, like yesterday. No biggie. Tried to go back to sleep. Around 5:30 or so, I got up and checked the guest room. Uh oh. I had my very own wading pool.

Since then: Mop and bail. Throw down old sheets and towels until they are supersaturated. Despair as the rain shows no signs of letting up, and the water keeps gushing through. Talk to neighbors. Repeat.

Around 7:30, however, although the rain continued, the gushing stopped. Hallelujah! I was able to remove the pool, and start draining my sheets and towels in the bathtub. Turns out my ground-floor neighbor's room was flooded, and he thought of a clever stop-gap solution. Literally: he stopped up the gap.

Now we are just waiting for the contractor. If he can fix this quickly and permanently, he will be the most popular person in the building.