It’s a new year, and so far, it’s about the same. Except, I have a new fear of rain.
It rained quite heavily here in Los Angeles earlier this month, which normally would have me giddy and gleeful – it doesn’t rain often here, so I try to appreciate it to the fullest when it does. But the problem with a city that doesn’t get rain very often is that it isn’t built to withstand a steady onslaught of the strange wet stuff that falls from the sky. The streets don’t drain, the hillsides get heavy and fall on houses, or out from under houses, the riverbeds collapse, and the walls soak up the water like a sponge, like mine did in my apartment. All of my exterior facing walls now have cracks, ripples and waterstains; the weight of the wall unit air conditioner and the veritical blinds is causing parts of the walls to crack and in a couple of places, crumble; and the insecticide they injected into the wall months ago to kill the termites is now oozing out in several icky places. It’s, well, kind of scary when you have to go out and buy more towels because you’ve run out of things to catch the drips from the ceiling, and most of my possessions, in the living room at least, are now crowded against the north side of the room, away from the damaged walls.
They were supposed to come in yesterday to finally fix it all, now that things have dried out, but they were so busy they didn’t make it, so the kitties are locked up in the bedroom for another day in the hopes that St. Fixer-up will soon be on the way. Not that I have much faith in St. Fixer-up – I’m pretty sure all they’re going to do is fix the cracks and crumbles, and ignore the fact that the water is in all the walls, undermining the base wood and causing all kinds of mold and mildew to flourish. I’m genuinely in fear of the next rainfall.
One of my elderly neighbors died during the rain (coincidence, as we did not actually flood or anything in our neighborhood). I haven’t figured out yet if it was the husband or the wife, as I have not seen either one since, but their daughter has been packing up their apartment, so whichever one is left is either going home with her, or to a nursing home. They were an adorable little couple – didn’t speak a word of English. I’m sad that one of them is gone.
But, the selfish part of me that is going to hell is wondering if maybe their apartment had less water damage…