Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Dear Office Manager, I Am Not Making This Up

Well, I was sitting alone in Tropical Storm Cindy...
At 1:00 I felt a drop, got pissed and moved my mattress to the floor.
At 2:00 I panicked because water began streaming through the ceiling. Mattress was drenched.
At 2:10 I grabbed all the coolers, trash cans, and pots in the house. Then called Marissa and told her to come back and bring more coolers.
At 2:15 I called Peter and asked what to do if my roof caved in. He ignored me, thinking I was exaggerating, and told me to go to bed.
At 2:30 I started picking up my belongings by flashlight and tossing them in a giant pile in the walk-in closet.
At 2:40 I fell asleep in Heidi's bed downstairs.
At 3:40 I woke up, ran upstairs to find all my buckets overflowing with nasty brown water.
(Emptied, and in the process wound up soaked in brown water, which smells suspiciously like pee. Which means at this point I smell suspiciously like pee. As does my room which holds all my worldly goods.)
At 5:00 the storm is over. Yet I feel the urge to go upstairs... to find a NEW leak with water pouring down onto my mattress, and an ominous buckling of the ceiling plaster.
At 7:40 --the crash! - of a drywall avalanche and broken glass.
And as I rushed up the stairs and to the door...
I saw what used to be my ceiling...
Lying damply on my floor.
Soaking insulation, broken plaster, and crumbly chunks.
A giant piece of ceiling and about 500 pounds of wet insulation covering my bedframe where, mere hours before, I had been about to fall asleep.
Also, I smelled suspiciously like pee.

Dear office manager, this is why I'm calling in to say
That I hope you understand why I am not at work today.

Thank you.

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