Deluge

At some time last night my son's room experienced a minor flooding incident. The pipe for the emergency drain in my bathtub is completely corroded and no longer connects properly to the main drain - if water goes above the overflow drain (which will happen if you put too much water in the tub or slosh around too much) it basically drains into the floor under the bathtub and into the next room, which happens to be my son's. Of course, we weren't fully aware of this until early this morning when my son came into my room saying that his blankets were all wet. Since he's only five and still sometimes has bladder control issues, I figured he'd had an accident. But when I walked into his room there was a large puddle of standing water on one side of the room, seeming to lead back from under the bed. The comforter on the bed had been half on the floor, so it apparently soaked up a lot of the water during the night and ended up drenching the mattress as well. Since most of the furniture in my son's room is particle board, we had to move the bookcase and dismantle the bed to mop up the water before too much swelling happened and the stuff was ruined. At least the floor is tarazzo now instead of carpet, so it was fairly easy to clean up. We did suffer the loss of my son's bean bag chair, since it got completely soaked and had to be thrown away. He was getting a little too big for it anyway, so maybe we'll buy one of those gaming chairs to replace it. I guess this explains why the carpet tack in that room was rotted out and the tarazzo was discolored when we pulled up the carpet. Mystery solved. Now I know I probably need a new tub with all new plumbing. Which means I probably need a new bathroom...

I think when I'm done with Neverwhere (and I'm halfway there already), I'll take a break from Neil Gaiman and read some Umberto Eco. I read The Name of the Rose a very long time ago, and think I should re-read it and also pick up Foucault's Pendulum and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Of course, I'm also reading The Time Traveler's Wife and it has yet to really catch my attention (so far I've found it infuriatingly plodding and dull, to be honest), but I'm only a few chapters in. I'll give it a little bit more time before I decide whether to keep going or not. Considering how overwhelmingly popular this book is, and how many people have gone out of their way to tell me how great it was I'm a little disappointed, so far. But as I've stated before, I'm not exactly a romantic, so I'm not one of those people who really enjoys treacly "timeless love stories" or star crossed anything, so the whole cliched tugging at the heartstrings approach doesn't really rate as great fiction to me. A certain amount of tragedy I can handle, but when it comes to a story centered around "everlasting love transcending the reaches of time"...I have a hard time suspending my disbelief.

I have things to do tonight, so the fact that I'm posting means I'm procrastinating - again. I have a house that needs tidying (I was reminded earlier this evening that there are dishes to do and a bathroom to clean).


I got all ambitious and decided to make a scrapbook for my mother-in-law. So I have two days to do that. I was lazy and sent out NO Christmas cards. I'm making something for my Grandparents in Pennsylvania, but it won't be ready until after the holidays, so it'll be a late surprise. I was hopeing to make it up there in a couple months, but it is looking less and less like that is going to happen. So maybe next year.