Sleepless in, well, here

I did hear the drip. It woke me up around 2(?) this morning. But I thought it was inside the fireplace. I'm not sure why I thought that. I guess because it sounded so close and the fireplace is only about 4 feet from my bed. But when I heard the drip turn into a trickle I realized I'd better check on it.

That's when I realized it wasn't inside the fireplace. Well, I mean it was, but the other one was not. It was coming in through the window. The rain had formed a puddle outside the window of my basement bedroom. The window is below ground level. The puddle had gotten deep enough that it was above the bottom of my window. So it was leaking into the house via old-fashioned gravity flow. Down onto my bookshelf and then to the carpet below. So I put a bucket under it. At the same time, the rain let up a little and the dripping temporarily subsided. Fine, no problem, right?

When I woke again, an hour or so later, I realized the 'flow' had not only returned, but was not going into the bucket anymore. It had moved and was hugging the wall. By then the carpeting in the corner of my room was pretty soaked. Bollocks! (in a bad way)

I moved both shelves away from the corner, off the damp carpet. My 4 foot ladder was nearby and was about the right height for my plastic drawer. Which I emptied out and put under the leak. But the water was still bypassing the container(s). I needed some quick way to re-route the drip. It occurred to me that a piece of string (or something, anything) would hang down and force the water to drop into the bucket. So I thumb-tacked a twist-tie to the edge of the window sill and finally, finally... the water was going where it could be contained.

Then I got a towel and stood on it to soak up some water from the carpet. Not a thorough job but I got a few inches worth out of the carpet. Then it was 4:?? and I decided it was safe to get a little sleep again. Oy... sleep... I'd been up late the night before after having dinner guests and then workin on a project.

When I got up this morning things were pretty much the same. I emptied the buckets (plural, there WAS a drip inside the fireplace, too) and then did my morning routine. On the way to the bus stop I could see why the water had nowhere else to go. It was raining like mad. I was thankful for my recently purchased expensive umbrella. (The cheap one I'd found previously didn't do much against wind or rain, let alone both)

More later...