The Sky is Falling

Friday happened to be a rather cold and wet day in Joburg. Cold probably doesn’t sound strange to you as it is fall for most of you and temps are dropping. Here we are headed into summer and temps have been in the 80’s so when we woke up to 50 degree weather it felt a bit winter like.

Friday afternoon the kids and I were cuddled up on the living room floor playing a game of Cadoo, I was just sharing that rainy days can be fun days and this was kind of nice. The only thing in my opinion that would make it better would be a heater. All our heaters were packed away; I mean why would one need them in the summer time?! So I gave a diplomatic suggestion to my husband who was working from home that one would be nice. He has learned after 13 years of being married to me that my diplomatic suggestion of, “we should get a heater out” actually means “he should get a heater out”. So he went to the flat to retrieve one. *Our flat is a self-contained one bedroom that is not attached to the house.

Not more than 30 seconds passed when Rich returned in a panic. “Michelle, I am gonna need some help here.” Marci our staff member was in the office and heard the tone in Rich’s voice and jumped up to investigate with me. As we walked into the flat a large portion of the roof was caved in and water was pouring and I mean pouring in. We frantically ran around trying to get the electrical appliances out while Rich was trying to figure out how to stop the gush. A thought occurred to me during the mayhem that although it was raining outside it wasn’t raining that hard and all the sudden the gush retreated to a trickle. It wasn’t the rain that caused the break after all, one of the hot water pipes burst.

So we spent the next hour attempting to sweep/mop up the water… I couldn’t help but laugh especially as my daughter artfully exclaimed, “but I thought God said He would never flood the earth again.” My husband did not find much humor in the circumstances, we have had so many things that have gone wrong with this house lately..he is finished (as they would say here). I felt the saying “when in rains it pours” was quite apropos. Just makes me believe that something good is just over the bend! And this is the one time when it is nice to be renting.

Anyway that is my Monday morning version of “the Sky is falling!” And as an added bonus here is a picture of Marci merrily sweeping away the unwanted H2O.