Gratuitous Domestic Posting - Le Deluge Division

On Easter afternoon, as I was furiously scrambling about to get all things ready for the long and festive dins, I suddenly noticed water dripping from a crack in the doorway between the library and the breakfast room. (The discovery so discombobulated me that I completely forgot about putting together the bacon and water chesnuts. I had no choice but to simply fix them for myself a few days later. Pity.)

That particular doorway is in a line directly south of the gels' bathroom, which in the preceding 48 hours or so, had experienced a number of overflows of one sort and another (which I need not go into here). My immediate diagnosis was that the seal around the base of the tub had probably gone, what with the incessent pounding and vibration caused by three sets of young but strong hooves.

And so it seemed when I inspected things later. The sealant was cracked and worn thin in several places. Thus, the next weekend I duly got out my caulker gun and redid the tub. This seemed to fix things, as the leaking and dripping soon stopped.

At least for the moment.

The dripping started again a couple days ago. When I noticed it, I simply grumbled under my breath, reckoning that I'd probably missed a spot somewhere and would need to do just a little touch-up caulking. No big deal.

But wait. There's more.

Last evening when I got home, the Missus was on the phone with our handyman. She seemed to be deep into arrangements and instructions, instructions that sounded far too complicated for just the small drip in the doorway. I asked in her other ear what was going on, whereupon she directed me into the living room. There, in the corner next the piano, it looked as if Niagra Falls had decided to open a branch office. The entire corner was positively sodden. What is more, there was a crusty white film dripping down the wall. I've seen that film before - surrounding the leaks in the three or four pipes we've had to replace in the last couple years. That, coupled with the shear volume of water in evidence, convinced me that the problem went much deeper than overzealous Llama-ettes splashing water out of their tub.

So here we are again. Our handyman will be over today knocking holes in the library and living room ceiling to try and figure out where the bloody leak is this time. Of course since I'm positive some pipe replacement is going to be involved, we're going to have to get the plumbers back as well.

Grrr.

One of the "joys" of home ownership is the knowledge that you're funding an awful lot of other people's kids' college education.