The cat came back, the very next time it would be most annoying

As some of you know, we have had leaky roof problems on our back porch almost the whole 5+ years we've lived in this house. It's a great house; we have a very responsive landlord. He sent people to fix the roof. Lots of people. And they evidently tried many different things. The last guy said the previous attempts were obviously going to fail; he didn't know why they even bothered. He was confident he had fixed the problem.

And he did. Except for one thing. This morning, I discovered a new leak. Suspiciously close to the old leak. The leak is no longer on the back porch, where it could conveniently drip onto a pile of old towels sitting on top of the dryer. No, the new leak is in the ceiling of MY CLOSET! Which means I didn't even realize it was leaking this morning till the hanging clothes were sufficient soaked to start making a noise when the drips fell on them. Yes, I just said "the hanging clothes were sufficiently soaked."

Have you ever had a problem that you thought was solved, only to have it come back twice as bad? Have you ever had a problem you simply didn't have time to deal with? And why is it that it's so weird to have work people you don't know come into the very personal parts of your life? (Maybe that's obvious. Why wouldn't it be?) For some reason, having a carpenter work on the back porch roof was not that big of a deal. They really only had to come inside to replace the ceiling tiles. But I'm guessing, in order to figure out what's gone wrong, they're going to have to spend serious amounts of time in my closet. Which means serious amounts of time in the bedroom. Where all the laundry lives, on chairs and in laundry baskets, waiting for that miraculous day right before the Second Coming when it all gets folded and put away.

Except now that miraculous day might be the day before the carpenter comes. Which, bizarrely, part of me wishes will be tomorrow. Making today laundry day. Now, mind you, there were parts of me that wanted to get the laundry put away soon anyway, since we'll soon be hosting varieties of guests. But I'm also wondering what it will mean to have a carpenter in the closet. That seems like it might involve clothes coming out of the closet and having to live in other parts of the house, which is the opposite of getting put away before company comes. I've already got the "dry clean only" wet things hanging in the guest shower that will need to be used this weekend.

I could lament that things always seem to happen at the worst time. But I don't think that's it. I think it's that whenever they happen, that time suddenly seems like the worst time. There's always something. With any luck, the carpenter will be booked till the middle of next week. In the meantime, you should see the drip catcher I rigged up using a tv tray table, a piece of particle board and a foot-soaking bucket. As long as it doesn't get too full, I don't think it will fall over and dump water all over everything.