Musings on a Small Life

I have my fingers crossed and am knocking on wood, but so far , the roof has held up to three days of very heavy rain. Yay! (Now I hope I haven't jinxed it.) We have another heavy rainfall expected for tomorrow (Wednesday the 31st), so we'll see how things go. Alas, we have 5 - 10 cm of SNOW in the forecast for Thursday, and that's not an April Fools joke. It won't last more than a couple of days, of course, but even so....Well, such is spring in most of Canada. Plus 16C one day, snow the next.   I spied the snowdrops and crocuses a week ago, on a lunchtime walk around the block. Happy dance! Flowers always make my soul sing.  :-)   This morning I heard my favourite birdsong, that of a white-throated sparrow . He's the first one I've heard this spring. The very first memory I have of that birdsong was when I was about 5 or 6 years old and staying at someone's house in Gaspé. I think I had chicken pox at the time, or maybe it was German measles. I don't k...

Note: Comments are off for this post.   I just wanted to thank everyone for their support, I truly appreciate it.   I really don't have the "patience of a saint," it's that I absolutely loathe drama and conflict and I'd prefer to walk away than fight. I'm a "flight" person! LOL. I'll only turn and fight if there's no other viable option. Also, fighting takes a lot of mental and emotional energy and I'm pretty short on that right now, particularly as a close family member currently has a significant health issue to deal with and a lot of my energy is focused on that person, especially as, because of COVID, I'm not able to be there with them.   All that said, thanks to one of yesterday's comments, I now know that the shingles on the roof are architectural shingles and are supposed to be textured like that.   Pic from a Google search.   That eases my mind somewhat, though doesn't guarantee that my roof won't leak.   I still w...

For anyone who actually wants to know what the "next chapter" of the really, really bad roof story is, here we go:   It didn't take long for two (different) guys from the construction company to come out on Saturday morning, Jan 16th, after the leak in the guest room. They went up and put another "waterproof" membrane down on top of the one that had been put on the day before. One of the two guys DID come and look up in the attic for himself, saw the leaking mess and took pics. Neither of them claimed to understand how this could have happened, of course. (Do I look like I'm fresh out of the cabbage patch to believe that bs? But no one steps up and takes responsibility for errors and bad jobs nowadays, something I find especially frustrating and annoying.)   On Friday Jan 22 two of the same three guys who had done the prep work on the 15th came back to actually shingle the back half. I made my feelings known, though neither said a thing, of course. They did...

After yesterday's back-half roof repair, I now have a leaky guest room.     Unbelievable.   I opened up the attic hatch to see that the entire back half they redid is saturated from the rain we had overnight.     I have taken a slew of pics and sent them to the property manager and company president, and followed up with an email with all the pics for official purposes. I'm beyond words at the level of incompetence. I'm waiting to see what the property manager will say about this and what will be done. If this isn't addressed right away, and PROPERLY repaired, yes, I will be hiring a lawyer. Comments are off; what can anyone say? Just please send some positive thoughts for this!! Take care and stay well.

It's Friday January 15 as I type this and the roofers have just left. Yes, they were here! They actually did the back half of the roof, and supposedly will be back on Monday to do the front, unless it's too icy. (They weren't able to do the entire roof at once because it took too long for the frost to melt this morning.)   I was talking with one of the guys (not the foreman), and he was explaining that they had put a synthetic membrane down first (not done originally, or when they re-roofed about 15 years ago) and that the shingles now are a different type, will last longer. They don't slot together, they're all of a piece. So he assured me that the roof won't leak; at least the back half won't. (It hasn't anyway.) I told him that one of the issues has been a gap at the gable, allowing water into the master bedroom (front of the unit, over the garage), but he told me that they had wrapped the gable with the membrane and that it should be fine. (Fingers c...

I've asked myself several times this morning if it's really Friday. It's my first full week of work after many, many weeks of working only 4 days/week or less, to use up vacation time, and then the 16-day holiday break. Five days is loooonnnnggggg. LOL.   Vector image from a Google search   I don't have anything exciting to relate, as I've not gone anywhere in six days (!), the longest I ever have spent inside in my entire adult life. We're still in full lockdown, so other than getting groceries, which I have to do tomorrow, there's nowhere to go anyway. The weather has been dull and depressing for days on end, but today the sun is trying very hard to break through the heavy cloud cover. Perhaps, for our neighbours to the south and to the world in general, this can be a metaphor for better times to come. On the leaky roof front: I now have a dumpster sitting in my driveway. A few guys showed up yesterday and tried to clear as much snow off the roof as possib...