Thursday, September 23, 2010

Raindrops keep falling on my head

This is not just a figure of speech or a mere song title, it is in fact a reality for me. My house is made of wood and I have a metal roof, which doesn’t give me as much protection from the elements as I would like. When it’s windy, the wind seems to enter on one side of my house and blow right through to the other side. I actually have some holes in my walls big enough to look outside and see stuff. When it rains, the noise of the rain is multiplied when it hits the metal roof.
Last night it rained and when it rains in Paraguay, it rains hard with full on lightning so bright it lights up your room and thunder so loud you feel like it’s cracking right outside your door… sometimes even inside your door. I spent half of the night awake, listening to the thunder and wondered how my dog could sleep so soundly through all the noise. The only time she even budged was when there was a crack of thunder so loud I could have sworn a bolt of lightning hit something in my front yard. She popped her head up as if there was a predator invading the house but then settled right back down when she realized the noise wasn’t continuous. I then dragged her across half the bed so that she could sleep closer to me. This wasn’t because the thunder and lightning scares me (although it definitely did my first month or so here) but I just felt like I could sleep more peacefully with her next to me in the midst of all the racket. That didn’t happen. Besides the constant noise of the rain and thunder that I had to block out, my dog insisted on taking up half of the bed, stretching herself out fully to sleep nice and relaxed while I was politely pushed to the side of the bed.
It was about that time when I felt a drop of water on my face. I figured this was a good time as any to get out of bed and figure out what was going on since I apparently wasn’t getting any sleep anyway. I turned on my light and got a good look around my room, surveying the damage. The leak above my bed wasn’t all that serious, I just had to deal with a drop of water or two falling about every 15 minutes or so when it’s raining really hard. There were however other problems that I became aware of with my light on. There were three small puddles on my floor from leaks in the roof, but fortunately, none of them were in problematic spots or large enough to be a real problem. I turned around again to get back in bed and I got a good look at my walls. For any of you who weren’t already aware, wood is not waterproof. This means that when there is rain and any kind of wind, the rain gets slammed into my walls… and then soaks through to the inside of my house. I now have water spots all over my walls, and in a few places, leaking down to the floor. This isn’t so problematic except that my bed is located right next to the wall, thus my blanket and sheet are susceptible to getting wet. I moved my bed a few inches away from the wall just to be safe. As there was nothing else I could do, I crawled back under the covers, shoved my dog over so that I could at least have half of the bed, and eventually fell back asleep listening to the rain and thunder with the occasional drop of rain on my face.

3 comments:

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  2. You just keep making my upcoming time with you sound more and more fun. This is going to be a very expensive camping trip!! :)

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  3. When as a child, my family moved from Michigan to California. I claimed to miss the weather and the seasons. My parents said it was because I never had to go to work in that kind of weather. As an adult I lived in Michigan for four years. Not only did I have to go to work in that weather, I was in construction so I was outside and had to work in that weather. I loved it all the while I was there. It sounds like you have a very interesting house and a wonderful place to live. I hope you get to enjoy it for all it's worth!

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