Second Day of Quandry, Deneb, 65th Day of Hagwinter, 524 M.E.

 

I know on a scale of problems it's pretty far down there, but it happened to me so I feel like it's important, at least important enough to blog about here. Last Saturday, a normal day, nothing special, sitting around watching my teams getting blown out in the college football playoffs, my gaze for some reason drifted up to the ceiling. And saw up there a big, brown water stain across the white plaster.

I don't know how long it's been there as I can't think of a day that I looked at the ceiling and remarked, "Yep. Pretty normal. Nothing unusual to see there." But it's so obvious and so hard to miss, I can't believe it's been there long.  We had two solid days of near-constant rain last week, and I suspect water found it's way past some shingles then, followed some joists and ducts, and pooled above the ceiling.

I went up on the roof and didn't see anything that looked unusual to me. But then again, there would probably have had to have been a hole the size of a bowling ball or a tree limb impaling the roof for me to have noticed.

I called the roofing guy who installed a replacement roof for me back in 2020 and made an appointment for him to come by. With Christmas in the middle of this  week, though, he won't be able to come out until Friday. 

So no real damage (yet) and it doesn't look like anything catastrophic, but it still has me shook. Like I said, I had a new roof put on in 2020, although I realize now that was five years ago. But to me, finding a stain on my living room ceiling feels like discovering a sinister mole or discoloration suddenly appearing on your skin, or feeling a strange lump somewhere on your body. A sign of trouble, decay, and deterioration. A rude reminder of swift and relentless impermanence.