Ophelia

/ Jeff Cann

Is it irony that the post tropical depression stalled above Gettysburg is named after a literary character who drowned? When the rain started this morning, I folded a blanket and draped it over the armchair in my sunroom. Having a sunroom, does that sound snooty? Is it on par with a billiards room or a conservatory? The name is apt. Twelve windows create two walls of glass. Three skylights seal the deal. It is a room of light, so bright on a winter day that TV is unwatchable. Low angle sunlight pours through the window. The cat and sometimes the people lie on the carpeted floor and bask. No sun today, but a steady drip of water.

The water is my bane, my Achilles heel, a sword strung above me dangling by a thread. Too much? OK, but that drip irritates the crap out of me. It’s those skylights. One of them leaks when it rains hard and the wind is right. Ophelia is that double whammy.

“Call a roofer,” you say.

I have already, two of them. We have two different roofs. The slightly pitched rubber roof with the skylights, and a steep shingled roof four feet away. Both roofs are new, one five years old, the other about eighteen months.  

“Not me,” says the rubber roofer, “my work is good. The water gets into the house at the edge of the shingles.”

“That’s stupid,” says the shingle roofer. “Obviously the skylight leaks.”

Ophelia doesn’t care who’s to blame. The ceiling drips. And drips. The blanket on the chair soaked through in minutes. I pulled the armchair away and positioned a bucket. The plastic tap, tap, tap morphed into a bloop, bloop as the water rose. The cat cares as much as Ophelia does. She sleeps the sleep of a rainy day, nowhere to be but curled on the couch. I sit on the couch too, reading, but glance often at the ceiling, expecting a sodden chunk to break away.

Susan and I dream of selling our home, renting something smaller. Letting someone else worry about skylights and drips. But that’s years away. This leak is ours to fix. We’ll call a roofer when the rain stops.  

25 thoughts on “Ophelia”

  1. My first thought about fixing anything is ‘Can I do it with Blu-tack?’ Of course your problem is finding the point of ingress. (BTW, is ingress a good roofer’s word or is it one that would get a premium added to the bill? Sorry, I digress). What have these blighters done by way of investigating the source of the leak?

    I’m imagining myself with a Country Fire Authority spray tank full of pretty dyed water up on the roof systematically blasting each suspect piece of roofing. Mind you, I’m not allowed to do such things anymore and I can only fantasise. (At least all those concussions haven’t dented my capacity to dream of such heroism).

    Another fixing material capable of sending me into a reverie is bituminused aluminium sheet.
    I managed a very effective repair of a rusted out floor pan in an old Hillman car. But that was years ago. Nevertheless, it was cheap and effective.

    Well Jeff, I hope that I’ve not been too flippant about this – it sounds like a right royal pain in the neck. Good luck.

    Regards
    DD

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  3. Moving from my 100 year old farmhouse (which I loved dearly and lived in for three decades, raising my girls there) was such a liberation…I feel your pain as I spent many hours and many dollars dealing with similar problems over the years.

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  4. Our bathroom skylight leaks. It’s on a slanted part of the roof too, so it pours in. Up until this last winter, it was a minor inconvenience. Now it’s just one more thing in this how that the Universe is using to show me that’s it’s time to move on😂 My stove has been acting up, my washer died last month…

    I bet a sunroom, there, is nice in winter. Here, it would just be a heat trap😂

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    • Yours is a rental, right? BS that you need to deal with all that. Something nice about the sunroom is that in the summer with the sun straight up, not that much sunlight comes in. Just through the #$&^ skylights. The room is open to the rest of the house so I’m sure we’re paying quite a bit to heat and cool it, but it’s literally the reason we bought the house.

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  6. this would drive me nuts (not the dripping noise– i’m like the cat and can sleep the sleep of rainy days): the fact that neither roofer seems to want to help you. 😦

    beautiful phrase, btw, about the cat and sleep. ❤

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  8. Just so happens, we’re reading Hamlet in one of my literature classes this week, so we’re discussing poor, soggy Ophelia.

    Your beautifully written post reminds me of how relieved I am to have recently moved out of a 120-year-old house plagued by leaks and other headaches into a new house that has yet develop any problems. Phew!!

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