Insomnia

March 8, 2008, 2:49 a.m.

I have been up since 1.

The sound of water dripping would not allow me to go back to sleep, so I checked the house and discovered that water was pouring into the front hall through one of the pot lights. I put out my last bucket and checked the ones in the diningroom and the two bedrooms. I checked all the places where the roof line dips into a hollow between two angles, as that seems to be where the ice is trapped and is now melting.

Then I wrote a second email to Peter Weeks who writes a column in the Low Down on home repairs. He also has a consulting service. This email was considrably more desperate in tone than the last one.

For a while I puttered about tidying my two blogs, wrote some emails, played a game, and worried.

I decided to make some camomile tea and see if that would help me get back to sleep. On that trip downstairs I re-checked the buckets and also the utility room looking for leaks.

No leaks in there, but the damned breaker for the in-floor heating had been thrown again. That is the fourth time in two days. The electrician has replaced it twice now. The next stage is to replace the hot water tank with a boiler, I guess. Another $2000 because of Mike' incompetence. I wish there were some way to make him take some financial responsibility for all the things that have gone wrong here because of his mistakes, but the fact that he is not certified in Quebec means that he can get away scot-free, I think.


And god alone knows what this roof problem is going to cost to remedy. The original problem has to be fixed, but now there is all kinds of interior damage being done to ceilings and walls, and of course to the insulation which is hidden by those ceilings and walls.

And if it doesn't stop snowing there will be even more ice building up in those hollows, and it will likely mean that nothing can be done till May, and by then there will be still more damage and likely mould as well.



I have a workshop on Sunday and I have to pick Kerry up from the airport. Leonard has promised that he will do his best to get me out by 9:30 on Sunday morning. If he can't, I can walk around the lake to Sarah's ... as long as Pike Lake Road and Mountain Road have been plowed ... and borrow her car.

The happy hermit is becoming weighted down by worries, I am afraid, and my insomnia is confusing Kenya as well.

At 2:00 she went downstairs to ask to be let out. I told her it was the middle of the night, so she sniffed the bucket in the front hall, looked up at the source of water spraying down on her, and went back upstairs to sprawl out on her cushion in my den. If she had been human she'd have shrugged her shoulders.

It is now 3:35, and as soon as I post this I will finish my camomile tea, do one last house check, and start reading another novel ... The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields ... and see if I can read myself to sleep.