Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Deuterium Oxide

Two weeks of nothing but sun, hottest day of the summer today, and what happens?

First it begins to thunder, and then rain like it's never rained before.

Virpi has been complaining for some time how she only has time to "put out fires" and no time to prepare for the future. And then she gets exactly what she ordered. Water.

Suddenly the water from the balcony started coming in under the door. By the liter. As quickly as we could, we moved the sofa to the middle of the living room, the water was heading towards the bookcase. "TOWELS, we need TOWELS!" I heard myself shout. The water kept coming in despite the dozen towels on the floor. I had to go and try to make the sink hole on the balcony bigger. It seemed no water was going through it. I ran to the washing room across the hallway, got a hammer and a screwdriver and hesitantly went out to the ankle-deep water on the balcony. The sky was flashing with thunder. God was taking a whole roll of pictures. Maybe he's gone digital and can afford to shoot however many times now without having to worry about running out of film.

After several hard hammer strikes I gave up, but noticed the water starting to spiral into the sink hole. I had succeeded and once we extended the marquee the danger had been averted. An hour later we had managed to get all of the water on the floor moved to the bathroom. (It's easy to make a towel wet, turning it dry is another matter altogether.) We had to remove all our photoalbums - probably 40 of them - and the lowest shelves of the bookcase where they used to be. Water has definitely gone under the floorboards.

And tomorrow we fly to Finland for two weeks. Any suggestions how we should leave our marquee? Completely open so that it won't rain on the balcony at all when we are gone? But then it gets dirty and if it gets windy, it can break and shatter the big windows. Completely closed? But then the rain can fill the balcony if the sink hole gets clogged. And if we leave it halfway, both problems can happen.

From Spiderman (Stan Lee) I learned that "with great power comes great responsibility". Now I've learned that "with a big apartment comes great responsibility, too".

Can anybody explain the title of this post?

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