I never learned to read, either.

Maintenance just left, and I’m feeling stupid.

The kitchen fluorescent light cover has been filling with water and dripping a puddle onto the floor lately after anyone takes a shower in the “guest bath”. Jimmy and I noticed the puddle in the kitchen and the light cover full of water a couple days ago, and I called maintenance.

I show them the kitchen light, and they say it’s directly under the toilet in the “guest bath”, so it’s probably a leak. After much investigation, though… it’s no leak.The problem is sloshed water all over the bathroom floor and wall, as if people shower without closing the curtain. Now, I assured the guys that the roomies certainly know enough to close the curtain, and show them that there are even shower guards there, but let’s just say I was still embarrassed to lead them into a bathroom that had a couple soaking wet towels thrown on the floor, still soaking wet considering it was about 7 hours since the last person showered in there. They also noticed all the wallpaper from around the tub seems to be peeling for several feet up from the floor from water damage… not really something that would come from a leaky toilet.

The maintenance guys actually said to me, “Tell your roommate to make sure the curtain actually stays closed, maybe by putting a shampoo bottle on it in the corner. Also tell them not to leave wet towels all over the floor, even if they are using them to clean up water that spilled out, they need to pick them up afterwards and at least put them over the tub to drip dry. Also, they could be trying to stand up too close to the shower and forcing the water to go the wrong way, so ask them to back off the shower flow.” One then asked me if I had any bleach, and proceeded to inform me how to clean the tub, tile and caulk and how often it needed to be cleaned, say, once a week, to make sure the caulk stays in good condition and water doesn’t begin to leak even worse. I’m not sure my mother could have done a better job with the lecture.

And thus, I pass it on: users of the “guest bath” … for future reference, make sure the shower curtain is closed… we’ll duct-tape it if we have to, because that’s the only problem with the kitchen light (standing water shorted the light) and the drip. If it goes on much longer they said the bathroom floor and kitchen ceiling may need some repair work.

Jeez…. does anybody else have this problem in their house? I mean… I know we get water outside our shower in the main bath, and we usually leave a towel there to soak it up. It happens, right? I have to wonder if all this damage is really just from that… or maybe there was some old leak that had things already damaged, and now even just a bit of water just soaks right through.

Who knows… I guess all we can do is overcompensate with that bathroom. I’m just wondering why it never occurred to me/us/anybody to just go up there and look around the tub to see how wet everything was. A little inspection probably could have spared a bit of humiliation.