It's been a stressful day. Moving and housesitting and impending life changes and - well, I'll refer you to my icon for my current state of mind. On top of this, I have to be all the way down at Park & Ajo (Price Service Center) at 8am tomorrow morning to walk some City folks thru the cultural resource clearance process. Ordinarily, this isn't a big deal. I've got handouts. It's a pretty self-explanatory process, but it does require a degree of alertness to field questions. I didn't sleep too well last night. I've got a mild cold that's just bad enough to be bothersome, but not bad enough to knock me out. End result is stuffy headed insomnia and a very muddy thinking process.
Yes, it's a fine laundry list of all that's unwell in my life, but it doesn't say much about water, does it? Hold on...I'm getting there.
Around 11:30, I managed to wind down enough to sleep. The piano man next door had stopped trying to hash out the latest Maroon 5 radio hit, and the folks upstairs had moved to the living room and were utterly silent from my end.
Then I hear it...a steady drip, drip, drip. I cracked an eye to check the clock. 11:45pm.
Bah, I mutter, and think the kitchen sink must be off kilter again. Then drip goes to a slightly swishy flowing sound. Hmm...woman upstairs taking a bath? Yes. Swish, splish, splash. Definitely sounding like a bath. But wait...the dripping is getting more insistent - like a shower head turned on low. Definitely a flow going here. In multiple parts of the bathroom, not just the tub. Argh. A patter patter over here, a plink, plonk, splish there.
I roused myself from my nascent slumber and flicked on the hall light to see what could possibly be making the noise. My entire bathroom ceiling was alive with the sounds of water. Swishing, splishing, splatting, rat-a-tatting.
What the...?
I pulled back the shower curtain...no water there. Checked the corners. No water there. Checked the air conditioner vent and the fan - still nothing. Hmm, thinks I, it's definitely a flood, but where's the water? I could hear it cascading now. Trickles of waterfall across the ceiling and down the insides of the walls. Insistent thudding drops like the beginning of a monsoon storm. Then I spotted it - a growing puddle behind my door. A tiny pinhole in the paint at the corner of my ceiling, and a thin trail of water flowing silently down the wall. I tossed a towel on the puddle and rolled my eyes.
Feh! I pulled a t-shirt on over my pajama top and hoofed it up the stairs. Two startled faces greeted me from the couch. I had interrupted a cozy night in front of the TV (Fx if you're playing along at home) for my neighbor and her significant other.
"Excuse me, but I live downstairs and I'm hearing an awful lot of water in my bathroom. There's a puddle forming from the dripping ceiling. Is something flooding?" A meek, apologetic look from me, a startled one from her, and a "man of the house - with Tools" look from him. He dashed over to the bathroom and - eureka! - my suspicions were right. A startled yelp and a cry for towels. Apparently the toilet went wacky and was re-enacting a scene from the Old Testament, sans fashionably matched animals.
*sigh*
Did I mention I have to be at Park & Ajo at 8am, bright eyed, bushy tailed and ready to present? And that I've got a mild cold that's sucking my will to live. And that I'm fully awake, listening to the cleanup effort upstairs?
*another sigh*
I just feel guilty for bothering the neighbor. (National Guard home on leave from Iraq) I'm such a softie :P

All this after the cat took ill and decided to empty her stomach in three different places (one carpet, two tile). What a night.

(btw - this exact same thing happened about a year ago to the toilet residing over my mom's shower stall. Different neighbor, same effect. Mom had a lovely Niagra falls effect going in her bathroom, and has been battling a nasty mold problem ever since. I think we picked a PERFECT time to move! My sympathies to the neighbors who are going to be left behidn to deal with the shattered plumbing and toxic mold)