A hole in my tooth, and a hole in my roof

You know, there are times when the excitement level in my life needs just a little adjusting...

I shall, for the sake of the dramatic structure of the narrative, begin back in October last year.

*cue neat wavy flashback transition effect*

I was at an engagement party, munching happily on one of the many delicious little snacks on offer (note to self - K's mother is a seriously good party host), when suddenly and painlessly there was something hard and non-chewy in the corner of my mouth.

It was a small piece of a tooth. One of my molars, right up the back.

It occurred to me at that moment that I really hadn't been to the dentist for quite a while. Our family lost the dentist we used to go to quite a few years ago (um, like... maybe 10 years ago... *embarrassed cough*) and I never seemed to get around to finding another one.

However, going to the dentist was never going to make it to the top priority list back in October last year. For one thing, I had lost my car in an accident just one week before - trips to anywhere other than work and back were a major chore to organise. For another, I was trying to look for a house (that's what I was doing when my car argued with a four-wheel drive, don't get me started on four-wheel drives...).

Once I was in my new house, and also had my own health insurance, my mind did turn to dentistry again eventually. However, I managed to misplace my health insurance membership card in the move. Turns out I never moved it - it was still at Mum and Dad's house. I got motivated enough to find that out a bit less than two weeks ago. Making an appointment for the dentist officially made the 'to do' list at that point.

Thursday last week, I was sitting down to yet another delicious stir fry when, suddenly and painlessly, there was something hard and non-chewy in my mouth...

It was a bigger piece this time. I'd say that something like a third of that same tooth is gone now. Not good. Still no pain, but I am getting it checked out tomorrow morning. By the time I finish this post, that will be this morning.

Meanwhile, a few metres away, events were conspiring in a most unfortunate manner...

A week and a half ago, my gas heating system decided not to turn on.

This was pretty inconvenient on a cold winter morning, and I couldn't figure out what had happened. The gas was still on. The fuse hadn't blown. One possibility was that the 'pilot light' on the heater had gone out - although why it should go out when the system is being used on a daily basis is a bit of a mystery.

My next door neighbour is a young guy (ie younger than me, therefore he shall be eternally regarded as youthful) who works for an airconditioning and heating company. So I asked if he would mind taking a look. He was happy to.

I wasn't 100% sure where in the roof the heater was. I misdirected him by about 5 metres. The first place he took tiles off wasn't right. He moved across, took off some more tiles and found the right spot. The pilot light was out, he relit it, the heater worked again. All was well with the world. We wished each other a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Fast forward to last Thursday - four days later. It rained heavily from about 5pm. (I keep meaning to post about the amazing run of wet days we've had for the last few weeks, there's months with not even a trace of rain and then suddenly we can't go 48 hours without at least one shower, it's bliss!).

I went out that night. About 11pm I come home and discover a sizeable pool of water on the floor of my meals area. The way I discover it is by nearly doing the splits as I skid across it, but that's really incidental to the plot.

There are two reasonably fast drips coming from the edge of one of the heating ducts. As I watch, they are joined by a third.

Right then, I didn't have a clue why this was happening. I raced for a bucket and tried to figure it out. Despite the drought, I knew this wasn't the first heavy rain - it had rained just as much a few weeks before and this hadn't happened. So, the big question was, what was different?

It came to me eventually. The drip wasn't all that far from the first place my neighbour had looked for the heater. He had forgotten to put those tiles back.

I confirmed it on Friday morning once it was light. There it was, a gap a few tiles long and a couple of inches wide, letting the heavy rain in. Actually the rain had stopped only about 10 minutes after I got home on Thursday night, and the drip soon slowed and ceased completely after a couple of hours.

I got my neighbour back on the roof late on Friday afternoon. He was mortified and apologised profusely, but we both said how fortunate it was that there was no furniture underneath the leak and the electrics weren't affected and no real damage was done. Before replacing the tiles, he felt the insulation batts underneath and they didn't seem wet.

Fast forward to tonight, Tuesday night...

Above and behind me, there is a metre-long crack in the ceiling, which is dripping, and a round hole close to it.

About 3.5 hours ago I noticed the crack when I moved the chair I'm now sitting on to get at the computer. I wondered how the chair suddenly got a couple of wet spots on it. Then I looked down, saw a pool of water, then looked up.

At that stage the crack was only about 10cm long, and the pool of water wasn't as big as Thursday night's effort. Nevertheless, I freaked a little. A crack was real damage. I rang my Dad because I had no idea what to do.

Dad came over, climbed on my roof, removed tiles, and found that underneath the insulation batts, there was a biiiiiiiig pool of water lying in the lower layer of loose insulation, which basically had the consistency of papier mache.

He started mopping it up and wringing it out. As he pressed the towel into the mess (not with all that much force, as far as I can tell), the crack suddenly expanded tenfold, to its current size. Which is probably a good thing in terms of releasing water, but it meant the crack went from something you had to look up for to something glaringly obvious and rather dramatic.

When he had done all he could up there, he came back down and poked and prodded at the roof a little, releasing more water through the crack with each prod. At first he used his hand, then tried my mop. With one of his prods - again, not all that hard - the mop went straight through the sodden ceiling.

At this point we agreed that the situation was beyond amateur help.

I've just rang my house insurance company, and I hope to God that there's no problem with the claim. I mean, 'deliberate and intentional acts' aren't covered, but I'm moderately confident that negligent inadvertance followed by desperate attempts to rectify the situation are within the scope of the policy. Certainly the woman I spoke to on the phone didn't detect any instant reason to tell me I was on my own.

It's going to be one hell of a mess to clean up, I'm sure of that.

And now, as I wait for news about what it might cost me to repair both holes, I silently pray that the thrills are at an end for a while.