Leaks Present and Christmases Past

Yesterday I added an ornament to our Christmas avocado -- a festive alligator-in-drag that I bought several years ago in Soho. This ornament always amuses me so it felt good to dig it out and put it on display.

In the process, though, I discovered another water leak that has caused damage in our flat. It's above the storage cabinets in the dining room (which is where we keep the Christmas decorations) and this time it's definitely from upstairs. I took pictures of the unsightly brown patch and alerted the Russians, who located the source -- an old radiator pipe that had once been sealed off but had somehow begun dripping again. Mr. Russia put a small basin beneath the pipe to catch any drips and told me he'd have his plumber seal it off. He also offered to paint the affected area in the dining room.

So now we have two leaks -- one in the hall of uncertain origin, and another in the dining room from upstairs.

Dave and I have sent all this info to our landlords, with photos. I think they're going to go back to the Russians to talk about how to handle the situation. I'm glad we don't have to wrangle with any of that, though of course we'll have to live through whatever remediation is needed.

Dave is thinking more and more that we should simply move when our lease is up next summer. This flat does need some fairly substantial work, especially in the bathroom and kitchen, and I think he'd like to start fresh. I'm concerned about trading one set of problems for another, though -- at least here we know what we're dealing with. And I'd hate to leave our garden.

Anyway, none of that is very Christmasy so we'll leave that debate for another time.

Since I'm thinking about my family at this time of year, here are a couple of my favorite old Christmas photos. First, my stepmother with our bulldog Meatball, back in 1979 or so. Meatball was a character -- such a ham. This is at my dad's house in Florida, where my stepmother still lives.

And here are me (R) and my brother, in Maryland in 1977. We're visiting my grandmother's next-door neighbor, a nice old lady named Mrs. Daniels. She had a Polaroid instant camera and took this photo after giving us those boxes, which turned out to contain toy trucks from Hess oil. We loved those Hess trucks, which as I recall had headlights that lit up. Mrs. Daniels was always super-nice to us and we visited her whenever we went to see our grandmother, a couple of times a year. Unlike Grandmother, who was rather austere, Mrs. Daniels was very crafty and at Christmas her house was full of handmade or sewn or embroidered or crocheted Santa Clauses and other holiday paraphernalia. 

Incidentally, we called that shirt I'm wearing the "chocolate milk shirt."

Merry Christmas, everybody!