Tomorrow is officially spring, but it’s still winter here. Coastal weather is not like inland. When Portland is fretting about 45mph gusts, we’re out walking in it. Sixty-five miles per hour, seventy. That’s typical in winter.

I woke in the night to a bang, but it’s happened so often in the past three months that I didn’t think too much of it. The house to the south is being “remodeled” and the contractor has repeatedly failed to adequately secure the site.

The firm hired to do the work seems not to understand about wind. They stripped off the roofing the beginning of January and since then the felt has torn off three times and plastic tarp has torn off twice as well. Three months without a roof.

And now this damage to our atrium roof. (Not to mention our Miele vacuum cleaner happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gary is uncharacteristically optimistic that it will survive.)

Water is running into our atrium.

Gary got up in the dark to check and found holes in the roof and a pool of water underneath. He first put a green toy bucket under the stream, but there’s a small village of buckets and the wheelbarrow catching most of the water now.

We expected the crew to show up at 7:15am, which is what they’ve been doing this week, but maybe they are starting Spring Break early? Apparently they are taking today off and thought that tacking 2x4s over the plastic would hold it in place better than just using staples.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: To lose one two-by-four through the neighbors’ roof may be regarded as misfortune. To lose two begins to look like carelessness. They have failed to secure the temporary roofing so far. Why assume this recent attempt would be successful?

I emailed the contractor and the owner. The contractor emailed back that he is out of town, but “will see if we can temporarily fix it this week and then when my roofer starts in a week or so I can have him look at it.”

Why do I not have much faith in his roofer? On the other hand, most of the subs working on this job have called it a “cluster-f—” so the roofer might be among those who actually know what they are doing.

This is not funny yet. Maybe once it’s repaired.

•

•

•