Day 38: Part 1, We do more before 5am than some people do all day

At 4am Cheryl hears the shower upstairs dripping and gets up to shut the valve. But it isn't the shower, it is our son's ceiling that is dripping. So now she gets me up. We mop up the floor, place buckets and then decide that I should go into the attic to see if the source of the leak is apparent and put a bucket there instead. This is hard because we can't find a flashlight that works.

Red flashlight? Missing. BOGO solar flashlight? Dead from overuse by the kids who didn't put it back in view of the sun. Princess flashlight? Dead with corroded batteries since the girls no longer love Disney princesses, thank goodness.

Finally, Cheryl finds our head lamp flashlight, which is the best option anyway. The roof sheathing is stained in two easily-found locations, so I first tried the old "string to direct the leak into a bucket" trick, but I can hear that the rain is letting up, so there probably won't be much more coming in anyway. I pull up the wet insulation and find the pooled water near the light fixture. I ask Cheryl for a towel that she doesn't mind getting disgustingly dirty - she hands me a Disney princess towel (see above for why this is OK) - and I am able to mop up the water.

I take almost all of the pictures for this project, and this is probably a good thing, since Cheryl later observed that she considered going to get the camera to take a picture of me pulling up insulation wearing only underwear and a headlamp. At 4:30am that might have not been so well-received...

I went downstairs and noticed that there was still dripping coming from the light fixture. The light fixture, which is a dome shape, was full of water, so I was happy that the light's power was off (and I know that there is nothing hot in the fixture since I ...um... watched the guy install it). I untwisted the bolt holding the dome on and the rest poured out. I wiped the floor and went back to bed.