As I write this, the roofers who just fixed our roof two days ago are in my mother’s kitchen ripping out walls. Why? Because the f^&*&^&*^&$^%#%$#%$#^%#^%$^%$% thing leaks. And not only is it leaking in my mother’s apartment, it is leaking in the two apartments below her which would make sense, since the law of gravity is king on this planet. I couldn’t tell you which walls they are ripping out , or what the hell is going on, because I am hiding amid the unpacked rubber maids, desperately seeking my happy place. But it seems that even that is under renovation these days.
I have been meaning to write a post about incompetence for about a month, but this is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back (hey French Panic, wanna check that out in your cliché dictionary?) They just fixed it two days ago! Did I mention that? And it has wrecked all the new drywall we just put up in our barely built house, as well as all the drywall we put up in the middle apartment. I hate this. I want to move.
But this is not the first time we have such problems. Leaks in this area of the house has been constant since we moved. First big rainfall that we had, it ended up pouring rain IN the house. That time it seemed the drain going from the roof to the basement was plugged. We promptly dealt with it and then decided, for good measure, to get the roof fixed. Ha.
Oh yes. But there was also another leak. This one was caused by the previous owner’s retarded brother, who actually sawed through the pipe attached to the third floor sink and then promptly hid it from view. So everytime you do the dishes, or turn on the tap to wash your hands, the water just falls through the walls. Here is a video of that particular disaster.
The killer part of that is that it took the plumber less than an hour and just thirty bucks to fix.
Not to mention the incompetence of the first plumber we had to deal with who had to come back three times to fix the sink that he installed. Apparently the sink we bought at Home depot was cracked and nobody noticed. And then he denied having put in the faucets until we showed him the bill. And the last time his boss came and told our Pakistani tenant that the reason why the sink was broken was because of him pushing his feet against it to pray. Yay. Incompetence, Ignorance and Idiocy. The triple threat to humanity.
Lina Branter 
oh my god, mama. I am speechless (typed letter-less?).
Ummmm,how much drywall is wrecked?was it the hallway?all the drywall in the bottom floor?you don’t have to answer. I’m sure I’ll find out for myself very soon.
The Facts on File dictionary of clichés/Christine Ammer. –2nd ed. [p. 237]<>Last straw, the<>The final minor irritation; one last superfluous item. This term, also put as <>the straw that broke the camel’s back<>, appears in Dickens’s <>Dombey and Son<> (1848). It is a version of the earlier “last feather that breaks the horse’s back,” found in Archbishop John Bramhall’s <>Works<> (1677) and repeated in Fuller’s <>Gnomologia<> (1732). Both convey a vivid image of something that would not be burdensome if there were not too much of it, but the straw version is the one that survived and became a cliché.
You write like a goddess.