Yesterday, we finally received our “government stimulus check” in the mail — a cool $1,200. In retrospect, I should have realized then that something bad was about to happen. It always does, you see, whenever we come into some large sum of money.

So today, naturally, we got our dose of karma-balancing payback. I should preface this by saying that it’s been raining here for the last week straight, and in the last four days especially, it’s done nothing but pour down this unrelenting, drenching rain. It was at precisely the same moment this morning when Apple and I both looked up at the ceiling in our bedroom and blurted out, “What is that spot up there?”

There was a weird discolored spot on the ceiling right above the bed. I felt it. It was cold and wet. Not coincidentally, there was also cold, wet stuff raining out of the sky outside. That’s a great big whopping dose of Not Good. So I get a huge ladder, crawl up into the attic access over our bedroom and start poking around with a flashlight. And then I see it: Water dripping off the pointed end of a crossbeam. About one drop every two seconds.

There’s just a small portion of wood that looks wet, right where the beam comes to an end, and for the life of me I can’t find any other wet spots anywhere in the attic. But it’s been dripping long enough that it’s soaked into the insulation in this one very precise spot, and has now made a corresponding spot on our bedroom ceiling. Actually, there are four spots, all right near each other, one bigger than the other three. I have no idea why there are four. There is only one drip point.

Anyway, I called a local roofing company that does free estimates, so they’re coming out at 9 in the morning on Friday. For the meantime, I’ve stuffed a folded towel up in the attic, right beneath where the water had been dripping. Since the attic does not have a floor, I can’t put a bucket up there for fear the weight would…well, cause an even larger problem. It’s since stopped raining, thank God, but we’re likely to get some more off-and-on between now and Friday.

Based on the downward angle of the dripping beam, the water is probably entering at an elbow-like corner of the roof, where two planes intersect. A typical leak location. Hopefully it will not cost a fortune to fix. I really don’t have a fortune right now.