loving & hating Valentine's day

We had a nice day. It started with pancakes for breakfast, cards, and cute little banners.


Later it turned into piles of torn, soggy cardboard and nearly every inch of floorspace covered in wet books. Stefan went up into the attic to get the tool box and discovered more than 10 soaking boxes. Like many German houses this age, our attic isn't sealed; you can see out under the tiles on the roof and under the eaves. So far, this has not been a problem, despite my initial concerns of birds, etc.

After Christmas we discovered we had a light dusting of snow on some boxes, so we brushed it off and covered the boxes with plastic drop cloths. We only covered the boxes that were storing things and our luggage, not the massive stack of empty boxes. So you can only imagine how we felt when we went upstairs and discovered that the only things damaged were the things under the plastic!


The luggage we think will be fine, much like it's fine after sitting out on a wet tarmac at the airport. The boxes were sopping wet and had to be tossed. Their contents are now covering the floors in the living room, dining room, and Stefan's office. Sadly, most of the contents were memories we thought would be ok in a dry environment, no matter how hot or cold it got up there. My college notes and all of Stefan's undergrad work, high school work and textbooks, all of his children's books, etc.


Thankfully the damage to his most favorite pieces are actually not turning out as bad as we thought. Still, we have been flipping and rotating books so they can dry, and trying to press covers and pages to be as flat as possible. The heat has been cranked and we are airing everything out as much as possible. The house smells like old, wet books and we're doing everything we can to fight mildew. Not fun!


On the upswing: I think Stefan will be deciding to toss a lot of these old notes and class folders, which is helpful. It's also been fun to revisit some of these children's books!