The War Against Wet

I have a love-hate relationship with our apartment. I love its location, up north in a nice, quiet suburb where we feel altogether safe. I love that it is ours, even if only in lease. But it is definitely a poorly constructed apartment. It is cheaply made, probably for the sole purpose of renting out at a profit that will be gained in less than the year that we will be here. The pipes leak, the roof leaks, the floor is saturated… I keep thinking that if we could only have a dry week that this place would dry out and there would be some hope for salvaging it. But apparently dry weeks don’t happen in Istanbul. The locals are used to it. I don’t know how they survive year after year in this constant wetness. It is a battle that I am not prepared for. The level of cleaning and amount of bleach required just to keep the mold at bay is… well, let’s just say that I never even purchased bleach in Arizona. Oh, how I miss the dry, warm safeness of the desert.