until it is gone! That is how I've felt since we shut our main water supply line off since discovering the broken water line early Monday morning. Yesterday wasn't too bad as I spent the majority of my day in the studio and Monday evening was too tired to really care. Dinner consisted of a carry out pizza --- Thank You, Pizza Hut!!!
This morning was an entirely different situation. Pouring water out of gallon sized jugs to make coffee, dishes --- mostly drinking glasses and cups scattered about the counter top near the sink. But the worst of it was trying to wash your face, hands, flushing the toilet, brushing your teeth.... Thankfully, I still had a bottle of hand sanitizer and some disinfecting towelettes from when Don had his knee replacement surgery over a year ago. Those came in very handy; right along with plenty of Alexxis's baby wipes, LOL!
Due to the extremely cold temperatures, our plumber friend, Chris and his dad, Mike were not able to get here until around 11:00 today. We were actually fortunate as most of their calls were people without heat due to furnaces breaking down. It was really sad to hear Chris talk about some of the elderly people he had recently assisted. One elderly couple blew their furnace because they couldn't afford to change their furnace filters on a monthly basis --- a very costly mistake. My heart went out to them. I pictured my own parents who are now both on Social Security and I have seen first hand the struggles that they face on occasion. Of course when I was working it was easier to help them out financially a bit here and there. It wasn't much but my Dad was always saying, "You cannot continue to do this." I was like, "Why not? It's my money." I always figured it this way, they took care of me when I was unable to do it myself, now it is my turn to be able to return the favor. Anyways, Chris was able to repair our broken water line. It was a small 2" crack in a pipe that previously had an outside line coming out off of it for a now unused water spicket. Because the spicket comes out of the house's foundation but is directly below the rear deck and is unused, cold air enters there and freezes the pipe line it feeds off of. Well, problem solved in 15 minutes by unhooking the unused spicket, repairing the break, rewrapping the insulated covering around the pipe and stuffing insulation in the around where the spicket fed into the foundation. To further protect it, Don took several bales of straw out of the carport and placed them along the inside of the foundation's outside wall. Hopefully, we will have no more water problems this winter.
I really feel a bit bad about complaining... I mean we've actually had a very mild winter in comparison to some years. I think this cold artic blast of below and near zero temperatures has made me grateful for a few things: the necessities of life that we often take for granted, like water, having heat, and the comfort of family. I'll have to create a new link for my gratitude garland soon and add that one.
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