No water, no internet, no freezer....

We knew it might be a tough situation to come home to, after having been away for six weeks, but we tried to look at the positive side of things.  Our daughter and son-in-law had stopped by our house to check on  it and found out that our water wasn't working.  Uh oh, what could be wrong.  We arrived home on Saturday around lunchtime and it wasn't  until Monday night that we had running water.

 I am blessed to have a husband who is a terrific handyman, willing to tackle any job, who exhibits great patience.  I am also blessed that  my two youngest girls, who are  teenagers, have really good attitudes and  servants' hearts. We decided that having no water for a few days was inconvenient, but that was it, just inconvenient.  We had had a safe 1000 mile trip, our house was in good shape, we had had a wonderful vacation so there was really no reason to complain.  We remembered all those who had suffered because of the tornado devastation  this spring.


Upon further inspection, it looked like lightening had hit our well, damaging our well pump.  That is what we had to replace.  Also the girls discovered our internet was not working, nor was our large freezer.  More inconveniences....

My husband, who was exhausted from the long drive, dug right into the work ahead of him.  Cate, Nan and I helped him pull out 265 feet of well pipe, as he strained to pull out the 40 lb pump.  We had to do this not once, but 2 1/2 times before the problem was corrected.  Through it all I was driving to Wal mart and loading up on gallons of water, I think 36 gallons in all, for drinking and flushing the toilet.  We had quickly  used up our rain water reserve for the flushings.  I bought water bottles, clorox wipes and hand sanitizer wipes.  We got Chinese take out once and ate sandwiches and cereal the rest of the time.  We made numerous trips to Lowes Hardware.  There was  a serious thunderstorm on Sunday night,  our neighbor had a big tree to fall and I prayed we wouldn't have to live without electricity too.  So glad God answered that plea.

 

We did have some extra help on Sunday. Gabe, a friend of the family and our daughter Claire came by to welcome us home. We promptly put them to work.

I began to think about pioneer days, when women didn't have running water and they used outhouses.  I did grow up with the outhouse in Canada, when our cottage was much more primitive.  But to have no running water.  Now that's hard work and it made me grateful for the spigot at my sink with the hot and cold valves, for a warm shower and a machine that washes my clothes.  Such convenience.