No Water - Day Three

In our modern world we all take so much for granted. Consider for instance water in your house. You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom. First you relieve yourself and flush the toilet. Next you take a warm, or hot shower, soap down in the wonderful water, wash your hair and maybe shave or whatever you do in that shower. Then you brush your teeth and likely rinse out the sink a bit. Now you head for the kitchen and make your morning beverage using water from the sink. When you are done you rinse things out or pop em in the dishwasher. During the day you use your water any time you want, wash your hands, get a drink, pop a load of clothes in the washer and so forth.

Well what if you woke up and there was no water. That is what happened to us on Sunday! First there was very low pressure coming from the pipes and Dear Husband took a shower, we did get water to make coffee but the trickle stopped coming entirely. Next we called the water company and they came out and checked their meter. Yep there is pressure there but none at our house which is up the side of a hill. We live at high elevation and it is very cold. The bottom line is that the pipes underground are frozen. We are not alone as there are others in our area in the same boat. Basically we were told until the ground thaws there will be no water coming thru those pipes.

Now instead of waking up and going thru the usual routine it is all about my water. I no longer flush the toilet every time I go. Nope the tissue goes in a plastic lined basket and I flush only if I have to with a bucket of water and then only as little as it takes. The toilet tank has about 3 gallons but with a bucket can I use less than one gallon. I only want to flush when absolutely necessary because the water has to be obtained from the neighbor half a mile away and I only have small containers (for now). To brush teeth I only wet the toothbrush and use bottled water to rinse my mouth and pour only enough on the toothbrush to get it clean. Coffee is made form bottled water from the store. I got 10 one gallon jugs of water on Sunday so that should tide us over for a bit. Well the dishwasher was not run on Saturday night so it is full of dirty dishes. Today I am gonna try to wash them by hand using as little water as necessary. For now we will be using paper plates as much as possible until we get a larger container filled. Hubby got a 55 gallon water drum yesterday but that needs to be filled and a pump attached so we can get the water out of it. Just taking that to be filled is gonna be fun as 55 gallons of water weighs well over 3oo pounds and that drum needs to be carried in the house one we get it filled at the neighbors.

Now as for laundry. It will be the Laundromat for now. Of course there were lots of dirty clothes when the water stopped and we are a family of four. I have instructed each family member to get together a weeks worth of clothes and a few extras and I will go wash them at the Laundromat. At least I can dry them at home in our dryer. I have always taken for granted just tossing my clothes in the washer when I wanted to. I just hate laundromats as I had to go to them as a child for years. They take up so much time and of course you always arrive just after someone that takes most of the washers and that means waiting. Well I will see how that goes. Guess I will be bringing my applique with me so work on while the clothes spin.

Well the bright side is that it is the water not the power. It is winter here and cold outside. We heat with a wood burning furnace that has an electric fan to blow hot air into the house. It looks like a fireplace. We cut the wood from our property and there is plenty of it. Pretty much that is all self contained so we have heat. We have lights and all the appliances work including my longarm machine..................than goodness.

Yep not having water is darn inconvenient and later I am gonna have to go get more water from the neighbor. I will heat some on the stove and take a sponge bath and wash my hair. I have not washed my hair since Saturday and it is getting pretty darn oily. At least I know how to take a sponge bath. I was hunting for our camping shower this morning with no luck. I need to find that valuable little item as it holds 2.5 gallons of water just enough to wash my hair and soap and rinse down. It sure beats a sponge bath.