From My Live-Journal

This is from my live-journal....I figured I better post SOMETHING on my blog, because I haven't recently...so here you all go... my live-journal is more like a journal than my blog is...so have at it....Rachelle

One Thing After Another This Week

• Dec. 17th, 2008 at 10:09 PM

So, my week so far, in a synopsis................So, Sunday night I happen to wash my hair...........temps are approaching below zero.......didn't really want to wash my hair and go to bed with wet hair, but for some reason did it anyway. Good thing, because Monday morning I wake up to no running water and no idea where it is frozen! It is about 14 below zero, and I am struggling to keep wood on the fires, and find out where it is frozen. Made three trips to the pumphouse which is about 400 hundred feet from the house, through 12 inches of snow, to see if the pump was frozen. It was, so I upped the heater to 1500 watts. That defrosted the pump, but still no water.... So, I call my landlord later in the day and tell her. She was kind of mad because I didn't think to keep my faucets running all night, and then i was mad at myself because i know better.
I told my landlord that tuesday I had plans that i couldn't change and that I would be gone all day. The plumbers would have to come Wednesday.
So, Tuesday I am gone all day and of course the fires go out and it is a frigid 50 degrees in the house when I get home. I have to haul water from the pumphouse for washing dishes and brushing teeth. I got my fires going and tried to warm up the house, but finally went to bed . James tries to call me at 3 am, so I can restock the fire but i think he forgot, and i never wake up until I am cold and that means it's already too late.
This house is really drafty and i didn't relaize how bad until now. So, this morning i wake up to both fires out and it is (no joke) 44 degrees in the house, UPSTAIRS...which means it was colder downstairs.......(40 degrees down there). I couldn't believe it! So now that i am sick of Idaho and being cold, because I spent the past two winters in a frickin icebox camper, and then think i will be fine in this new house, with two wood stoves, and plenty of space, I am getting pretty mad. And starting to move slow, and lethargic like. I call my friend Anne to see if she is still coming over to bake Gingerbread cookies with the kids, which we planned two weeks ago, even though it is spitting snow, and we are under a winter storm watch, until tomorrow. She says yes........she lives on generator power so decided she could do without the running water, since she has been there and done that. Anyway, so today we baked the gingerbread cookies and decorated them..........melted snow for drinking water (the pumphouse water is a little dirty), and for hot tea. Ended up having to use my treasured water down in the basement for washing dishes because I was too tired to go to the pumphouse and we had 5 new inches of snow. James put this tank of water in the basement for me, for power outages, and such. I didn't want to use it, but i was just too tired and annoyed, so now i need to re-fill it.
My brother in law shows up un-expectedly with a whole truckload of extra firewood for me, and shows me in the basement where the water pipe comes into the house from outside. We had to hunt for it, because there were some things belonging to the owner of the house that were in front of the pipe. So he suggests putting a heater near it. I had the heater going in all different areas today, trying to find out where it was frozen, so I try there, and within an hour we have water. Fifteen min later the plumber shows up, and i already have it fixed. I had called his secretary but she couldn't let him know because his cell phone didn't have service where he was at the time...
So, anyway, the water is running right in the nick of time to be able to wash all the gingerbread cookie dishes and bring peace to our chaotic home.
By the time my friend got here, I had gotten the house up to 55 degrees....i decided to get the fires as hot and blazing as I could and try not to worry about saving wood. I have no idea how many pieces of wood I used today, but by the time Anne left we had it up to 65 degrees, and by nighttime it was up to 70, finally. it was like an angel in a pick-up truck that brought me extra wood! :) I have been so worried about not being able to make it through the winter! I am praying that this is our cold snap, below zero week that north Idaho always gets each winter, and that it will warm up, but we;ll see! ...........then I took the hottest bath i could stand and relaxed!
It is 14 out there tonight which is so much nicer then 17 below zero, which was the lowest it got between Sunday and Wed. I told the kids that NOW that we have water they can fingerpaint and paint some rocks they had collected this summer to paint during the winter. They had been bothering me and bothering me the last two days to do it, but i told them there was no way, without running water that we could do that.
So, now we are still under the weather watch and they are predicting 10-15 inches of snow, and we have gotten about 6 of it so far. For some reason, Idaho has been getting more snow than it has in recent years past and seems to be acting more like it did in the 70's and 80's with over 3 1/2 feet. Weird....I'm glad we are moving because I am sick of being cold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, we'll see what the rest of the week holds!!!!!!!!!