As I sit here writing, my house is shaking. I can hear the sounds of heavy trucks and earth-moving equipment all around the neighborhood. One day, workers dug a ditch at one end of our driveway. Another day, we lost our city water supply.
It’s been a fun summer!
I’m not sure if the water valve failure on a nearby street was related to the road reconstruction that is happening on three of the four streets that make up our block; I just suspect that it was. In any case, losing water was an adventure in itself.
My husband Paul and I knew there was a water problem through a Facebook posting and the fact that we could see utility workers trying to fix it. The major part of the repair was scheduled for a Sunday, as the faulty valve was in a busy area. Paul inquired about the possibility we would lose water and we were assured that we would not, although our pressure might drop.
Around 9 a.m. on that Sunday, Paul went to take a shower. I heard him exclaim, “We’ve lost water!”
Apparently the utility workers had encountered a worse problem than they had anticipated.
If we’d been warned of the possibility that this could happen, we would have prepared— taken our showers earlier, filled the bathtub with water and supplied ourselves with bottled water for drinking or cooking. At this, point all we could do was get bottled water. I asked Paul to go to the store.
When he got back, he called the police to ask about the situation. They gave him the number of a contact with the utility district. We learned that the shutdown was only affecting three houses on our street. Lucky us to be one of them!
Although I was glad I had leftovers we could eat for lunch. All I had to do was pop the dish into the microwave.
The dirty dishes, needless to say were piling up in the sink. It was a lazy Sunday morning — we hadn’t even done the breakfast dishes before 9.
One of our chickens laid an egg. I had to rinse it with bottled water.
Paul fretted about not having a shower more than I did. Then he realized he could go to the YMCA to wash. I fetched him some soap to pack in his bag. Paul noticed that he didn’t know where his lock (for the locker) was. I gave him mine, but for some reason he couldn’t do the combination correctly. Finally he left for the Y, saying he was going to stop at the hardware store for a new lock first.
Paul came back 20 minutes later. The Y closes early on summer Sundays.
The worst aspect of this situation, by far, was keeping my hands clean. I am a bit obsessive when it comes to hand cleaning. We had a big bottle of hand sanitizer, but that doesn’t make me feel clean. It makes me feel sticky. I usually only use it when I’m eating out because I figure it’s better than nothing.
Hand sanitizer before preparing food for us and the dogs and cats. Hand sanitizer after bringing the egg into the house and then again after rinsing and drying it. Hand sanitizer after cleaning up a hairball. Hand sanitizer before and after giving the dogs biscuits. I was pretty sick of hand sanitizer by the end of our dry spell.
We had been told it could go on until 4 p.m. I told Paul that if it did, we would have to eat out. I wasn’t going to try to prepare food with bottled water. We were pleasantly surprised when the water was turned back on around 2:30 p.m. We were told we could use the water for washing (after letting it run a while), but to hold off on drinking and cooking with it until it could be tested. I was ecstatic to be able to wash my hands and face. I had already brushed my teeth by filling a glass of bottled water and running some of the water over my toothbrush. I applied toothpaste and brushed, used the water to rinse, and then wiggled my brush in the remaining water to clean it. Necessity is the mother of invention!
The next morning, a Monday, two men from the utility district arrived to take a water sample. This was more complicated than I had imagined. It involved the use of pliers (to do what, I’m not sure) and running the kitchen tap for about 15 minutes. The next day we got the results: All clear. Yay!
Whenever we lose power or our furnace fails or our car has to be in the shop for a couple of days, I always remind myself to appreciate the amenities of modern life. When they are absent, life immediately becomes more complicated, as is to be expected. The experience also opened my eyes to the amount of water we use on a daily basis. I am certainly going to try to become less wasteful.
As I write this, we have enjoyed three days of the blissful pleasures of indoor plumbing. Then we received a notice that our water would be turned off the next day from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., for a trial run for more extensive work to be done the following week.
That sounded ominous, so Paul called the water district. Yes, indeed, our water is going to be shut off for four to six hours one day soon, and they promised to give us 48-hours notice.
That should give us enough time to fill the bathtub, stock up on bottled water and take our showers. And I’ve already got my toothbrushing routine down flat.
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