Froze Up

Well we survived our first crisis.

Last Friday I came home to frozen pipes, which stayed frozen for six more days. Yup. We had no water for one entire week.

Living without water definitely puts a few things into perspective. Life gets pretty smelly and everything about living in a house becomes more difficult. I clean our house with Norwex and water - so the cleaning was on a halt. Dishes were out of the question and paper plates became our best friend. And we had to come up with a flushing system - number one stays until we can't handle the smell, and number two gets flushed right away ... obviously we weren't inviting any one over to be our guest during the past week. It actually got to the point where I was 'planning' when I would drink water at work, so I could use the toilet there and then not have to use it at our house (too much information? sorry.. that's what this blog is all about). Luckily we were offered many showers to use. I have a feeling we had a good funk going on.

Now.. I hate complaining. Because we did have electricity, we had food in our fridge, our house stayed heated, and we had a bed to sleep in. People kept saying there's no way they would have put up with no water, and they would have called the city instantly - but I felt guilty complaining. Maybe it's because I hear weekly about the hundreds of kids who live in my hometown, having to sleep on the floor every night. Or the same families not having a fridge, or food, or a home.

By no means were we attempting to see how long we could last in those water-less conditions. But I was brought down to a level where I really don't realize some of the basic things that I have, until it's gone.

With our landlord living just a few houses down the hill from us, we were able to fill up big buckets of water to flush our toilet with. And in their words, "we were just like Jack and Jill fetching our water at the top of bottom of the hill."

People. Do you even know how great that real, flowing-out-of-the-faucet, H2O actually is? Think about it. It automatically fills our toilets. {sigh} So wonderful. I guess the only downside is that I have no excuse as to why our house still isn't cleaned. Don't judge me.