Curveballs and monkey wrenches

The mundane and predictable events of day to day living are often complicated by the unforeseen. When this happens it's like someone pitched you a curveball that you are unable to hit no matter how hard you swing. It doesn't matter how much we try to plan our lives, these things happen and when they do they are usually a source of great stress.

This past week has been very stressful for me. For the third time this winter our water lines froze and broke. When our overnight low temperature is forecast to fall at or below a certain level we take actions to prevent this kind of occurrence. On the night that the lines froze the local weathermen miss-calculated how cold it was going to get. Since the temperature that they were expecting was within our "safe" range we didn't take any actions to prevent freezing. To make a bad situation worse, there was extensive damage that required additional time to repair. Uncooperative weather conditions also added additional time to the repair process. Thankfully we were able to draw water from our outdoor source, because we were without water to the trailer for 4 days. This required filling buckets and hauling them into the trailer for bathing and toilet flushing, and filling other types of containers for cooking and drinking purposes. The whole situation was stressful and extremely inconvenient. It was good to get back to normal yesterday. I was even able to wash a load of clothes. I needed my work clothes washed and feared that I would have to go to town to the laundromat in order to accomplish that.

I will be so glad when we get the water lines run for the house. We are making plans for the water lines that will hopefully prevent a repeat of the scenario that we have experienced with the trailer. We have purchased several electric water line heaters that are wrapped around the water pipes and plugged into an electrical outlet. These give off just enough heat to keep the lines from freezing. The situation will also be improved because we plan to install windbreaks between the pillars of the house which will serve the same type of purpose as underpinning does for a mobile home.

One good thing that happened this past week is that Jeremy now has a running vehicle. The CRX is still not repaired, and Randy is doubtful that the repair is something that he and Jeremy can handle. Instead, Randy found a GEO Tracker for a reasonable price. I am not familiar with this type of GEO. It is a four door model, with seating for 4 plus a small storage area behind the second seat. It will not get the gas mileage that the CRX did I'm sure, but it will still be cheaper to operate than what we have been having to do for the last several months. A fellow student of Jeremy's at the college has expressed an interest in purchasing the CRX, even in it's current condition. If we are unable to repair it, might as well sell it to someone who thinks they can make the needed repairs.