From Sea to Shining Sea–A Water Thing

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As far as I know, this is the last in my “From Sea to Shining Sea” series. I say, “as far as I know,” because we just never know, do we?

Our “From Sea to Shining Sea” adventures took us away from home overnight 120 nights in 2013! Several were unexpected, including numbers 119 and 120. You see, we had this water thing going on.

Frozen Water

We expected to wrap up our adventures with nights 116 through 118 while visiting John and his family. Water in the form of a snowstorm kept us away from home one more night. We were thankful for night 119; however, we wanted to be at home sweet home for the rest of the year. We didn’t even want to go away for our anniversary. Well, we just never know, do we? As I said, we had this water thing going on.

A Cell Phone Dunk

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that I dropped my cell phone in a public commode in mid-December. It’s been in a bag of rice since then!

A Well Gone Bad

When I told you about my cell phone, I also told you a little about our plumbing woes. The day after Christmas I told you a little more. The sudden switch from well water to city water became a necessity after we found out that our well, which had always tested just fine before, was badly contaminated.

New Water Heaters

A wonderful, helpful man from our utility district came out to test our water a few days after we hooked up to city water and found that our hot water was still contaminated! The best solution was to replace both water heaters. Price? As Danny Kaye says in White Christmas, “Somewhere between ouch and boing!”

Night 120

After the plumbers replaced the water heaters on our anniversary, they installed a water filter, poured a gallon of bleach into it, and turned on each faucet until they could smell bleach. Then we had to leave our house for twenty-four hours while the bleach sat in our pipes!

“Oh, well,” we thought. “We need to go to Nashville anyway. We’ll go away for our anniversary after all. We can be in Nashville in time to go out to dinner.”

The plumbers, who were supposed to arrive by 1:00 p.m., came at 3:30 p.m. and finished at 8:30. Our anniversary dinner was a couple of Subways picked up next door to a truck stop; we arrived at the hotel at 11:00 p.m.

Hotel Plumbing

As I washed my face in the bathroom, Ray noticed paper in the toilet–a surprise since neither of us had used the bathroom. He decided to flush it. You guessed it! The toilet wasn’t working. Since the hotel staff was changing shifts, Ray had to go to the front desk to get the key to the room next door. We had to laugh. You see, we had this water thing going on.

Perfect, Pure Water

Twenty-three hours after our hotel plumbing issue, we came back home. As instructed, we turned on every faucet to let the bleach water out. The wonderful, helpful man from our utility district (who even gave us his personal cell phone number) left his wife and child in bed early on Sunday morning and came back to test our water. Perfect!

One and a half weeks after the terrible results from our well water test, we had perfect pure water. By then we had purchased many gallons of spring water, boiled water for dish washing, and used several gallons of hauled water from Mev and Nate’s house. They had re-washed about half of our clothes, all of our towels, and enough sheets to use when the rest of our kids and grandkids came home for Christmas.

With our perfect water, we set about to wash every pot and measuring cup and storage container and dish and fork that we use on a regular basis (many for the second or third time). These two filtered-water-drinking, organic food junkies were never so thankful for good, old-fashioned chlorine!

As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
Psalm 42:1, NASB

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