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Friday, November 7, 2014

My Coke Rewards and Plumbing

Get over to mycokerewards to get a 12-pack for only 30 points. It may be gone now, not sure. I got one, all they allow. Thanks, kizzy!

The plumbers left the water on last night and I did 6 loads of clothes, drying things I really needed to hang. But, I did hang some today and clothes in the house last night. I did two loads of dishes, unloaded one and still have the last one to unload. I washed my hair at 6:30 after a two-hour nap. They dropped by at 8 am to turn it back off. They said they will do this as long as I need and until I can afford to pay. Nice guys!

Yesterday, with water off I baked in a bag 7 boneless chicken breasts, the free potatoes, and carrots that had frozen and the free onion. I may have said this. So, today I am going to get a cheap loaf of whole wheat bread from bread store, and I will have sandwiches and heat the excess vegetables. With a clean sink, I can manage to at least wash some of my dishes and try to keep up. When I came back from reunion, dishes were in the sink because I was feeling awful before reunion and came home really ill.

Do you know how difficult it is to handle chicken with no water? I used my hand sanitizer lots, just hoping I did not get alcohol on the chicken. I used hose water to rinse off the sanitizer. I think I will fire up the grill if I cook multiple chicken breasts when I have no water. It would be easier and more sanitary.

Oh, another thing I did when I had water for a few brief hours was to refill my water from the bathtub, leaving seven gallons just sitting in the tub. Driving around the block and hauling water from the faucet was beyond me because I could not bend and then pick up a gallon of water. If I had something to hang onto, I could. The cane was not enough. I still buy drinking water. His hose is not for potable water. However, we drank from the hose when we were children. My children did, too. sigh

Bathing is hard, but two cups of water, a washcloth and a sliver of soap works for right now. Getting wet all over is such a luxury. First World problem? If I had to do this for long, I would fix a way to shower of sit in two gallons of water!

At the moment, I don't have heat and it has gone below freezing. Sleeping is easy in the cold, but walking around is not fun in here. A friend was supposed to come help me with the heater, but something happened. Oh well.

Go get your Coke rewards or enter some more codes. This has not been edited at all. Good luck reading it.

Your turn
Have you ever been without water in your house and for how long? Did you have a place to go and shower? If you use Coke rewards, did you snag a coupon? I know some of you don't.

15 comments:

  1. Linda,,,we did have a well go dry and did not have water for about a week. Believe me I will never take it for granted again. As for personal cleaning, I highly recommend baby wipes. Yes they are wasteful but leave you feeling refreshed. You certainly have some kind plumbers. Now to solve the mystery of who cut your pipe,

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    Replies
    1. carol,
      That is a long time, too. I just don't want to itch from baby wipes. Some things make me itch, and I never know what it will be. I may get some soon! They are very kind. I doubt I will ever find out.

      I found some sketchy looking wiring while down there. I KNOW who did that. I will have to check on that soon.

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  2. We have had plumbing problems but the worst time was only 3 days. We always have water stored and we have a hot tub in the back so it is much easier than what you are going through. Plus we finally found an honest plumber, spent another $2,000 and it seems to be
    fixed.
    We live in so cal, so a broken heater would not be a hardship. It never gets that cold here.
    So sorry for all you are going through.

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    Replies
    1. patti,
      Don't you need water for a hot tub? I think day 5 was when things started getting horrid. I have about 50 vinegar jugs just waiting for water. I cannot store any water down there because it is humid. Well, maybe not after this!

      So Cal sounds good right about now!

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    2. Linda,
      You do need water for our hot tub, but we have the kind that always has water and it has a heater. So worse case scenario, we could heat it and get in to get rinsed off. It is like having 12,000 gallons stored. We can't drink it, but we can use it for all the other things.
      I bet it was bad at day 5, I am so sorry you are going through this trial.
      Vinegar jugs are a great way to store water, it is too bad you don't have a safe place to store them. We also have some of the 55 gallon water drums filled. We can store them outdoors since the weather is so mild.
      So cal is still warm enough to go in the ocean. My son was there today. I wish you had some of these options.

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    3. Patti,
      If these two fixes solve the perpetual dampness in my basement, I can store filled vinegar jugs in the basement now. I could store them upstairs around the kitchen wall, but a leak in a jug would be catastrophic. Right now, I have the seven filled jugs in the bathtub. I have one laundry detergent jug filled. From now on, I will put water in those, too. Now, I have a collection of drinking water jugs. I use one of those for the chickens' water. They barely drink a gallon of water each week. And, the waterer is sealed so little evaporates.

      As long as I keep plastic water containers off the concrete floor, they should be okay if it stays dry. When we moved here it was amazingly dry down there. I think the humid atmosphere has been from the cut sewage pipe and from a slow leak in the water pipe.

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  3. We are quite often without running water in the house but have a rainwater tank out near the shed that we use for drinking and another tank full of water that I use for the animals and garden and washing myself. If it's hot we go for a swim in the dam. Makes us smell like mud but we feel clean! I would hate to have no water or to only have tank water like some people. A lot of people have no idea what it is like to have limited water, we at least have enough until it comes back on but the rainwater is dependant on the rain and if I remember to get the pipes connected during Winter...I feel for you.

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    Replies
    1. Barb.
      I knew you had some water setup that was different, but was not sure how. No water is no fun. I could bathe in the sink, but dishes and clothes are too hard for me. As a younger woman, this would be a snap. Carrying one gallon of water is hard; picking it up to pour in the kitchen is hard.

      Thanks. If I were depending on rain, we have had little in the last five weeks.

      Delete
  4. Years back we live in the country and our only water was tank water. There was a drought. No water. And we couldn't afford to buy it.
    So for months we showered at friends place, washed at friends places and suffered. We carried water home in bottles but there was never enough. Flushed the toilet using a bucket. Once a day.
    Part of the reason I am never, ever sorry to see the rain.

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    Replies
    1. EC,
      I really don't have a friend here I could ask to shower. Charlie is in Huntsville. Other friends, like Tommy are in Birmingham, both 50+ miles away. I pour the water in the back of the commode since pouring it into a bucket is just another heavy step. But, I do know how to do that. I could set buckets to catch the rain, but then there would be leaves and trash and too heavy to carry. Tommy is getting to where carrying anything at all is too much for his hips. He needs both replaced.

      Delete
  5. I lived up in the boonies one time and main pipe down the hill from the cistern stopped flowing. It was a huge pain.

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  6. Sometimes I think your biggest blessing would be an arsonist. With no casualties of course. Way back when I was a kid, my mom spent half her time wishing the house would burn, and the other half being afraid it would. Even down here, with a cold snap, we're glad we have heat. I worry about you. I honestly do.

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    Replies
    1. lotta joy,
      I, too, have ambivalent feelings...lol. Oh, I worry!

      Delete
  7. After Hurricane Charley we were without water for about a month. We became very good at bathing/hair washing with 2-3 liter bottles of water - handed out by the National Guard. Retrieved water from the community pools for toilet flushing. We used paper plates and washed our eating utensils using a bottle of water. We cooked on the grill as much as possible and used disposable foil pans when necessary. Now we have our own pool so could use that water for dishwasing & toilet flushing and even bathing by bringing it in the house and 5 rain barrels that we could purify the water to drink. Hope your plumbing problems can be fixed in the near future. No one should ever have to be without water.

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Okay, hoping the annoyances have gone away.