I must apologize for taking so long to get back to this blog. For the past two weeks it has been absolutely crazy around the house. I will try to catch you up. Buckle up it is going to be a bumpy ride.
First, my husband was sick with a cold and a sinus infection. Then, just because he loves me so much and wanted to share, he gave it to me. I do believe it made me feel worse than I did when I had the flu. It took me out of the game for over a week. All I did was sleep. When I did wake up it was just to take more meds, get something to drink and then back to bed. I had to make a trip to the doctor to get antibiotics to get over it. It was yucky!
I am not sure what the weather has been like where you are, but here in Gadsden, Alabama, it has been manic. It will be nice and fairly warm one day, and then it will go down to single digits and water pipes all over town will bust. Some businesses will be closed, schools will open late. It is really bad on those warm days when the pipes defrost and flood yards, or even worse when it busts inside and floods the rooms inside. My house has suffered with this problem too.
Twice in the past two weeks we have had water pipes freeze and bust. I have murdered three electric heaters so far this winter just trying to keep warm. So, it has thrown me behind on everything from cleaning to cooking to staying warm.
We have had to go Mom's to get showers and do laundry, just so we could have enough clean clothes to get us through the weekend while we tried to conquer these repairs. This weather has thrown a monkey wrench into everything.
When I heard the weather man predicting the coldest weather this upcoming week in the history of Alabama, I made the executive decision to do something about our situation. I was tired of not having water, of freezing, and dealing with a dirty house. Do we need to even discuss the fact that my power bill tripled from running electric heaters?
I planned to install propane heaters in the house and use this to heat with. Originally the plan was to install two propane burning heaters in the house. One in the kitchen and one in the living room. We had to get the water pipes fixed and do some weather proofing. Plus, I wanted to put the bedroom into what is now the living room to try to cut down on the square footage we were trying to heat.
Saturday morning we planned to go to storage, get our propane heaters out, the 2 -100 pound tanks, mounting brackets, etc, and go fill up the tanks at a local gas dealer . Go by Lowe's and get our copper pipe, fittings, and supplies and have heat by the evening. In the meantime, hopefully our pipes would defrost and we could take care of the water repairs after we got the heaters installed.
Wouldn't you know it, nothing ever works as planned. We head over to Mom's for a shower before we get started & to get my Dad to help us with the installation of the heaters. For those of you that can afford it, go ahead and call a plumber for the water pipes and the gas company to run lines. In my case, we cannot afford that so we call someone older and wiser than we are on the subject. Especially, when it comes to things that can be very dangerous (such as propane or electrical problems).
Dad & I are getting ready to leave to go do the shopping, while my husband grabbed the gas tanks to go have them filled. We decided to divide and conquer to get everything knocked out quicker.
Before Dad & I could leave, I got a call from work and had to drop everything I was working on to run deal with a problem there. Thankfully, it did not take but about an hour and soon I was back on track to getting things done, back to the house to get Dad and on to Lowe's. I spent over $120.00 buying things to get the heater installed and weatherproofing materials.
Of course, they didn't have a lot of things we needed. They were sold out because it seemed that everyone in town had the same idea that I had. On our way to the car to leave, we were planning our next stop to pick up the remaining items we needed when his phone rang. It was Mom, they had a leak at their house and it was flooding the yard. So I had to rush him back home so he could try to repair his water problems. He was hoping it would be a quick fix, but of course it wasn't. It took him until dark to get it fixed. This put installing my heaters on the back burner. My uncle was going to help my Dad work on his busted water pipes. So, I was free to move on to the next challenge.
In the meantime, my husband had been to have the tanks filled only to discover that our tanks were out dated and would have to be sent off for 4 - 6 weeks to be retrofitted. This was going to cost us an additional $40.00 per tank. We had to have heat, and buying a new tank was not in the budget, but he went to the bank, did a little juggling and managed to get a small personal loan just in time to get to the only store in town that was open that sold the tanks and get it back to the gas company 10 minutes before they closed.
My husband and I decided to meet up and go out together to see if we could go to the other stores to find the remaining items we needed to get the heater installed and try to find the things we needed to fix our water pipes. After hitting two more home improvement stores to try to find all we needed, we finally were able to go back home. He tracked down the leak and started to work on it. I started inside the house trying to clean up and straighten up so that they would have plenty of room to install the heaters the next morning. By this time, it was dark and I knew that getting heaters intalled was not going to be feasible. It would have to wait until the next day.
It wasn't long after we got home until Robby (my hubby) was able to get the water leak fixed. We were happy! We had water again! YAY! Then, it wasn't long until we discovered that the toilet was running nonstop and every time we turned the water on in the kitchen the spray nozzle spritzed water all over the counter and whoever happened to be in front of the sink. Almost every occassion it was me. Oh goodie! More repairs demanding attention and requiring money we had not budgeted for. Stress and frustration mounted by the second. Robby calmed me down a little by reminding me that he had borrowed a little from the bank, and still had some left so we would be ok. These problems would just have to wait (like the installation of the heaters) until Sunday. I gave up. I went to bed and prayed that Sunday would be a better day.
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