Hot Water

Roses Steven gave me for my birthday.

Friday, May 30th I woke with energy, ready for anything... I thought. The day before had been my birthday and I had taken things easy. I hadn't cleaned the house. I hadn't washed laundry. I hadn't even done the dishes, and there were a lot from baking a cake, and muffins, and stuff. To add to the excitement, we were planning on going camping that evening, so we needed to pack and prepare for an overnight trip. I had energy. I had most of the day. I could do this!

My attitude lasted until after breakfast when I headed to the laundry room to clean out the cat's litter box, and noticed that what was usually a small amount of dry litter that the cats had kicked out of the box, was a thick, oozy mud that caked the floor surrounding the water heater. Remembering the puddle of water I had found on the pantry floor the evening before (and tossed a towel over and forgotten) I realized that our ancient water heater had finally sprung a leak. I turned off the hot water and the gas to the water heater, let Steven (who had already left for work) know and set about contacting our heating/cooling/plumbing company. They told me that they could replace our water heater, install it, and everything for about $1300, or we could buy a (lesser quality) water heater at Home Depot for about $500 and they would install it for a few hundred. We decided that Steven would pick up a water heater on the way home from work that afternoon, and hopefully we would be able to get it installed before we left for our campout.

A glimpse of the kitchen table

Meanwhile, I had a mess to clean up. I had to scrape, sweep, and mop up the cat mud from around the water heater, dig mud out from a crack in the linoleum, and essentially clear out everything on the floor of the laundry room. Not everything had gotten soaking wet. I worry that a lot of the water that spilled went down through the crack and into the floor, warping the floor boards and seeping under the walls - hence the puddle in the pantry, and a sopping wet shirt that I discovered behind the toilet in the hall bathroom, both of which back to the space where the water heater is located. Steven had told me that he wanted a bigger water heater, so suspecting that the new one would need more space, I pushed the washer and dryer closer to the far wall and rearranged the stuff in the laundry room to make a little more space. The whole job took me a few hours to complete, and by the time I was done I was exhausted.

The sink, and no hot water.

At the same time, there was a truck load of dishes that needed washing, and no hot water, so, we heated water on the stove, and John was an angel and washed about three quarters of the dishes by hand. Josh and Peter helped a little bit with drying the dishes and putting them away, but their attention span is short. I ended up finishing the job, as well as washing the last several dishes.

I had laundry to wash, but I only ended up washing one load - the darks since I usually wash them in cold water anyway. I decided to wait to wash the white things until we had hot water to wash them in.

Then came straightening up the rest of the house, picking up clutter and putting stuff in order. Once everything was in place, we started getting ready for our campout. I sent the kids to gather their clothes for the night, and I made sure we had stuff to make breakfast the following morning, and the equipment necessary to cook it. I was grateful that we have most of our camping equipment put together in buckets, and I only had to add a few things to our supplies. The sleeping bags had to be rolled up and put back in their container. (They were still out from the Father's and Son's Campout two weekends before.) I gathered the stuff we would need in a pile, and hoped that I didn't forget anything important.

New water heater waiting to be installed, looking like an alien.

Around 4:30pm, Steven let me know that he was at the store getting the water heater, and that the plumbers should be here shortly. When he arrived home, we unloaded the water heater from the car and carried it in to the kitchen, then started loading the camping equipment into the car.  A little while later, the plumbers arrived and began draining the old water heater and preparing the new one to be installed. Finally, around 6:30, the plumbers left, their job completed, and we were able to pile into the car and head to Sedalia where we joined my sister April and her family for a camping trip. I was tired, exhausted, a little slap happy and silly. I was grateful to be out of the house. I was happy to know that when we returned home again, there would be hot showers waiting for us.