A nice little break

And not much to write about today.

Because I was visiting family, and because I seldom write about my family (other than Hershey the dog), there's not much to say.

It was very good to get away. I've been home since February, when I went to Tennessee to attend my daughter's law school graduation. And I've been working on something – volunteer stuff or house stuff or Whole 30 stuff – for months. So it was good to get away.

Following a primal/paleo plan 90 percent of the time means you can have a couple "cheat" meals each week. I had one Saturday night, and got right back on track Sunday morning. It was HARD watching the rest of them eat cake for breakfast, but really? If I eat cake, I know I'm going to pay for it in more ways than is comfortable for me.

Priorities.

Stopped at Trader Joe's and the Piedmont Triad Farmer's Market on the way home. Two of my favorite places when I go to North Carolina.

I checked the electric meter at the water pump yesterday morning and we're still averaging 1 kWh per day, which our pump installer says is what we should be averaging. Since we've been using 20 kWh per day, and since during the cold months it jumped to 50, I'd say digging holes in the front yard was all he needed to do.

The lawn ornament is finally gone.

Seriously. He didn't do anything. Pulled the pump out of the ground, put it back, dug a bunch of holes with a backhoe looking for leaks, didn't find any, filled them back in, and charged us a reasonable amount of money for his trouble and effort.

I think I'll reduce my treks to check that meter to about once a week from here on out.

I have a lot of events and projects coming up, and I don't want to forget anything. It's good to be busy, but bad to drop the ball on something I said I would do. So the next thing on my to-do list is to … make a to-do list!

3 + 3 = DONE

Three more miles will get me to 122, which is what I need to reach 400, or 100/month for the year.

Three more Whole 30-compliant meals will get me to the end of the 30th day of this Whole 30.

Do you get the idea that I'll be excited to complete this Whole 30? WELL, YOU'RE RIGHT! Not that anything on my plate is going to change all that much, but it does feel restrictive. I am, however, happy I did it. A Whole 30 really is like pushing the reset button in my brain. I was getting very sloppy with my food, thinking I was "cured," that the weight I'd gained back would go away by itself.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

If I've learned anything in my six-plus decades on the planet, it's that maintaining a weight loss is much, much more difficult than losing it in the first place.

I'm just gonna treat myself as though I have a food allergy. Or something. I'm going to turn into one of those dreaded picky eaters. But I'll try not to make a big deal out of it.

In other news … I can still climb.

What does one do when faced with a locked
gate, and one has forgotten the key?
One climbs over it.

That's your standard cattle gate there, leading down a three-quarter-mile lane to our water pump.

We've been having issues with the amount of electricity it takes to get water up a very steep hill to our house. (The whole well location is complicated and was chosen long before I got here. Let's just say it's inconvenient.)

For the previous three years, we've had two months of very high electric bills for the water pump (it has a separate meter). During January and February, the usage quadrupled. Then when spring hit, it would go back down. We were kind of resigned to it this year, except … it didn't go back down. After four months of increased kilowattage, we called in the big guns.

Which means the man who put the pump in came to take a look at the situation. Again. He's been here every year, and is as puzzled as we are.

The past two days I've climbed that gate, walked down that lane, climbed down (and back up) a hill and read the meter.

The pump installer has done nothing but dig holes in my yard, looking for a water leak. And the electric usage has gone from 50 kWh per day to – are you ready? – 3. THREE!

He's coming today to (hopefully) find and repair the leak and fill in the holes. There's a lot of water in those holes. There's a leak somewhere. But for some reason we're not using as much electricity now as we were before he started digging.

The joys of country living know no bounds. It's non-stop FUN, I tell ya!

Time for the first of three meals (strangely, I've not been snacking between meals, perhaps because I'm, um, not hungry) today. Looking forward to tomorrow's weigh-in. I'll report results before I head south. Thanks for reading and have a GREAT last day of April.

Day 29 DONE!

I hardly even opened the laptop

It's so much easier for me to blog from the computer than from the phone. As I promised last week, I took photos, I just didn't post them here. (They're on Instagram.) I'll get those up later.

My original plan had me leaving Friday and returning Sunday, but I ended up staying an extra day. The trip began with a dead car battery. THANK YOU, COLD WEATHER! We jumped it, drove to our local-ish service station and determined it was still holding a charge, but it's the original battery. Probably ought to replace it. Sooner rather than later. So, a late start, but no harm done.

The purpose of the trip was to watch my older granddaughter's winter dance concert, which was amazing and wonderful and beautiful. It was a great visit, one of the best. My daughter is low-carbing and we made some great food while I was there, especially this soup, which we modified by eliminating the tofu and doubling up on the pork and mushrooms. Oh, my, was it ever good!

The trip home was long and rainy and ended with a bit of frustrating news, which I'll get to in a couple of paragraphs. I took a shopping break, which is why it was such a long trip, but worth it for the new fancy jeans and cool shirt I found clearanced at Old Navy.

I'm on a social media team for our state Democratic women's organization and with the chemical spill in the Elk River Thursday, the team was very busy over the weekend. I think I managed to tweet a couple times, but the rest of the team knew I was going to be gone. They've done a great job covering a major disaster. West Virginia's population is about 1.8 million people. Three hundred thousand have been without water for cooking/bathing/drinking since Thursday.

Some areas were allowed to use their water yesterday, and the remaining areas – nine counties were involved altogether – should be back on board soon.

Our home was not affected by the spill, because we have a well. As I was driving home yesterday afternoon, my husband called to report that something was wrong with the water pump. We have no water pressure. An electrician came out last night to make sure all that electrical work we had done a couple weeks ago was still working. It is. Meaning it's a pump problem. And, of course, as our weather comes from the west, the rain I drove in almost all the way from Nashville is here today, further complicating well repairs.

I am BEYOND fed up with country living. I should change the blog name to Knit. Run. Suicide.

KIDDING!

Pushing the reset button

Woke up at 6-ish this morning, after sleeping for 11 hours, and WE STILL HAVE WATER!

For the first couple days after any kind of basic-necessity disaster (no electricity, no water, no bacon) it's an adventure to flip a switch or turn a faucet. So far, so good.

My plan for today has already changed. Last night when I checked the weather it wasn't supposed to start raining until mid-morning. I'd planned to take a long, long walk beginning at around 8 a.m. I haven't walked in a couple of days (one doesn't want to exert oneself when one can't shower. ahem.) and was really looking forward to getting outside. The temperature is unseasonably warm.

It would have been great.

However. The winds from the west pushed the storms here earlier than predicted, and it's been raining and blowing for half an hour already. The chance of rain all day today is from 80 to 100 percent.

[I'm very glad the lineman came yesterday to hook the power back up to the water pump. That whole apparatus is in a muddy cow pasture, which is surely much muddier now than it was yesterday afternoon.]

So the plan now is to hop on the elliptical and watch a movie.

I'm resetting the food button, after two days of eating crap. [I did pretty well the first two days, not so much Friday and Saturday.] Not total crap, but certainly not enough vegetables, less-than-ideal protein and too. much. sugar.

When one doesn't have water, one doesn't cook. Because one can't clean up the mess. Well, one can, but it's certainly more of an operation than just moistening a sponge, swiping a surface and rinsing the sponge out. I ended up using an entire roll of paper towels during the four days we were H20-less. We ran out of clean dishes and had to switch to disposables. We ate up all the easy-to-nuke leftovers and then just caved to convenience.

I woke up this morning feeling achy and stiff, just like the old days, and blame it on toast with marmalade. Among other indiscretions.

If anything, this experience has reinforced the theory that convenience foods contribute to poor health in ways Big Food couldn't have imagined when they thought they were making life easier by providing grab-and-go meals and snacks.

And I absolutely MUST remember that it matters more what you eat throughout the year than what you eat during the holidays. Or during a short-lived, inconvenient crisis.

Still. No. Water.

I'm so angry.

We were told yesterday, after an inspection of the repair work to the water pump power system had been completed (or nearly so, there's a bit more to do this morning), that no one from Mon Power (our electric company, owned by FirstEnergy Corp.) was available to come turn the power back on.

They were all on vacation. Because, you know, IT'S THE HOLIDAYS!

Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO know it's the holidays. And I have no water. I can't cook or do dishes. I can't clean. I can't do laundry. I can't shower or flush my toilets.

AND I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!

I took the radical step of reporting an outage this morning and someone actually called me back. I explained the situation to him and learned that, because our outage was a scheduled one and not an emergency, it goes through a different system, and I can't even talk to anyone who has the authority to send someone out until Monday morning.

He gave me another number to call and I talked with a very sympathetic woman who confirmed that nothing could be done today. Or tomorrow. But she promised to keep working on it and also promised she or someone else would call me back this morning.

I'm not holding my breath.

It's unfathomable to me that if workers are available to take care of emergencies on a 24/7 basis, one of those same workers can't be dispatched to restore my service today.

I'm beyond frustrated.

What have I done to piss off the Universe?

The hits just keep on comin'.

My husband called me last Friday while I was out shopping to let me know we had a huge problem with the power supplying our water pump. I cut my trip short and came home to be of whatever support I could.

Everything came together somewhat magically and we had running water again by the end of the day. It took a lot of coordination and effort and manpower, but we now have a telephone pole holding up the electrical box and meter, and it all worked well.

Until Tuesday night, when we noticed the water pressure was weak. In the light of yesterday we went to the site and – eventually – discovered a burnt-out wire. It was most likely damaged when the original, inadequate pole fell on Friday. But it took a few days to actually fail, giving us quite the false sense of security.

So no water yesterday while we figured out what was wrong and what we needed to do to fix it. And no water today while we gather the materials and coordinate the manpower. And maybe – MAYBE – we'll have water tomorrow.

One of my Facebook friends commented over there that perhaps we needed to move to civilization.

That's an EXCELLENT suggestion.

Know anyone who wants to buy a lovely home in the country with, um, water issues?

What else? About a month ago my husband approached me with the idea that he might like to learn how to use one of those tablet things. You know, move into the 21st century. Embrace the technology. He has since gone on an anti-technology rant at least once a week. I might be adding his Kindle (Merry Christmas, honey!) to my arsenal of devices.

Also, I spent a lot of time and effort gathering a bunch of Indian spices and spice mixes to give my sister for Christmas, who adores Indian cuisine. Along with her thanks, she said she didn't know where to find any of the other ingredients she would need to make the recipes. I'm a by-guess-and-by-golly kind of cook. If the directions say add blah-blah-blah, and I only have chicken broth on hand, by golly I'll use chicken broth.

She, apparently, goes by the book and was just a little less grateful than I thought she'd be. Oh, well. Those were my expectations. Once the gift is out of my hands I can't do anything about it. But believe me, she's getting a check next year.

There are other things I won't or can't go into, and so it's time to dig deep and come up with something positive upon which to end this drivel.

Did I ever write about the two boys our Amish neighbors were fostering? (I can't find any past record of it if I did.) The couple who had the boys also owned the bakery. Melissa (the wife/mom) is my friend who died last summer. At the time she died, she and her husband were fostering four siblings, but prior to that they'd had two brothers for nearly nine months. The state decided the biological mother had turned her life around and the boys were sent back to her just before they were about to be adopted.

Which devastated Simon and Melissa, but within a couple days the new children arrived. Only to be removed when Melissa died.

Leaving Simon quite alone.

Well, when I picked up the little Amish girls to go to school Monday morning, I heard the news that the two little brothers are back with Simon. Their mom's addiction was apparently stronger than her affection for her children. Which is sad, yes, but we're all so happy for Simon and the boys.

So, yes, the hits do keep on coming, as hits are wont to do.

But the Universe has a way of evening things out.

P.S. At least I don't have to do laundry. Or dishes. So YAY for that!

A killer day

So yesterday began with an e-bill for our water pump electric meter that was seven or eight times higher than normal.

(One of the not-joys of country living is having a well. Our water is fine, and there's plenty of it, but you have to hire someone to take care of any problems that crop up. And problems will crop up.)

The well is located down a very steep hill and the meter is on a pole nearby. We get three electric bills every month, one for the pump, one for the garage and one for the residence, how fun is that?

I called the power company and spent an inordinate number of cell phone minutes on hold and ended up walking down to the meter to take a physical reading. Which turned out to be quite accurate, thankyouverymuch, but there's no way IN HELL we used that much water.

I finally talked to Jon, a very patient customer service rep, who explained that we didn't use that much water, we used that many kilowatt hours. Which is a whole different ball game. (Speaking of ball games, the college basketball championship game was one of the most exciting I can ever remember watching!)

We got a huge bill last year, as well, and paid for a fruitless service call.

The good thing is the meter reading I took yesterday shows that we're back to a normal usage pattern. The bad thing is we don't know why, for two consecutive years, our bill as been so high during the two coldest months of the year. There probably is a connection, but since everything is underground and, thus, doesn't freeze, it's unlikely that the pump has to work any harder to push water up the hill when it's 20° than when it's 80°.

The trek to and from the meter was the killer part. It's a three-quarter mile trail walk to get there, through a cow pasture. (Don't click if you don't like cows. Or pictures of cows.) We climbed the hill back up to the house, which was less than half a mile but OH SO STEEP! My husband and I were following the water line, looking for leaks. Which were non-existent, and we figured there weren't any because if there's a leak, we usually have evidence – discolored water, low pressure, etc.

And then I walked five miles in the afternoon. So. KILLER DAY! With no good answers to the problem and a hefty chunk taken out of the checking account for water we didn't use, but kilowatt hours we apparently did use.

That condo in North Carolina is looking better and better.

Wiki Waterleaks

I would love for life to just even out for a while. Each individual issue my husband and I are dealing with would be manageable on its own, but there are so many piled atop one another that we find ourselves wanting to sell everything and run away.

That water drop should be a dollar sign.

Unfortunately, the issues are not appropriate blog fodder. Except, maybe, the water.

We have spent So. Much. Money. making sure water is both potable and available here in the Middle of Nowhere. In addition to money, it has cost me a friendship, which ended almost exactly a year ago.

Our water pump is located nearly half a mile from our house, down a steep hill or mini mountain, take your pick, in a cow pasture. You have to duck under an electric fence to get to the meter.

The bill for said meter has always been less than $10 a month. This month it was more than $200.

Houston, we have a problem. If the pump is running that much, there must be a leak, right?

The thing is, usually when we have a leak there's some evidence of it, and the evidence has always been low water pressure. The pressure has been fine, so we didn't suspect a thing.

The power company has tested the meter which, of course, is fine. The man who has been our water expert for the past three or four years came yesterday and ruled out all the dire possibilities. He temporarily adjusted a pressure switch which finally got the pump to shut off. But the key word here is "temporarily." There's still a leak, somewhere along the line, and we have to wait for it to show up above ground. After which there will be equipment and mud and lack of water until repairs are made.

Oh, the joy and anticipation.

Wars have been fought over water. If your water works, you can add one more blessing to your day.