I was able to get the well pipes thawed, at least enough to get water back into the house. Propane should be delivered either late this evening or tomorrow.
Grilled ginger garlic tilapia and garlic buttered grilled shrimp for dinner.
And now I can make some coffee...5 hours into my day and I'm finally getting a nice hot cup of coffee - YAY!
Showing posts with label water-well. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water-well. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Another Snow Day
The temp hasn't even reached the 20s yet today. Most likely going to be another snow day tomorrow. Tomorrow night another super cold Arctic blast is supposed to get here, bringing more snow and more blizzard like conditions...there goes the possibility of school being held on Thursday & Friday...To think, I was complaining about Mikeal not getting a full two weeks for Winter Vacation, now he's had his full two weeks, and then some...
Other just lovely news - either the water deep in the well is frozen or the pump is frozen or something went screwy with the electrical in it overnight, regardless we currently don't have water in the house and the pump house is taking forever to thaw out. I'd wrapped the pipes with an electrical heating tape, plus had a heating lamp in there, obviously days on end of below freezing temps just finally got the better of it. I put a small electric space heater out there and Brian should be bringing in a tarp that I'll use to seal up around the door better, maybe help keep in more of the heat. I'm praying anyways.
Then the propane is critically low. I budgeted it out, based on last year's use...well this year has been MUCH colder, so the heat has ran more, thus going through the propane much quicker. Basing it on last year we would of had enough to get us through until we got our tax refund, then would of filled it up, that would of gotten us through the rest of the winter and then some. Such is not the case, so we get to do some creative re-budgeting.
I'm just completely over winter already. It could go back to "normal" winter and I wouldn't complain, it'd be at least 20* warmer!
Other just lovely news - either the water deep in the well is frozen or the pump is frozen or something went screwy with the electrical in it overnight, regardless we currently don't have water in the house and the pump house is taking forever to thaw out. I'd wrapped the pipes with an electrical heating tape, plus had a heating lamp in there, obviously days on end of below freezing temps just finally got the better of it. I put a small electric space heater out there and Brian should be bringing in a tarp that I'll use to seal up around the door better, maybe help keep in more of the heat. I'm praying anyways.
Then the propane is critically low. I budgeted it out, based on last year's use...well this year has been MUCH colder, so the heat has ran more, thus going through the propane much quicker. Basing it on last year we would of had enough to get us through until we got our tax refund, then would of filled it up, that would of gotten us through the rest of the winter and then some. Such is not the case, so we get to do some creative re-budgeting.
I'm just completely over winter already. It could go back to "normal" winter and I wouldn't complain, it'd be at least 20* warmer!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
2010
This year holds a lot of promise for our family!
Mikaila will be starting into a pre-Head Start type program, not exactly sure when as the building has not been built yet, but she is on the waiting list.
Mikeal will be continuing with his wrestling. There has been a lot of snow lately, so wrestling practices have not been held this entire Winter Vacation, maybe things will clear up enough that the kids & coaches will be able to get back into the swing of things.
Brian just got his ASE certification and will be starting his assistant manager's training, so we're holding out hope that an assistant manager position will be opened up in the area so he can slide on into that vacancy.
I'm hanging in here. I had considered going back to school this spring, but believe I'll wait until we know for sure where everything else is headed, this way instead of trying to budget and plan around 4 different schedules we can work with the three...leaving one of the drivers open for this shuttling.
As far family plans we have a few in the works. Our water well is going to be "tanked" so that I'll be able to do my laundry at home, without the hassle of having to wait 3-8 hours between the wash & rinse cycles, and then have to wait another 8 hours or so until we're able to use water period in the house. So that will be completely fixed! YAY!
We're also planning on putting up a privacy fence down the entire length of the one side of our yard. We're just completely tired of chasing off their pregnant/nursing dog, who's constantly tearing through everything, looking for a bite to eat. The building of the privacy fence will also DRASTICALLY reduce the creepy feeling I get just stepping out onto my front porch, feeling like my every move is being watched like a hawk. Hopefully some of the harassment from the local law enforcement & subsidiaries will slow down as well. The biggest bonus of all - being able to walk out my front door and not have to see any of their garbage & junk piled up almost staring in my face. I could maybe go even as far as to say that the garbage that blows around in their yard will not be landing in my yard, for me to have to pick up; am hoping the fence stops it and it all just piles up on their side, instead of making it's way to the fence line between my place and the neighbor's pasture. I'm quite sure the old man will throw a fit over the fence, but that just sucks to be him! He can either get over it or have a heart attack freaking out over it, oh well.
I'm also hoping to be able to climb around in my attic at some point. Maybe put up some more insulation, some plywood, or even some sheet rock in there to finish it off. I know at the one end the clearance is only barely big enough to be used as a storage area, but that would save us shed space and closet space, especially since the water tank unit that's going to be going in is going to take up most of the shed space as it is.
After all is said and done in these areas of home improvement, then we should be right on track to start the add-ons! I can't wait to nearly double our house space!!!!
Mikaila will be starting into a pre-Head Start type program, not exactly sure when as the building has not been built yet, but she is on the waiting list.
Mikeal will be continuing with his wrestling. There has been a lot of snow lately, so wrestling practices have not been held this entire Winter Vacation, maybe things will clear up enough that the kids & coaches will be able to get back into the swing of things.
Brian just got his ASE certification and will be starting his assistant manager's training, so we're holding out hope that an assistant manager position will be opened up in the area so he can slide on into that vacancy.
I'm hanging in here. I had considered going back to school this spring, but believe I'll wait until we know for sure where everything else is headed, this way instead of trying to budget and plan around 4 different schedules we can work with the three...leaving one of the drivers open for this shuttling.
As far family plans we have a few in the works. Our water well is going to be "tanked" so that I'll be able to do my laundry at home, without the hassle of having to wait 3-8 hours between the wash & rinse cycles, and then have to wait another 8 hours or so until we're able to use water period in the house. So that will be completely fixed! YAY!
We're also planning on putting up a privacy fence down the entire length of the one side of our yard. We're just completely tired of chasing off their pregnant/nursing dog, who's constantly tearing through everything, looking for a bite to eat. The building of the privacy fence will also DRASTICALLY reduce the creepy feeling I get just stepping out onto my front porch, feeling like my every move is being watched like a hawk. Hopefully some of the harassment from the local law enforcement & subsidiaries will slow down as well. The biggest bonus of all - being able to walk out my front door and not have to see any of their garbage & junk piled up almost staring in my face. I could maybe go even as far as to say that the garbage that blows around in their yard will not be landing in my yard, for me to have to pick up; am hoping the fence stops it and it all just piles up on their side, instead of making it's way to the fence line between my place and the neighbor's pasture. I'm quite sure the old man will throw a fit over the fence, but that just sucks to be him! He can either get over it or have a heart attack freaking out over it, oh well.
I'm also hoping to be able to climb around in my attic at some point. Maybe put up some more insulation, some plywood, or even some sheet rock in there to finish it off. I know at the one end the clearance is only barely big enough to be used as a storage area, but that would save us shed space and closet space, especially since the water tank unit that's going to be going in is going to take up most of the shed space as it is.
After all is said and done in these areas of home improvement, then we should be right on track to start the add-ons! I can't wait to nearly double our house space!!!!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
I have a LOATHING dislike of Snakes!
My morning started off as lovely as I'm sure only it could.
Mikeal couldn't find his shoes...they happened to of been under the edge of MY bed...how they got there, I have no idea, but at least they were found.
The nausea from yesterday does not seem to be letting up much, but it has at least stayed at just nausea...of course keeping an empty stomach seems to work well in that department.
And Brian's bad mood from yesterday doesn't seem to be letting up, of course I'm just faking the puking and such to mask my lazy incompetency of being a SAHM.
I went to make myself a pot of coffee and not one drop of water falls from the faucet. So to the pump house I must go. Of course Brian has to leave out for work at this time with barely even so much as a "see you later".
So I go out to the pump house to mess with getting the well going. No luck on the first go around. Of course I can't dedicate much time to messing with it out there because Mikaila is loose in the house, on her own. I go back in to check on her, give the well a little bit of cool off time. Prepare a pot of coffee from the water I have stored back for just such instances, and serve breakfast to Mikaila.
I make another trip out to the shed, pour water into the pump to get it primed up, turn it back on. Then from the corner of my eye I see it. Not 12 inches from my head, the flick of a reptile tongue. Now I've grown quite accustomed to seeing quite a few lizards in and around my shed, house, yard, so I didn't think much of it for about 20 seconds. I think see part of its body, that compared with its movements, is COMPLETELY wrong for a lizard. Its a snake. A very small snake. Okay, no big deal, I can deal with this, its a small snake, a small baby snake. Then upon a more detailed look at it I noticed the gorgeous copper tone to its scales and hourglass-type markings along its head and back. Its a copperhead.
I'm already in the shed, barefoot, I might add, wearing a pair of shorts and t-shirt. See copperhead snakes are quite poisonous, baby ones are even more toxic, I'm home alone, with a 21 month old, no calling card, no way to call my husband, no guarantee that I'd be able to get a hold of someone that would be able to get a hold of him. But even that's fine, it takes the ambulance an average of 45 minutes to show up out here, cops an average of 3 hrs to get here...and well, that yard fire I had in October last year, I still haven't heard anything from the fire dept on that. So I'm sure I'll be fine waiting on them. To add to my confidence that I'll be just fine we have no health insurance, and if my memory serves me well, a few years ago I suffered a very nasty Brown Recluse spider bite, went to the local hospital to be treated, and was basically given a band-aid to cover the wound, after it'd swollen to the size of a large grapefruit. I survived, ended up with a lovely half-dollar sized scar...from what was a hole the size of a baseball, so I guess it could of been worse.
I grab my hedge clippers. The handles are roughly 2 ft long, so even if I were to only manage to grab the tail of it I should be far enough away from the danger end, at least long enough to get another tool at assist me in killing the thing. That's when I see it. One of the original target's siblings. So now I have one hiding behind the back of the door/side of the shed, since the door was open and another one hiding in the boards that make up the door itself, one close to my ankles, the other close to my head.
Neither one easy to just grab, and I risk getting bitten by one by trying to get the other.
I carefully check the ground, to be sure I can't see any slithering where I'd be standing, slowly push the door forward, having my first target in sight, the one that's moving back into the hole in the bricks, where it'd apparently first emerged from. I get it by the mid-section on my third try. But the clippers do not cut it in half. I get it over to the burn pile and commence my efforts to kill the thing. It doesn't die, but I handicap it enough that he's not able to move too terribly far. I then turn my attention back to snake # 2. Its still in the crevice between the board and door.
This one proves to be quite a bit trickier. I try spraying some cleaning stuff at it, hoping to coerce it out of hiding, but it doesn't seem phased. So I start beating the door with my clippers, using the sharp, cutting end, as I would a hammer, to squish the snake or convince it to come out. After about 10 hits it works, kinda. He sticks the end of his tail out, shaking it much in the way a rattlesnake shakes its tail to warn off threats. I grab him by the tail with the clippers, again, it doesn't do more than just break the vertebrates and grab the snake. I take it to join its still twitching sibling. It takes several strikes at the twitching sibling, its response was a bit of swelling followed by no more twitching. I proceed to go to town on both of them with the clippers until both are too broken to fix themselves, and the one is split in three pieces.
By this time the well has gotten itself back where it's supposed to be, and I head inside...only to realize that I forgot to turn the water on back to the house....I was a little distracted afterall.
That was a few hours ago...and I'm still a bit jumpy at anything that even thinks about brushing up against me.
But I'm sure, when I go to relay this to my husband, with the added urgency for him to get the metal, etc hauled off that's sitting behind the shed, metal that back in January his friend was going to use to patch his barn roof with, but its still sitting behind my shed, that I'm just making this up, just had to make up some sort of drama because I just can't go a single day without creating/making up some sort of drama. And if I'm not able to make some up on my own then I create some with him and his friends or what he does, just anything to draw attention to myself and to minimize him and his day. The two mangled snakes in the fire pit won't count as proof either, because I probably just found them lying around.
Mikeal couldn't find his shoes...they happened to of been under the edge of MY bed...how they got there, I have no idea, but at least they were found.
The nausea from yesterday does not seem to be letting up much, but it has at least stayed at just nausea...of course keeping an empty stomach seems to work well in that department.
And Brian's bad mood from yesterday doesn't seem to be letting up, of course I'm just faking the puking and such to mask my lazy incompetency of being a SAHM.
I went to make myself a pot of coffee and not one drop of water falls from the faucet. So to the pump house I must go. Of course Brian has to leave out for work at this time with barely even so much as a "see you later".
So I go out to the pump house to mess with getting the well going. No luck on the first go around. Of course I can't dedicate much time to messing with it out there because Mikaila is loose in the house, on her own. I go back in to check on her, give the well a little bit of cool off time. Prepare a pot of coffee from the water I have stored back for just such instances, and serve breakfast to Mikaila.
I make another trip out to the shed, pour water into the pump to get it primed up, turn it back on. Then from the corner of my eye I see it. Not 12 inches from my head, the flick of a reptile tongue. Now I've grown quite accustomed to seeing quite a few lizards in and around my shed, house, yard, so I didn't think much of it for about 20 seconds. I think see part of its body, that compared with its movements, is COMPLETELY wrong for a lizard. Its a snake. A very small snake. Okay, no big deal, I can deal with this, its a small snake, a small baby snake. Then upon a more detailed look at it I noticed the gorgeous copper tone to its scales and hourglass-type markings along its head and back. Its a copperhead.
I'm already in the shed, barefoot, I might add, wearing a pair of shorts and t-shirt. See copperhead snakes are quite poisonous, baby ones are even more toxic, I'm home alone, with a 21 month old, no calling card, no way to call my husband, no guarantee that I'd be able to get a hold of someone that would be able to get a hold of him. But even that's fine, it takes the ambulance an average of 45 minutes to show up out here, cops an average of 3 hrs to get here...and well, that yard fire I had in October last year, I still haven't heard anything from the fire dept on that. So I'm sure I'll be fine waiting on them. To add to my confidence that I'll be just fine we have no health insurance, and if my memory serves me well, a few years ago I suffered a very nasty Brown Recluse spider bite, went to the local hospital to be treated, and was basically given a band-aid to cover the wound, after it'd swollen to the size of a large grapefruit. I survived, ended up with a lovely half-dollar sized scar...from what was a hole the size of a baseball, so I guess it could of been worse.
I grab my hedge clippers. The handles are roughly 2 ft long, so even if I were to only manage to grab the tail of it I should be far enough away from the danger end, at least long enough to get another tool at assist me in killing the thing. That's when I see it. One of the original target's siblings. So now I have one hiding behind the back of the door/side of the shed, since the door was open and another one hiding in the boards that make up the door itself, one close to my ankles, the other close to my head.
Neither one easy to just grab, and I risk getting bitten by one by trying to get the other.
I carefully check the ground, to be sure I can't see any slithering where I'd be standing, slowly push the door forward, having my first target in sight, the one that's moving back into the hole in the bricks, where it'd apparently first emerged from. I get it by the mid-section on my third try. But the clippers do not cut it in half. I get it over to the burn pile and commence my efforts to kill the thing. It doesn't die, but I handicap it enough that he's not able to move too terribly far. I then turn my attention back to snake # 2. Its still in the crevice between the board and door.
This one proves to be quite a bit trickier. I try spraying some cleaning stuff at it, hoping to coerce it out of hiding, but it doesn't seem phased. So I start beating the door with my clippers, using the sharp, cutting end, as I would a hammer, to squish the snake or convince it to come out. After about 10 hits it works, kinda. He sticks the end of his tail out, shaking it much in the way a rattlesnake shakes its tail to warn off threats. I grab him by the tail with the clippers, again, it doesn't do more than just break the vertebrates and grab the snake. I take it to join its still twitching sibling. It takes several strikes at the twitching sibling, its response was a bit of swelling followed by no more twitching. I proceed to go to town on both of them with the clippers until both are too broken to fix themselves, and the one is split in three pieces.
By this time the well has gotten itself back where it's supposed to be, and I head inside...only to realize that I forgot to turn the water on back to the house....I was a little distracted afterall.
That was a few hours ago...and I'm still a bit jumpy at anything that even thinks about brushing up against me.
But I'm sure, when I go to relay this to my husband, with the added urgency for him to get the metal, etc hauled off that's sitting behind the shed, metal that back in January his friend was going to use to patch his barn roof with, but its still sitting behind my shed, that I'm just making this up, just had to make up some sort of drama because I just can't go a single day without creating/making up some sort of drama. And if I'm not able to make some up on my own then I create some with him and his friends or what he does, just anything to draw attention to myself and to minimize him and his day. The two mangled snakes in the fire pit won't count as proof either, because I probably just found them lying around.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)