Hot Water

I don't always shower every day. I'm guessing most of you don't either. But I don't go for more than every other day. And if I'm super sweaty one day, then whether or not I wash my hair, I at least bathe myself. I bathe my kids every day. Not because they are necessarily grimy. (Although most of the time they are. Let's face it. They're kids!) But because it's just a nice part of our bedtime routine. And that routine helps them to go to sleep much, much easier. And we like bath time. It's fun. I like watching the kids splash and play. We sing songs. We make shampoo hair towers. We play with bath toys and they get to squirt Mom on occasion.

So why am I sharing this with you? Well, on Saturday our water heater went out. Ugh. Jason realized that the pilot light was out and followed the directions and safety guidelines on the heater, to no avail. We rent, so we called the maintenance guy. He wouldn't answer. So we called a neighbor friend who works for Questar Gas. His wife was working and one of his 3 kids was sleeping. So I headed over to hang out with his kiddos and he came over to help Jason try to figure out the situation. After a few hours they gave up. The neighbor offered his house for bathing if it came to that. That was super nice of him, but we had all bathed on Saturday, so we'd be okay for Sunday. I would have preferred to shower, but whatever. I didn't mind just washing my face in ice cold water. And we figured we'd get it fixed first thing Monday (today).

We got in touch with the maintenance guy this morning and he was over here by 10 am. He checked things out, tried to relight the pilot light himself (also to no avail) and then headed out to get us a new water heater. Great!! I had nowhere to be today, so I was fine waiting a few more hours to shower. He came back and drained the heater, took out the broken one, and came back to install the new one. When he left he let me know that I would need to run the water for a bit to get rid of the air in the pipes but after a few minutes we would be back in business.

Guess what.

We were not back in business. He had to come back over here to see if he could figure it out. I'm ready to bathe my kids and get them off to bed. They've gone two days without a shower and I'd rather not make it three. And the same goes for myself. We have places to be tomorrow. I don't want to be smelly and greasy.

AND we don't have a dishwasher so I wash our dishes by hand. Obnoxious, but not the end of the world. Soap is great for cleaning, but the real sanitizer is HOT water. I have none. So I have a pile of dishes sitting in my kitchen. The bigger it grows, the more likely I am to put off washing them. Ugh.

Washing your hands after you go to the bathroom. HOT water is mandatory, right? Well, we don't have any. Alcohol wipes are drying out our skin in the mean time.

Laundry? Well, I guess it's fine to wash in the cold water. But I'm using the lack of heat as an excuse to postpone all that washing and folding. :)

Turns out he just forgot to open the valve. Thank heavens!! We have heated water again!!

Anyway, this is the first time in my life I've really been without hot water. WOW. I have taken it for granted!! Every time I start to complain I remind myself of the people in Haiti and other parts of the world. Not only are they suffering in a million different ways, but they probably don't have easy access to working water heaters either. And how lazy am I that I don't just boil a few pots of water on my working electric stove? You see, it's not the end of the world.

I've been spoiled for years with hot water at my finger tips, complaining if the hot shower water ran out because I'd been in there for 40 minutes. Or going camping and washing my face in the cold river water. That seemed to be torture.

The things we take for granted. I'm looking forward to my hot shower tonight. And you can bet I'll be on my knees at bed time thanking my Heavenly Father for the convenience and blessing of hot water.