Lo's World

This has been a fun month. (And there are pictures of diggers further down.) First off the washer didn't stop filling and I didn't notice as I was reading a book – I was in 16th century Rome, afterall. Pretty far away. When I got up to see what was happening, I stepped into a 1/2" of water, in the dining room and running down the hall into the bedroom. Fortunately, the linen closet is right there and I had plenty of scatter rugs to throw down to dam the office and living room. I tried to turn off the washer but it was already off. I tried to shut off the circuit but that didn't work either. I tried to turn off the main water and that worked. Hubby figured out later that some electronic relay had gone bad so he ordered the part and repaired it within just a few days.

I called T and had her send the older kids over with towels. I set the 7 & 5yr old boys to squeegy the basement as there were 3 waterfalls pouring down there — but the basement has a drain and we live on a hill. They thought it was a lot of water but they did really well. A, stayed up and helped me throw down and pick up and wring out the towels. But it was heavy work and I was wearing out.

In desperation I called the outlaws and Nick came over with his shopvac to help. He seemed to be duly impressed with the amount of water. He managed to vac up most of the water so that I only needed to wipe the floors up then. Of course, now I had all my towels and rugs sopping wet and nowhere to wash and dry them. So, I hung them outside on the porch. Which worked pretty well except that the bigger ones froze to the floor. On the weekend hubby got the electric paint scraper and melted the floor ice so I could wash and dry them in the now repaired washer.

The next week I went downstairs and found water in the basement again. UhOh. But, it seemed to be from the cellar steps and was just running into the drain. Oh, and then a few days later I found that the cellar door had been left open accidentally since the weekend and it was now the next weekend and hubby was not home. If it hadn't been frozen open – thanks to the thaw during the day, freeze at night cycle we were experiencing — I would have closed it myself but it had to wait til hubby came home.

Ok. That was three overflowing water in the house experiences. We should be done now.

But no. I was doing laundry and discovered that the dryer wasn't heating – laundry was being air-dried. And then the surge protector kept beeping randomly. Then the stove elements didn't work. And some of the outlets didn't work but some of them did. All the lights worked. Later in the afternoon, I realized that the baseboard heaters weren't heating either and it was beginning to get cold in the house. crud. Fortunately we were eating at the Big House that night, so I just moved the crockpot over to the coal stove.

Hubby came home from work and pulled out his handy-dandy electricity measuring device. Hmmm. The 220 was out. And the 110 was feeding thru somehow so we at least had partial electric. So, he called Met Ed to report a partial outage and they said, what do you mean by that? They sent out someone within an hour who also tested it and agreed with hubby and stated that it was MetEd's problem not ours. Whew! By 11 pm 2 big trucks pulled up and started hunting for the breakage/short in the buried cable. By 1 a.m. they hadn't found it, but they put a little dolly with a transformer next to the meter so we could have heat and cooking as well as light.

The next day several trucks pulled up and they used a metal detector? to find the buried cable. Nice to know where it is now since they sprayed orange paint from our house across the road through the truck patch and down to the transformer pole. They didn't find the break. Someone would be out on Monday.

Monday 3 trucks came out. A pickup; A cherry picker; a flatbed with a wee trench-digger. After spending the day standing around and drinking coffee, they took the wee digger down to the meadow and dug a hole at the bottom of the transformer pole. It's half filled with water. But they didn't find the break.

Today they came back with a pickup, a cherry picker, and a large truck with an auger or drill on it. They had a little trouble figuring out where to park the vehicles.

And they wandered around the truck patch and up at the house and finally drove the wee digger straight up the hill to the house.

And started digging and digging and digging.

And they dug up the holly bush.

They said they'd put it back, but as long as it is out, I'm wondering if I might just move it somewhere else? The hole is deep enough for me to stand in and maybe or maybe not see over the top. But I wasn't going to try – I'd probably not be able to climb out again.

You can see the really big pile of dirt too!

Meanwhile, they still haven't found the break but they think it is up near the house somewhere. They'll just come back tomorrow and keep digging down further until they find it.

Meanwhile, I can see some daffodils starting to come up. Of course, there will be a bunch of bulbs rearranged by the time they leave. Since it is so beautifully sunny today, I am getting into spring fever big time.