Country living.....

When we moved last February to the "country", we are 30 seconds from a grocery store and restaurants, we discovered new things like a well, septic system, generator, gas stove, gas hot water heater etc. etc. When Mike came home with a generator less than 2 days after we moved in I thought why did you go and buy that? We have never had one before why would we need one now? If the power goes out because of a hurricane or whatever we will just use flashlights, we can build a fire in our backyard or light a candle. I was quickly informed by one of our friends if we lost power and wanted water we needed to have a generator....WHAT??? If you didn't know wells run off of electricity who would have known? I guess I just took for granted all the years we had city water, we pay the bill and someone else had to worry about it. I told Mike that we should probably have a someone teach us, more importantly me, since he travels all the time how to hook  up that generator in case of power outage...I still don't know how to do it. 

On Thursday night I was baking and enjoying the nice cool weather with the windows open. Cody and Mckenna were playing nicely in the family room. It was just what I had been waiting for all day! Cody decided on his own that he would go and take a shower. (Notice I said on his own and no prodding from me) About 3 minutes later he comes out and says "Mom what happens if the water just turns off?" At first I thought he was kidding until I turned on the kitchen faucet...nothing. The first thought that ran through my mind was did I pay the bill. Oh yea, I don't have a bill. Now what! Mike is out of town by the way. So I quickly called my friend and said what do I do? She's like why are you calling me? Call the county. That would be great but remember I have a well!!!!  Her husband got on the phone and walked me through what could possibly be the problem. After turning the power off, going out into the dark, chasing a lizard out of the box that I needed to be in and don't forget the ants that love to live near the well.....it still didn't work. He informed me that we probably needed a pressure pump from Home Depot that closes in 20 minutes!!!  It's 15 minutes from my house. In a panic, mostly because our teenage daughter would be home from a long day of school and band and would be wanting a shower and honestly I really didn't want to "rough it". I made it to Home Depot and back to our house in 23 minutes! I know that time really does stand still when we need it to! 

As I was pulling in our driveway our friend was pulling out. He had fixed the problem. He came back to show me what I needed to do in the event that this happens again. There's contacts that get dirty and need to be cleaned.  I did learn a couple of things that night....how to clean contacts on a well and that we need to have a couple, ok at least one pressure pump in our food storage in the event that we need to replace it in the middle of the night.