January 9, 2010

Here's the past few days.

Thursday, January 6, it got up to 50 today and was sunny. It was 27 when we got up and after breakfast we went off on a walk around the place. The ground was crunchy and covered with frost. A nice chilly winter's morn with a slanting low light. In a tree at the edge of the woods we saw what appeared to be two rufous sided towhees, but I'm not sure that they should be around here at this time. I'd have loved to have had Dean with us.

We got a lot organized today and I'm pretty tired from toting boxes full of books. We were going to check our mail, but were both too busy and then too tired to make the one mile down and back to our mailbox. Fed Ex and UPS will drive up the road, but the Post Office justs goes along the main road half a mile away. The pace here is such that it doesn't seem to matter whether we check our mail. That different pace and feeling for what's important is beginning to rub off on me. I have to look at my computer to check what day of the week and day of the month it is. I'm also getting used to the much slower internet connection we get with our satellite hook-up. My old cable connection was more of instant gratification, now I just have to wait.

A curious thing after dinner: Catherine is washing the dishes and says "there's not much water coming out." A check in the pump house tells me the pump ain't pumping. Ain't no EBMUD out here, gotta get someone out here tomorrow morning. Country livin'. If you're wondering why she's doing the dishes it's because I did the cooking.

Right now it's Friday afternoon. It's a cozy sort of day, around 42 and cloudy, the kind of day to step back from all the activity of putting a house together (still some ways to go). I'm trying to organize files from boxes and Catherine is upstairs doing the same. The plumber can't make it out this afternoon. He will get here tomorrow morning.

The pump may be taken care of in a day or two. Because of the likelihood of power outages we had quite a bit of water frozen in gallon milk containers in our big freezer, so we're ok for basics. We hauled up a bunch of water in 5 gallon buckets from our little pond and that does fine for flushing the toilets and the hens and the cat. Part of our practice is "don't take anything for granted." Didn't think that would be something to take so concretely!

Catherine's son Miles came be over later with Jasper, so we had a nice afternoon and family dinner. Besides Miles brought us another 7 gallons of water.

I'm now writing this Sunday morning, a quiet day for us after so much working over the past few days. We had a few snow flurries a couple of hours ago, but as the temperature is heading up towards 40 so anything that falls will just melt: arising, abiding, ceasing.

The plumber was out yesterday and found a burned out capacitor. He went out got another and installed it, but, to our dismay, that wasn't the problem. It was more likely an effect of the problem. So we called the well and pump guy. He found all manner of problems: non-functioning pressure tank and a bad pump. Monday he will be here and we will be back with indoor running water either Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. This morning he came with his truck to use his winch to get the old pump out. It really makes this all the more an adventure! The only hitch may be his daughter giving birth to his first grandchild, but it didn't happen last night or this morning, so all's going well (ha! ha!).

We're getting our sitting space set up and easing off of no schedule mode, using our alarm and getting back to facing the wall. Also Richard Haefele will be dropping by on Tuesday and we're both looking forward to that.

I think that will be it for today. Pictures will come next week.