chaos! and the well run dry

Okay, not complete chaos. It is somewhat controlled, which is good. And isn't there a saying about a well running dry?

I was planning to have a regular old week. You know, taking care of babies, cooking dinner, doing laundry, working on my to-do list here and there.

(I'm just gonna intersperse some pictures of Celia from when I took her to the park on Saturday. They have nothing to do with this post.)

On Monday I was home with the kids, and our jerky ex-neighbor was coming to power wash the deck and deck furniture. "What is your jerky ex-neighbor doing power washing your deck?" you might ask. Well. The dude's a painter. For some reason Chris has always tried to be friendly with him, even though I've always known he was a jerk. He was always unfriendly and just didn't ever seem happy or nice. Anyway, Chris hired him to wash and paint the deck. I wasn't thrilled with having the guy at the house, but whatever. It took him all day to get the power washing done because we have a well and don't have enough water pressure. It was basically a huge hassle for him to get it done, and I felt bad, but he could have been more prepared since no one has town water around here. Ahem. He should know how to deal with power washing on well water, but he obviously didn't because he ran our well dry!

Yep. Ran it right down to the dregs, which then ran all through our house and clogged up the toilets and the faucets and all. Then, apparently the (I don't usually use not-nice words on the blog, but here goes) a-hole ex-neighbor wasn't happy that he didn't make any money off cleaning our deck since it took him all day and he had to go buy some special sprayer thing, and he was all pissed off at us and he and Chris had a weird and uncomfortable conversation through texting and then talking by phone last night. Long story short, he will no longer be painting the deck and Chris now agrees with me that the guy's a complete jerk. Ha!

After having the well guy out yesterday to check things out, I've been flushing the water through the outdoor faucet for the last 24 hours waiting for it to clear up. It's improved but still has particles of dirt in it, so we can't run appliances or run water through the hot water heater for fear of gumming them up with sediment. This means no drinking or cooking with the tap water, no showers or baths (and let me tell you, we are all becoming increasingly stinky), no dish washing, no laundry. (Actually, I broke down and gave Celia a bath and took a quick shower tonight. Hopefully using a little hot water won't hurt anything since it's almost clean now.) Now we have to figure out how to get the deck stained. I can do it, but we would have to get a taller ladder to do the underside.

On top of dealing with this water situation, we had some trees taken down and trimmed today so I had to be home and on top of all that. It was just one more thing added to my mental load that I really didn't need. However, with the trees gone we're now on our way to having a fabulous back yard.

To review: The deck is clean. The water's dirty. I have a lot of stuff to paint. We have a lot of wood to split. We haven't been bathing. I have a lot of dirty dishes and haven't done laundry since Sunday. We are up to our necks in new projects and backed-up household chores. Oh, and one more thing (a good one this time): Henry went for TEN hours last night without making a peep! Then I fed him and he slept for another hour and a half! Hopefully this will continue. We'll see how he does tonight.