Sometime toward the end of June our water heater broke. It was still heating water but somewhere along the lines it decided to also spew buckets full of steam and water onto the roof. Firstly, I was worried about a leak. Secondly, I was worried about the cost - water is not cheap in the desert. Initially, while I tried to figure out what had happened and what would happen next I turned the water off to the house. We spent a day like that, looking at each other and wondering what next. This wasn't the greatest idea because we knew immediately we could neither afford a plumber right now nor a new hot water heater. I spent the day on the internet looking at parts and pieces to water heaters and googling various terms; spraying water on roof; water heater kaput; water heater symptoms; ways water heaters break-down; stupid freaking water heaters!, and at no point did I find a remedy for the water heater. I did however find numerous cheap parts at home depot for all the little various pipes in and taps to and from the water heater itself.
I decided, given that I'd shut the gas off to the water heater, and after draining it and trying everything else I could think of, I would simply shut the water off to the water heater and turn the water back onto the house.
Which we did.
We went another few days without hot water. We realized the huge pot for processing jams was the best bet for any hot water in the house, but given an entire tank of it, boiling hot, made only an inch of water in the tub and given that it was a 35 foot walk from the stove to the bath, and given that only 1 of us in the house could lift it, and wasn't terrified to try, the kids and I somewhere along the lines gave up and began cold bathing.
I decided I could tolerate cold baths better than cold showers. The cold spatting at me from the shower was just irritating and startling. Spending time in the hot outdoors helped motivate these excursions into the frigid baths.
Not long after all this the dishwasher failed for the third and I think final time. This has happened twice previously but never before has it made this noise, the noise is a lesser and more muted version of the usual noise of the dishwasher. I think perhaps the motor has gone.
I've decided to blame the mouse.
The mouse that the black cat brought me - still alive. When I shrieked at the cat for the live mouse Ditzy dropped it, when I shrieked at cat for dropping live mouse, Ditzy chased mouse and fetched it and began to eat it, when I shrieked at cat for eating live mouse in front of me, cat dropped the mouse again. Mouse stating that he could take a hint and didn't need a neon sign ran at mouse speed for the nearest cover, being under the dishwasher.
I sat with a cup of tea and contemplated pulling the entire dishwasher out to get to the mouse. Dishwasher was built into cupboards, go figure. I could do it if I had the motivation, really I could.
Cat sat for about 2 days facing the dishwasher with confused but diligent expression.
I gave up on pulling dishwasher out, instead I went to sleep and told cat to watch for the mouse until he caught it.
Next morning the dishwasher was kaput.
I thought, maybe the mouse will turn up dead in the workings - until the next morning after that when I realized every dish in the house was dirty and I had something on my hands like work.
SO I set to washing dishes, and I reached under the sink to refill the dish-soap when what? Mouse droppings from here to eternity. Upon inspection there was indeed an open corridor between the dishwasher and under sink! Upon further inspection, several pans were soiled in the next cupboard over. Mice soiling pans crossed my animal rights sensitivities. I tried to lock the cat in the cupboard.
My nerves took the piteous mewling for an entire cup of tea, when I finally told cat he was a big wussy and he really ought to have better character than to leave his mouse in my pan cupboard.
Cat wasn't there by the end of that speech, simply a cloud of fur hanging in the air where cat had been. I phoned husband at work.
Husband turned up at the end of the workday sporting a packet and assortment of mousetraps. None of which were the interestingly lethal "humane" gluey traps our last exterminator used. Which is just as well, because if anyone has ever tried to lift a mouse off said glue without pulling said mouse's feet off in the process, or perhaps tried dissolving said glue in water and possibly having drowned said mouse in process - all whilst desperately trying not to be bit by feral mouse or inhale deadly hanta virus mouse is surely carrying, then that anyone would surely understand my relief at not having to use the glue traps in this instance.
I set the most modern looking traps with a bait of almond butter I had just conveniently, sadly, broken a jar of. Almond butter is oily, sometimes it dribbles, sometimes it falls through one's hands. Very sad.
As I sat realizing everyone else was asleep and I was the only one awake staring at the closed cupboard door at 3am, I pondered the array of pans laying before me. I had boiled them all and sanitized them all and I thought to myself "well if nothing else I'll have cleaned out the pan cupboard as I've meant to do for a while now." I thought same of misc, under sink items. They had not been boiled but had been wiped with bleach. That's sort of redundant in some cosmic way, wiping cleaner bottles down with cleaners. However, my neurotic Jewish mother's brain had picked a fight and won with my green, liberal, anti-bleach & pro-animal life instincts.
Sometime between 3 and 4 am I heard a snap - then I heard a SQEUUUSQEEEKSQUEEEESQUEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.
This is why women get married. Truth is out. This and spiders in bathtubs.
"Honey"
"what time is it, am I late for work?"
"Honey the trap snapped"
"..."
"sweety?"
"pardon?"
"the trap, it snapped"
"Am I supposed to know what that means?"
"the mouse, we caught the mouse, its dead...I think"
"oh, good, I can sleep now"
So much for that plan.
I thought long and hard what to do next. Then, I thought, well, surely it is already dead, and besides, I want to take it someplace so it doesn't stink up the bin. I could put it in the freezer? Noooo, it will stink up the freezer with micey-nasty-mouse-germs. I can't leave it till the husband gets home tomorrow - it will stink up the sink. DAMN - the bin trucks came today - DAMN! It would be in the bin for a week, well I'm not doing that. There is that one neighbor that won't leave me the flip alone. Hmmm, what's it to him if I water my lawn from North to South - there is no slope from North to South. With my luck I'd get caught wanging it over his fence - I'd have to be sure to wang it hard enough that it should not land near my side of the fence and be obvious - perhaps I should just sneak around the far side of his house with it and wang it over that side of the fence. What if it was a female? What if it has babies? With any luck they will be so young they'll die in the dishwasher tubes where it must have been living. Wait a minute, what if it has brought others in? Like a scout ant? I mean - how could one mouse have produced all that poo in one day? Do mice poo that much? I could get a mouse from the pet store and keep it in a box and see how much it poos and then I will have a relative idea how many more mice I'm expecting.
I think that's about where I fell asleep.
Somewhere between the mouse, the dishwasher, the swamp cooler dying (yes it gets better - how good could this week have gone? Oh did I mention one of our precious pet guinea pigs died, in my arms, with the kids crying "Mommee, save him!") and the hot water heater going out, Husband and I decided it was probably time to cheer ourselves up with sitting in the back garden with the kids and a bunch of hot dogs and a grill.
It was sitting in the garden, contemplating how much we like sitting outside together as a family, and how fun cooking out can be, and how much of a relief being even feet away from our problemed lives and house that the idea began to hang in the air.
It sort of coalesced above the children first, like a cloud of paint swirling above their heads.
"Hey, Mommee, this is fun" "Hey Mommee, why don't we shut off more often?" "Hey Mommee, its been a while since we did a non-media week, I don't miss the TV at all right now" "Hey Mommee, why don't we cook out here forever" "Hey Momee, look at Daddy watering the plants and looking unstressed" "Hey Mommee, can we just - I don't know - not stop what we're doing right now? Who needs houses, or tv's or hot-water, who needs electricity?"
I decided, given that I'd shut the gas off to the water heater, and after draining it and trying everything else I could think of, I would simply shut the water off to the water heater and turn the water back onto the house.
Which we did.
We went another few days without hot water. We realized the huge pot for processing jams was the best bet for any hot water in the house, but given an entire tank of it, boiling hot, made only an inch of water in the tub and given that it was a 35 foot walk from the stove to the bath, and given that only 1 of us in the house could lift it, and wasn't terrified to try, the kids and I somewhere along the lines gave up and began cold bathing.
I decided I could tolerate cold baths better than cold showers. The cold spatting at me from the shower was just irritating and startling. Spending time in the hot outdoors helped motivate these excursions into the frigid baths.
Not long after all this the dishwasher failed for the third and I think final time. This has happened twice previously but never before has it made this noise, the noise is a lesser and more muted version of the usual noise of the dishwasher. I think perhaps the motor has gone.
I've decided to blame the mouse.
The mouse that the black cat brought me - still alive. When I shrieked at the cat for the live mouse Ditzy dropped it, when I shrieked at cat for dropping live mouse, Ditzy chased mouse and fetched it and began to eat it, when I shrieked at cat for eating live mouse in front of me, cat dropped the mouse again. Mouse stating that he could take a hint and didn't need a neon sign ran at mouse speed for the nearest cover, being under the dishwasher.
I sat with a cup of tea and contemplated pulling the entire dishwasher out to get to the mouse. Dishwasher was built into cupboards, go figure. I could do it if I had the motivation, really I could.
Cat sat for about 2 days facing the dishwasher with confused but diligent expression.
I gave up on pulling dishwasher out, instead I went to sleep and told cat to watch for the mouse until he caught it.
Next morning the dishwasher was kaput.
I thought, maybe the mouse will turn up dead in the workings - until the next morning after that when I realized every dish in the house was dirty and I had something on my hands like work.
SO I set to washing dishes, and I reached under the sink to refill the dish-soap when what? Mouse droppings from here to eternity. Upon inspection there was indeed an open corridor between the dishwasher and under sink! Upon further inspection, several pans were soiled in the next cupboard over. Mice soiling pans crossed my animal rights sensitivities. I tried to lock the cat in the cupboard.
My nerves took the piteous mewling for an entire cup of tea, when I finally told cat he was a big wussy and he really ought to have better character than to leave his mouse in my pan cupboard.
Cat wasn't there by the end of that speech, simply a cloud of fur hanging in the air where cat had been. I phoned husband at work.
Husband turned up at the end of the workday sporting a packet and assortment of mousetraps. None of which were the interestingly lethal "humane" gluey traps our last exterminator used. Which is just as well, because if anyone has ever tried to lift a mouse off said glue without pulling said mouse's feet off in the process, or perhaps tried dissolving said glue in water and possibly having drowned said mouse in process - all whilst desperately trying not to be bit by feral mouse or inhale deadly hanta virus mouse is surely carrying, then that anyone would surely understand my relief at not having to use the glue traps in this instance.
I set the most modern looking traps with a bait of almond butter I had just conveniently, sadly, broken a jar of. Almond butter is oily, sometimes it dribbles, sometimes it falls through one's hands. Very sad.
As I sat realizing everyone else was asleep and I was the only one awake staring at the closed cupboard door at 3am, I pondered the array of pans laying before me. I had boiled them all and sanitized them all and I thought to myself "well if nothing else I'll have cleaned out the pan cupboard as I've meant to do for a while now." I thought same of misc, under sink items. They had not been boiled but had been wiped with bleach. That's sort of redundant in some cosmic way, wiping cleaner bottles down with cleaners. However, my neurotic Jewish mother's brain had picked a fight and won with my green, liberal, anti-bleach & pro-animal life instincts.
Sometime between 3 and 4 am I heard a snap - then I heard a SQEUUUSQEEEKSQUEEEESQUEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.
This is why women get married. Truth is out. This and spiders in bathtubs.
"Honey"
"what time is it, am I late for work?"
"Honey the trap snapped"
"..."
"sweety?"
"pardon?"
"the trap, it snapped"
"Am I supposed to know what that means?"
"the mouse, we caught the mouse, its dead...I think"
"oh, good, I can sleep now"
So much for that plan.
I thought long and hard what to do next. Then, I thought, well, surely it is already dead, and besides, I want to take it someplace so it doesn't stink up the bin. I could put it in the freezer? Noooo, it will stink up the freezer with micey-nasty-mouse-germs. I can't leave it till the husband gets home tomorrow - it will stink up the sink. DAMN - the bin trucks came today - DAMN! It would be in the bin for a week, well I'm not doing that. There is that one neighbor that won't leave me the flip alone. Hmmm, what's it to him if I water my lawn from North to South - there is no slope from North to South. With my luck I'd get caught wanging it over his fence - I'd have to be sure to wang it hard enough that it should not land near my side of the fence and be obvious - perhaps I should just sneak around the far side of his house with it and wang it over that side of the fence. What if it was a female? What if it has babies? With any luck they will be so young they'll die in the dishwasher tubes where it must have been living. Wait a minute, what if it has brought others in? Like a scout ant? I mean - how could one mouse have produced all that poo in one day? Do mice poo that much? I could get a mouse from the pet store and keep it in a box and see how much it poos and then I will have a relative idea how many more mice I'm expecting.
I think that's about where I fell asleep.
Somewhere between the mouse, the dishwasher, the swamp cooler dying (yes it gets better - how good could this week have gone? Oh did I mention one of our precious pet guinea pigs died, in my arms, with the kids crying "Mommee, save him!") and the hot water heater going out, Husband and I decided it was probably time to cheer ourselves up with sitting in the back garden with the kids and a bunch of hot dogs and a grill.
It was sitting in the garden, contemplating how much we like sitting outside together as a family, and how fun cooking out can be, and how much of a relief being even feet away from our problemed lives and house that the idea began to hang in the air.
It sort of coalesced above the children first, like a cloud of paint swirling above their heads.
"Hey, Mommee, this is fun" "Hey Mommee, why don't we shut off more often?" "Hey Mommee, its been a while since we did a non-media week, I don't miss the TV at all right now" "Hey Mommee, why don't we cook out here forever" "Hey Momee, look at Daddy watering the plants and looking unstressed" "Hey Mommee, can we just - I don't know - not stop what we're doing right now? Who needs houses, or tv's or hot-water, who needs electricity?"
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