Thursday, July 4, 2013

Adventures In Housekeeping

In a way, I feel like the last three weeks have been a crash course in living on my own - figuring out how much food I should buy each week for one person, adjusting to cooking for one person, doing laundry twice as often as I used to (cuz in a small space, laundry piles up way faster!), and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And occasionally dealing with crises.

In the first couple days of moving in, it was the sewer system crisis that filled my trailer with fumes from the sewer tank. After a few days of trying everything to fix it (all to no avail!), we got the permanent hookup installed and luckily everything resolved itself immediately. Though there were a few times after that when I walked in and it smelled slightly "off," it was never that bad and, I'm thankful to say, I think I've finally gotten the hang of how much water to keep in the tanks, how often to empty them, etc.

Then last week, I ran out of propane, which runs my hot water heater, my heating system (which obviously I wasn't using at the time), my oven/stove, and can run my refrigerator (it also has an option to run on electricity). I figured no big deal, as I'd just showered and washed dishes, so I made dinner in the microwave, flipped the fridge over to run on electric, and decided I'd get gas the next day on my way home from work.

That was when I discovered  that the option must be broken, because I came home the next afternoon to discover my fridge and freezer completely defrosted. :( I quickly refilled my propane and got it going again, but not before I'd lost all the perishables. The sad thing was, I'd just stocked my freezer with a bunch of meat because the grocery store was having a sale!

(On a happier note: I went back to do my regular grocery shopping, and was delighted to discover that the sale was still going on, even though it had been more than a week later. But when I got to the front, everything was ringing up regular price! I pointed this out to the cashier, who got the manager, who went to investigate... long story short, the sale HAD ended, but they forgot to take down the signage, so they were obligated to give me the stuff at the lower prices. Yay!!! I gotta say, I felt like God was giving me a special gift.)

Then Tuesday afternoon, I got home early and decided to take a nap before going out with some friends for dinner and a movie (btw, we saw Despicable Me 2 and I LOVED IT!!!). Took a nap, woke up, put my feet on the floor, and I was standing in a puddle.

I immediately grabbed some towels, threw them down, followed the trail of water back to the bathroom and saw my tub was overflowing with water, threw a towel at the bottom of the tub, grabbed my phone, called me house, and shouted "my-place-is-flooding-send-dad-over-now" to whomever answered the phone, ran around back and opened the line to my grey water tank, listened for a second to make sure it was draining (it was), ran back around inside, checked the tub - which was draining, to my relief, and began mopping up the inside.

My dad arrived around this time, and basically confirmed I'd done the right thing; we think that somehow leaving the bathtub set on "shower" mode builds up pressure that eventually drips into the pool, and over time, fills the tank and the tub. At least I think that's what he said. :) I just know the problem hasn't repeated itself lol!

So all in all, it's been an adventure-filled past few weeks, but good. 

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