Two Weeks

If you've read my previous posts, you have an inkling of my last two weeks. My husband was gone on a business trip. It rained for most of the two weeks, and we had two nights of freakishly heavy rains. One evening we got 2.3 inches and the gutters overflowed for hours. Another night we got 1.5 inches in a very shot amount of time! The local creeks, rivers, fair grounds, park, and some roads were flooded. Our basement even flooded a bit! Luckily it is an unfinished basement and the only permanent damage was the destruction of my children's elaborate cardboard house. I mopped up the water and wrung it out into a bucket bit by bit every moment I wasn't busy with the baby until I had sore, red, and swollen hands. I hauled out the soggy cardboard and wet rugs. The water is now gone due to my effort and the help of a dehumidifier. 

The same day that the basement flooded, I noticed in the evening that our well water was cloudy. Although the clouding cleared up quickly, as a precaution I retrieved a sterile collection bottle from the county health department and collected a sample. I drove it to the nearest water quality lab (45 minutes away.) I was told at the lab that if any bacteria were found in my water that they would call me the next day and that written results would be mailed to me. "No news is good news," the lady informed me. "If you don't here from me, your water tested clear." Well, I didn't get a call or a message, but considering the week that I had, we continued to avoid drinking the water, brushing our teeth with it, or washing our faces with it. I even put off washing laundry and dishes. Five days later the results arrived and the water tested positive for E. coli.

A bacterial contamination in the well should not be a big issue. This can happen when flood waters affect the water table or ground water infiltrates a buried well cap. Treatment is relatively cheap and painless. You shock treat the well and the plumbing with household beach and then flush it out.  This is done by swabbing the well cap with bleach, adding a bleach solution to the well, running the bleach water to every tap, letting it sit for 24 hours, and then running water through an outdoor faucet until the bleach smell is gone. But, of course, our well cap is buried. So we need to have a pitless unit installed on the well before we can do this. So not only is the back yard recovering from our recent sewer line replacement, our front yard will now be torn up in order to install piping to elevate our well head above ground.

When we contacted the previous owners of this home (who had lived here for nearly 20 years) for information before making our offer to purchase it, they said that they had never had a problem with the well. And the folks we bought the place from had replaced the 40 year old well pump right before we moved in. In fact, my husband has JUST leveled the ground above the well and reseeded it with grass this spring. I'm assuming this is a freakish occurrence that may never happen again. But we still need to alter the well in order to rid the system of the current bacterial invasion. And it's an expensive modification that we didn't count on.

So we covered the kids and the water. Now I'm up to events. I had to manage choir rehearsals at bad times, a choir concert at the lunch hour (with a grumpy baby, wiggly pre-schooler, and aloof/bored teenager) a reception with a buffet at nap time, a First Communion Mass, and a First Communion party for 3 of Gianna's friends that included a buffet and basketball (also at nap time) by myself with 5 kids. Managing those two events with buffet lines with a writhing 16 lb. 10 week old on my shoulder, and two other kids incapable of serving themselves or carrying plates or cups without spilling was quite a task, despite the help I was offered at the First Communion reception. 

Then there was a snafu concerning my husband's birthday present. (His birthday arrived while he was in Taiwan.) I had placed an order for pick-up, but was never notified that the in-stock item was waiting for me at the customer service desk, as I was supposed to. The e-mail I sent to customer service  remained unanswered. And the call I made to the local store resulted in folks having no idea what I was talking about, and transferring me to a line that rang and rang with no answer. Eventually I just went to the store where there was a record of my purchase, but nothing was at the customer service desk and we had to wait for at least a half hour while the order was sorted out and the item brought to the desk. In the end, my oldest son and I wrestled the large box into the van while the baby caterwauled.

Speaking of crying, I had a grumpy baby who seemed to be teething and who continued to fight BMs. My four year old peed his pants on and off and refused to poop (and was therefore acting out due to his discomfort.) And I had two kids with fevers and sore throats in there too.

Another of my worries this last week was a call I received last Friday from my sister, informing me that my father was sitting in an ambulance undergoing tests because he had an episode that seemed to be a heart attack or a stroke wherein he was dizzy, couldn't talk, and had tightness in his chest while he clenched it with his left arm. This caused all sorts of anxiety ridden rabbit trails of thought. Being states away, I could do nothing but tell my children to pray and inform other family members, asking for their prayers as well. In the end, he was taken to the hospital and all tests he underwent showed no detectable heart damage. (Heart-related ailments is all that he was tested for, much to his frustration.) He feels that the episode was blood sugar related, as his blood sugar was high, or perhaps potassium or magnesium related. I wonder if he didn't suffer a mild stroke. He now has to find a compassionate and skillful doctor to help him ascertain what he experienced and to help him decide how to proceed. I wish that there was some way that I could help him with this. I also wished it was easier to see him.

And finally, I met one of the non-local "clan" who owns the certified forrest behind our property.  He turned up at my door on Saturday. He had come with some friends to camp on the land for the weekend. They stopped by seeking a lost dog which had bolted when they lit a firework the night before. I helped them to get in touch with the local humane society and took names and phone numbers, but Millie never turned up.

While he was here I learned that the story told to us by some local huntsmen- that they were caretakers of the land in exchange for hunting rights- was bogus. We had suspected this, as I indicated in a previous post, but now it has been confirmed. I was informed that the family who owns the land has even sent them certified mail asking that they refrain from trespassing, and that other than the utilities, only one other person has permission to be on the land. So we'll likely have to deal with that sometime in the future.  

Now my husband is safely home. He's trying to adjust from having been in 3 different time zones in the last two weeks- the last one a 12 hour difference, involving something like 26 hours of travel time to return home. We celebrated his birthday yesterday. And although we are still without potable water and need to get the well alterations completed, we are striving to get into a new routine with the baby and my husband's new job. After all, the baby is only 12 weeks old tomorrow, and my husband has only been on the job for 6 weeks- and has been away for travel for three of those!