The sun is shining, always a nice thing, but the temperature is going to start plunging tonight and it’ll be super duper cold for at least the week.
Last night Kevin turned on the faucets in the bathrooms and opened the doors underneath so the pipes wouldn’t freeze.
After he went to bed I thought that maybe I should turn on the kitchen sink faucet, but maybe not? Then I told Bev about it and suggested that maybe she, too, needed to let her faucets drip. I went into the bedroom, where Kevin had been asleep for about an hour and gently said, “Honey? Honey?”
He opened his eyes with a panicked look on his face but when I asked if I needed to turn on the kitchen sink faucet I could see his brain roaring into gear. He assured me that I didn’t need to because the sink’s pipes were not against an outside wall. I then asked if Bev needed to turn on her bathroom sink faucets and he said, nope.
I let him go back to sleep, which he did before even setting his head back down on the pillow and Bev and I continued to discuss the freezing pipes issue.
“What about my washing machine?” she asked. “It’s against the outside wall in the basement.”
Hmm, I didn’t know about that and I finally said, “I’ll wake him up again and ask!” I set the phone down and could faintly hear her protest that I didn’t need to wake up the poor guy again, but I did it anyway. He said that because her washer is in the basement there was no need.
Whew. I then regaled Bev with the story of how, one morning many years ago, Kevin turned on the kitchen lights and water poured out of the canister lights in the ceiling. I couldn’t recall any details about the story except that it was quite dramatic.
This morning I asked Kevin if he remembered me asking him questions last night and for a minute he didn’t recall, but then said he did have a vague memory of me asking him. He said that the pipes in the kitchen did freeze long ago because the house builder had put in loose, crappy insulation between the attached garage and the house and the insulation had blown away from the wall.
That morning when the water was pouring down he ran to the crawl space in the basement and shut off the water in the house, and later he climbed up in the crawl space above the garage and added a wall and some good insulation. He’s quite a handyman.
Today I’m going to have him show me where this water shut-off valve is, because what if it happens again and he’s not home?
That’s my goal for the day.
Meanwhile…here’s a photo of a lone heron standing in the shallow water, taken from mom’s back deck on January 15th.
Riley, oblivious to the three deer in back of him. I like it that two out of three deer are looking in.
On this January day there were many geese in the circle as I pulled into the driveway.
Lovey frequently lies on this top step. She’s there now, as a matter of fact.
And there’s recent huge progress with Lovey. Last night before bed I bent down to her level as she slept in her bed on the bedroom floor. I reached out and petted her three times and she didn’t flinch or run away! That was awesome. This morning I petted her again as she was lying on the step above and again she didn’t run away. She definitely didn’t look thrilled about it, but progress is surely being made. Soon she’ll be letting me pet her all the time! Maybe.
Here’s a pretty good view of the moon rising on January 28th. If I hadn’t been so lazy that night I could have tried to get a shot outside in front of the trees, but realistically it probably wouldn’t have turned out any better.
ok then, I hope you’re doing well on this brisk February morning.
mrs. h.