Pipes and Pets

A few things of note here.

1. One morning we woke up and the hot water wouldn't come on in the kitchen. It was the strangest thing. The cold worked just fine, and they're on the same faucet. I scratched my head and went about the day, assuming that it would fix itself. That night when it still hadn't, I began to suspect that something was wrong. Nate wasn't home so I called Brother Grove who confirmed my suspicion that the hot water pipe in the kitchen was, in fact, frozen. Dah! So I called my Dad and a brother in law or two and before long Brother Grove had sounded the alarm and half our ward knew. It's nice to have people.

Anyway, Nate got home and I tearfully and angrily told him all about it. He did some sleuthing and figured out where the pipe was located. Right in our brand spankin' new kitchen wall behind our brand spankin' new kitchen cabinet. He and I were both pretty glum as he busted a hole through the wall under the sink. We grimly awaited a dramatic explosion as he got up close and personal with our garbage disposal (have I mentioned that we have a garbage disposal? Well we do. We are so high-falootin'.) and spent some quality time under there with a hair dryer. As in like three hours. At which time the water gushed forth through the tap and I cried with relief that it was the tap and not the wall. Our elder's quorum president who does restoration work even came over at 11:00 at night to test the wall for moisture so we could sleep.

For the next few days several gents from the ward stopped by to hem and haw over the situation and dig around under and over the area to try to figure out what went wrong. One was the guy who redid our kitchen for us. It is quite puzzling, since we have about three times the insulation that we used to in the kitchen walls, and it's never frozen until now. Hmm. Anyway, this fellow and Nate spent most of that Saturday freezing their tushies off in the crawl space, rocket-launching even more insulation up into the wall with some sort of nail gun that uses shotgun shells to drive nails into cement. Very impressive. And then the blasted pipes froze again that week. Guess we'll be leaving the water dripping.

2. We got some new chickens. Three of them. All hens and adults. Two are Rhode Island Reds, and one is a white leghorn. A friend of ours was sick of fighting her kids to go out and feed them, so we got to take them in. They're getting along with our hens just fine. And we are officially to the point where we have eggs coming out our ears. If you run out and it's a Sunday afternoon, you know who to call. Addison and Bryn named the browns Rusty and Super. And the white one is Mat. I die laughing every time I think about it.

3. Our cat disappeared. For like two and a half weeks. We dutifully kept her bowls full of food and water and the heat lamp turned on over her cozy little bed in the shed, but I was pretty sure she'd gone somewhere to die. Cats do that, right? It was right before Christmas and the kids were pretty bummed. We had searched and called to no avail, although the Addison and Bryn had followed some cat tracks in the snow and were sure if we squoze through the fence and continued to follow them we'd find her. We all had turns hearing phantom meowing, too. Nate and I had finally decided we'd get a kitten on our way back into town from St. George after Christmas. 

The day of our departure to St. George came and found Nate outside loading the car, and there came the phantom meowing again. Except it was actual meowing. Very quiet and muffled meowing. So Nate walked around the house and popped open the door to the crawl space and whaddaya know, out bounds the cat. Looking and acting none the worse for her two and a half week fast. Remember that Saturday Nate spent launching insulation into the wall? Well it seems the cat found a cozy spot to watch the show and didn't make it out in time. I'm pretty sure she ate and drank insulation, because really, how does anything survive for two and half weeks with no food or water? But we're glad to have her back. We all made quite the fuss over her and she decided to forgive us and allow us to feed her and scoop her poo out of the box again.