Oh, the lessons in life...

The other day I woke to find the temp in my house at 50 degrees. We had a major cold front move in that dropped the temps to an average of 3 degrees and wind chills in the -degrees. I quickly cleaned out my wood burning stove in efforts to get things warmed up. I stumbled into the kitchen to make some coffee and discovered that I had no water in the kitchen, the pipes had frozen. Oh the joys of living in a 101 year old farm house. :-) I immediately stuck the blow dryer down the hole under the sink to begin thawing the pipes and was lucky to have water within 20 minutes and no damage. Lesson: When temps are this low, always leave the water trickling so it won't freeze!

The next task on my list was the morning ritual of going out and feeding the horses. I noticed when I got to the barn that their water was getting low. There isn't a water pump in the barn, so I have to string a garden hose from the pump out by the garage to the barn. Not a big deal and I have been really good at disconnecting the hose when I'm finished and walking the water out of the hose so it won't freeze. However, this particular morning water must have accumulated in the hose as it was frozen solid and no water was coming through. I thought perhaps if I worked my way up the hose bending it to break the ice up, I might be able to get some progress. Nope...no joy here. The horses still had enough water to last them until the next day so I decided to bring the hose inside the house to thaw.

I spent nearly 1/2 hour wrestling with the frozen hose trying to coil it up to bring it inside. I finally got it to where it was manageable to carry and was gingerly carrying it up to the house when suddenly I found myself parallel to the ground. Yet another life lesson: Crocks (or as my sister Kara refers to the knock-offs as "Crooks") will keep your feet very warm, but they are made out of rubber and have no tread. Lesson: Not recommend to wear during snowy, slick conditions. I lay there for a moment flatly stating "This is going to leave a mark", then picked myself up and went inside struggling with the discombobulated hose.

The next morning, I was able to easily coil the hose up and prided myself in the fact that I had positioned both ends of the hose to drain into the sink so I wouldn't have a water mess to clean up. I did notice that I had cracked the hose in one place where I had bent it to break the ice, so I patched it up with good ol' duct tape and proceeded out to water the horses.

I got everything hooked up and in position. I turned on the water only to observe what was once a hose was now a "soaker hose"! Lesson: Never bend or kink a frozen hose in attempts to break the ice. Every place I had bent the hose had a left a hole in the hose! Who knew???

So today I go into town to buy another hose....given what I have had to learn the hard way, I think this one will last a while!

P.S. For those of you wondering, yes...I think my mother may have dropped me on my head when I was born. :-)