We Are Not Just An Address.

I wish I could say we had the cool waters blissfully flowing in our house again. But we don't.

In an interesting plot twist, we did find out that the frozen line isn't actually ours at all. It in fact belongs to The City. We can't touch it because it is their responsibility.

Furthermore, in a sinister plot development, when told that they had a frozen water line that was negatively affecting households on our street, the response was "They will have to let it thaw".

Does that sound right to you? Because it doesn't sound right to me. In my way of thinking, when you know that a service you are charged with doling out and are responsible for caring for is broken, you need to apply some method to fix it. Waiting for The Thaw is simply not acceptable in my mind's eye. And one only has to glance at a long range forecast for our area to see how truly disheartening that pronouncement really was. (It appears Spring is going to be very late to the party this year).

Without intervention, we are looking at weeks or months before the frost line ebbs enough to loosen its grasp on whatever do-dad is frozen under the cement. Weeks and weeks of this constant interruption; in your face, always reminding you. "I'm still here."

It's not just the "inconvenience" factor that has my feathers ruffled here. Running water in the house is, after all, a First World problem. But there is a bit of a safety issue as well. We have a garden hose supplying our water. A garden hose with no federal regulations behind its manufacturing. Lead? Chemicals? Microbes? All of the above? That's our water.

Until "It Thaws."

I don't even want to go into the amount of water gushing down our drain right now. In order to keep our "hose-lifeline" from freezing (which it's already done twice now in the 9 days we've been relying on it), we have to keep a strong stream of water flowing. 25-30 gallons of water per hour. Do the math on that and it's staggering. Thousands of gallons of water absolutely wasted. Down the drain.

Until "It Thaws."

My husband trekked down to City Hall today with one purpose in mind: to put a face to a situation. We are not an address. We are a family. This is very real to us and has consequences for our family. He was able to speak to the manager of city utilities, and although we don't know yet what (if any) impact his conversation will have on the situation, at least City Hall knows we exist. Whether they do anything about our problem, or sweep it under the rug (out of sight out of mind), we are here. And we deserve a whole lot better than being a forgotten casualty of an extreme winter freeze.