A gentle thaw.

Forget the "master plumber." After 24 hours without water, and the thought of having to wait till Monday for the master to get here, we called up the plumber who installed the new kitchen sink back in November. (Gee... I remember November...... it was 50 degrees warmer way back then.)

It's amazing to me how little water you will need when you have precious little to use.

Anyway... that guy showed up here around noon. After looking at all the cracked and frozen and burst water pipes, and after giving a "Tsk, tsk..." there and a "Dang it...." over there, he said he could give us a temporary fix, but couldn't do the entire job because it was going to "freeze on up" tonight and tomorrow night as well.

Two hours later, we had the temporary fix..... he and my husband disconnected broken pipes and connected an extra-long, extra-thick garden hose to the pump that goes down to the well, which is bringing unfiltered water into the house via the faucets, commodes, tubs, etc. Magic! Running water!

Being that the temperatures are going down below freezing again tonight, my husband had to go out there after dinner and disconnect the hose so it wouldn't freeze up, but we had hot water this afternoon and my hair is clean again and so am I. The dishwasher is filled with dishes, but I can take care of that in the morning after he connects the hose again after the sun comes up.

The plumber is not only going to replace all the pipes, but he's talking about building a wooden insulated "closet" around the pump and the piping so if we get another hard freeze in the next hundred years, the pipes won't "freeze up on y'all and burst to kingdom come, dang it." Of course, we wondered why the previous owners didn't take that precaution, but then we remembered that there's never been a good hard freeze up here before this.

The cold blast and freezing temperatures aren't going to disappear till at least Tuesday, so my husband will be doing the connecting/disconnecting dance till then. When the freeze is over, the plumber is coming back to do the work. May take a day, may take two.... he took measurements of all the piping before he left and he will let us know the cost. His hourly rate is less than half of the master plumber, which my husband will be calling to cancel.

Another day on the ranch. Another day in the hills. My husband was so aggravated yesterday that he started looking at web-sites of the local realty companies. "To heck with living in the hills... maybe we should be in a subdivision after all." After he looked at some of the homes for sale and the fences surrounding them, he told me "We're not going anywhere. We already have the best house on the best piece of land. Just look at that view."

I could have saved him the trouble of looking at all those web-sites. I knew this would be the house as soon as we saw it from the bottom of the hill, before we even set foot inside the front door.