by Annetta Elgie in Arkansas
This morning I went to laundromat to wash my kitchen rugs. Good! Came home and was too lazy to make two trips, so I carried in the rugs, purse, pop, and liquid soap all at once. Not good! I got in front door ... accidentally dropped soap ... the cap broke to pieces when it fell, and liquid laundry detergent poured everywhere in the entry! UGH! I saved the soap by using hand towels and bath towels to sop it up, and now I am washing all the towels I could find to "save" the used soap. Go figure. But I did get a very clean floor, so not all was lost!
This morning I went to laundromat to wash my kitchen rugs. Good! Came home and was too lazy to make two trips, so I carried in the rugs, purse, pop, and liquid soap all at once. Not good! I got in front door ... accidentally dropped soap ... the cap broke to pieces when it fell, and liquid laundry detergent poured everywhere in the entry! UGH! I saved the soap by using hand towels and bath towels to sop it up, and now I am washing all the towels I could find to "save" the used soap. Go figure. But I did get a very clean floor, so not all was lost!
If I would just slow down and do the "right" thing, I wouldn't have had to make a bigger mess for myself. What was really funny (glad no one was here to see it) was that the liquid soap was in a big puddle on the tile floor, so I thought, "How am I going to save this? I don't want to waste this precious soap!" So I went and got a dust pan and a little scraper to scrape it all up and put back in the bottle. Well, while doing this, the puddle expanded! I dribbled liquid soap all over the outside of the container and in more places on the floor, so I had to go to "Plan B," which was to get a washcloth and bowl, wipe up the soap and wring out the cloth.
That didn't work too well, since the washcloth got too gooey, so then "Plan C" was to use dampened dish towels and hand towels to wipe it up. I had to wipe it up about four times to remove all the soap, and then I had to keep washing with new towels to clean up the leftover soap! It was a HUGE mess, but I've learned my lesson: "Haste makes waste!"
POOR ME STORY # 2 (LESS THAN PERFECT WEEKS)
by Lois - February, 2010
I told Annetta that if she would share her "Poor Me Story" with you all, I'd share our ordeal from the past two weeks of losing our hot water and heat - not once, but twice. Two days after we got home from my husband's semi-retirement trip, we went to bed in a cold house, although the problem was seemingly fixed the next day for a very hefty fee. We also smelled a burnt odor around the hot water heater after the job was done - not good! That didn't seem right to my husband and he asked the repairman about that (no reply), but since the odor went away, we relaxed. Less than a week later though, the hot water heater quit for the second time! It has saved us a lot on gas bills, since it is a high efficiency water heater that works in connection with our furnace - the reason for no heat.
While John went about solving the mechanical problem, I brought our water distiller upstairs, to help heat our kitchen as it distilled water. I turned on our small space heater, heated water in two large pots and the teapot on the stove, turned on the oven with the oven door ajar, pulled the blinds, hung quilts in the doorways to the kitchen and family room to keep the heat contained, and we kept dressed warmly. I washed and rinsed all the dishes from the dishwasher full of dirty dishes and let them air dry. We decided not to use our fireplace, because of allergies, and besides that, John would have had to climb up on the roof to uncover the flue. With wind gusts as high as 60 mph at the time, we ruled that out!
So on the first day of the second breakdown, my good husband made calls for hours, and ran all over town and several other towns nearby in search of help to order another water heater like ours, that served us well for about twenty years. The company was sold, so it took a while to find out all the details. He learned that a new hot water heater could be here on Monday, but it would probably be Tuesday until it could be installed. In the meantime, we were having temperatures in the twenties and as high as 30 degrees, but we settled in with the thought of just making the best of it to keep warm - sort of like camping out!
I kept telling myself, "This is kind of like an adventure, and we do still have electricity - just no hot water or heat." So that evening I washed my hair in the kitchen sink, using some of the water simmering on the stove. In the morning it was only 60 degrees everywhere in the house - quite chilly! We had our space heater on in the bedroom the night before, but I couldn't sleep with the bright orange glow in the room, so I turned it off. Besides it was plenty warm in bed with all those blankets. In the morning a good friend brought her two space heaters over for us to use, which really helped!
Well, this is getting too long and drawn out, so I'll tell you the bottom line! After two days of having a rather chilly house, my husband made another phone call, and the owner of this company himself came out to fix the water heater! Bless him! He said the man last week put in a faulty replacement part and crossed the wires - the reason for the burnt odor. We are grateful that it's nice and warm in our home once again! Little things in life like hot water and heat make such a big difference, and I'm a more thankful person this week - not taking as much for granted!
That didn't work too well, since the washcloth got too gooey, so then "Plan C" was to use dampened dish towels and hand towels to wipe it up. I had to wipe it up about four times to remove all the soap, and then I had to keep washing with new towels to clean up the leftover soap! It was a HUGE mess, but I've learned my lesson: "Haste makes waste!"
POOR ME STORY # 2 (LESS THAN PERFECT WEEKS)
by Lois - February, 2010
I told Annetta that if she would share her "Poor Me Story" with you all, I'd share our ordeal from the past two weeks of losing our hot water and heat - not once, but twice. Two days after we got home from my husband's semi-retirement trip, we went to bed in a cold house, although the problem was seemingly fixed the next day for a very hefty fee. We also smelled a burnt odor around the hot water heater after the job was done - not good! That didn't seem right to my husband and he asked the repairman about that (no reply), but since the odor went away, we relaxed. Less than a week later though, the hot water heater quit for the second time! It has saved us a lot on gas bills, since it is a high efficiency water heater that works in connection with our furnace - the reason for no heat.
While John went about solving the mechanical problem, I brought our water distiller upstairs, to help heat our kitchen as it distilled water. I turned on our small space heater, heated water in two large pots and the teapot on the stove, turned on the oven with the oven door ajar, pulled the blinds, hung quilts in the doorways to the kitchen and family room to keep the heat contained, and we kept dressed warmly. I washed and rinsed all the dishes from the dishwasher full of dirty dishes and let them air dry. We decided not to use our fireplace, because of allergies, and besides that, John would have had to climb up on the roof to uncover the flue. With wind gusts as high as 60 mph at the time, we ruled that out!
So on the first day of the second breakdown, my good husband made calls for hours, and ran all over town and several other towns nearby in search of help to order another water heater like ours, that served us well for about twenty years. The company was sold, so it took a while to find out all the details. He learned that a new hot water heater could be here on Monday, but it would probably be Tuesday until it could be installed. In the meantime, we were having temperatures in the twenties and as high as 30 degrees, but we settled in with the thought of just making the best of it to keep warm - sort of like camping out!
I kept telling myself, "This is kind of like an adventure, and we do still have electricity - just no hot water or heat." So that evening I washed my hair in the kitchen sink, using some of the water simmering on the stove. In the morning it was only 60 degrees everywhere in the house - quite chilly! We had our space heater on in the bedroom the night before, but I couldn't sleep with the bright orange glow in the room, so I turned it off. Besides it was plenty warm in bed with all those blankets. In the morning a good friend brought her two space heaters over for us to use, which really helped!
Well, this is getting too long and drawn out, so I'll tell you the bottom line! After two days of having a rather chilly house, my husband made another phone call, and the owner of this company himself came out to fix the water heater! Bless him! He said the man last week put in a faulty replacement part and crossed the wires - the reason for the burnt odor. We are grateful that it's nice and warm in our home once again! Little things in life like hot water and heat make such a big difference, and I'm a more thankful person this week - not taking as much for granted!
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