Taking it for Granted

You take water for granted until you don't have it - or at least I did! Due to the drought that has plagued this part of the country (Texas), the land has dried so much that it is contracting. Our soil here is mostly clay so anyone familiar with that knows that it causes the houses to shift which can be very damaging. Our house has moved so much this year that there is a gap that spans a couple of inches between our door jam and the top of the door! We were just talking about putting a soaker hose around the house to run at night to prevent the house from shifting too much and breaking any pipes. We are under a water restriction and any watering has to be done at night to conserve.

My husband wakes up this morning and goes to take his shower. He comes back into the bedroom and wakes me up asking if I had any water pressure when I showered last night. I tell him that it was normal. He said that he had absolutely no pressure and was worried that our nightmare had become a reality. When it was light enough to see outside, he went to check our meter to see if it was running indicating that we had a leak somewhere - thankfully it was not. One of our neighbors (who happens to be a fireman) saw him checking the meter and asked if we were having problems with our water pressure. Apparently they were too. He thought there might have been a fire in the neighborhood last night and they had to use the water so the levels were low.

I get up a couple hours later and have absolutely no water at all! I guess I had always taken it for granted that there would be running water whenever I needed it. Luckily we had bottled water which I used to wash my hands and brush my teeth with. I leave the house to go to work and the city has the road that I usually take to work blocked off. It turns out one of the water mains had broke because of the ground shifting. Thankfully they had it repaired by the time we got home from work. We desperately need rain.