Shortly after Mike died someone asked me if I was the type of widow who would not have another man in my life. I told her no and it wouldn’t be what Mike wanted for me. Almost six years later I don’t have a romantic interest.
It’s not that I won’t. It’s that I have moved and haven’t met many people. I have also become accustomed to living alone. I love being able not to have to worry about anyone else’s schedule. As a wife and mother, and then caregiver, I worked my schedule around my family’s events. Now there’s only my schedule and I can eat whatever I want – I don’t have to consider anyone else.
It does have its drawbacks. This week it has been dangerously frigid. I have horses to tend to. The water in the barn has frozen so I’ve been carrying water from the house to put on their feed. The waterer’s lids have frozen down, so I got them a heated tub for water and I’m carrying water down for that. I call John and we talk on the phone when I need to be outside, so he knows if something happens and can take appropriate action.
Mike putting hay in for me on a frigid day in Oakley.
The Pipes are Freezing
Friday night I discovered that one of the shower heads in my shower wasn’t working. The master bath is on the north side of the house. I assume it’s frozen. I took a shower on Saturday morning and left the hot water running through both shower heads. It started again and I turned the water off.
When I checked it again later it had frozen again so I decided to run the hot water again, but I didn’t turn the fan on. It got so steamy in the bathroom that it tripped the GFCI and I didn’t have any lights in the bathroom. When the house was inspected, I was told that the GFCI for that bathroom was on the outside of the house. I went out in the cold and dark and checked the outlets on the front porch. I pulled up the inspection report but didn’t find anything saying where it was. Then I called John as I walked around the house to see if it was somewhere else. Still, I didn’t find it. There was so much moisture in the bathroom that I wasn’t sure that I wanted the lights on in there anyway. So, I left the other shower head dripping and called it a night.
Sunday, I went down and checked the breakers. There was one marked upstairs bathrooms that I reset but still no lights in the master bathroom. I texted my realtor to see if she remembered where the GFCI was. No, and she said she would look at the inspection report. She didn’t find anything either.
Help is On the Way
Roderick called to see how I was doing in the cold. I said something about the GFCI so he decided to pick up John and they came up to see if we could get lights in the master bath. Roderick went around the house with a little heater that I keep at my desk to see if the outlets were working. They all were but still no lights in the bathroom. So, he went downstairs to check the breakers. The one below the one that I had reset said master bath. He reset it and there was light. I believe the GFCI is on those breakers. After the boys left, I took a shower, turned on both fans in the bathroom, and let the showers run hot water. The second shower head started running and I’ve let it drip since.
On Friday night I had a moment where I thought I was ill-prepared to live alone and take care of everything myself. I had gone from my parents’ house to Mike’s with a few years of college in between. In the Monday morning writer’s group, after reading the first of this post, one of the other Gestaltists asked where those thoughts were coming from. So, we explored that for a few minutes, and it helped.
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Onward!
