Bad things come in threes and spring has FINALLY arrived!

Well that was one hell of a winter! I wrote a post awhile back called When it Rains it Pours and I really can’t begin to describe it better then that. This winter attacked me and I attacked it in every way possible. Things I wanted to save up for forced me to deal with them RIGHT NOW. I haven’t mentioned any of this yet simply because I was so fed up I didn’t want to talk about it!

Being divorced in early December meant that the heat in my home was entirely dependent on me and I have only wood heat as an option. (That will not be true of next winter!)

Because I work a full time day job that meant, when it was really cold, I was having to drive home on my lunch break to fill the wood stove. Not to mention it meant I was hauling wood (by hand) several hundred feet to my house every weekend (or more often) so I would have enough to get me through each week.

No, my back is still not yet talking to me and yes, I am walking with a limp.

Regardless of how much wood I burned though this was a VERY cold winter and I had to turn the water off to my main floor bathroom after having discovered ice in the toilet one morning… but that was only the “tip of the iceberg” of what this winter had in store for me…

It all began with my mom leaving on a two week vacation. (This lady is literally my rock.) A few days after she left my water exploded in my barn.

So this is how I’ve been filling my horse’s water tank. Out in my VERY OLD barn is a VERY OLD dried up sand point well shaft that is about 18 feet deep and about 3×3 feet around. (We call it the Pit of Doom.)

Sticking out of this well is a spigot that is also VERY old, that has been leaking about 8 feet down inside my Pit of Doom for years. It goes all the way down the pit then underground 300 feet to my basement where it hooks up to my water.

Because of the leak the faucet freezes up every winter.

SOOOO to unfreeze said pipe I had to haul 5 gallon buckets full of boiling hot water from the house to the barn and dump them down the pipe to unfreeze it.

This has been going on since I moved in and I had every intention to move it/fix it this coming summer.

Literally I was willing this damned pipe, “Just make it through one last winter!!!!”

So after over an hour of my hauling hot water to the barn (in sub zero temperatures) said little leak EXPLODED down into my empty Pit of Doom. After all of that I couldn’t even fill my horse’s water tank!

I sprinted to the house and turned the water off (thank goodness I put a turn off valve in my basement!) and then I proceeded to lay down on my kitchen floor for a good long while because at that point I just COULDN’T EVEN.

Then I did something the next morning that went against every DIY bone in my body.

I called it in.

That’s right I HIRED someone to fix it.

It was great. For the first time a man actually fixed something for me!

I HAD TO PAY HIM… BUT STILL!!! (he was also kinda cute!)

Moving on to the second week my mom was gone. Just like with the leak out in the barn I had been telling my ancient, little car, “Just make it through one last winter!!!!” Aaaaand she didn’t….

She died in town at my best friend Rachie’s house and there they were (her poor husband Shane who was SO sick) out in literally -18 degrees, loading my car onto a trailer for me.

THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR HOW AMAZING THOSE TWO ARE.

So, even though I did pay for my little old lady to get fixed, it felt like the Universe gave me a very clear warning. It was time for me to get another car.

So I got a new car as soon as my mom got back from her vacation. (I told her she could never leave again.) And I do really love my new car and my old car is still with me (I’m retiring her to a quiet life as my little farm cart.)

I pulled my “new” car into my garage for only the SECOND time and then, not six hours later, I went upstairs to take a shower and all of my drains in my master bedroom just stopped.

MY SEPTIC WAS FROZEN.

At that point I just laughed.

Fortunately my grandparents had put in another septic tank at some point so I actually have two for my house. So, my second floor (my master) and my basement were draining into the one that froze but my main floor was on a separate line.

So, I had to turn my main floor bathroom back on so I didn’t have to go outside to do my business… But at least I did, in fact, never have to go outside to do my business!

My mom came by while I was brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink and I told her, “This is fine.”

Said main floor bathroom does have a working toilet but, unfortunately, since the day I moved in, the shower has always leaked SO, because I really didn’t want to have to bathe in my kitchen sink (again) I cut the hole in the wall and I fixed that damn leak.

This all happened in the couple of weeks leading up to my birthday in February and, fortunately, we had nothing but higher temperatures from then on out so my only working bathroom never froze again.

I put a thermometer on the toilet out there and it never got below 41 degrees but I still stressed about it considerably (because indoor plumbing is kinda awesome and though I am so appreciative that I have a nice big kitchen sink its still not quite designed for a full grown adult to bathe in…)

The following is the “cake” my best friend made for me for my birthday (not four days after my septic froze) and I told her, “Honestly I don’t know if that’s going to be enough beer!”

In the middle of ALL of that this little blog started doing INCREDIBLE. So, I don’t know what happened, but I do feel like I have whiplash and jet lag lol.

I told my aunt about all of it and she said about my septic freezing, “Oh good then you’re done! Bad things come in threes!”

Wow what a winter! And it was SO cold, we had some hardcore cold snaps that lasted at least two weeks a piece (wind chills down into the -40s and temperatures dipping down to the -20s EVERY night) and then, when March was almost here, we got dumped on and after all of that cold we saw over a foot of snow come at us.

When it finally “warmed up” we broke our snow fall records lol.

It really felt like the winter THAT WOULD NOT END.

But, of course, it did. I have a “new” car that I love, I fixed that leaking shower that’s been bugging me forever and now my horse’s water is perfect, fixed and working great.

My back is NOT great, but it is getting better and though I am still hauling wood (this is still Minnesota and we still have two days left in March and it literally just SNOWED FIVE INCHES!), I am not having to bring in nearly as much as I was.

And I just kinda feel like I do about most things, “Its good to get the bad stuff over with as soon as possible!”

And, NO, I did NOT have that good of an attitude when all this was going down lol. To be honest, I text my best friend that I was going to have to start swearing in another language because English swear words were no longer cutting it!

For the record: I had several offers for a place to stay (or at least to shower) during all of this (there’s even a shower at my day job) but I’m damned stubborn and I also knew that even winter in northern Minnesota could not last forever!

Cheers to spring!