Is this what it's like to be Amish?

We’ve lived in this house for over a week and still no hot water.

Apparently the only electrician in town is far too busy to fix the problem (I can only hope this is a temporary condition), so cold water it is. But although, the water is icy cold, the weather has been hot.  And when you add a string of eighty degree days to a sea of boxes to unpack, you get one sweaty writer.

So what’s a girl to do?

I can only go so long without a shower, right? But I’m not into icy cold showers. So, instead, I boil water in a pot on the stove to fill the sink and tub to wash. I’m thinking about switching to candlelight in the next few days…you know, so I can really feel like I’m Amish. I almost wonder if this was part of my husband’s grand plan when he decided we should move to the mountains and live on a farm.

And about that…

What’s up with Mike going to the office every day this week? I didn’t sign up to be stranded here in Green Acres by myself. No, I sure didn’t.

So…with that fact in mind, I piled Mike’s visiting thirteen year old daughter into the beat up old pick up truck I’m stuck with (while my husband drives my Kia Soul eighty miles to the office each day) for a mini-road trip to the paint store two towns over. Because after two weeks of unbridled certainty about the perfect white, I was having second thoughts.

Fast forward several hours (and one trip to Dairy Queen later) and I was cracking open a can of Sherwin Williams Ivory Lace…not the Shoji White.

It was a spur of the moment decision, coupled with a thirty-five dollar discount (what can I say? I charmed the paint guy) and after painting a huge section of wall in the kitchen, I can safely say, the experiment was a success.

It would have been a pretty good day if not for the millions of boxes yet to be unpacked. The painted shut windows. The no hot water. The missing husband. The possible rabid possums in the basement. But let’s not focus on the negative.

I found the perfect white paint…and a store that sells Amish cheese. And let’s face it…cheese makes the world go ‘round!

Until the next time…I’ll be boiling water.

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Posted on April 3, 2012 .