On Sunday afternoon John and I were lounging in our living room post-church wondering why we heard water running through our pipes. Nothing was on in the house. Nothing was on outside the house. Where was that sound of water coming from?

After extensively checking and rechecking everything we could think might be the culprit we finally got our home teacher over. He’s sprinkler foreman at BYU, so he knows his pipes. He pulled off the top of the water main outside the house and pointed down. Sure enough, there was water gushing out of a broken pipe. He got a shovel and dug out a nice big hole to get a better look, and he said that he’d have to get a mini track hoe to dig an even bigger hole to actually fix it. He thought he wouldn’t be able to get to it until Wednesday.

We calculated that our water bill was at least $200 from the water lost during the week before we found the leak, so we turned off our water on Sunday night. At first having no water made me grumpy. But it is surprising how quickly you can adapt. I feel almost pioneer-ish. I even showered in the RB today on campus! I actually really like showering there, even with the whole lack of privacy thing because of the open showers. It’s like showering outside. Or in a palace. Without doors.

Except that today when I went I discovered that they’ve added shower curtains! They’re only on a few, seemingly randomly selected showers. But still, that’s progress. I haven’t seen shower curtains there in all the seven years I’ve been around BYU.

So I had a lovely palatial outdoor experience with a shower curtain in the RB. Came home, and our hometeacher was able to fix our water tonight after all!

John just came in and turned on the faucet. Water! Blessed, beautiful, wonderful, wet wet water, all ours to drink and bathe in and cook with and it’s all coming out of the faucet like it’s supposed to!

Conclusion: I can be a pioneer woman when required, and mostly ungrumpily, too. But life is so much better with running water!