These past three days have been especially trying beginning with our losing hot water on Tuesday and the continuance of no heat and low temperatures. Our house was frightfully cold (it reminded me of the Varykino ice palace as seen in Dr Zhivago), and we were quite bundled up as we went to bed. Colonially so, in fact, as we went to bed with hats on one evening. Baths were become torturous with careful pains taken to wash the hair without exposing the rest of the body to the icy water. My Le Creuset pots found new purpose as I used them to heat water on the stovetop that was then poured into the sink and used for bird baths. If I had a coal box, I would have by all means placed it under our bed clothes to warm them a bit.
Temperatures here feature in the low 40's at night and 50's during the day. The skies are continually overcast and little sunlight is allowed to escape. Winds are frequent as they sweep through the river valley, and coupled with the temperature, make for chilly days and frigid nights. I began to fervently pray for our heat to function and hot water to fill our tank.
Wednesday found me desperately trying to reach our landlord who is deep into his own renovations. Wanting to escape the arctic, I decided to take the kids to a movie to thaw. Upon arriving home, I noticed that manuals for the water heater and thermostat were conspicuously placed. The house felt a bit warmer, so it was apparent the landlord had come by the house to provide remedy. There was still no hot water, but some of our troubles were lessened. I put the kids to bed and tried to pour through the manuals in the hope of extracting some clue as to how to restore hot water. Being as they were in the most technical German and pertaining to pipes, plumbing and switches (admittedly not my strong suit), I ciphered little in the manuals and went to bed happy to be warm if not entirely clean.
I awoke in the middle of the night racked with sweat and flushed. I sat up and swung my legs around and retracted in pain: the floor seared my bare feet. Our heating consists of pipes run under the tiles. I crawled to the end of the bed and jumped to a rug close to my shoes; Log would have been amused by my Spiderman type moves. After putting on a pair of slippers, I walked through the hall to find that the temperature in our house was 82 degrees. The thermostat hangs at eye level for a man of six feet, so for the thermometer to register such a high temperature at that level you can imagine the temperature of the tiles.
No manner of pushing buttons and turning knobs on the thermostat affected the temperature. Bop woke up a short time later saying she felt as if she was going to vomit from being so hot. In a short time, the kiddos and I had worked out the pattern of the pipes and made efforts to walk far away from them. Even with shoes or slippers, the heat emanating from the tiles still penetrated the body. Littlest forgot herself once and stepped down without socks or shoes and cried saying, "Mama, the ground is hot." I could only surmise that our landlord, not being able to fix the water heater, thought he could make a cold shower desirable by making the room's temperature stifling. Cold water lessened in it's evils this morning.
A few more pleading phone calls were placed, and at long last a repairman came and ran diagnostics. He assured me that I should have cooler room temperatures and hot water within a few hours time. The two LED panels were manipulated and explained to me; he even demonstrated how to trouble shoot and wrote out a brief guide in German. I am hopeful, as I look at my half naked, tribal looking, flush faced children that he is right for we all require baths tonight.
Add these woes to our phone/internet ones, and there can be no doubt in J's mind that I would walk through hot coals for him, endure cold showers (and screams of children enduring cold showers), and be completely reliant on a library computer for news and email.
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