We had a great thanksgiving. Potluck dinner at one of the teacher’s
houses. There were 3 chickens,
stuffing, scalloped potatoes, squash, salad, roasted onions, butternut squash
soup, meat balls and delicious cheese cake, there was pumpkin pie too, but I’m
not a fan, although I hear it was fantastic. We had a great time!
There were kids for Reed to play with and the house was all on one floor
so he was able to roam relatively free.
The wheels fell off when we made it home.
When we arrived we saw our sewage
light was on, in the North we have a septic holding tank and the septic truck
comes around and empties it, they’re suppose to come everyday. That is the contract they have with the
school board. They don’t. When the septic light comes on your
septic tank is almost full, at this point we still have water but you have to
be careful because if it gets too full your water shuts off. Which is good, because that way it
can’t overflow. Anyway, like I
said we still had water so things could be worse….oh and they got worse.
As Tyler was trying to figure out
who to call to inform them that we needed our septic pumped we had a flurry of
activity. I was trying to feed a
cranky and tired baby. Tyler was tracking down numbers and calling wrong numbers
and answering calls we were getting. In the midst of the commotion we got a
call asking if we would be willing to take in two little girls for the
night. They needed a place to
sleep. We didn’t ask what the
situation was, at the end of the day the “why” is not so important. Anyway we said we couldn’t really take
them that night, we don’t have beds for them since Reed’s room only has a
crib. I mean we would have moved his
crib in our room and they could have had his room but they would have been on the
floor. And we had no septic. It just didn’t make sense that night,
but Tyler said to the woman, "Don’t loose our number or anything but we just
can’t do it tonight." And that’s
basically how we ended up on the emergency fostering list.
As the evening went on we
realized it was getting colder and colder in our apartment. Yep you guessed it the furnace
broke. We are in an apartment so
our furnace is in a utility room with a locked door, so we couldn’t even go see
if there was something we could do ourselves. So Tyler got back to the phones.
Side note here : During off hours, the only way to get a
septic truck to your house is to call the radio and they announce it and you
hope the truck drivers are listening and are willing to go to your house. In our case, they were not. This was all going down Sunday
evening, it is Monday evening as I write and we still have a full septic but
I’ll get back to that later.
Tyler calls the principal and the
Director to explain about our no heat problem. The exchange went something like this.
Tyler “Hi, it’s Tyler so we have
no heat, the furnace is broken”
Principal “Well we don’t have any
maintenance guys right now [one quite, one was fired] so you’ll have to call the Director”
Tyler “Hi, It’s Tyler, so we have
no heat, the furnace is broken.”
Director “Hi Tyler, we have no
maintenance guys right now.”
Tyler “Yes, I know but we have no
heat.”
Director “Well, we have no
maintenance guys, I don’t know what to do.”
Tyler “Ok, but we have a baby here
and no HEAT! We need to do something”
Director “You will have to call
the other director, he might know.”
The other director eventually
came and fixed the furnace. He
doesn’t seem to really
know much about furnaces but what
he knows works and we get heat….At this point any guilt about not taking the
two girls is totally gone since it was a bit of a gong show here.
I should say that during all of
this, one of the other people who lives in our building (and had heat and a
working septic) offered us a place to sleep if we needed it and offered us
supper, I went down and ate (it was a girls potluck/tv night at her house, I
didn’t take anything. Everyone
understood). Tyler opted to staye home and eat leftovers, talk to the director
when he arrived, and stay with Reed.
Meanwhile Reed was in bed sleeping in a long sleeve onesie, fleece pj’s,
a fleece sleep sack and a blanket over him. He had no idea anything was going on and was happy and cozy
in bed, until the heat came on and I had to start unlayering him. (I may have been a little over cautious getting him dressed for bed).
So it was at least a memorable
first Thanksgiving in the north.
And we learned a few valuable lessons. Like always keep extra water on hand (we have lots’). And now we know what great neighbors we
have.
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