Pain in the A#$

There are so many reasons people eat which have nothing to do with actual survival.  Boredom, habit, celebration, anger, thirst, and my big winner today was frustration.  I am happy to say I did not let frustration get the better of me, but it took everything in me to recognize that eating would not fix my problem.

This morning Russ got up and took a shower in his normal routine way.  I had an early meeting so I was up reading e-mail waiting my turn.  After his shower Russ lathered up his face with shaving gel and suddenly stuck his head out of the bathroom and announced there was no hot water.  When he said none, it was not that the water was not hot, but that no actual water was coming from the tap.

Last year we installed a tank less instant hot water heater, which had an epic failure this morning.  This was not the news I was looking for in the early morning hours.  I called for service and was told that sometime a repairman would come, but you know the drill, we can’t tell you when.  I asked that they give me one hour so I could go to my meeting and they said of course.  There was no chance a repair was coming to my house in one hour anyway.

Seven hours later a nice guy showed up and confirmed that the water heater, new as it was, needed to have the entire heat exchanger along with some ancillary parts replaced.  Let’s see, it’s Friday afternoon, do you think I might have hot water today.  Not a chance.

The repairman called the manufacturer to order the parts and they were happy to send them for Tuesday afternoon delivery.  Nice as this repairman was I got involved with the manufactures phone call to get the parts sent fed ex for Monday morning delivery.  Naomi, the phone rep, finally gave in after spending over 45 minutes having me get her to admit that five days without hot water from a one year old very expensive hot water heater with a twelve year warranty was just insane.

So here I sit with four days of no hot water, a full dishwasher of dirty dishes and two loads of laundry needing to be done and me in need of a shower.  Frustration was knocking on my door.  I got the dishes washed the really old fashioned way, by boiling water and filling the sink and boiling some more so after the soapy washing I could rinse them.  I had forgotten how hard on a manicure washing dishes by hand is.  I am going to have to not worry about nails since I have a lot of hand washing in my future.  At least I can say I did not let the lack of hot water make me eat something naughty, but boy I certainly thought about.