Cold

The water in our pipes froze sometime between this morning, and this evening. I thought that sort of thing only happened when people were out of town for a few days, and weren't using their water... but apparently not. At first it just seemed like there was something wrong with the garbage disposal, but it seemed to be running just fine, except for the fact that every time we turned it on, the water would drain out of one side and come back up the other side, and if we turned it off, the water would come back up the first side. We called in the maintenance people and they found ice not too far down into the pipes. I guess this house wasn't built to code, and so the pipes are in an exterior wall with no insulation at all. That explains why we've always had to keep the water running for ages to get any hot water from that faucet. We're hoping that we'll be able to convince the owners of the house to just insulate the entire house.
It looks like this house was built in pieces. They added on a room here and there, and then dug out the basement out from under the house. There is still a door down there that opens directly onto an excavation site. Andrew's bedroom was built right off of another bedroom, and that's a little weird, but that room hardly seems to be insulated at all, and the little heater in there can't seem to keep up with the cold outside, so Andrew's room is always freezing, I have to put him to bed in heavy sleepers on top of other pajamas. I'm glad that he's old enough now that I can also put a blanket over him. There are some built in cupboards and drawers in his room, and if I ever open those, it's almost like opening a door to the outside, it's just that cold in there.
There is a little space heater in the basement, that hardly does anything at all. To feel warm down there at all you have to sit directly in front of it. Even after it has been on all day, there is still a huge drop in temperature between the upstairs and the downstairs. And with that in mind, I think it might be a better idea for those coming up for Heidi's graduation to go stay with David and Donna... unless they want to sleep in heavy duty sleeping bags, or sleep upstairs in the living room. The heater in the basement wasn't working at all for the first while we were living here, so we hoped that getting that fixed would solve the problem, but it puts out so little heat, it was hardly worth it.