It's almost done

I finished classes for the day (Friday is my short day) and drove home (grading and the hugacious PI book in tow to work from). I was shaking a bit as I drove, because I kept saying "please please please let there be a plumber's truck at my house. Please."

I could think of all the many things that could have happened to prevent them from being there, or any other problems that came up.

But no - as I turned up my street, there was one large truck and a smaller truck with a trailer. (And a backhoe in my drive).

One of the plumbers greeted me...he was grinning, I guess it was an easier job than he expected (and maybe it's fun to run a backhoe, and it's surely more fun to work with the intake line of water than it is to work with the sewer line).

"We're about fifteen minutes from being done." he said. And then the magic words: "It's already all tied in to the house."

They're going to turn the water back on, he said, to make sure everything's fine, and then he'll push all the soil back into the trench. All I will need to do, once we start getting some rain again, is either reseed that area or wait for the St. Augustine to tiller its way over it.

He showed me how they had done it - a very neat job and if the pipe ever again breaks under my sidewalk, because of the clever way he tunneled it in there, they shouldn't need to take up the sidewalk. (And as for replacing it - well, they just cut out a chunk and will drop it back in, no fuss, no muss, no calling he city to make my sidewalk again).

I am very close to having water again. You may not have a full idea of how grateful I am for this. It's really surprising what an effort it is to deal with not having running water...having water to drink is the least of your worries, because, if, like me, you keep bottles of it on hand for emergency, you're fine there.

I will admit to reacting a bit this way when I stepped into my house and closed the door after finding out I nearly had water again: