I grew up in either cities or the suburbs, so all of our amenities were just right there.  I did not have to worry about where our water came from, or where things went when I flushed the toilet.  It was like magic, things just took care of themselves.  

When I moved to where I am now, I learned very quickly that there is no magic process involved in delivering water to my house or taking sewage away.  Because there is no county water or sewage run to our part of the mountain we have to use a well for our water and a septic tank for our sewage. 

Even though I now knew that the well gave us water, and the septic tank took care of yucky stuff , I took them for granted.  It just never dawned on me that a septic tank and a well, would actually need some sort of human contact occasionally to keep running smoothly.

A few days after we moved into our house, I was taking my morning shower, and while I still had shampoo in my hair, the water quit coming out of the shower head.  Of course the first person I call is my husband.  I was standing there with my phone to my ear, shampoo drying in my hair, begging him to come home and make my water “magically” appear.  

He comes home, and of course water comes out of the faucets when he gets there.  His diagnosis.  The well was four hundred feet deep and filled very slowly.  In my zeal to run every single dish, cup, glass, and piece of silverware through the dishwasher, I had depleted the water in the well, and had not give it enough time to fill back up before my shower.   

That was the beginning of a pattern that was to last for several years.  The water never ran out for anyone else, only me, and only when I had shampoo in my hair that needed to be rinsed out. 

In that same year, I learned that there are more things to do with a sewage system than unclogging the toilet occasionally.  I learned terms like gravel line, as in “M’am, you gravel line in your septic system has collapsed.  That is why your septic tank is full and you have sewage coming up in your toilets, sinks, baths, and showers.”  I also learned there are whole trucks devoted to doing nothing but sucking stuff out of your septic tank.  

In August of the third year we lived there, once again for the 100th time, I am taking a shower and the water stops while I have shampoo in my hair.  This time was different though.  I knew I had done nothing to deplete the water, and my usual tricks did not get it going again.  Once again there is an aggravated, irritated, panicked phone call to my husband, with me demanding that he “make the water come back”.

He tells me to go out to the pump house and “close the contacts”  The best I can describe the contacts is that they are actually an electronic switch that tells the pump to start pulling water out of the well.  Now, I have never messed with these the contacts before, but I see how to push the contacts together to make things start working.  What my husband failed to mention though, is that touching the metal part of the contacts is a bad idea.  

Want to guess which part I touched?  Yeah, it was the metal part.  I received a nasty shock, screamed and hung up on my husband who was laughing.  

It turned out that our well had gone dry.  We had to have a new one dug.  The thing is though, you never can plan how much you are going to pay for a new well, because the drilling companies charge by the foot dug.  So your new well could turn out to be several thousands of dollars, or a few hundred, depending on how far they have to drill.  

The new well works so much better than the old one did, well most of the time.  It seems there are these large ants that love to make a home in our pump house every year.  There are bunches and bunches of them.  So many in fact that as they are running across the electronic  parts of the well, including the contacts, the contacts are closing and electrocuting them.  Eventually, so many fried ant bodies have piled up that they are preventing the contacts from closing.  If the contacts do not close, then no water comes up from the well.  Guess how I found out?  Yep, in the shower, with shampoo in my hair.  

People who do not live in the country, seem to enjoy talking about the wonderful fresh air we have here.  No pollution, no car exhaust, and no truck fumes.  

We have none of those things but we have the lovely smell of chicken poo.  Every summer many of the farms around here get fresh chicken poo to spread over their fields.  By the time that stuff cooks in the summer sun for a few hours, the chicken poo reaches maximum smelliness.  

You know those lovely spring days where you have your car windows rolled down?  If you happen to drive past a chicken house that is being cleaned and your windows are down, the chicken poo smell will stay with you for many miles.  

Something else I hear people talk about is how lovely our water must be.  We get it from the well, and it has no added chemicals to it.  They are sure that it is cool to drink all the time.  Those things are all true.  However, they do not realize that when we lose power, we have no water since our well runs off of electricity.   I am smart though, when the weather looks bad, I avoid the shower.  That means I do not end up with no water and shampoo in my hair.

Finally, all these wide open spaces and cow pastures, means there are loads of field mice.  Not really a big deal, they are kind of cute.  Except for the fact that when winter comes along they think our home is the perfect place to live.  I do not use any kind of poison since we have pets, so with just traps it makes it harder to get rid of them all.  No worries though, there is always
a snake that follows the mice into the house.  I guess the snake enjoys the mouse buffet.  Unfortunately, my husband is terrified of snakes so once he has evidence there is a snake in the house, the great snake hunt must commence.  He has yet to find a snake, just a snake skin.   

I guess country living is good.  I just have to remember to have a sense of humor about the other stuff that is not all that fun.