More Septic Fun

Oklahoma is freezing. Literally.

The other night our phone rang, and it was my dad, telling us that there was an alarm going off at the side of our house. My parents live about six miles away, so we were a little confused. It turns out that our neighbor noticed the alarm but didn't have our phone number, so he called my dad. I have no clue how he knew my dad was my dad since he doesn't have my last name, but I guess that's what happens when you live in a small town.

Anyway, the alarm was for the septic system, and Jay eventually had to have the septic guy come out late that evening. It is so cold that the sprinkler heads are freezing, so the system can't get rid of the processed water. Jay rigged up the insulation you see above, and the each day before it's time for the sprinkler to go off, I haul out some hot water and pour it over the sprinkler heads to make sure they're thawed and we don't have a backup problem. Yeah, it's really fun living in the boonies sometimes.

See that little red circle in the middle of the picture above? That's one of the sprinkler heads, completely underwater--not a good thing when the temperatures are in the single digits. It was so frozen over today that at first I couldn't even see the head and was pouring the water a couple of feet too far to the left.

The other sprinkler head isn't underwater, but it can still have frozen water inside, so it has to be defrosted, too.

If the grass looks icy, you know the sprinklers went off.

Today they started a few minutes after I poured the water on them. The one that was underwater came up, but didn't spray, but the other one did, so we shouldn't have any problems.

I can't wait for spring.

By the way, remember this post about the one-ply paper? I thought I would never get used to it, but the other day I was at my parents' house and I noticed that their quilted two-ply actually felt like a quilt. Weird. If I can get used to one-ply toilet paper, why can't I get used to Diet Coke?