Complicating the Uncomplicated

This morning I was washing some dishes in the sink after making a vat of applesauce, and I noticed that the water didn't seem nearly as hot as it usually is. Huh. Weird. We always have hot water here.

Now, the hot water at Blackrock was a highly variable thing. The amount and temperature of the water depended on the time of day, the season, and how much hot water was used that day. Quite frequently, we wouldn't have any water at all, hot or otherwise. But here, the water comes reliably from a well and the water heater heats on demand, so there is always water and it is always hot.

Such is my Blackrock-trained mindset however, that as soon as I realized the water was lukewarm rather than hot, I immediately thought, "Oh God. The water heater isn't working and it's going to take forever to get someone here to fix it and I'm going to be boiling water on the stove to wash dishes and . . ."

But then I stopped myself. This is not Blackrock. Maybe I should think this through with a more rational, modern-house mentality.

First I turned on the hot water in the bathroom to make sure it was a whole-house problem, and not something to do with the kitchen supply. No hot water there at all, so to the hot water heater I went.

I thought maybe there was some kind of thermostat on it I could check, or something obvious I could try.

Indeed there was. Like the bright-red on/off switch right on the front--at, ahem, child level--that was turned to "off."

After I flipped it back on and was rewarded with the whoosh of the hot water heater immediately beginning to heat the water in the tank, I called Charlie in for questioning. He of course vehemently denied touching any switches, but said Jack had been in there a couple of days ago.

Yeah, sure.

I explained to Charlie that he should never, ever touch any of the switches on the machines in the utility area, and that if he sees Jack playing with them, he should tell me so I can make sure nothing got messed up. He assured me he would.

It's nice to be in a house where there are simple solutions to problems that were often major at Blackrock. If only I could find a solution to the monkeying children problem . . .