This is our fourth day in a row that I have been able to open the windows and try to clear the crud we had out of the house. We have whole-house air purifiers and also some room purifiers, but I like fresh air better. Unfortunately, the nice temps are supposed to end tomorrow night and fall below freezing with precipitation. That usually means inches of ice here. I hope we just get snow.

Today is my last day for antifungals, and my rash is gone, though it got really bad the day after I started treating it, then just disappeared overnight.

My daughter and son-in-law for volunteering to help when they heard our cunnundrum. We got up on Christmas day, and our shower started backing up before my husband finished. Thankfully, I had had a shower the night before. No plumber was working on Christmas day and most said they wouldn't be back until after the new year. My husband went to the office and got a long snake and snaked it. Nothing. Since it was the furthest drain on the house system, it meant it wasn't in the house. He went out to the clean-out outside. He got out about 90 feet before he found anything, but the snake wouldn't go through; got stuck instead. He got the backhoe from the office and started digging up the front yard. Daughter and her husband had heard and came over to help. Although schedule 40 drains are warranted for 50-100 years, it had holes or cracks in it as he went. Instead of going straight to the street for about 40' to connect to the sewer, it went all the way across the yard, over a hundred feet, and joined the sewer under the driveway; both against codes. It had fallen in right before the driveway and was so full of mud that they couldn't get it cleaned out under the drive. We had to call Roto Ruter to come out and clean it out the rest of the way. That set us back over $600 and it only took him less than 10 minutes. I am just thankful that they came back to work yesterday. We also found that the water pipe was laid right beside the sewer line. That is against so many codes because if both pipes shoudl somehow get a break that means that the water can mingle. Ick! How did this house pass inspection? We didn't build the original house here, we inheirted the utilities to the house.

Today our son is helping to lay new pipe. They are also laying a new water line according to codes this time. Hopefully by night time I can use my own toilet and shower.

The office is less than two miles away for a toilet that works and our daughter let us use her shower for two nights.

It has been a very eventufl Christmas and we are grateful that we had our get together early so that we didn't have 15 people here when this happened. This area is bad to have pipes shift because we have a lot of sandy soil on top of clay and we have a lot of small earthquakes. We have had a swarm of earthquakes for the last few weeks so that is probably where the cracks and fallin came from. I am so grateful that we found it before the water line cracked, too and that that will no longer be a problem.