Living without water
I wrote about the first days without water in this post you can read the first part there so I don't have to repeat it here. Remember that I said that the water company would come within a few hours? They never did! It was Thursday at the time, and you'd surely expect them to come on Friday, right? Well, think again. They didn't either. Meanwhile, thankfully, the kid was feeling slightly better yesterday after having a few days of fever and very sore throat. Diarrhoea was also added to the mix on Thursday for one day in total so you can imagine how much water we needed to flush through the toilet in these days.
My boyfriend didn't want us to use bottled drink water so the first 2,5 days he drove down to the beach and started filling up the empty 5 Litre water bottles where the public showers are. The looks of the people you get ain't funny, but thankfully, he's very immune to those things and I was only with him once as he forbid me to carry any bottle due to my recent back pains. Those are barely here anymore, thankfully, but as the scan pointed out that the back is not ok, it would probably mean that a few heavy lifts cause me to be out of order for a bit again. So this man of mine had the daunting task of getting water from the showers twice a day, one round before work started and one round in the afternoon. He probably grew some extra muscles these days, lol.
Keys to the owner's apartment
Since Thursday, we thankfully have the keys to the owner's own apartment about a km from our home. He said we could use the shower and whatever needed there, so I asked him yesterday if he was ok for me either cooking there on Saturday, to prep meals for two days and then do the dishes right after so I don't have the struggle in our already too tiny kitchen with no water, meaning I'd waste so much water as well. Or in the other case, that I'd take my dishes there to clean them and bring them home after cooking in our own apartment. I know he told me to use whatever we needed, but still it feels like invading someone's home and I felt it was needed to ask his permission first. I also felt very uncomfortable using his shower so this felt even like a bigger invasion of privacy. He said sure, whatever you need. And I will obviously make sure it looks exactly as he left it.
The cause of the cut off
You're probably wondering about the reason they cut us off, right? So were we, after constantly asking without getting any answers. Friday night my boyfriend bumped into an upstairs neighbour and he said there were illegal tenants upstairs who were cut off (makes sense) that day our water was cut off. I know the president also mentioned something about illegal tenants but the message was not clear to me while on Friday night my mind started to connect the dots.
I realized when we moved in, whenever we'd order something online, packages were constantly brought to our upstairs neighbours until I added the memo that they needed to be on this floor. What if they accidentally cut off us instead of upstairs because of the unclear instructions of each apartment and the supply area to the apartment? I told my landlord immediately to ask if this was what happened and he confirmed that this was the case.
They told him it was by mistake and they'd come yesterday (Friday) or otherwise Monday. WTF? So they can just cut off an innocent family who pays their bills on time and put you without water for 5 days by their mistake and then just add another 2-3 days because there's a weekend in between? This made me "slightly" mad to be honest, and I'm considering at least checking to see if I can file a complaint for extra costs made. I doubt it will do anything, but I will look into it tomorrow because it doesn't feel right to just let it slide. If this would have happened to us before we had this car, we'd be in serious trouble and would have to rent another place until fixed.
Our weekend plans
First we went to the laundry service on Friday night just before the supermarket at the other side of the street closed so we could get a few groceries while the laundry was being cleaned. It cost me 5 freaking euros for a little laundry which is highly annoying but hey, one needs to have some clothes, right?
Instead of before work filling up water bottles to flush the toilet and wash hands etc, today my boyfriend could skip that task in the morning because he loaded up enough yesterday in the owners apartment. So he could do his weekly meeting without having to do a workout first, lol.
I'm currently completing a few tasks, of which one is the quarterly taxes declaration, I think I have it all covered but I need to print some invoices as well and double check if I have everything sorted. Once that's done, I'm always happy because it's one of these mandatory tasks you can't postpone too long. Normally, I'd have them done early this week but you know, my whole week changed in such a way that I didn't get to it yet.
I bought so many groceries for several meals this week to prep food right before the cut off. But these meals would have meant big dirty pans and worse: red stains from the Bolognese sauce all over, costing me WAY too much water and effort to properly clean that I've been postponing that every day in the hope we'd have water supply again. Hence my question to the owner to do those in his apartment because that's making my life a lot easier and avoids me getting stains everywhere (I hate the red sauce stains, lol).
Then we have another daunting task in terms of getting nasty stains: making turmeric paste. First I wanted to postpone until we're back on the supply but now I'm probably going to make it anyway with a little more preparation such as a bit more gentle whisking (could help avoid stains) and wearing old clothes that can handle a yellow stain, lol. Once done, I plan on dropping the dishes from this in a plastic bag to clean at the owner's apartment later today.
I've decided to leave the towels, cleaning cloths and sheets in the laundry laundry for what they are and just do these on Monday, so I can don't have to pay another 5 euros for a laundry and make more unneeded costs.
Stain!
Talking about laundry, my boyfriend accidentally dropped the liquid chlorophyll bottle (which is GREEN!) over his white t shirt so I also have to find out if we can get these stains out, I fear not but Goog.le is my friend so fingers crossed. If you wonder what the heck liquid chlorophyll is, you can find some information here or look more up yourself. I bought it for heavy metal detox and even though I can't prove it does that, I've been feeling so much better in any way since I've started taking these drops daily about 3 weeks ago. It surely can be a coincidence, but as my brain fog fully disappeared since, I'm just going to continue taking these, we should just be a bit more careful with the bottle because this stuff is green with a capital G.
Thankful for our owner's cooperation
Even though it's been an absolute nightmare a few days having no water, but mostly, having no answers or even a mechanic to come and CHECK it properly. I'm very happy that the whole thing is a misunderstanding and we aren't in need for new pipes as the building's president mentioned. He clearly doesn't have his facts straight but yet he was fast enough to point fingers at our landlord and even say we should ditch him as he's a bad owner. Easier said than done, mate!
Not many owners would send a friend with his own house keys to then let his tenants he barely knows inside to shower and such. I surely can't see any old landlords we have do this anyway.
Now we countdown until Monday and hope they are at least decent enough to come early Monday morning as Monday it also means the kid is back to school since her throat infection is disappearing and she's getting back to being her giggly self again. At least we were not left without a shower for a full week, as I can tell you it's a lot of hassle using bottled water for quick washes and with my long thick hair, washing them without a shower is mission impossible.
I surely hope you're weekend looks a bit less complicated than ours, and I'm assuming mine will too again next weekend!