The Water Hose Incident

Or, otherwise titled, "Whenever There's A Problem, There's Always A Solution." And sometimes you stand in your own way of seeing it. 

I went to the store to get water...a couple of those large 5 gallon jugs. Honestly, it's more accurate to say I was covertly sent to the store. I didn't realize it in the moment. Apparently, I was told later, I was "giving off a negative vibe." 

Let me back up just an hour or so in this story.

I came home to a frozen water hose. This is significant because it's the hose we have going out to the horses' pasture to fill their water tanks. Today was day 3 of a super cold streak here in South Carolina. We've been leaving the water dripping as you do around here when the temperatures don't get above freezing. So the pipes don't freeze. 

Well, this time, the very long hose that goes out to the horses' pasture was frozen solid. SOLID.

There's a whole lot that goes on in a person internally when frustration is present. And I was a person experiencing frustration. And anxiety. Thirsty horses cause me anxiety. Horses need water. My water dispensing device was frozen, and the temperatures were dropping. I didn't see a simple solution. Why hadn't I planned better? Why don't they make un-freezable hoses? Will it get above freezing tomorrow? For whatever reason, I was responding with a lot of crap in my mental dialog!

Nathan came home around this moment.

"Did you get my text?" I asked him. "No, you sent a text?" he said.


"What did it say, babe?" he said.

"It said the water hose going out to the horses is frozen. Solid." My frustration and anxiety had now spilled out into the environment around me. I had images of us carrying buckets of water from the house out to the pasture until midnight.

He said, "Well, it's Ok we can just get some water for now and fill up the horses' tank."

We dialoged a bit about the issues around this. I think he asked me a few times, "Why do you have that look on your face?" My tension about it was just overriding anything else. "We have a solution for now, right?" he asked and, although we did, I didn't like being in this situation and my frustration was still just pretty high. And then he asked me if I'd to go to the store and get the water while he finished up dinner.

I did. And, when I got back home, this is what I saw:


* Nathan asked me to add to this post that "After spending the last 2 days, working 10 hours a day, out in the freezing temperatures, he spent another hour defrosting the water hose for our wonderful horses. In the shower with hot water. And Logan helped, of course. They both got cold and wet to solve the water hose problem because they love me. And the horses." :)

Julie Rhem