If you’ve been following along, you know that I have had a few little glitches in my travels.

Apparently, things had been going along ticketyboo for a little too long as this morning brought another one.

Before I left for the trip, I had spoken to the property owner to get some details, like where the key would be and so on. One of the things she told me was about the hot water tank.

She explained that it’s on a timer where the hot water heats up overnight and then not again till the next night. As the day goes on, then, the water can cool off. If it does and you need hot water, you can give it a one-hour boost.

This morning, I went to get a shower and….you guessed it: No hot water. It was around 8:30 am and I hadn’t used any hot water yet. There should have been be plenty!

I hadn’t had any trouble with this till two nights ago when I went to wash up a couple of dishes.

The water never got hot.

It was night so I figured that was the problem because I had had a nice hot shower and done a load of hot laundry that morning. It made sense that there wasn’t any hot water left that night. There was only a saucer and a glass to wash, so I didn’t bother wasting a boost on just that. I’d wait till I had a few more dishes.

This morning, I went to get a shower and….you guessed it: No hot water. It was around 8:30 am and I hadn’t used any hot water yet. There should have been plenty!

What’s worse is, because of the way it’s set up, you have to be in the shower before you can even turn it on and it takes a minute to warm up.

Being the Queen of Efficiency, I splashed my face a bit and figured I’d just do my face scrub while waiting for the water to heat up.

But it never heated up.

In fact, it was cold!!! I mean C-O-L-D.

And because I had a face and neck covered in apricot scrub, I couldn’t just get out because I had to wash that off. I still needed a wash, too,  and couldn’t guarantee I’d get any hot water later so I just needed to brave it as much as I could.

So I did some minor acrobatics to get the face scrub off and do the most basic of washes without freezing all my bits off. I left my hair for later because that would require being in there way too long. Even if I had wash it with cold water, I would rather do that over the kitchen sink where only my head had to deal with the cold water than subject my whole body to it.

I then checked the room with the hot water heater and the switch (apparently I can’t have a story that doesn’t involve a switch!!) was in the right position. As far as I could tell, anyway. I had no idea what the problem could be and didn’t want to mess about with it.

The caretaker had shown me how to use the one-hour boost when she came by the first Sunday so I figured I’d give that a go.

After about half an hour, I checked and the little boost dial had moved the appropriate amount, so I figured it must be working. I was becoming tentatively optimistic.

A little while later, I checked the water in the kitchen sink and, sure enough, it got hot.

Before my luck ran out, I went upstairs to grab my shampoo and towel and then washed my hair in the kitchen sink. (I did not trust that there would be enough to last through even a quick shower and my body was not at all interested in a repeat of the earlier icy experience.)

Now, clean from top to bottom, I was ready for the rest of the day!

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