Who Said Water is Free?

While in the midst of our crazy rain storm a few weeks ago, I noticed that the water meter had water on it ... to the height of our long grass. I just thought to myself: MAN it sure is raining a lot! Well it continued to rain off and on for several days and I completely forgot about the water meter. After it had dried off for a day or two I noticed that the water level hadn't gone down on the meter. I mentioned it to Joe and he took a look at it. Low and behold ... our meter had a leak. I called the lady at the utilities office and she said someone would come and look at it. No one did. I called the next day and talked to, what I can only assume to be, the same lady as the day before. Now I know pretty much nothing about how this meter works. Infact, I didn't even know that WAS the meter until this whole fiasco. Needless to say I felt rather ... retarded ... talking to this woman on the phone. I was frustrated and embarrassed. Finally she let me know someone would return to my house. He did ... and indeed there is a leak, but he didn't have the proper equiptment to handle it and let me know they would send someone in the morning. The next day four men came to rip my front yard apart. It is finally all fixed.

Except for the bill!

I would say that this thing was leaking for over a week, but because of the rain nobody noticed it. I got a call from the office yesterday and they let me know that they could credit my account from a $530 water bill down to $400. Now that is significantly higher than our bill in the summer time ... grrr!! Hopefully we can haggle them down a bit further ... but I don't think that we'll be able to. Being a grown up is tough!