Mystery... Solved

OK, so the Great Water Mystery of '07 seems to be coming to an end. I can't believe it.

I first blogged about it here. With an update, here. And I blogged when my mental capacity for logical reasoning was put to the test.

Today I went to the Water Co. to pay our past-due bill (because even under protest, you've got to pay it or they'll turn it off, and that wouldn't do any of us any good!) The counter lady finally let me talk to the maintenance guy. He was great. He ran his own numbers and tried to give me the, "Well, we're a household of four, and we use 143 gallons a day." Song. Dance. Whatever. I asked whether all four people shower daily? (Yep.) And he waters his garden, no? (Yes.) And his lawn? (Oh, um, why yes.) And does he, by chance, have a pool? (Yeah, yeah we do.) Well, then he listened to OUR water habits and it clicked. From that point, on, he was very helpful in helping me figure out how to find the problem.

We walked through all of the things to look for, and how we've already looked for them. Down to using the cell phones while one of us stood at the meter and watched as the other one said, "OK, I'm flushing the toilet now." Or "OK, I'm filling a one gallon jug right now." The meter works, down to the gallons. (It might have an error of <10%, which isn't something we can do anything about.)

I steeled myself, and asked, "Could you give me the reading for 123 Forever Home Rd.?" They pulled it up. There's no account for that address. There IS an account for 127 Forever Home Rd., but it's not active. Been listed as "vacant" for a couple of years. (On the county GIS, 127 IS the house next to ours. I don't know why their mail box says 123.)

The silence in the office was painfully loud, as the implications of this information sank in. People looked at one another and raised their eyebrows. I stood there, praying for all I'm worth, that none of the people standing there are related to either of the families historically associated with this property.

EmBaby broke the silence by slamming into the glass door and yelling at the baby who'd hit her in the face. Then the maintenance guy, with one look around (as if for confirmation or the go-ahead) raised an eyebrow at me and said, "So, um, can you go out of town for a week, or so? You know, lock your meter with a padlock when you go."

That broke the spell. The room erupted in nervous chuckles, and the knowing looks as people said, "Well, we know the C's and the H's, don't we?"

There's no well on the neighbors' property, so they aren't getting their water from a well, and now we know they aren't getting it from the county.

The general consensus is that we've been paying for their water all along. And that they knew it. They had theirs turned off sometime before we bought the place. With the shared power lines, and all of the other "oddities" we've encountered so far. (Strange cars in our meadow, down by the water lines, the barbed wire and tree stumps and spray paint across the drive, the guy who switched out our meter not able to say where the neighbors' meter was at the time, the water never being turned off while we were negotiating the purchase, it goes on and on... one oddity after another, all compiling to make it look like our neighbors are, well, less than stellar citizens. Certainly not good neighbors.)

I was able to choke out, "Well, 'not being from around here,' I never know when I'm about to step into a hornet's nest. But yes, that was our original thought." Nobody jumped me for it. They said from our records, our logs, the reputation that family has for grifting and such, along with everything else we've shown, it's almost a certainty that the neighbors are tapped into our water line.

So.

Huh.

Well, good to know I'm not imagining things. Or thinking we're so water-savvy, when, in fact, we're water-sucking buffaloes. That's good.

So why doesn't the knot in my stomach feel any smaller? Hmpf.

I'm gonna go kiss my babies, and try to remind them that they are always, always responsible for their actions. Be truthful, be kind, be diligent. It's so, so important.

~Dy