Learning patience

Well, the guys thought they had the water problem fixed; instead, they met failure and also found a new problem:  a below-ground leak quite a distance away from the well.

The grandson and Cliff  thought they'd found the problem after  lifting the pump up just a few feet. something about  an O-ring near the top of the well.  I don't know a lot of details because I've learned, in fifty-six years of marriage, that when my husband is doing a job he hates, he does not want to answer questions about it.  The best thing for me is to keep away, and if I have go near him, don't ask stupid questions like "have you found the trouble" or "when do you think you'll be done" or "how's it going", etc.  Oh, or my favorite: "What do you think is wrong with it?"  and he roars, "If I knew what the hell was wrong with it, it'd be fixed already!"

Because I've learned this, our marriage is still intact this morning.

The grandson does all the tough work while Cliff is the "gopher" and tractor operator.  The tractor does the lifting for them

The red thing in the background is the roof over a hole in the ground, sitting on its edge while they work on things.  The electricity and other stuff that keep the pump running are down below it in the hole, which has walls of concrete blocks.  That's where the old well is located, but it started giving us sand in our water years ago, so we had the well drilled that you can see below.

Here we are looking down on the well, probably 12 inches across at the most.  No human will be falling in this well.  

About the same time they realized something worse than a bad O-ring was the problem, they also realized they had a leak in a pipe somewhere  underground.  First it was a slow leak, but after they turned on the pump after they had taken a break for the grandson to go to the doctor, then turned it back on, they realized the leak was a bad one. It's over near a watering place next to the barn, unfortunately covered with  gravel the grandson had put down trying to make the barn look better from the outside.

So  they're out there again trying to fix the problem.  They'll just shut off the water to the barn for now and concentrate on the well and pump.

all this, after messing with the well all day long plus going to see a doctor

I am still keeping my mouth shut.  That's why I  don't know much about  what's actually going on out there.

It'll all come out in the wash, as the old saying goes.