Cool, clear, water ...

Through a random confluence of domestic hilarity, the city of Duluth turned off our water today.We tend to ignore any sort of mail that doesn't have an -e- in front of it, or a present inside of it. And so any company that doesn't just extract the required amounts of money at a designated time from one of our bank accounts gets treated a bit like that pesky 35 pound tabby that skulks around this joint:

Ignored until it interferes with our creature comforts. And even then we usually just spray it in the face with, ironically, water.

I got through my coffee, shower, toilet treatment no problemo. But when Chuck went to brush his teeth when he got up tonight -- after Water & Gas operating hours -- he was met with puffs of nothing from the pipes.

"Why don't we have any water?" he texted me, right before he went out and bought three jugs of Apocalypse gold.

This comes at a bad time for me, as I've been dealt the combo platter of urinary tract infection* and the simultaneous shedding of my endometrium. Flushing a toilet is more than a luxury, it's a common courtesy. Luckily, we have two bathrooms in this house. We are able to privately operate under our own take on the credo: "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown take water from the dehumidifier, dump it in the toilet tank, then flush it down."


"It's like in the book 'A Good and Happy Child,' when he says they're between middle class luxury and absentminded squalor," Chuck said, coming out of the bathroom without washing his hands because he couldn't. "We have two toilets, but we have to flush them using a bucket of rainwater." 

I kind of like these random times of inconvenience. Adversity usually puts me in a pretty good mood for whatever reason. I like using a dirty strainer and using purified water to boil eggs.

All around this house, there are half-filled water glasses from a time when we were rich in taps. This has come in handy.


"So, I had bed head when I woke up this morning, and I had to use half of your glass of water to wet my hair."

Blah blah blah [insert hippie diatribe about water conservation here].

* my fourth of the summer. Holla!