H2 No

Posted May 27th, 2009 by Kimberly Dowd

Every Sunday, WM and I have breakfast at Starbucks. While he works on his lesson plans I go through the Sunday paper — clipping coupons, reading stories and working the crossword puzzles. It puts into a wonderfully relaxed state of mind.

This weekend that Sunday-kind-of-feeling ALMOST lasted until we made it into our apartment door, due to a neighbor asking us if we had no water, too.

Faucet on. No water. Blah. Calls to our helpful maintenance department went unanswered, so WM strolled down to chat. Turns out the line that went from the water main to our apartment complex broke. When would it be fixed?

“Don’t know,” the maintenance employee at the desk answered as she ignored the ringing phones. She’s so helpful. She lives on the 2nd floor of my building with a bunch of kids who write on the walls and break the locks on the outside door so they can get in and out easier. Charming family.

A poorly-spelled memo taped to the lobby door stated 12-24 hours until we got water back. Neighbors said to expect closer to 48 hours.

After some discussion (and the inevitable imminent post-coffee pee) we headed back out to Target, where we bought 10 gallon-bottles of water and 16 single serving bottles.

And Arby’s Beef’n'Cheddar sandwiches. Hi, emotional eater here, how’re you?

So while the dogs and cats enjoyed their frou-frou bottled water, I learned that it takes 2 gallons of water to fill up the toilet tank so I can flush it.

Monday morning we woke to running water, but with an advisory to not drink from it, cook with it or clean dishes with it unless we 1) boiled it for a minute or 2) added chlorine bleach to it. But bathing would be fine!

Uh…no. I showered at Mom’s and the dogs not only continued to enjoy the bottled water, but requested I get them Evian and not Target brand. Ungrateful beasts.

Finally, FINALLY last night there was a poorly-spelled and crookedly-photocopied memo taped up next to the elevator that said the water was safe to consume. I guess we’ll put the remaining gallon bottles under the sink for storage and finish the bottles eventually. (I’m a Brita girl – I prefer that to bottled water).

Lesson learned: It is EASY to take for granted something as routine (to us) as clean running water. Be more thankful!

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