The Choice

We have no water.

Zero. We are now using paper plates and plastic bowls, taking showers at our Church’s conference center, flushing toilets with water from the Cato Village tap, dragging clothes out to a nearby laundromat and spending a ton of money doing them – like that. We looked in our dug well recently and saw something horrifying: the well had no water for 11 feet, and the water we did have was just above our jet pump. Usually the water is about 3 foot from the top. So we are missing eight feet of water, and our neighbor’s pond is down six to eight feet. (The dock now hangs up there in the air – quite strange!)

This is the Village Tap whee we get water;  all the jugs shown are our own

Totally unrelated, I should mention this: I’ve tried hard to turn off the internet in our house between 4 pm and 7 pm on weekdays; sometimes I miss or forget, and sometimes I’m out, but when I remember or return, off it goes. One press of the button and – presto! – no more internet. They wander around like animals put into a new cage, not knowing what to do; disoriented. We suggest books. Books? There’s always homework, and what about chores? What could be worse!? Tonight we pulled them out of their funk and played a rousing game of Uno. It was fun. Really.

The point of this blog is to marry these two discordant instances together with a simple question that I asked each and every one of my children: If you had to choose between having running water or having the internet, which would you choose?

Some might think this question a slam-dunk. Obviously, running water. To be sure. Well, if not a slam dunk – and if there is a few seconds of pause – of course the answer would still be running water. There can be no other answer. Really. You would agree, right?

Not if you’re a teenager in 2016. There is a three millisecond period of choice when I ask, a flash in the eye and out comes the obvious answer for these publicly educated souls: The Internet. All say The Internet. Everyone of them. Yes, The Internet.

Perhaps we can take this apart and analyze it more fully. On one hand we can barely wash out a toothbrush after using it, and on the other we have YouTube videos of a gorilla flying a hang glider, or something stupid like that. Is there really any choice? On one hand we have the blessed and always welcome flush, and on the other we have Amazon Echo and some jivy dance music and four teens dancing in the kitchen with boom-boom-boom vibrating throughout the house.

Do we even have a question?

You would think not. But we do.

These young minds perhaps don’t fully understand life, and the real world has not yet become fully real to them. They’ll get there, someday, I’m sure. Someday they will understand. And someday they’ll be asking their kids the same question; then they’ll be rolling their eyes, and wondering how their children could pick pure unadulterated fun over a living necessity. It’s the cycle of life, to be sure. But let’s be clear: at 56 years of age and with more than half a century under my belt, I pick running water.

Just Checking In

I’ve been slack and remiss at blogging. Great ideas come to me, and some of them actually find their way to paper; once there, of course I have to edit them to death, thus attaining the standard that I always aspire to, and it all takes time – something I don’t always have. So I’ll just check in now with a few tidbits from my always busy life:

The Kitten. What can we say? She is an absolute terror. She harasses the older cat, Melcore, endlessly; will jump on Melcore’s back, play with his tail and even bit him in the arse as he walks across the kitchen floor. I’m surprised he hasn’t killed her, though he will hiss at her sometimes. When she’s not torturing him, she’s torturing us. All feet shall be played with and attacked and the more they jump, the funner it is! I tell my kids this joke: what’s the difference between having kids and a cat? When the cat is bad, you can just put it out, but you can’t do that with kids. So out goes the cats, but in the kids stay.

The little terror resting up for her next onslaught….

My fatigue. It’s generally better, and that makes life 100 percent easier. It’s very difficult to live life with no energy.  Possible but no fun. It bit me yesterday but I’m better today. That’s good: there’s enough to do around here, that’s for sure!

Water. We have no water. Well, that’s an exaggeration. We do have water: a bit of it, sometimes. As long as no one washes their clothes, takes a shower, flushes the toilet or draws tea water for the electric tea kettle, we have water. Do more than a few loads of laundry – no water. Teenagers take showers like we live in a rain forest – no water. Too many flushes – no water. The water slows to a trickle in the evening, as it did in other droughts, but this drought is different, and much worse. Wake up in the morning, and there is a trickle; be washing dishes mid-day, and suddenly a trickle, and at evening-time: a trickle. A trickle leads to: off goes the water pump again at the breaker in the basement, since we don’t want burn out the jet pump in our well. Two hours later we are desperate – someone has pooped!  On the pump goes and we have water right up until we don’t. Perform steps again. Repeat until bedtime.

Elections (US). I read a guys blog who is usually right on but unfortunately not so optimistic about this countries trajectory into the future. He writes about this strange thing called the 2016 election here and ends his blog thusly:

In history, elites commonly fail spectacularly. Ask yourself: how could these two ancient institutions, the Democratic and Republican parties, cough up such human hairballs? And having done so, do they deserve to continue to exist? And if they go up in a vapor, along with the public’s incomes and savings, what happens next?

Enter the generals.

To end on a happier note, the world may be about to end, kittens can attack us unmercifully, our health may suck at times and who really needs all that water anyway, but if we’ve given up everything and have become a disciple of Jesus, everything will work out well for us – and very well – in the end!

The Drought

Tuesday June 19th:

We have no water in our house, day #1 where turning on the faucets results in a few drips and then none, and off to the town faucet we go with every sort of jug we can find in the house, to be filled with this now wonderfully-thought-of quantity: water!

Our Yellow Lawn This Year

Map of Drought in Northeast

All the lawns are yellow in the area, and our front yard looks like it’s just been mowed on the lowest setting, but in reality my son did it about three or four weeks ago. There has been no growth. Riding around Cato, we see the same: whole yards with yellow, carefully tended grass you might think, but actually its stunted. And there’s no rain in the forecast or, at most, a light drizzle lasting a few minutes, then more sunshine.

It’s amazing how much you appreciate water once it’s gone. Oh, how I used to just get in the shower and out the water came, and brushing my teeth was a breeze, and shaving – how do you do that with no water? Then there’s dishes and cooking and giving the chickens water and getting a drink and hearing the flush when we put the handle down and of course the teens must have their shower. Did I mention laundry? Isn’t water just supposed to come out when I turn the faucet on? It is. We never had these problems in suburbia when I was growing up!

We’ve been here before. Our well is generally good but in drought periods it gives way. Usually in these times the well will be dry by about 6 pm or 8 pm, then we turn the pump off and almost always we have water the next day. But these conditions have never started so early; usually it starts in the middle to end of August or into September, not mid July.

I should mention the cause of our water shortage. It’s just not that it hasn’t rained. It’s also that my kids left the outside faucet on and thus emptied the well; as far as I know, the jet pump is still functional as we did get a small stream of water last evening. We got this small stream right up until it was a few drips, then not even that. Then we knew we had a problem.

Alas, running water, how I love thee! When you are there, you are forgotten but once gone, you are so missed greatly. Maybe we can do a rain dance or something. At least its not California – not yet.

Wednesday, June 20th at 10:00 am:

We have water.  Not a lot, but at least some is flowing out of our taps!