Water, water everywhere and the white stuff all over the place.
Last Tuesday was World Water Day and as I read reminders on the Internet I reflected on how lucky we are to live in a place where this necessary resource is so plentiful and clean. I've seen brown water wells on ads for child relief agencies and listened to reports of First Nations communities across the country where boil water orders have lasted for years, but I've almost always been able to turn on a tap and safely take a sip.
A couple of weeks ago the water was off for a few hours and immediately my mind switched into survival mode and I thought about melting snow as I imagined my pioneer ancestors must have done. I thought of the few bottles of drinking and tap water stowed in the basement in case of a disaster to keep my mind at ease and was grateful for the modern wonder of indoor plumbing.
That was Tuesday. Thursday afternoon a phone message came through from the high school about a boil water advisory and it was all my children talked about when they came home.
With the advisory came a sense of hysteria and my daughter described a classmate who accidentally stopped at the hallway fountain for a drink running to the bathroom to throw up. Rumours of people not feeling well hit the social media circuit, but I've since talked to an official and there are no reports of illness or nasty bugs in the water.
I devised a comprehensive and obsessive way to wash dishes, twice after every meal, but not much else is changed. My son made a comment at supper a couple of nights into the advisory wishing for the water to be back to normal. I reminded him he's getting a break from his regular chore of washing dishes and all he has to do is keep his mouth closed when he's washing his face and carry a cup of water with him to the sink when he brushes his teeth.
At the best of times the water here doesn't taste very good and it even feels different on the skin than water with a lower mineral content. We accepted the differences and put a reverse osmosis system in when we moved into Maidstone as I was not prepared to be spending my life hauling heavy jugs back and forth several times per week.
We still have better water than a lot of people in the world, I'm just keeping the kettle whistling and a pot on the stove.
