Current mood:

nostalgic

Iced beverages: good / iced water: sometimes bad
I'm for really real going to try to write in this more again. For real.

Right now the city is on some kind of water-conservation alert. I guess the pipes that get water out of Lake Michigan have frozen over so they are unable to get enough water into the water processing plant. Seeing how it gets FUCKING COLD* here every winter, it seems like they should have had this figured out by now. Currently, you can't do any laundry or dishes or other water-consuming things that are not necessary to sustain life, or the city will hunt you down and yell at you for using too much water. I had been debating the merits of showering today, but this tips the scale toward stink-fest.

The city also suggested citizens "draw and store drinking water before going to bed tonight" as "weather forecasts indicate that conditions will remain optimal for ice formation to reoccur for the next several days." I started gathering vessels to "draw and store" water in, and found I am entirely unprepared for a disaster. Even our camping supplies fall short as we always go places that have a water spigot nearby. My mom used to buy me cases of bottled water as gifts, instructing me that one should always have bottled water on hand in case something happens to the municipal water source. I ignored her good advice, choosing to greedily consume all the water within a few weeks. After a few years of this cycle, I heard a story on NPR about the environmental/social consequences of people in the US buying bottled water and swore to never drink it again. I started keeping the bottled water from my mom in the trunk of my car to avoid temptation. Ultimately this led to the water tasting so horrible (who knows what chemicals leeched into it?) that it was thrown away after a few years, which is actually quite a bit sadder than if I had just drank it.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I now see the value in having some bottled water hanging out in my pantry. The only things to drink in there now are some cans of V8, a bottle of vinegar, a jar of spaghetti sauce, and some olive oil.

At least I have some items for storing drinking water, including 3 Nalgene bottles, 2 half-gallon empty milk jars, 1 Brita pitcher, and 1 stock pot. I think that will be more than enough because I don’t think the city will really run out of water anyway. I'm an optimist like that.

*Seriously, it is cold, a lot colder than Kansas. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a lying sack of dog poop or recovering from head trauma that caused memory loss. A few people who had lived both places told us the weather "isn't that much different." I am unsure what category they fell into...maybe both.