I live on a little five-acre wanna-be ranch out in the country. Living out in the country means I do not have a home life like regular people in regular neighborhoods have. I have year-round roughing-it, sort of like camping, except there is a house instead of a tent. And the restroom isn’t a quarter mile from my campsite. Unless, as it sometimes happens, I don’t have running water, then I have to execute Restroom Plan B.
Here, like in the olden days, I get my water from a well. Sometimes in the winter it gets just cold enough (the California definition of “cold”) to freeze up my well pump. When that happens, the pump can’t pump, hence no water.
Horse-sicles
So, while I wait for warmer temps to thaw various frozen well-pump doo-dads, here are some steps I take to stay amused until the water comes back on :
[Step 1] Build a fire in the woodstove. Find a log that has a black widow spider on it. Put the log in the fire. Wait and watch for the black widow to crackle and pop. [If you listen closely, you can hear the tiny evil creature scream right before the pop.]
[Step 2] Let the idiot cat-killer dog loose in the yard. Then let the giant rat-killer cat loose in the yard with the idiot dog. Wait and watch to see which one of them will end up in a tree first. Wear gloves, long sleeves and heavy boots since I may have to climb a tree to rescue a German Shepherd.
[Step 3] Neatly stack next to the kitchen sink a week’s worth of crusty, algae- and fuzz-covered lab experiments gone awry that just two days ago were mere dirty dishes. This I do in the hope that I will have water and the inclination to wash dishes in the foreseeable future. This assumes, of course, that I remembered to get dish soap which I never do at the grocery store which I try to never go to.
[Step 4] Get out the machete. Then go to the room in the home loosely referred to as the “home office.” But first clear a path to it with the machete. Then once safely inside the home office, start sorting crap and making piles of related pieces of crap. When I have been at it about 5 minutes, I take a break, get some coffee, machete one of the piles of crap off of the desk chair, sit, and log in to the web. And then I go to YouTube. A few hours later, groggy and disoriented from sensory overload, I emerge from the “office” without any idea whatsover why I went there in the first place.
[Step 5] Break the ice covering the outside fish pond, fish out any little frozen goldfishsicles I may find, punch a hole in each little fishsicle, thread the hole with some hay twine, and then hang them from the trees like strings of little sparkly frozen gold Christmas lights. Eventually they will thaw and smell but then I have instant homemade cat food.
If after all of these amusing distractions, I still don’t have water, then I park my butt alongside a couch dog in front of the classic movie channel on TV. If I have electricity.
Life in the Fast Lane on a Dirt Road 