washout

Water is essential to life on earth. Living in the developed world, I am lucky to have easy access to clean water. I know that too many in the world don’t have this luxury. Water is necessary. Water is precious.

Water is also trying to kick my butt.

I have refrained from sharing here the soggy details of my recent battles with water, in its various forms. Sure, I started a post about waking up to a steam-filled basement and a geiser of scalding hot water shooting from our hot water tank, and thoroughly soaking through a stack of dozens of boxes of books and papers and mementos, but I figured I’d spare you the damp whining. And then there was the follow-up post (that I also didn’t share) about how that incident, what with the water running for X number of hours in the night, had killed of the pump to our well and another water tank to boot. After all that, the dozens of leaks that our kitchen faucet sprang, spraying a shower of water each time we had to wash dishes or fill the drinking water pitcher, seemed quite minor. Almost cute. I hadn’t even gotten around to griping about the water we’d had leaking in through the windows over the winter, due to ice dams on the roof, and all the trials of dealing with more snow than we’d seen in the past several winters combined. What fun was all of this? I decided to move on to other things.

But water was not done with me yet. You may recall that this weekend was the dreaded yard sale. I dedicated practically my whole week to purging cabinets and closets and piles of things. I signed on to the town’s group listing. I planned. I publicized.

Then come Saturday…it rained. A lot. It was a cold, wet, rainy, wet, dreary, wet day. There was lots of water. It was wet.

Did I mention that it was wet?

I ended up having the sale on our front porch, with lots of things still crammed in boxes. I didn’t even manage to bring out everything that I’d purged from the house. It didn’t really matter that much, as traffic was slow. Only the really hard core bargain hunters, and some people coming to haggle over the last bits of baby gear we had. People enthusiastically bought a few items that I could have thrown out, and quibbled over a dollar or two for things that were worth 20 times as much.

As low as my expectations were, I wasn’t counting on the rain. What’s more, I’d signed up to have Sunday be the rain date in the town listing, so that more-or-less meant having the sale both days. And today was rainy too. (But I just worked on packing and re-sorting things, anyhow. Only one person came the whole day, but at least he bought a few things.)

The weekend wasn’t a total loss, but I still have my work cut out for me. I have to make arrangements to donate, sell, or otherwise dispose of all this remaining stuff. I blame the rain.

And would you believe that tonight I discovered a new leak in my basement? I can’t tell yet whether it’s water coming in from the rain, or from the plumbing.

All of this has left me feeling very stressed and cranky. I need to unwind. I’d think that a hot bath might be a nice calming thing, but who knows what perils would await me. Would I shrivel into a giant prune? Slip climbing out? Get washed down the drain?

Now excuse me while I get something to drink. Usually, I mostly just drink water. At this point, however, I’m not sure I should risk that much contact with the plumbing. I’m pretty sure that beer is safer.