Boil the Water!

The Flooding - from our driveway - 1:30 a.m.

What? Boil water? One thing we have come to take for granted is safe and decent tasting drinking water here in West Michigan. That big lake provides abundant water of good quality, far better than the well water that I got used to drinking on the farm of my youth.

We filter our drinking water, just because I am now a fusspot, but most people I know enjoy the water just as it comes out of the tap.

But today a city worker hand delivered instructions to boil our water for a few days, until they can test it and determine it to be safe. He indicated there was not much chance of risk, but I boiled a pot of water to be on the safe side and made some ice cubes with it. The husband was less careful and was sucking on other ice cubes. We have recently replaced the filter on the icemaker, and that might afford protection against contamination.

Once again, I am very aware that I live a privileged life. I have traveled through countries where I had to remember every day to brush my teeth with bottled water. One fellow traveler in a moment of less vigilance ordered a latte cooled with ice cubes at a Starbucks in Malaysia and promptly fell ill. I have a photo of her sipping that latte. I bought a mug from that Starbucks to add to my collection.

But here I am, "suffering" in my own country. First we had no heat, when the furnace failed. So glad that wasn't this week, when temperatures dipped to single digits--somebody said 2 degrees.

And now I have to boil my water!

When things as basic as fire and water are compromised, I feel justified in complaining.

The flooded street, however, was plowed and salted before I woke up this morning and it was like the flood never happened. It had been a raging torrent of water. A 30-inch water main broke. We are a few blocks downhill from a water tower. Our water pressure in this area rivals (I'm sure) the most vigorous in the world. The water from that tower poured out a river, flowing just outside my house! Because it snowed I can't assess whether the mulch I put down in the fall is now in the sewer. Warmer temps are coming and then I will venture outside to see if any hostas floated away.

Talk about unusual weather patterns--a winter flood at a time my indoor-outdoor thermometer registered 8 degrees!

The week when the POTUS used an inauguration speech to highlight once again the need to address global climate change, the country has been plunged into a deep freeze. Brrr. Talk to me about global warming in the summertime!  It reminds me that it seemed every time Al Gore was involved in a global warming conference we would have the nastiest cold and snow ever.

I only hope I live long enough to see some consensus on the truth or falsehood of the climate change propaganda.

Will it be like margarine and butter and cholesterol in eggs: oops we were kind of wrong about that? Now we have determined that it is the margarine that in fact clogs your arteries...

Sorry if I sound a little cranky in this new Year of Living, but I lost a little sleep last night taking photos of the "river" in the wee hours of the frigid morning.

And yes, I have become pansy-fied, living in a more moderate climate zone here in Michigan, partly moderated by the lake and maybe by a degree of cyclical warming.

 I remember temperatures of 40 below zero back in the Dakota days. We would have to plug in a heater to warm the car oil or it would get solid or something. When I was very young I remember scooping coal into our furnace--but it never failed. Then we switched from coal to electric heat, which was actually affordable back in that day.

Now I am inclined to just hibernate by my fireplace, or under that electric blanket, with a book--and not venture out until spring. The bears and other hibernating animals have the right idea. Skip (sleep through) the winter.