And not a drop to drink

It seems we have water issues.

It seems I always have water issues.

You know how articles about saving water always talk about people taking water for granted? I never do. Our water situation has always been, except for the year and a half at the HWWTNTMA, tenuous.

When we lived in the House of Squalor we had a great well 650 feet down. Even in the worst of droughts, it never ran dry. The water was wonderful and ice cold. Only for some reason the pump would burn out on a regular basis. Replacing a well pump for a 650-foot well is no small matter (ask Dark Garden, who had to help Dirtman pull the well by hand the second time it happened) and usually resulted in us being Beduins for a week or so. In our last years there, it was happening once a year at an expense of over a thousand dollars a pop. No one could tell us why.

In this house, we have a cistern. At first I thought, well, at least when we run out, we call for water. We try to be very thrifty with our water usage -- but we do have teenagers. Having run out of water twice, even they have learned to cut back as much as two young men believe it's possible to cut back.

I, myself, have learned how truly invaluable the "sponge bath" can be for water conservation. My hair no longer gets washed every single day, which I can get away with now that I'm an old lady (when I was younger, my hair was an oil slick by evening).

Laundry-wise, we've...well, I've, learned that a skirt can be worn more than once before it needs to be laundered. I think I've convinced the boys that something doesn't need to be washed just because you try it on.

Well, for the third time we've run out out of water again and our water man says there is a hole in the cistern. This is, actually, an issue for our landlord, but I wonder what this means in terms of what happens in the coming weeks.

Right now there is precious little water in the cistern and what is there needs to be saved for ... um ... the bathroom. And I'm finding there is not much you can do without it. I don't want to do any major cooking because it will generate too many dirty dishes. Can't do laundry. Fortunately we have two Brita pitchers in the fridge for drinking water and a little bit of cooking.

So I've worked some on the computer and now I'm going to knit on my shawl -- now that I've finished a certain green and white scarf, which I can't block because........................

I don't have water.