You Have No Idea How Many Times I Flushed the Toilet Today!

Saturday morning, Cees has to work at 7am. Yawn! I roll out of bed, wash my hands, and hmmm, why is the water only a trickle? Too early to care!



Waking up Cees, who has same experience I do. Hmmmm, I guess we have no water. Did we pay the bill? Yeah, that should be fine.



Driving down the road, leaving our neighborhood. Finding BIG hole in the street, surrounded by public works trucks. One wonders whether the water main could have been broken.



Searching through basement for bottled water. I know I have it somewhere. I look at many different somewheres, and don't find it till I invoke my PAF option (Phone a Friend). We have two gallons for sure, which is less than I want , but will do for now. At least it saves me a trip to the store. Add Emergency Preparedness to my mental list of 'Things to do: urgent!'

I flush the toilet, figuring that this magically might turn on the water. It goes 'GURGLE, GOBBLE, ZOOBLE, ZORK, SLURP, GURGLE, BLOBBER!' I do the only thing I feel capable of doing, I close the door and hope it will stop sounding like this.



Finally! Water turns back on! Rejoice! Wait. Water????? Last time I checked our water wasn't ... brown. Very brown even. Very yucky and awfully looking brown. We are not amused.

I turn on the faucet and flush the toilets a few times, to prove to myself that it really is brown. Since it is, I flush them again and again, to prove that I must be hallucinating, how else could I explain this. Maybe I shouldn't have had those mushrooms last night?



Decided that brown water was enough of a concern to call public works. Patiently listen to a phone message telling me that it isn't an office day, hoping it will give me a phone number for when you want to talk to someone anyway. Eventually give up and try a different phone number.

Talk to a nice guy, who confirms, yes, the water main broke, and yes, it's fixed, and oh, the brown colour should go away if I just flush out the next 40 gallons, or maybe more if we live more uphill. He also explains to me that I can just run the bath tub. He clearly isn't in charge of cleaning the bath tub in his house, since I can just imagine how nice the tub would look with dark brown rings.



So instead, I flush the toilet. And flush the toilet. And run the faucet in the sink. And after an eternity, things seem to get a bit clearer, but I still tell the kids to use the bottled water.

I decided that going geocaching was the best thing to do now, and I call my friend, and we go out and find SEVEN caches! Not bad for an impromptu trip. We even got a First-To-Find, and we might or might not have had help for that one.



Came home, used the bath room, flush, only to be greeted by ... 'GURGLE, GOBBLE, ZOOBLE, ZORK, SLURP, GURGLE, BLOBBER!' and trickle of brown water. Oh joy! Back to square one!

That is where we still are, early evening. No water, or sometimes we seem to have a bit, which is a lovely brown colour.