We all know all the world’s a stage and our bit parts are not to be taken seriously folks so best to keep your sense of humour forefront or you might be blindsided and bitter ….and that will get you nothing but the curse of high blood pressure and ulcers.
So it came to pass one Sunday morning, maybe late September, Momma was walking me and right at our intersection there were city vehicles parked haphazardly, up and down the street, blue lights rotating, walkie talkies blaring…it seemed we had sprung a water leak and Sunday was optimum time to fix it….the diligent contractors would get triple time for Emergency Weekend Work…but heck, the council could raise the taxes to cover costs…so it is all good. Even as night fell, daylight turned in to dark, more vehicles came, crowding every side street, bright lights, illuminating the interior of every home for blocks, we suspect.
Now two months later, winter on the way, in the dead of night, a letter is slipped in to every mailbox announcing the water would be turned off at 2am that very night for 12 hours to make routine maintenance…so tell me, in what world do city folk live….
Wouldn’t spring, summer, or even early fall be a better time to do routine maintenance…like when the ground it not frozen….just asking….
Momma pulled an RIP Daddy and called City Hall…were they really going to do it tonight…with the 1st snowstorm moving in to dump 15 to 20 cm of snow? The chirpy administrator said, oh yes, …if there is a change we’ll let you know….Momma’s thinking about Maintenance vehicles all over the street, side-walk and road snow ploughs trying to move through…chaos, it’s called, chaos.
Being highly organized and practical, Momma went in to 1st gear, (does she have any other), filling buckets with water, pots and pans with water, my little white grooming tub to the brim with water, jugs with water, even the kettles got filled with water…having watched some Walking Dead, she was prepared for Armageddon…one that never came, I must report, because although no notification of cancellation to the routine maintenance came, the snow storm showed up….like, did City Planners not have the Weathernet App? And so all the water, captured in vain, wasted actually, went down the drains, probably overloading an already compromised system, oh and remember….conserve, conserve, conserve water in a world where so many live without it.
As life spun out other challenges, the routine water maintenance was pushed to the back of Momma’s mind…but then front and centre, a couple of weeks later at 2am on a Sunday night, the crews moved back in. Momma woke to the sounds of heavy-duty vehicles, like army tanks, out front, breaking the nightly silence with their insistent running, chatter, the bright white lights bathing her home like the Yankee Stadium…..but no notification???? Well, they had snuck a note in the mailbox sometime Sunday but who checks their mailboxes when there is no delivery that day…so you guessed it…no water harvested….
Somehow, we made it through, hallujah…. somehow the City completed their work within 11.5 hours…so it was all good….I know, I know, so first World Problem…because well… we are such snowflakes, piling high and melting at the first hint of heat. Yes, those Third World Problem Solvers are pointing a finger, busting a gut laughing at us as they struggle with thirst, hunger, homelessness and war zones…so it is our little Secret… (our dirty laundry???), we got to keep our Pride in tact…especially when the Two Footed can’t shower, make coffee, wash dishes or horror of horror….or even flush their toilets for 12 hours….Truth be told even the Four Footed of the First World are snowflakes that melt at the hint that their life is disrupted…by anything…
May God Have Mercy on Snowflakes.
