Water

Water....

As for me, just saying...I prefer water you can't actually SEE in your glass. That's just not happening at my house. Our water tends toward a dull yellow (I know, I know) and can range to a bright orange. It's always a "thing" at my house when we have company. I live on bottled water and a tiny reverse osmosis unit at my kitchen sink that can produce three gallons and then have to rest for the remainder of the day.

A typical gathering goes something like this, " Hi, it's so great to see you! Can I get you something to drink? We have Coke, Sprite, 7-up, Iced Tea, wine, beer, ginger ale, hot cocoa, hot coffee, champagne....."

"No thanks, I'll just have a glass of water".

Then I have to think and scurry. Usually I've put in a pretty good supply of water AND nixed all salty snacks, but for some reason we ALWAYS run out. And as they head to the sink, I lunge forward and say, "Nooooooooo".

It's all because we live in the country. We have a well. Yes, there is actually water in the well, but darned if I know what it's good for. It's not good for flushing (you've never really lived until you had to tell a perfect stranger that the orange toilet was "actually clean"). It's not good for laundry...unless you are a perfect "autumn" and look nice in creams and rusts. It possibly could kill you if you drink it (well, by "kill" I mean gag you to death). The sulfur smell which surrounds you as you shower tends to negate that "Ivory clean" feeling. Let's just say it's a problem that I think about on a daily basis.

For example, when I see the real estate prices rise in this neck of the woods, I think, "hey, we'll sell". Then I remember house inspections. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that SOMEONE would turn on a faucet and the stream of rust that would come out might just mean that good deal I was offering wasn't so good at all.

BUT, we have GREAT pressure.

This past spring, we got a water tank. It's ugly, it's in the yard, it cost thousands of dollars, but I was as excited about it as getting a new car. More so, as I dreamed of white laundry, white toilets, heck..even getting a drink of water out of my bathroom sink.

First of all, whatever anyone's preconceived notions of "good ol' boys" is, I am going to say...they are great salesmen. I had several out here and between squirts of tobacco juice and squinting their eyes at my rusty water, I was assured that all my water problems were going to be solved by that big ugly plastic tank. It would "settle out" the rust and sulfur, leaving us with nice clean water. I wouldn't even need a softener (I haven't mentioned the lime deposits here that I furtively scrape off with a knife before aforesaid company comes). "Yes ma'am", they would say, "I had a customer with worse water than yours and it's right near perfect now". Oh, they could sell.

I was sold. I got it. And the problems just began to snowball. Suddenly, we had PRESSURE! Suddently we had BLACK WATER. Suddenly, the washer stopped working. Explaining a black toilet was too much even for me.

It seems the new pump at the new tank gave us so much pressure that 30 years of gunk came gushing into the house. You've never lived till every faucet in the house spewed out black gunk. Oh, and I had company in the house (maybe my real problem is all the company, but that's another post).

We had people out, we had filters changed, we spent money after money.

It seems that now, all we need is to have the whole house re-plumbed. But I've learned my lesson about those country well and plumber salesmen. I'm not buying.

I'm just showering in rust, washing in rust and keeping a fridge stocked with any kind of drink that does NOT require turning on my sink. Oh, and the orange toilet IS clean!

And perfect college daughter knows to warn friends she brings home that this is NOT the house to do a semester's worth of laundry in. Luckily, she wears a lot of black.