Water: A Tale of Two Scenarios

I live a little leery of July 19. Two years ago tonight, I was at Busch Stadium with a colleague and a client. We had the company's field box seats for the event and I was psyched. It was the stadium's inaugural season and this was my second visit in as many nights. (I'd spent the first night in a luxury box. THAT was hard to take.)

It was as hot then as it was today. High humidity. Miserable. I packed lots of cold water, cool rags. We were overheated by the time we hit the stadium so we got dinner and a cold drink. While we were in line, the gray sky that had been overtaking the stadium started to go completely black. Torrential rain, powerful winds leveled buildings, flooded streets and threw around debris. The storm that blew in wreaked havoc on my neighborhood -- and on This D*mn House -- and left us without power for a week. (These are pictures of some of the damage to the house and the tangle of wires at the end of our alley. When a second storm blew through on July 21, those wires and trees came down on that car, with the neighbor inside! Luckily, she wasn't hurt.)

I thought about that all day as I worked outside in the heat. The three things on my mind: Getting a hot shower, a good meal, and relaxing in the cool.

I was wrapping up my day when our neighbors were getting in their car. "Sure a shame that you're not going to clean after being out here all day," she said.

I was afraid to ask what she meant, but mom beat me to it. "Why not?"

"We don't have any water. There's barely a trickle coming out." My heart fell. Turns out somebody hit and broke a water main earlier in the day.

We'd both noticed that the water pressure was off earlier, but that happens in the summer sometimes. Especially on a day like today. (At 95 degrees.) But I couldn't have imagined this.

But luck smiled on me. There was a minor trickle that seemed to strengthen a bit in the shower mode. It was enough to get clean. I was ecstatic. It took a while and took some effort, but I was able to scrub clean.

So now, I'm enjoying a Blizzard and preparing to take some pills, including a muscle relaxer. Luckily, I have plenty of bottled water in the house so we'll make it through the boil order.

Good thing. Tomorrow is going to be even hotter. Please ... NO STORMS!