Perspective

...and once again I have been reminded of perspective.

This morning I woke up, and deciding that it was going to be blazing hot earlier than usual, headed out to water the garden. (with a hose! Novel concept! No lawn mower towing of 7 gallon jugs required!)

Yeah. The water hose wasn't connected at the spigot. And I couldn't get the cheap (again proving that low cost does mean cheaper...) hose to connect back to the hydrant.

OK. No problem. I'll go get the vice grips, wrastle it on, water the garden, have coffee, shower, go to work. Easy peasy.

Yeah. No. I turned around from the hydrant to go get the vice grips, and saw that water was gushing out of the bottom of the camper - right in the middle. Great. I nonchalantly walked back up to the camper, and stuck my hand in the stream. HOT water. Great. Turn off water, turn of (new) water heater. This part at least, feels fucking familiar. As does the feeling of "ohgoodgodhowlonghasthewaterbeenrunning andthewaterheaterguzzlinggas?!?!"

I decide to go inside and have coffee before figuring out the problem and attempting to fix it.

Yeah. I'm out of coffee.

Nonchalance is still there. Weird. Moreover I notice that the nonchalance is still there, and take a calm moment to notice. Weirder.

OK. So. New plan. Where is the water coming from?

I realize that the water is coming out of under the kitchen sink. OK. I pull EVERYTHING out from under the sink - both shelves. Only to find that the waterline to the sink is disconnected. OK. Cool.

It's 8:40. I have to be at work at 11am. It's 30 minutes each way to Lowe's. Just enough time.

I get in the car, and halfway to town realize that I am in cutoffs that are so dirty (I live in the woods, people. I don't yet have a washer and dryer, people.) they are walking me, and not the other way around. My tank top has bleach stains and my feet are black with mud. Said mud is spattered all over my legs. I decide that I am too dirty even for the co-op that I work at (and get a discount at, I might add), and go to Starbucks instead (besides, it's close to Lowe's and I love the employees).

LONG story short - I get what I need from Lowe's to fix the problem (I hope), and get home. I have enough time to leisurely shower, get ready for work and go.

Yeah. I have no running water.

OK. No problem. I have a hydrant. I have a hose. Oh. That's still disconnected. Great. OK. Found the vice grips. Wrastled it on. And the other end of the hose (with a convenient shower attachment) is in the garden. A mere 200? 250? ft away. No problem. Wander out into the garden, and shower amongst the weeds, birds, and bullfrogs. Kinda nice actually. Oh. That was the water warmed in the hose. Once it clears out and I get the water straight from the tank - holy buckets it's freeeeeeezing! (yay well water!)

And off I go to work.

If you had told me a year ago that this would have been a morning that I would have, I would not have believed you. If you had told me 4 months ago that this is a morning that I would have without breaking into a severely bad mood that would spill over into my workday, I would not have believed you. If you had told me this morning that I would come home from work at 9pm and lounge around nonplussed about the whole thing until almost midnight before I fixed it without really worrying about whether I could fix it or not, I would not have believed you.

Yeah. As it is, apart from a quick AGGHHHH! txt to my beloved manfriend, I really wasn't too ruffled about the whole thing. Oddly enough the most stressful part of the whole thing was the water hose issue. Everything else just kind of happened, and I just kind of observed. To say I was confident in my ability to figure out what was going on and then fix it would be an overstatement. But I never really was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to get it fixed. It was just kind of another thing that happened that I rolled with. Which is what the last nine months out here has taught me to do. As a self-proclaimed control freak, I have learned that the only thing that I can control is how I deal with things when they are beyond my control. It is a huge lesson that I have learned, and a huge thing that I continue to wrastle to the ground now and again. Had I not been able to fix the issue, I would have gone to my aunt's house to shower, or jumped in the lake (something I'm not supposed to do), or something. Until I could get it fixed - by my hand, my manfriend's, or (god forbid!) someone else's... there's a way through and around every issue.

And now I sit in my camper with everything all connected and turned on again, and all is well. Until the next thing :)