Category: House of Rock

WATER! from mikedidonato on Vimeo.

Here it is, 1:30am on Friday. And I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so happy to be awake.

I was having trouble sleeping. It was 12:30 or so and my bedroom was hot. As I tossed and turned I suddenly heard the rain. It beat down on the roof ferociously. In not so much as a moment, I was out of bed and running downstairs.

I grabbed a big bin and brought it outside to collect the liquid gold. I had my big polka dot pajama pants on and when I walked outside I was immediately drenched.

Drenched head to toe… strange… this downpour felt a lot like a shower.

I threw the bin to the ground and bounded back upstairs. I grabbed a bottle of head and shoulders, some body wash, and my bath towel. I skipped back downstairs and straight out the door. The water was cold on my skin but not unbearable; think ‘Atlantic Ocean’ in early July. I ran around to the front of the house and yanked off a downspout. I threw my head under the condensed stream, added some shampoo, and scrubbed.

I rolled up my pajama legs and then started in with the body wash. It was cold, but oh so refreshing. When I was finished I ran back around to grab the bin of water. A healthy 2 inches of water had collected. I raised the bin up over my head and poured the water over me. It was bliss.

Once clean, I stuck the bin under the drain spout to collect more water. This, in addition to the five 5 gallon jugs of water that Liz and I took from work, will provide us between 30 and 35 gallons of water entering the weekend.

Never before have I looked at Rain as such a wonderful gift.

ugh… I thought everything was under control. The water guy came by, and despite the difficulty of the job (there are all sorts of complications), he said that it could be done. I’ll get a quote in the morning and the pipe should be fixed (hopefully) by Thursday. On top of that, the neighbors allowed us to tap off of their water supply. By connecting a hose from their outside spigot to ours, we’re able to reverse plumb my house. There was a small leak in the hose connecting the houses… so I spent some money and repaired the line to ensure that no excess water would drip out.

Then Tony and Paulette, in an extremely kind gesture, came to Meriden and kidnapped me for some ice cream at the end of the day. Things were looking up.

When I got home however, I found the neighbors rather upset. They don’t feel comfortable providing water at night. Just during the day.

This is extremely tough for me because what bothers me more than any other thing is being an inconvenience to someone. When I feel like I’m being a burden it’s bad. I typically get restless and occasionally nauseous.

The neighbor’s being upset really got to me. And not being able to provide water to my roommates really gets to me. See, Brian and Liz both get up SO early in the morning that it’s basically night-time and right now it’s 11:30pm and Shaun still isn’t home from work. Without water at night… the house is essentially without water. During the normal day hours… none of us are even home.

And tomorrow, I’m scheduled to fly to Washington D.C. for work… frankly, I don’t know what to do.

I just don’t know what to do.