Post-Weekend

Weekends go by so fast!  And we could have a weekend every day if we wanted now that The Husband is "working for himself" and doesn't have an employer.  I guess we're still in the weekday/weekend mode as far as general life goes.

Saturday morning we decided to refresh the water in our emergency water storage barrels.  We have four barrels.  It was no trouble to roll the barrels out in the driveway, let them empty and then get them cleaned up and ready to refill.  The main way to preserve (and keep fresh) the water is to add a bit of regular bleach.  (In case anyone wonders, it's 1/4 cup bleach to 55 gallons water.)

When it was time I added the bleach to the barrels and The Husband commenced filling them.  When the first barrel was nearly full he remarked that the water was sure bubbly, kinda-sorta-not-really foamy.  So I started looking at the Clorox bottle.  It was the splashless formula.  I hadn't really looked at it, but apparently that's different and it clearly (though in teensy tiny print) states:  not for disinfecting or sanitizing.  Yikes.  I'd already added it to all four barrels.

Sigh.

Up to the grocery I went to find some regular bleach. Whose purpose includes sanitizing and disinfecting.

By the time I returned The Husband had almost finished rinsing, rinsing and rinsing out the barrels to make them safe.  After all, if something happens and we need to use this water for anything, even drinking, we want to be confident it will be good water.

So, once again, my efforts to help made the job three times as long, complicated and costly as it needed to be.  I felt like an idiot.

Poor tree.

Yesterday afternoon after several stutters, our power went out.  To supposedly 1300+ customers. The website (that I could access on my phone) said they hoped to have it restored by 7:00 p.m (roughly 5 1/2 hours later).  We settled in for the afternoon.  Our friend (whose car wasn't parked in a garage / electric door opener) had done some scouting around, told us the fire dept. was over by the city park cleaning up tree branches that had fallen on the power lines.  Whatever the reason, the power was back on in a bit over an hour.  What a blessing it is to live in an area with a fairly stable power supply.

So this morning, my walk took me through the park and I didn't see any evidence of broken tree limbs, or anything that would have caused the power outage. Then I crossed the street to the trail for home and saw this poor tree.  I wonder if a bunch of the older trees in the park are just diseased and rotten?

YAY for shade in the summer.

And I headed over to the grocery today (so glad there's our regular money coming on Wednesday, I'm about out of grocery $$) and yay! for me, they saved me the shady spot.

I'm so grateful for the power that makes our life so comfortable and convenient.  I'm grateful for trees that provide shade and beauty.  I'm grateful for something fun to try for dinner tonight.  And I'm grateful for plenty of good, safe water.