2 days down.... :)

This water-as-only-beverage thing is hard, but I am not going through juice nearly as quickly as I normally would...  I wonder if I can factor in that cost savings to add?

When Bear was getting into the tub tonight, she, in her best authoritative princess tone, asked us to bring in a bucket of water.  I told her we had a faucet so she did not need a bucket.  Then she saw her gladware "toys" in the tub and exclaimed, "oh, there they are!"

This got me thinking.  The areas that lack drinking  water probably lack clean bathing water, too.  When I spent a few weeks in a small rural town in Northwestern Mexico, I was advised to not even brush my teeth with the ground water, but to use bottled water.  Fortunately, they had the huge 10 gallon tanks brought in, you know the kind you might see in an office here.  And if water was running low, one of the neighbors was sure to have a bottle of coke in their little front porch tienda, or even better, helados (ice pops made of juices frozen in plastic baggies).

The spigot on the pump in front of the house where I stayed did not look like anything I would want to wash my hands in, much less drink from.  Who knew what kind of chemicals from the surrounding crops ended up in their water supply. But that was what the families were used to... I remember one little boy with eczema so severe, his brown skin cracked so you could see pink underneath.....

Just think that most parts of Africa are even more remote than the most rural, impoverished places in the United States. (And yes, there are places in our nation which warrant that description.) That village I visited in Mexico had the ability to obtain drinking water, even if there was only one telephone  for the community and the cattle shared the same road in as the pick-up truck.  The kids had a basketball court, the church had electrical fans which could be plugged in., and you might glimpse a hen sneak behind you while getting a drink from the water tank.  I once had a tick find my back while I showered, but we had ample water that was clean "enough."
*****
Today was harder, but I made it.  I took some more ibuprofen and an afternoon nap, snuggled with my 4 year old.  I put my coffee grinder up, and intend to find a place in the closet for my coffee maker to reduce temptation (and clutter).