Not a Post-Modernish Post

So, yeah, I haven't posted in DAYS.

I could give you my host of reasons, but really...you know them all.

A glimpse into my internal dialogue:

I've been moving...the unpacking seems endless (YAWN, again with the move. Your readers are OVER that. YOU are over that!).

It's a new school year, our schedules are whack (Yeah, ummmm...it's, fall!).

I don't have my own laptop (AGAIN, YAWN. You are sick of that excuse, how about your readers?)!

How about a throw-away post...you know, one to let them know I'm-thinking-of-you-but-I-am-oh-so-busy. (They will hate you. You will hate you. That isn't you.).

THEN, I thought, I could write that post (which I just did, see above), and then reference it, which would make the post cool, because it would be all post-modern and shit.

But, I wonder, NOW, that I've acknowledged that it's post-modern, how cool am I? Or, not? Does my acknowledging my post-modernism make be uber-post-modern, like how Woody Allen would pull it off, or is it just lame and self-congratulatory?

All I know is I have to hit publish, because my lappy battery is dying.

Belly up and hit the tap

Not long ago I was at a friend's house, and my four year-old asked me for a glass of water. I grabbed a cup and headed over to the sink.

"*GASP,*" my friend exclaimed. "Don't use that water, use the drinking water!"

"Oh, yeah, right, I don't know what I was thinking," I mumbled as I made my way towards the water tank I'd use countless times over the years I've known her.

Mere months ago I would have had the same reaction as her. In our last home, we had a state-of-the-art reverse osmosis water filtration system; only the purest of H's and O's made it through to our drinking water. When we moved to our rental home, it didn't have any filtration system at all, so we switched to bottled water.

But the thing is, we are on a budget. A serious budget. The paycheck-to-paycheck kind of budget (and sometimes we don't make it that far). Things have to give; items that were once necessities become luxuries.

Like bottled water.

At first I did the Sacrificial Mom thing and saved the bottled water for my kids, and I started to drink *gasp* tap water. It tasted...weird. Then I thought of how I grew up drinking municipal water (except for those years we had our own well), and how that water probably tasted very similar to what I was presently attempting to choke down.

Then I had a very interesting conversation with a friend in town whose husband is an environmental engineer; he just happens to study water. Guess what he drinks? And his kids?

Water from the tap.

He emphatically states our tap water is perfectly fine, and he knows it as well as anybody, and certainly better than most. He is so confident that it is safe his children have been drinking it from the moment they first swallowed something other than breast milk.

He's not alone; as much as forty percent of bottled water's source is from municipal taps. Furthermore, municipal water is regulated by the EPA...not so with some bottled water. So I started to feel better about drinking tap water and giving it to my kids.

Then I noticed how our recycling container wasn't as full as it had been, and how when I threw a container into it (our city provides each house with 65 gallon curbside recycling bins, half for paper products and half for plastic and glass containers) it tended to crash against glass rather than bounce off plastic. Hmmmmm...

That's right, now that we aren't buying bottled water by the gross we have greatly reduced not only our cash outflow, but also our plastic consumption. And that alone can't be a bad thing.

Repeat after me: I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say!

(Please tell me you know from whom I stole that quote.)

In a flash of individuality, I decided to copy Mrs. Flinger copying Mrs. Fussypants (geeze, a lot of Missuses there, huh?) and create my OWN FancyThongs (Loralee suggested this nickname for me) Caption Contest.

I took this photo a couple of years ago...it is my cat Ruby, the youngest and normally most docile one of our Pride of Three, teaching a certain stuffed animal that mammals RULE over stuffies.



The fun part...what will you win by participating? A bunch of belly laughs (which you know translates to rock-hard abs) as you read what I am hoping sure will be many HI-larious entries! What other Caption Contest lies promises a beach body just from entering (and/or reading)?