Let's Pool our Natural Resources

Our grass in the back yard died a few years ago because of the drought, so we decided to do the only drought-friendly thing that made any sense. We put in a pool. Droughts are caused by not having enough water, so we put in a twenty thousand-gallon water reservoir in our yard. We’re doing our part, California. You’re welcome.

Our front yard grass died at the same time, so I wanted to help even more by putting in a bass pond, but my wife insists there are some zoning issues with that, or something. I think she just doesn’t want an eighteen-foot MasterCraft floating in her front yard. Women, huh?

Getting a pool is not for the faint of heart. Besides choosing which two of the three kids won’t go to college, you also have to endure an eight-week demolition experience, and be prepared to deal with the aftermath.

All pool builders follow the same simple three step process:

Step 1: Remove fence

Step 2: Completely destroy everything between the street and the far corner of the back yard.

Step 3: Fill new pool with water

It looks like an atomic bomb went off in the middle of our back yard, leaving a beautiful pool in the blast crater, and total destruction everywhere else. Our front yard looks like a bad day in Afghanistan.

Once the pool was complete and it was time to deal with the utter destruction of our property, we did the first thing anyone would do. We ignored it and threw a pool party. And then another one. And another. I don’t know how the rich and famous do it. I have been at a never-ending pool party for two and a half weeks now, and I’m exhausted. We filled the new pool with water on June 24^th, and since then the only time I have left the house was to get more beer, wine, and juice boxes.

Do I care that everything in my back yard besides the pool looks like the aftermath of a Vegas strip hotel demolition? Of course I don’t. I have a pool. Please ignore the rubble and enjoy yourselves, folks. Actually, it makes party cleanup quite a bit easier. Instead of picking things up, you can just sweep everything into the rubble pile the next morning and start over.

And it turns out the pool is convenient, also. Not only have none of us had to shower in the last two weeks (again, you’re welcome, California), but the boys have no more arguments for why staying home in the summer is boring. Every time one of them says anything about being bored, I just throw them in the pool. Many times while they’re still in their pajamas. Boredom problem solved, plus as a bonus, laundry done. The drought-friendliness of a pool never seems to end.

The pool can help in emergencies, too. Our Fourth of July party, for example, had a happy ending that could have easily been the other way around if not for the pool. When you accidentally light yourself on fire with an El Diablo fountain firework, a quick dip in the deep end is not only refreshing, but also eliminates a visit to the ER. California’s tax payers can thank me again in that situation, since we had to give up health insurance to afford the pool.

The bottom line is, I would highly recommend getting a pool, especially if you live in a dry area like we do. If we all do our part, we can not only eliminate our kids’ boredom complaints and prevent holiday-related injuries, but we might just be able to end this drought.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to ignore the annihilation of my landscaping some more and get ready for the pool party today.

Cheers!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Drought Intolerance

If you are reading this in any other state besides California, congratulations, you probably have water. Here in the Golden State we’re almost out. It hasn’t rained here since 2012.

I received a threatening letter from the Placer County Water Agency the other day, cleverly disguised as a “notice.”

On April 1, 2015, Governor Brown issued an Executive Order mandating a 25 percent reduction in water use in comparison to 2013.  In response to the Governor’s action, on April 16 the PCWA Board adopted Resolution 15-10 declaring a water shortage emergency.

Here’s the problem: They’re not really serious yet, because Outdoor Water Use Mandate Number One was Limit landscape watering to a maximum of 2 days per week during the months of April through November. 

If they were serious, we wouldn’t be allowed to water anything. Personally, I completely stopped watering everything in my yard in 2013. The plants that survived are feral at this point. The lawns are in bad shape. I can’t even really call them lawns anymore. “Boys, why don’t you go play on the back dirt.”

I actually stopped watering back then to save money, and as an added bonus, to eliminate the need for mowing. Then it never rained again and I stumbled into this whole “drought awareness” thing. But now I can hold my head high as I stand on the brown cracked earth in my five-thousand-degree front yard.

I care.

So, here’s the real problem. Governor Brown is mandating me, (using an Executive Order, which is capitalized to make it appear more official), to reduce my water usage by 25 percent based on what I used in 2013. Well, if I completely stopped watering everything on my property in 2013, I’m not sure I’ll be able to reduce any more than I already have. Certainly not by 25 percent.

So, for me, the accidentally ahead-of-the-curve drought-conscious citizen, will I now be penalized by an Executive Order for conserving too early? I have a bad feeling the answer is YE$$$.

If you folks at the PCWA are not so serious about the situation that you’re still letting me water my lawn, then I really don’t feel the need to comply with your Indoor Water Use Mandates, the first of which is, Limit showers to 5 minutes or less.

We can stop right there. That is quite simply impossible.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not Kramer from Seinfeld. I’m not planning on adding a garbage disposal to my shower and spending half a day in there making a salad. But the PCWA gave us a little hourglass shower timer that suction cups to the shower glass, and I can tell you it is physically impossible to complete a shower in the forty-five seconds worth of sand they’re calling five minutes.

And even if it really was five minutes, I have to take a longer shower than that. I do all my best thinking in the shower. I solve plot problems. I come up with storylines. I think of humorous anecdotes. All while in the shower. My long showers are part of my job. It’s literally (and literarily) my job to take long showers.

The PCWA is basically telling me to stop doing my job. They are trying to fire me. I take that rather personally.

And I shave in the shower, too. I cannot shave anywhere else. Once you have experienced the unbridled comfort of shaving your face in the hot shower, you can never go back to the sink. I might as well just spray carburetor cleaner on my face and rub it with a cheese grater.

In essence, Governor Brown has written an Executive Order telling me that I have to choose between growing a beard or submitting to torture. I’m not a constitutional scholar, but I believe that is a violation of my follicular rights. Or a violation of the separation of personal hygiene and state. One of those.

Now, recognizing that I require longer showers than the average non shower-thinker, I have already done my part to reduce shower times on aggregate in our house. We are only requiring the boys to shower once a month during this water crisis, whether they need to or not.

So at this point, if we’re going to achieve a 25 percent reduction from our already reduced consumption, we’re going to have to pull a Kevin Costner from Waterworld and start distilling our own pee for drinking water.

And speaking of Waterworld, if Costner’s character had a distillery that could render his pee drinkable, why didn't he just distill the seawater?

Are the people running our government here in California the same yahoos from Hollywood that couldn’t see that plot hole in Waterworld? If so, that would actually explain why we don’t have desalination plants providing us with all the fresh water we could ever hope to use. This state only has eight hundred miles of coastline. Maybe we should look into it, because we’re not going to get water from anywhere else.

Our neighbors won’t be much help. Mexico? Even if they had any water to spare, it comes with the trots, so no thanks. Arizona and Nevada? They are currently sucking on cactus leaves and thinking we’ve got it made. Oregon? Don’t make me laugh.

I can tell you, having lived in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the people of Oregon are going to shoot at us long before they give us any of their water. They are very jealous of our weather, and rightfully so. It has been raining continuously there for the last two hundred years. We can’t trade them sunshine. Water is all they have. They won't give it up without a fight.

So, that’s where I stand, PCWA and Governor Brown. I stand in my shower. And until you’re willing to tell us we need to stop watering the outside decorations, or willing to build some desalination plants, I’m not willing to quit my job or grow a beard for you.

You can take my shower when you pry it from my warm, pruned hands.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

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My Water is Being Flushed Down the Toilet

I must have been at the peak of boredom (if boredom can even have peaks… was I at the valley of boredom?) a few months ago, because I actually read my water bill. Normally, I look at the dollar amount, gauge its reasonableness with a highly complex and intricate formula that mostly involves the question, “Does that sound right?”, and then I pay it.

For some reason, I actually read the charts and graphs on the August/September bill and was amazed to find out that we used an average of 772 gallons per day.

ALMOST 800 GALLONS A DAY?

That seems excessive, to say the least. How is that even possible? That’s probably like nine or ten Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth, or, to put it in more understandable suburban terms, about seven billion 16-ounce Starbucks travel mugs.

Back in August and September, we Californians had no idea we were in for the driest winter we’ve had since the dawn of time, so I was watering my lawns dutifully, to keep up the ridiculous social convention of green grass being more attractive than brown dirt.

I stopped watering my lawn around the end of September, unwittingly ending up on the cutting edge of the self-righteous, drought-conscious Northern California homeowner scene. Now in February, after we have received roughly 0.0 inches of rain in December and January, I can point to my dying, brown, lawn-like substance with pride and say I cared about the environment and our precious natural resources long before you people with green lawns did. The truth is, I really stopped watering because I don’t like mowing. I just sort of stumbled into this whole self-righteous thing.

Curious about our water usage without all the annoying lawn care, I checked the December/January bill and I was shocked. We used an average of 292 gallons per day, which seemed a little high still, but what I was shocked to see was that the dollar amount of the new bill was only 36% less than the old one even though we cut our water usage by 62%.

How does that work, Placer County Water Agency? If I did my math correctly, based on your billing logic, if we stopped using water altogether you would still want $47 from us.

We have three young boys, all of whom play sports and wear clothes to school, and my wife owns nearly a third of all the clothes in North America, so our washing machine has basically been running continuously for nine years now. That makes the 300 gallons per day number a little more believable, but it still seemed high to me. Until last night.

I had just put the kids to bed and my wife was out of the house - wearing the third or fourth outfit of the day - so I was firmly planted on the couch in front of the TV, no doubt watching some manly show about wrestling alligators or blowing things up. The boys’ bathroom sits upstairs above the living room, and when the toilet flushes, it sounds like a medium-sized waterfall in the wall behind the TV.

When I heard what was probably the fourth flush in as many minutes, I started to pay attention. When I heard the estimated ninth flush, I began counting. Knowing which one of our children it was – I will not divulge the culprit’s identity here, to spare him from any future horrific embarrassment should his senior prom date happen upon this column - I decided not to intervene, even though nine flushes is obviously overkill for any bodily function a kid can produce. I was treating it more as an experiment than anything, mostly out of curiosity at just how many times one boy felt it necessary to flush, but also because I really didn’t want to drag my lazy butt off the couch.

At flush number twenty-four I got off the couch. He was up to twenty-six when I made it up the stairs. I’m not making this up. (Neither the flush count, nor the fact that I’m so old it took me two flushes to get up the stairs.)

I politely inquired as to what he was doing.

“Pooping.”

“Yes, I can see that. Why are you flushing so much?”

“I don’t want to clog the toilet.”

Hmm… While I appreciated his motives, I didn’t really know which subject to tackle first – The fact that the wipe/flush/wipe/flush/wipe/flush method, while effective in preventing toilet clogs, is not the most economical or conservative approach; or the fact that if you have to wipe twenty-seven  times, you might want to improve your overall technique.

Like so much of my really good parenting advice, I decided to put it off until later.

“OK, well, we obviously need to have a talk about pooping, but let’s do it tomorrow, OK?”

“OK dad. Goodnight”

“Goodnight, son.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“I like to have a clean butt.”

“We all do, buddy. Goodnight”

I walked back downstairs shaking my head. At least now I know how we manage to use 300 gallons of water a day. My son just accounted for half of it.

As summer approaches in the great parched state of California, we’re definitely going to need to work on more drought-friendly wiping methods around here. Not only will that help everyone water-wise, but it should also help our toilet paper budget tremendously.

Running out of water is one thing, but if my boys keep going the way they are now with the toilet paper, we might be forced to re-purpose that water bill, if you know what I mean.

Ouch.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Drought Tolerance

Here’s the thing about water: We have the same amount of water on the earth that we’ve always had, and always will have. It does not evaporate into space. It changes forms and locations, but it doesn’t disappear. What does that mean to you? For one thing, it means at this time in the history of the earth, every drop of water that you drink has probably been pee at some point. Fun, huh?

Water changes locations all the time, and currently there is none in California. Whatever the hell a “Polar Vortex” is, there seems to be one gripping the entire country except California. It has basically been spring here in California since fall. We are apparently just going to completely skip winter. With no rain or snow to speak of, we are in the midst of the driest winter months ever since they started keeping track of these sorts of things.

We took a drive out to Folsom Lake near Sacramento this weekend to gawk at the astounding lack of water. At one point in December the lake level was dropping one foot per day, and it is looking a lot more like a mud puddle at this point than a reservoir. The marina docks are all sitting in the dirt on the bottom of the lake. We went out to see the remains of an old gold-mining town that was abandoned and flooded when the Folsom Dam was built to create the lake. We even walked across a really nice old stone bridge that has been uncovered, still in great shape after 60 years underwater. There are multi-million dollar homes up on the hills above the lake that now boast the impressive view of looking down on hordes of tourists walking around a dry lakebed.

Never afraid of making a profit from catastrophe, the state of California was charging $12 per car to come view the horror. Based on the parking lot traffic we saw while we were there I would estimate the state made well over $20,000 that afternoon, minus the salaries of the two gate personnel and the upkeep cost on the ONE functional port-a-potty at the entire lake. Nice job, California.

Things are looking bleak for The Golden State, which is great news for me.

As you probably know, I hate lawn care. I don’t like spending my time mowing and trimming, and I hate spending my money on water to attempt to keep my lawn green and therefore requiring more mowing and trimming. It’s a vicious cycle. It rained about an eighth of an inch in late September, and that was the day I shut my automatic sprinklers off for the summer. I foolishly thought we would have more rain during the fall and winter months. By the end of October my wife was asking me to turn them back on, but I refused, saying, “It has to start raining at some point.”

I was wrong. I think it has rained once since then. By mid-November my lawn was so yellow it made the house look abandoned. I was afraid my neighbors would stage an intervention. It was looking like I might be forced into action by the ridiculous social convention of year-round green lawns, but then I got really lucky and everyone noticed that we hadn’t been getting any rain or snow. By mid-December all anyone could talk about was how dry it had been. Excellent! I’m off the hook.

This is a double boon for me. Not only am I going to have a summer of almost zero lawn care, as the impending drought forces all of us to give up watering, but I can be smug about it, too. If anyone comments on my dead grass I can look down my nose at their green lawn and say something like, “Still watering, huh. I guess some of us care about preserving our natural resources more than others.”

This whole thing is making me look like I was drought-conscious before it was cool, and that’s what it’s all about, right?

The good news – besides of course my lawn care reprieve and impending smugness – is that the water is out there somewhere, and it will eventually return to California. The bad news, at least in the short term, is that we might not have any food later this year.

Bummer.

Food concerns aside, luckily quite a bit of the nation’s beer is brewed in other states, so we should be all right there. A big thanks to Colorado, Missouri, and Wisconsin. You guys are really saving our bacon out here! Triple win for me, since I will have more time to drink beer this summer due to the cessation of lawn care activities. Droughts are fun!

While it appears we’ll be fine beer-wise, you wine drinkers out there might want to stock up now. I don’t mean to be a doomsayer, but it’s looking like the only thing the folks in the Napa Valley will have to irrigate the grapes with this summer is their own pee.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Hydration of a Thirsty Nation

“Why is everyone so thirsty all of a sudden?” That’s what my grandpa used to ask me. “Nowadays everyone carries around their own personal bottle of water. They all must be really thirsty.” He was amazed and amused by the sight of it.

Nation-wide thirst has, indeed, increased dramatically in my lifetime. Think back to when you were a kid. Do you remember anyone ever walking around holding their own personal bottle of water? No. Because personal water bottles didn’t exist. Somewhere along the line – in the late 1980’s, I think – companies first produced the portable plastic personal bottle of water, and we have been a nation on the verge of dehydration ever since.

The invention of the personal bottle of water was huge -- bigger than the cell phone, probably -- because it spans all the generation gaps. Every single man, woman, and child needs their own bottle of water today. Everyone from the eighty-year-olds to the one-year-olds can be seen fighting off imminent dehydration with their very own 0.75-liter Evian life insurance policy. This was a massive double-play for beverage companies, because not only does the target market consist of everyone, but they had finally figured out how to get people to pay for something that was otherwise free. That really made my grandpa laugh.

I began to realize how truly water-crazy we have become when my kids started playing organized sports. Every kid on my son’s soccer team arrived at the first practice with their own water bottle. Some kids had those Thermos-type one-gallon jugs with the flip-top spout. They played soccer for about three minutes and then had a ten-minute water break. When I was a kid playing soccer we practiced for an hour and then you were more than welcome to go find a drinking fountain somewhere if you were thirsty. On game days, the parents brought orange slices. You weren’t allowed to leave the field to find a drinking fountain, so you got any liquid you might need from the orange pulp.

With my son’s team, they cancelled a few of the practices because it was too hot. I was left thinking, “Are they actually worried anyone will overheat? Between all the players and coaches they will have 400 gallons of water within arm’s reach. They could take what they don’t drink and fill a small swimming pool if they get too hot.” Oh, well.

And, don’t even get me started on T-ball. If there was ever a sport that requires as little movement as possible on the player’s part, it’s T-ball. I have never seen any of the players actually break a sweat, yet our entire squad comes equipped with giant personal tankards of liquids. We are constantly rotating kids off the field in the middle of games to go pee, and the floor of our dugout is like a Dasani minefield.

And not content with just plain old water anymore, many parents opt for sports drinks to keep their kid’s electrolyte levels acceptable. I know the electrolyte levels of us kids was always a big concern for my folks.

The shift in our perceived water requirements is a strange thing. Back in the day, if you were ever thirsty when you were outside playing, you found a drinking fountain or a hose. Nowadays, moms and dads actually follow their children around the playgrounds and parks with bottles of water, forcing them to drink water even if the kids protest that they’re not thirsty. On any given 70-degree day you’ll hear, “You have to drink some water, Billy. It’s hot out here!” Many of today’s moms may not believe this, but farmers used to work all day in the fields, only drinking water at meal times. Many of today’s moms also may not believe that pee is supposed to be yellow, not clear.

I used to work with a guy who was a coffee drinker and a smoker. He had been with the company for years running one of the machines out in the shop. One day I wandered over to his workstation holding a cup of water. He asked me what I was drinking, and when I told him, he said, “Huh. I can’t remember the last time I had a drink of water.” He was dead serious. He thought about it for a while and decided that he hadn’t had so much as a sip of plain old water in over 10 years. Wrap your head around that one, Mommy!

My wife is one of “today’s moms” who feels the need to keep herself and our three boys maximally hydrated. I am starting to think an over-abundance of water in the body sort of feeds on itself like a crack addiction, because no matter how much water we give him, Boy Number Two is constantly complaining about being thirsty. He is also the one that needs to go to the bathroom every eight minutes. Strangely enough, he is also the one who has had the most potty-training issues and nighttime “accidents.”

It occurs to me that our potty training might go a little smoother if our boys weren’t experiencing a level-nine bladder emergency every time they need to pee. In fact, I’m not sure that any of them have ever had just a simple urge to pee. It’s always been a zero-to-sixty rush to the toilet to unleash a fire hose.

They say the human body is about 60% water. I’d ask them to re-check. I’ll bet these days we’re more like 80%. And I’ll bet my boys are pushing 95%.

There goes one of them now, sprinting to the bathroom.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


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