Whatever Floats Your Boat.

Weather is a funny thing. We have been experiencing a drought, but that all came to an abrupt end last week. Rains came and made up for lost time. Now I am not saying we had a flood of biblical proportions, but being that it is Colorado, I am sure that someone loaded up their boat with two dime bags of every variety of marijuana known to man. The rising waters  got so bad that my wife mumbled that she would like to kill me in my sleep, hollow out my carcass for a boat, and call it Noah's Mark.

It was not long until the rumors of impending doom started circulating. I heard from an absolutely credible source, the internet, that our water supply was contaminated. I called the city government and they denied it, but suggested that if I was worried I could drink bottled water or boil the tap water before consuming it. Now, I am not normally paranoid, but I thought that it would not hurt to get a few bottles of water. I went to the store and found out there was a run on water. Sheeple and their panic. I laughed at them as I loaded up my van with 50 rolls of toilet paper and 200 bottles of water. I had to hide this from my wife because, well you know, she did not need an excuse to turn me into a canoe.

Soon we got word that our waste water treatment plant was submerged and we were stricken with a no flush order. This put us in a panic. No flushing, no washing dishes, no showers or doing laundry. What to do? First, I taught the boys to pee off the back porch. Did not take much coercing, the 2 year old thought this was the best thing since Disney themed diapers. Next I had to think about how to deal with the other biological waste issue. A neighbor mentioned that if kitty litter was good enough for cats, it was good enough for people. It sounded good so I tried it. It was not working at first. In the first place, the kitty boxes kept breaking under my weight, and secondly, the cat nearly scratched my back to pieces when I tried to use her box. Then reason prevailed and I came up with a plan. I constructed something that I called  "My totally bitchin, 2x4 - Home Depot bucket - kitty litter $h*tter"

Now that I had our immediate needs met, one of the oil companies decided to donate the use of porta- potties which they had set up around the neighborhood. Pretty soon it became evident that there was such a thing as "Flood Crisis Economics". Even in a podunk town like ours, you can see that there are the "Haves" and the "Have Nots". Soon the redneck elite had rented their own porta-potties. The local news highlighted some people who are actually embellishing theirs, cause nothing screams Martha Stewart Living, like an upholstered outhouse.


Before long, I had to go back to the store to get other supplies, and saw they were already out of water, but sure enough they had a stack of Charmin T.P. that reached the ceiling. I asked a manager why they were hawking toilet paper when they knew we could not flush. Her face turned the color of cat meat and I got out of her face.

Now, let it not be said that my Boy Scout survival training had been lost on me. I gathered a list of essential items to save my family. A boxed set of Breaking Bad DVD's, two cartons of smokes to use for currency when the money system failed, Kevlar body armor and a Mossberg 590 riot gun to fend off looters and zombies. Oh, and 4 cases of Twinkies, cause those darned things have a great shelf life.

We were adapting, my wife figured out a method of washing dishes in buckets and we started using disposable plates as much as possible. After a couple of days however we had a new problem. Maybe it was the fact that the sewers were backing up, maybe it was rotting debris in the flood plane, which by the way turned out to be about 300 yards from the house. In reality it was none of the above. We all just needed a shower. Our solution? Bathe in the kiddie pool. In retrospect, it may have been better if I had waited until dark because the neighbors were horrified at the sight of a fat yeti singing and soaping up on the back porch. (By the way, the neighbors are equally disturbed if you wait until dark, and stand naked in the back yard, shaving your head under a water hose in the middle of a lightning storm.)

Eventually the rain stopped and we had sunshine again. It was only then that we realized how bad it really was. We could not leave town, because all the roads were either closed or washed out completely. Here is a video just a few hundred yards from my house:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201117583674263&l=5938359666390599106

 Despite all that has happened, our family is actually quite fortunate, as we are blessed to have people reaching out to us. We have had several families invite us over to shower, wash clothes and have a meal. We are very grateful, because at best we are inconvenienced. Many others are homeless. within 1 mile of us, over 200 homes are being condemned due to contamination or outright destruction.

Got Milk?

It has been 124 days since I lost my job, which amazingly enough is exactly the number of times I have pissed off my wife for being at home all day. I have tried to figure a way to hide, but it costs too much gas to ride around in the car all day, and the library has classified me as a loiterer. As it turns out, being unemployed is not nearly as enjoyable as I had remembered it. There is the obvious set of issues, like not having enough money to make the bills, not being able to afford basic necessities such as ice cream or decent coffee. There is the depression and fear. We have slashed our expenses to the bone. Still we struggle. 

A couple of weeks ago, a dairy farmer I know asked if I wanted to get out of the house for a couple of days and come visit him on the farm. It seemed like it would be interesting to learn how a dairy works, so I jumped at the chance. I went out to see the operation and as I was admiring the huge tractors, he offered to let me drive one! I was stoked. I had driven a little old tractor once, but these were much bigger and newer. I climbed up in the cab, got some instructions then went off to mow a field. It was quite large. One lap took about 20 minutes. However the sheer rush of being 10 feet in the air, choking on dust, smelling the exhaust of about 1700 head of cattle and feeling the roar of a big diesel engine beneath me was exhilarating. Before I knew it, I was singing songs. "Old MarkDonald mowed a farm...."followed by the theme song to "Green Acres." I felt like I was doing a decent job, and just as I started to regain some confidence that maybe could be a productive member of society again, THE TRACTOR BROKE! As I was turning the 8000 pound machine, it shuddered and the front tire popped off the rim. I called the farmer and he came out with another tractor and some tools and we took off the tire which turned out to just be old, so it was not really my fault. Just the same, I got sent home until it was fixed.

A day later I was summoned back to finish what I had started. Fortunately it went better this time round. The tractor did not have A/C and I had to endure the 130 degree cabin temperature. I was whining to myself about it when suddenly I had a vision, or maybe just a heat stroke induced hallucination of my uncle Kenneth laughing at me and ridiculing me about how when he was farming, the tractors did not have cabs, roofs, or windows, much less air conditioning, so I should shut my pie hole and man up.

I got the field mowed and asked if there was any other odd job I could do. The farmer was obliging and set me up with a tractor that had A/C and asked me to disc the field I had mowed earlier. This seemed like more fun, and I got to it. I started out in a section that had just had a few tons of manure, the green stuff spread all over it. I have heard it said that manure smells like money, so I must have been driving though a few million dollars. As I navigated the tractor through the bovine sewer, the cab got a lot darker. I looked out the back and side windows which were entirely coated by hundreds of thousands of flies. They were everywhere. I tried banging on the window but they were persistent. It was sort of creepy. I finished disc'ing that area and moved on. Still the flies clung to the glass. I do not know what came over me, but I lost all presence of mind and opened the door to try and wave them off with a rag. Boy howdy. Turns out the flies like air conditioning more than I do. I quickly closed the door but I now had 400 new friends who were content to hang on the ceiling and take turns flying up my nose. I got done for the day and went back home.

The next day I went to do more work in the fields. When I opened the tractor, about 200 of my friends were waiting for me, and wanting to know what I brought for breakfast. Turns out that they are big fans of continental breakfast, and they took over my zucchini muffin and tried to drink my coffee.

I  was doing a pretty good job, making good time, when suddenly the tractor lurched and seemed to get lighter. I looked out the window and saw that I had lost my disc apparatus about 50 yards back. I tried to get it reattached a pin had fallen out and it was soon apparent that I needed help. I called the farmer, who as it turns out had gone to town and he said I needed to get one of the other workers to help. Now, it might be important at this juncture to explain that possessing a working knowledge of the Spanish language is often very helpful on a farm in Colorado.  I found someone and tried to ask if he could help me. He gave me a blank stare, and so I tried to remember back to high school when I took a couple of years of Spanish.  I vaguely remembered this one word, "ayudame" which is pronounced something like 'ayeyoodahmay'. Unfortunately, I articulated it as 'eye YOU DAMN mee'. I do not know what I actually said, but the worker, looked at me and said "What da hell is wrong with you, gringo estúpido?" I did not have a good answer for him. He came and helped me get the disc attached again, then he told me he needed the tractor for a while, which I think is secret dairymen code for; "You have done enough damage for the day."