Journal of a Sabbatical

January 5, 2000

water - not

Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

MRFRS cats and more at Adopt Homeless Paws

Today's Reading: Winter from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, Wild Fruits by Henry David Thoreau, Writings and Drawings by John James Audubon

I'm sure there's a Zen koan about washing dishes with no water. There must be. There's certainly a whole lot of weird karma going on. And what's with all the black cats? Is there a population explosion among black cats?

I knew it was going to be a weird day as I was sitting on the edge of the bed coughing and clearing my throat while I put on my socks. The phone rang. It was Kendra asking me to bring water. Water? The cat shelter has no water. Broken water main down the street someplace. I fumble around in the recyclable trash until I find a couple of suitable containers and fill 'em up. I throw a couple of extra shirts into my briefcase (which I now use as a camera bag and all purpose tote for birding supplies, clean shirts, cleaning supplies, and whatever - far cry from transparencies of quality metrics). I do my eat a bagel and drink coffee in the car trick on the way.

As always I invite Chloe to escape when I open the door, and she ignores the invitation. I offer her some coffee, which she accepts. Giggle Girl is on the other other side of the room cleaning a cage when she hears me talking to Chloe and totally disbelieves that Chloe drinks coffee. She demands to see this for herself. I slosh a little more coffee onto the lid and set it front of Chloe while Giggle Girl watches closely. Chloe ignores the coffee. She just won't do it while Giggle Girl is watching. I leave the coffee cup on the credenza and assess the situation. After all, we have work to do.

Several people have brought jugs of water. Definitely not enough to wash dishes though. And it looks like we will be overwhelmed with dirty laundry soon. I volunteer to take the laundry to the laundromat. Kendra and Giggle Girl load it into plastic bags and Giggle Girl helps carry it down to my car. It would be interesting to weigh it. There's a lot - to understate it slightly.

I change the money Kendra gave me into quarters and start loading washers. I fill up three of those big commercial washers. I brought a brand new box of detergent and a bottle of bleach with me. The hatch through which one loads detergent and bleach is on top of the washer. It's a reach for me. The box of detergent is heavy and I clumsily dump more than I meant to in the first washer. The other two I do OK because the box is easier to manipulate. I rule out laundromat attendant as a possible career option - I'd need the height of a flight attendant to load these machines properly.

With the washers safely spinning around, I drive back to the shelter to see what else I can do and return the detergent and bleach. Kendra is heating water in the coffee pot to wash dishes and litter boxes. Only the really dirty litter boxes are getting washed, most of them can just be dumped, scraped, and refilled. We need more water though. Especially more drinking water for the cats. Kendra suggests that since Shirley's gallery is right downtown, hence near the laundromat, that I get some water there. I suggest calling first so it's not a frightening panic when I appear in my bleach shirt carrying a trash bag full of empty bottles. I mean that could frighten the art patrons, not to mention Shirley. Chloe comes over to the sink to drink hot water from the tap, one of her favorite things. She is bitterly disappointed. Kendra and Giggle Girl gather as many bottles as they can find and I'm off.

When I drive past the hole in the street where the water main is broken, I notice the workers are now kneeling on the ground in a circle peering into the hole. This can't be good news.

Back at the laundromat I unload two of the washers and fire up the enormous quarter-eating dryers. The washer into which I put too much soap has stopped dead with suds everywhere. Suds are oozing out the top - the little trap door where you add the detergent is floating on suds. Oops. I ask the attendant what to do. She says just run it again and it'll spin out. I try to do that but it won't budge. And the door won't open for me to remove the wash. She goes to the back room and gets a wire thing that looks like one of those things you break into cars with. She jiggles and jimmies and whatever with the wire and finally gets the door open. We load the wash into another washer and she runs it through on the house.

While the dryers are drying and the washer is washing, I put the sack of empty bottles over my shoulder and walk over to the gallery. Shirley has just stepped out and the woman I talk to knows nothing about my arrival. She has however heard of Shirley's involvement with the MRFRS and at first suggests that I wait for Shirley to return. She thinks better of it and asks "What was it you needed again?" "Water for the cats to drink. There's a broken water main on Bridge Rd." OK. She directs me to the bathroom, where I start filling jugs in the sink. That works pretty well with the gallon, half gallon, and quart jugs, but the two liter soda bottles just don't fit in the sink.

As I'm stumbling down the brick sidewalks laden with water jugs and a trash bag full of empty soda bottles, two tourists in search of coffee pass by. One points out the Starbucks on the corner but the other exclaims "I don't like Starbucks coffee it all tastes burnt." I tell them the coffee is way better at Fowle's, and point out the Fowle's sign a block and a half away. They thank me and head for Fowle's. They can go home to wherever they're visiting from and tell everybody how they discovered this great coffee shop on the recommendation of a bag lady in a really weird green shirt with lots of bleach stains.

I stash the water and the empty bottles in the car trunk. It's gotten really cold all of a sudden, but not cold enough for the water to freeze yet. A fierce wind has come up out of the northwest making the 34 degree temperature feel more like 9. The inside of the laundromat feels like a sauna. The attendant tells me all about every cat she's ever known. The final washer load finishes. I load up the final dryer, check how much time remains on the first two dryers and conclude I have enough time to get some coffee. I walk over to Fowle's, still in my shirtsleeves as the sauna-like laundromat climate has made me forget the wind chill factor. Oddly, I don't feel that cold until I'm almost back to the laundromat with my large dark roast to go.

There's not enough time to go back to the shelter and do anything useful before the dryers finish so I sit with my coffee and watch the weather on tv. When the weather dude on one channel finishes, the only other customer in the place asks if I mind if he changes to some other channel that has a five day forecast. This guy knows which channel shows weather at which times. I'm impressed. We watch the five day forecast together. One of those little moments of community that only happen in New England.

I manage to get all the clean laundry and the full water jugs back to the shelter and have people help me drag it all up the stairs. I sit down to rest for a second and try to pet Chloe. She puts her ears back. I guess she's really disappointed about not being able to drink hot water out of the tap. Nice clean cool water in a bowl just doesn't do it for her today. I fold the laundry and stack it on the conference table as there's no place to put it in the linen closet. There would be some room except that Midgee is stretched out across about half of the bottom shelf. She loves the linen closet.

Where I found a second wind to photograph new cats, I have no idea. Must have been the extra hit of Fowle's coffee. I even had enough energy to look for birds afterwards, but with the intense northwest wind not a creature was stirring except two northern harriers and a black-capped chickadee. On the way home, I noticed the water main men were still kneeling on the pavement gazing reverently into the hole.