Of course, after declaring to the world that I’m calm, the universe starts poking at my Zen-ness like a woodpecker.
I came home after writing the previous blog post to discover that we had no water pressure. This confused me. Didn’t the pipa arrive at 6 a.m.? Didn’t that mean we should now have water? I asked our new portero, Pablo — or maybe it’s Pedro — whether or not anyone else in the building had pressure. He said he didn’t know. He seemed surprised that I cared so much.
I knocked on a neighbor’s door to see if he had water pressure. He said he didn’t, and he acted bored with the whole conversation, like he wanted to get back to watching TV or whatever. I was like: Does no one CARE that we have no water? Is wanting water an American ideal? How can the Mexicans, and my Argentinean neighbor, be more Zen than I am? Where in the hell are they showering? Are they not showering? I felt tears coming on again, but I pushed them back.
I decided to go to the grocery store. Maybe I was just hungry and that’s what was making me so upset. I would buy the fixings for a fabulous salad — mixed greens, turkey, panela cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, and maybe fresh sliced mango for dessert — and just wait this whole thing out.
Sure enough, I did feel better on my way back. I ate my salad and read the new Chilango magazine and devoured my mango sprinkled with coconut. A little while later, a neighbor knocked on my door. He said the whole building didn’t have water pressure because of a blockage in the pipes. Folks were coming to clean the cistern early Saturday morning and hopefully that would solve the problem. But that would mean we’d have absolutely no water — not even to wash our hands — starting at 9 a.m. and continuing until at least 1 p.m., he said.
That brings us to today. This morning, before the cleaners arrived, we filled up the toilets and our water bucket, and washed all the dishes. We’ll shower later at the gym. A friend graciously offered to let me do laundry at her house tomorrow, if our water still doesn’t work.
What else can a person do?