Every Village Gave Up Their Idiot...

...so they could all be together and run our town council.

Splendid.

And they're multiplying and taking over every business I deal with, it seems.

Last week, we had a few days with no water. Which was not splendid. In fact, it was quite annoying. We also had no communication about what was going on.

I found out Saturday morning, because Kevin was in fire training, and he heard it on the radio. Yes, it had finally made the news. We're not very important here, being just technically, a village of 800-and-some-odd residents. So, Friday, we had no water. Until around 6 pm, when it came on for two hours, and then it went off again.

More of the same on Saturday.

What really annoyed me was finding out later what had happened. There's a drain* here that often overflows. Because, the village being cheap doesn't do some things properly but does a shitty job and then they have to redo it, or spend a bundle cleaning up messes, later. There might be a few of you who remember my rant about them moving the sidewalk in front of our house, which used to be a good five or six feet back from the very wide street. But they ripped it up, narrowed the street and, on top of that, moved the sidewalk right down beside the road, with a slope between sidewalk and road. So, months ago when I put my back out, it was from trying to shovel off the snow that had been dumped there by plows. Because the town bylaw requires you to clear your walks. In our case, all 230 feet of walk, and now that they moved the sidewalk, 235 feet of walk.

Plus whatever the snowplow dumps after I shovel it the first time.

So, there's a drain in town that overflows. What exactly does that mean? Well, sometimes, the fire department gets called out to pump it when it's rained too much, so that the water doesn't start to mix with the sewer system. Except last week, when it was pouring, they decided not to do that. Now, part of me says, Good, they shouldn't call the fire department. Why, you ask? Because my husband is on it, they don't get paid, it isn't a fire fighter's responsibility to clean up town messes and I'm not particularly happy when my sleep is interrupted at 1 am so he can go do a town job, for free.

That's bullshit. They know they have a problem with this drain, so they should fix it.

Last week, it rained and rained, and they didn't call the fire department. A couple guys working for the village gave it a good, old college try. Things went wrong, obviously. And they turned off the water because they were afraid the supply had been contaminated.

But then they turned it back on, didn't tell us anything, and - duh! - being dinner time, we used the water. We stocked up everything.

By Saturday afternoon we were on a "boil water" advisory. Now, it's been raining again, and guess what? Kevin called to tell me that we're still on a boil water advisory, and that the water might go off again.

I just stocked up the pots on the stove. The pressure in the pipes is already off the norm. In other words, I can hear the air coming. So, I know they've turned the water off.

I am not in a good mood.

Ever since the Walkerton tragedy people are extra cautious. But you'd think that, instead of paying out the back end and spending piles of money on overtime for town employees who have to deal with this - and some of them were out pumping all night Friday night - that they'd invest in fixing the problem.

Is that too much to ask?

And don't tell me that they likely can't afford it. The village came into a bit of a windfall with energy money because of a company drilling out here. I don't want to talk about it, because we're still in a legal "situation" with the energey company, because they've been thieving the natural gas out from under our property. We're an oddity - we own our mineral rights - so this is another headache we've been trying to deal with.

Hence my remark about the idiots multiplying and working for every business we have to deal with, because the bank lost our legal documents over the buy-out of the mineral rights.

Only 9 months after they got them.

So, we have to redo them.

And then I come to my office, turn on the internet and it's down. Okay, so it's back up now, which is a good thing, because I was thinking seriously about going back to bed, getting up tomorrow, and hoping for a better start!

And those cute kittens? They think my legs are climbing posts.


I'm going to try to find my happy place.

Once I clear out the 40 emails that are in my inbox.

I hope you're all having a better day. C'mon, tell me your village idiot horror story - some business you've dealt with that makes my annoyance with the town council look petty and ridiculous. Is it mean to ask you to make me feel better by telling me you have it worse?

Sounds mean, doesn't it?

Don't forget to check out the Killer Year blog! Brett Battles is posting today.

* I'm probably using the wrong word, but I can't remember the technical term for it.