Shhhhcuckshhhh! That’s the sound when a faucet turns on and no water comes out.
The good news was our well had water, the bad news was the pump that brings that delicious material to us had to be replaced. The pump died Monday morning, and Terry and I managed quite well, only occasionally turning on an impotent faucet or flushing a dehydrated toilet. The pump people came Monday afternoon and gave us the report. We'd have no water until Wednesday.
I managed to cook dinner Monday night using two eight oz. bottles of Aquafina. Moving around my kitchen in bot mode, I realized I waste a lot of water while I’m cooking. I probably rinse my hands 30 times during meal prep. With a Walmart bag over the kitchen faucet to intercept my habit of turning it on, I put a washcloth soaked with water on the counter by the sink, along with a finger bowl for all finger rinsing. It worked great throughout my food prep and I’m going to do that from now on to conserve water.
Keep reading this because I have a gift for you at the end.
After dinner, Terry usually does the dishes, but Monday night he opted to skip them and we watched a great movie starring Clint Eastwood called “The Mule.” It’s such a sweet movie with two essential messages all SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) would agree with; family is the most important entity in our lives and we need to pay for our mistakes.
After the movie I went into my office to check emails and close things up for the night. That’s when I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to deal with this no-water thing.’ (The thought was definitely from Nelly (my inner child) who doesn’t like the thought of extreme change.
Realizing it was she who was pitching the complaint, we put our heads together and she talked me into making a reservation at a Portland resort hotel where we’d pretend we were far, far away on vacation. We could swim in the pool, have room service, use the toilets etc. And we’d stay until our water was back. There happened to be just such a room for us, so I booked it for one night. $189. (You need to know, $189 is way, way over our vacation budget when we ARE on vacation. This was a fake vacation but there I was plopping out $189 plus $10 in tax!)
When I woke up Tuesday morning, the “GOOD Book: Get Out Of Debt” a book I wrote about my wonderful journey out of debt, was the first thought on my mind. I woke Nelly up and said, “Listen little girl, I was tired last night and I let you in my purse and to get my credit card, just like I did back when we got into that credit card debt. We’ve lived a debt-free life for 15 years and I’m not about to start spending beyond my means just because we don’t have any water.”
It was 5:00 am when I called the hotel and spoke with a nice, young man who cancelled my reservation and didn’t charge me a late cancelation fee. I’m sure he detected my sleepy, old voice and felt a bit sorry for me. Then I went back to Nelly who was bummed that we were going to have to deal with the lack of water issue for the next two days.
“Nelly, we need to figure out how we can turn this awful feeling around.”
“Get the reservation back again. I wanna go away. I don’t want to deal with no water in our house. It’s too hard. We can’t do anything fun.!”
“We are NOT getting the reservation back. That’s not what we want. The main point is $189 is out of our budget and next month, when that statement comes, it’d be that joy-of-the-purchase vs the-agony-of-the-charge. Remember that horrible, old feeling we had way back when we were in debt and we’d get those credit card statements? Besides, we’re going to have the pump bill to pay.”
“Oh big whoop, we have a savings for that. Call ‘em back, let’s go to the resort! I don’t want to deal with NO WATER!”
“Nelly, you’ve used the verb “deal” three times and that’s what we need to change so we can have a change of heart.”
“Huh.”
“You said, ‘I don’t want to “deal” with having no water.”
“So?”
“Well, what if we changed the verb deal to the verb play? We could make this positive with our words.”
“We get to play with having no water? How?”
“Let’s pretend we’re camping and we have to get water from the river. We’ll cook the way we would if we were at a camp ground."
"Yeah, we’ll pretend the Tracey’s house (next door neighbors) is the river. and we’ll ask the river people if we can use their shower."
"And just think about this tent we’re camping in! It’s better than any ol’ resort in Portland.”
The thought of playing like we were camping changed Nelly’s mind and we proceeded to truly enjoy our “camping” experience. Our pump was replaced Wednesday and we are back in water. We saved $189, we’ve had showers in our own bathroom and now Nelly wants to go out to dinner to celebrate. Her argument is, “Because we didn’t spend the money on the hotel room we now have that money to go out.”
It’s interesting how changing a verb can change our attitude. When it comes to anything you don’t want to do, why not see if you can change the verb to one that sounds fun. And ALWAYS say, “I GET to blah, blah, blah,” not “I HAVE to blah, blah, blah.”
“The GOOD Book: Get Out Of Debt” will help you meet your inner child, by seeing how I met Nelly. It took me almost three years to get out of debt, but between Nelly and me, we managed to make it fun! I'm so happy I have water, I want to give you a gift today. I'll give you the audio download for free if you buy the printed book, Just purchase the printed book and we'll watch for your order and
personally give you the audio download.
Blessings to you,
