When I lived in town, I didn't give a second thought to things like electricity and running water. Since I've lived out here in the wilderness, I've learned not to take those things for granted. Not that there's anything I can do about it, of course. I either have the amenities or I don't, and today, all day, I had no water.

It was working when I got up in the middle of the night for the usual reasons, but not working by 8:30 am. My first thought was that the landlord was doing some work and it would be back on in an hour. When it got to be 10:00 I called his house, which if you'll recall shares the same well as mine. His wife said she had already called him home from his job site.

And that was the last I heard from them all day. I saw his truck going in and out, so I knew he was working on it. In the meantime, I was finding ways to do without running water. Luckily, I have bottled water brought in for just such emergencies, but I don't like using expensive water for things like rinsing off the breakfast dishes.

The hours crept by, and I muddled through the best I could, finally remembering that I had a bottle of hand sanitizer in the medicine cabinet. Since I'm a compulsive hand washer, that came in, uh, handy. It's no substitute for vigorous scrubbing with soap and water, but it's enough to relieve my mind somewhat.

At 6:30 pm, I finally had a visit from my landlord. He said he'd tried everything he knows how to do (he's a plumber, remember), and the problem was something else, something he couldn't do. Not the pump or the pipes, in other words, but the well itself. So he was going to try to get someone to come in first thing in the morning, but in the meantime we were high and dry.

Then at 8:00 he came back and said that he had rerouted the pipes (his and mine) to draw from the well next door. That well serves a property he also owns, so he wasn't stealing someone else's water. The water pressure was lower than I'm used to, but I asked if there were any restrictions on how much I could use. No, he told me, use as much as I could get.

Since I didn't know when the water would be turned off again tomorrow, or for how long, I immediately went into survival mode. Well, sort of. I shaved and took a shower. If I can't do those things in the morning, at least I've done them tonight. With luck, though, tomorrow will be the normal, uneventful day I was planning for today. I know it will happen sooner or later.