apparently there was this situation with our water, or, i saved lives by spending $40 at the StuffMarts

Last Friday, I called my friend K from up the street because her family was planning to join my family for our Friday night tradition, Pizza And A Movie. This is neither here nor there, but I was surprised that instead of talking about olives and mushrooms and peppers and stuff, she wanted to talk about water.

Awesome.

I was bracing myself for the sort of conversation that The Mister and I had after he finished reading the Comprehensive History of Salt a few years ago, and he was just so taken with salt that he would talk and talk and talk and talk about it until I wanted to bury my head in the salt shaker and die.

It seemed that our village had the bad kind of e Coli in the water. And to make life superamazing and ultra-awesome, we had a YOU MUST BOIL YOUR WATER OR SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE (or week) POOPING YOUR BRAINS OUT WITH THE POISONING.

That's so odd, I said to me, you'd think the Village People (and yes, that does include the Phone-Conversation-About-The-Goat Lady) would have told us we need to boil our water.

And also not wash our dishes.

Or laundry.

Or bathe.

But maybe I was just over-thinking the situation.

Nobody came knocking on our door. Nobody came around with a letter, or information of any kind. What *did* they do?

THEY LEFT A NOTICE ON THE DOOR OF THE GAS STATION. That's just what they did. Somebody mentioned that they might have seen something about some sort of water issue on the news.

The gas station. And the only reason I know this is because before I could go to the StuffMarts to BUY WATER SO WE DIDN'T DIE, I had to put gas in my supersweet mini-Coopervan.

Village People = FAIL.

I loaded up the short people, and bought 20ish 2.5 gallon jugs of water for us, and my in-laws, my friend K from up the street, her parents, and the three elderly people who live on my street and who don't really get out much.

The more I thought about the situation, the more infuriated I became. There are maybe 100 houses in my village that have municipal water. And that's a stretch. The Village People couldn't get their act together for one itty bitty problem, run to Off.ice Max, pay the $7 to get 100 copies made, and drop by those 100 houses to inform us?

It gets better. The notice on the gas station door said that the Village People had known FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH that there was e Coli in our water. Since October 1, 2009, the notice read. Must be we just had the COMPLETELY NORMAL KIND of e Coli, that is until October 28, when THE ACTUALLY BAD KIND of e Coli showed up. AND THEN!!!!! They waited two whole days before not telling us our water was dangerous.

Not enough?

It gets more better. When the time came that the water was deemed fit for human consumption? They also kinda sorta forgot to tell us. I consulted the Googles yesterday, after dinner, and the Googles told me my water was safe, and had been safe since at least 10 o'clock that morning. THANK YOU, OH GREAT AND POWERFUL GOOGLES!!!! I got a text message tonight from a neighbor asking if I'd heard if the water was good. It had been deemed safe for a day and a half, and they had no idea.

What the bloody hell, people. I hope nobody got sick, but if someone did? I hope they sue the pants off the Village People.