Hopeful January

Well, the pump is installed, and it works great. Glee! Joy! As if that weren't enough joy, Jacob and Mamma also fixed the library and living room doors so that they actually close and installed my coat rack after two years of it sitting in a corner of the bathroom. I am so inspired by my house's new awesomeness that I actually picked up the office floor. Incredible, no?

So, Obama's in the White House now. I am very hopeful. I'll tell you what would be awesome, would be if he actually listened to the people who are petitioning him to put an organic food garden on the White House front lawn. He read Michael Pollan...now's his chance to show he really got it. And hell, what'd it cost him? He's got gardeners. If he did that, I would be very, very hopeful. Of course, if gardening gained ground as the new national fad as it would from such a thing, then there really would be a seed shortage. Well, so much better that than a food shortage. Just have to be sure to start saving seed this year!

Actually, I don't seem to have much to say.

Shiny!!

Yup, my husband rocks. For Christmas this year, he made the calls, he did the thinking, he made the measurements and calculations, and he got me the best goddamn hand deep well pump on the market, so far as he or I can tell. $1800 for a solid stainless pump from Bison. By far the most either of us has ever spent on a gift, and he's still reeling, but I consider it's well worth it. How utterly absurd to be cut off from one's own water in a power outage or blackout! And if you're going to spend the money, do it right. There were, of course, other, cheaper pumps, but Jacob didn't feel that they were cheaper enough to really compensate for the loss in quality, so he bit the bullet. That's a philosophy the two of us share, obviously, but even so, $1800 takes a bit of getting used to. He's allowed to be a bit shocky.

Me, I'm amused, because I was utterly delighted and astonished and, well, so relieved to have him take all the worry and figuring off my hands and just DO it, and the pump head, it really is beautiful...every weld is smooth as butter, and the whole thing has a lovely burnished gloss...but of course most people would not find a well pump to be a romantic or exciting gift. So gushing about my wonderful present is a little funny, as most people greet the whole thing with something akin to incomprehension. For example, a dear friends' parents, who have just finished spending who knows how much on another big screen HD TV, think that spending $1800 on a well pump when, uhhhh, it already comes out of the tap?, to be thoroughly odd. And who can blame them? I am preparing for something that we all hope will never happen. I'm just not in the least willing to gamble that blackouts and the like will never happen, and not having non-electric access to one's water strikes me as a pretty big gamble.

Anyway, there it is. I can't wait to get it installed, gleaming subtly in the center of my herb garden.