puddle water

I enjoy a good puddle as well as the best of 'em.  I LOVE a good puddle! Nothin' beats a good puddle, if you know what I mean.  A good puddle of an excellent vintage just can't be beaten.  But this past weekend, the puddle situation was gettin' a little ridiculous.

Let me start at the beginning...

A week ago today, we had the blizzard.  Yup, the Great Blizzard of 2014, it was.

Okay, maybe it wasn't all that great.  To be honest, it really wasn't great in any kind of way. Certainly not great as in good and not even great as in size but it did dump about a foot of snow on us and knock out the power for several hours.  That, and the fact that it arrived when we were all gettin' anxious for spring, earned it the name, The Great Blizzard of 2014.  At least, it did at my house.

Anywho...  No sooner was the blizzard over but the weatherpeeps were warnin' us of another storm. "Another one!" I cried but to no avail.  The weatherpeeps totally ignored my cries and sent it anyway.

Late Friday afternoon, it began with a little smatterin' of rain, here and there.  By sometime on Saturday, the raindrops were all fully present and accounted for.  It rained Saturday night and then all day Sunday.  It rained and it rained and it rained.  "Enough already!" cried I but again, to no avail. It just kept on rainin'.

Because of the rain, there were puddles EVERYWHERE.  Now like I said before, I love a good puddle.  I do.  I really, really do but the best time to enjoy a fine puddle of water is immediately after you've been enjoyin' a sunpuddle.  You get up from your nap in the sunpuddle and walk over for a sip or two of puddle water.  But the thing is, it's pretty hard to have a nap in a sunpuddle when the sun has been driven off by all the rain and all the sunpuddles are filled with water and really, are nothin' more than puddles.

Ahhh...  the sweet taste of puddle water.  Cool and refreshing with just a hint of outdoorsy flavour.  Like a fine, vintage wine.  EXCELLENT.

One day, I'm gonna find a way to bottle up puddle water and sell it on E-Bay or somethin'.  I've been tryin' to figure out how to do it but so far, I've been stuck at the bottling stage. You see, the best part of puddle water is the fact that it comes in a puddle.  You put it in a bottle and you've got bottled water.  Not the same thing.  Not the same thing at all.  Not nearly as good.  Back to the drawing board for the puddle water factory for me, I should think.  MOUSES!

But I digress....

It was still rainin'.  Yup, it rained all day and it rained all night and then on Monday, it rained some more.  I seriously expected the peeps to start buildin' an arc or somethin', it was rainin' that much.

But the peeps were too worried to be buildin' arcs and whatnot.  The peeps were worried about tables.

Remember that ol' water table that lurks underneath my house?  I blogged all about it in my post, "tables of water," when it was threatenin' to rear its ugly head a little while ago.

So the hole in the basement was lookin' a little damp early on in the weekend but by Sunday night, it was containin' some water.  The water table was makin' an appearance.  By Monday, it was gainin' strength.  Higher and higher it crept until by Monday night, it was only three inches from the basement floor.

I gave it a full inspection as only a cat like myself can do.  I waved a paw over the hole in the floor and allowed the aroma of the water to waft toward my nose.  "MOUSES!" I cried. "This water has no aroma at all.  It's nothin' but water.  No puddle aspect to it, whatsoever.  What good is that?" I asked the peep but she ignored me.  Rude, I know, but I'm givin' her the benefit of the doubt 'cause I think she was worried we might be in for an indoor swimmin' pool... AGAIN.

But by late Monday night, somethin' miraculous happened. The rain, durin' the day, had been goin' back and forth between rain and freezin' rain and ice pellets and whatnot but by Monday night, it was lookin' like snow.  SNOW!

Yesterday mornin' I awoke and the ground was covered in white stuff as far as the eye could see. Not a lot of it.  Not enough for any sort of shovellin' to be required but it was...  EVERYWHERE.

Personally, I was not overly impressed with the arrival of the white stuff.  I figured it was some sort of cruel April Fool's Day joke on the part of Mother Nature.  Don't mess with Mother Nature, they say. DON'T MESS WITH NERISSA THE CAT, is what they should say.  The white stuff was interferin' with the spring programming of my Bird TV, not to mention the complete and utter lack of sunpuddles for nappin'.

But believe it or not, the peeps were happy about the white stuff.  The fact that the weather had turned colder and the rain was now snow meant that the table of water was no longer bein' fed from above and would be able to sink back into the underbelly of the Earth and leave my house alone.  Of course, it also meant that there would be no indoor swimmin' pool for this year but really, I think that's sort of a good thing.

I am now currently awaitin' the return of the sun and some sunpuddles.  Perhaps if I have a nice little nap in a sunpuddle or two, inspiration will strike and I'll be able to figure out how to bottle up those puddles 'cause I just know that when all that snow melts, there will be puddles galore.

After I figure out the bottlin' aspect, I'll be lookin' for investors. Any takers?  My bottled puddle water is gonna be the best thing since sliced bread, for sure.  Maybe even better 'cause you know...  cats don't eat bread and I, Nerissa the Cat, am a cat and that, my friends, is a fact.

tables of water

Truth be told, I've had a couple of nervous peeps on my paws the last week or so.  I did my best to console them.  I purred a lot.  I let them rub my tummy.  I purred some more.  I let them give me chin tickles and behind-the-ear scritches.  I purred even more.  I practically purred myself out!  Yup, that's how much I purred but still, the peeps remained nervous.

Luckily, the nervousness has subsided...  as has the water.  I believe the two are connected.

It all started when Peep #2 came up from the basement and mentioned that there was water in the sump pump.  Just what is a sump pump, you ask?  Who knows.  It's that thing in the corner of the laundry room in my basement.  I usually avoid it, myself but from what I've seen, it's a big hole in the floor.  Don't know WHY the peeps wanted a hole in the floor but they did.  MOUSES!

Anywho...   the big hole in the floor was fillin' up with water.  From what I understood, this was not good.  Apparently, all that snow Santa brought at Christmas started to melt when Mother Nature whipped up the January thaw.  Then, on top of the meltin' snow, it rained.  All that melted snow and rain went into the ground.  Down and down it went until it met up with something called a water table.

Now this is where it gets interesting.  Apparently, under my house, is a table made of water.  Weird, huh?  That's what I thought, too!  Why would anyone make a table out of water?  It's a very strange concept, indeed.

Water doesn't provide a very firm surface so it's a very odd material with which to make a table. Wood is usually used.  That makes sense.  Wood is good and hard.  You put a plate on a wooden table and it sits right there on that table.  You put a plate on a pool of water and...  well...  well it's gonna sink.  That's 'cause water isn't firm like wood or stone or glass or even plastic.  All of those are far better materials with which to make a table.

Now some things can float in water.  I know this from experience.  Now that I think about it, I remember that three or four years ago, that ol' water table got even higher than it did last week and came right up over the basement floor.  It's true.

And do you know what else is true?  Litter boxes are capable of floating in water.  Yup, they float just like little boats and sail around the basement when the basement floods.  I didn't sail in any of 'em, though. In order to do that, I would have had to have gotten into one and that would have necessitated my wadin' through the cold, icy water and my paws would have gotten wet.  I really don't like havin' wet paws.  I could have waited at the bottom step for a litter box to dock and climbed in from there but...  well...  the litter boxes never docked at the staircase.  Also, I didn't have a ticket.  I think one needs a ticket to sail in a boat.  At least, that's what I've heard.  MOUSES!

Furniture, however, does not float.  Neither do appliances.  They just sit in the water.  They just sit there gettin' wet and sometimes, they break.  Peeps lost a freezer the last time this water table reared its ugly head.  They were pretty annoyed, if I remember correctly.  The old little freezer was okay but the big one they had had for only a year went caput.  Apparently, freezers are like cats.  They don't like wet paws, either.

Peepers tells me that the water table has actually come up above the basement floor three times in the fourteen or fifteen years they have lived here.  That table is down there, lurking and just waiting to cause trouble.  Kind of sounds a little like Nosey Neighbour Cat, if you ask me.

Yesterday, that Old Man Winter came back and shoved Mother Nature and her little thaw out of the way.  The colder temperatures mean no more rain.  Oh yeah, sure, we happen to have a blizzard warnin' for today but at least it will be snow comin' down and not rain.  Plus, none of that snow will be melting 'cause it's just way too cold for snow to melt unless it happens to be a flake you've caught on your tongue and it melts in your mouth but quite frankly, it's too cold out there for me to be catchin' the flakes.  I'm stayin' inside today where I'm nice and warm and snug as a bug in a rug. NOT THAT WE HAVE ANY BUGS!  Well...  Nosey Neighbour Cat sometimes bugs me but that's a different kind of bug, I think.

The peeps are quite pleased that it's cold again.  That ol' table of water is droppin' now.  Yup, they can see it gettin' lower and lower and lower in the big hole in the floor of the basement.  The water table is headin'...  south?  No, down.  Yes, most definitely down.

But I have to wonder why anyone would build a house on top of a table made of water.  Well, the peeps weren't responsible for that.  They're responsible for a lot of the foolishness that goes on in my house but not for that.  The people who built the house are the ones who would be responsible for this particular foolishness.  Yes, they really should have known that water simply does not provide a solid surface upon which a house can sit.

From what I've heard, when the basement was originally dug, water started pouring in.  A neighbour on another street said he saw it happenin'. I don't think he was lyin'.  I think he was snoopin' around and whatnot after dark but good thing he was 'cause now we know more about this water table business.

Had I been in charge, I would have stopped digging right there and then and filled in the hole before startin' over but not diggin' down so deeply the second time.  That's what other people livin' around here did when encounterin' the same issue.  But that's not what happened.  Instead, the water drained away and the people buildin' the house just kept on buildin'.  Maybe they were thinkin' of puttin' in an indoor swimmin' pool or somethin'.  Could be.  Stranger things have happened.

But there is a moral to this story and the moral is this.  Don't make tables out of water.  'Nough said.  MOUSES!