12 hours

Barring an alien invasion, the end of the world, the gas company deciding to randomly shut gas off to my neighborhood, or my plumber blowing a cog and winding up sitting on the roof of a Krispy Kreme shop shooting rubberbands at passers-by, I should have hot water in 12 hours, give or take.

I. Am. So. Ready.

I heated water on the stove last night to take a (eeeeww) "sponge bath" (well, I used a washcloth, but you kind of know what I mean). Yeah, I know, people did that years and years ago before hot water heaters were common. My mom (who grew up in a house that didn't have PLUMBING until she was in high school) has told me all about her adventures growing up in washing her hair, washing dishes, etc.

I don't want to sound like some kind of snotty ahistorical brat but...I mean, it's really nice and all that people survived like that...and I suppose when you wash that way all the time, it becomes routine and you don't think about what you're missing (or don't know what you're missing)....but dammit, I want my hot shower!

I would not survive well on one of those PBS "House" programs ("Frontier House," "1900s House"...all of those. Even "1940s House," which was designed to simulate Britain during WWII...because of fuel restrictions, the people in the house were limited to bathing in 5" of water. If I remember right, the father actually PAINTED A LINE in the bathtub to let people know how much water they could have.) Don't get me wrong - I find those programs FASCINATING. And at one time I would have thought participating in something like that was kind of cool. But, now that I've been a homeowner for 6 years, I've spent time living without:

heat (10 days in November 2004, when it turned out my furnace had a bad valve but the first guy I hired turned out to be an idiot and couldn't diagnose it correctly)

air-conditioning (a few days this summer, and a few days a couple summers ago, plus all of the brownout times we've had.)

water (when the city decided to shut our water off for a day - WITHOUT TELLING US - because a fancy-smancy new manufacturing plant ("which will employ lots of townspeople" - yeah, at minimum wage) went on-line. Other times we've had "boil orders" because the archaic water plant shut itself down)

gas (when the gas company screwed up)

electricity (both due to thunderstorms and also due to squirrels thinking transformers were a really cool place to go hang out. I was actually without electricity for well over a day, and that was when I lived in my "all electric" apartment, so I also had no heat - and that was in December 2000)

And now hot water.

And you know, every time I managed. I found workarounds. (Lots of candles in a small enclosed space like a bathroom - especially if you have a big mirror - give enough light to read and also can help keep you warm. Electric space heaters aren't cheap, but they're cheaper than hypothermia. It's possible to heat enough water to wash your hair in a large crock pot and on the stove).

But you know? It's just kind of miserable. You get used to a certain way of living, and finding workarounds...it just feels kind of, I don't know, kind of desperate and sad. And it's more time consuming - I didn't realize how much work and effort washing dishes even took when you have to heat the water on the stove first (and that would be exponentially more so if the water had to be gotten from a well or pump and brought up to the house, first).

Okay, I'll admit it - when it's not really hot out (so the lack of air conditioning becomes noticeable), having the electricity off for a little while is kind of fun...it's so quiet, it's kind of like camping but without the bugs and with enough books. But after a while - and especially at night - it gets old fast.

(Incidentally - I don't camp. I realize this is odd for someone who is a field scientist. I have friends who think nothing of going off to Costa Rica or somewhere and peeing in the woods and sleeping in a hammock swaddled in mosquito netting for months on end. Me, not so much: I like to go out and sample my forests and then come back home and have a nice warm shower and make myself a cup of hot tea while I look over the data.

Someone - I can't remember if it was one of the Viorst sisters or if it was Jackie Mason - talked about Jews not camping, and made the joke that, "My people wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. So we don't camp, now." Well, I'm not Jewish (at least, as far back as I can trace my heritage), but I'm inclined to feel the same way - I had ancestors who were "dirt farmers." They probably lived in small dark huts. They didn't have plumbing. They didn't have light other than what came from a peat fire. They were probably never warm enough, except in the height of summer, and then they would get bit by bugs. All of my ancestors worked hard to better life for their children. My parents sacrificed a lot - my dad split what inheritance money he received from the sale of his parents' property between my brother and me (when he could have bought a boat, or a nicer car than ANYONE on our street - and I lived in a wealthy town) for our education, and as it turned out, eventually to help me buy a house.

So, I'm inclined to feel - my forebears went to a lot of trouble so that at this particular point in history, I can have a nice house with most of the modern conveniences (I say "most" because I don't have a snazzy stereo system or an iPod or a Wii...and yes, I know people who think I'm living in the Stone Age because of that). So, why should I voluntarily give those up for a weekend (or longer) to go and live like one of my dirt-farmer ancestors? (And don't give me "because it's fun." Maybe for you. Not for me. I've tried camping; I don't find it "fun.") The only thing I can say about it is that it gives you a new appreciation for what you do have. (but then again, a night in a Motel Six with a cheap bed that's apparently made out of concrete, and a shower with Mystery Stains is enough to make me very very grateful to see my nice house with its good bed and lovely clean shower again)).

And yes - I realize there are billions of people on this planet who don't have hot water, EVER. Who don't even have clean water. And I do feel bad for them. I do make my monthly donation to Mercy Corps and give money in other areas when the need's pointed out to me (and when I have reasonable assurance the money won't go to bureaucrats or corrupt leaders of the country or "overhead" costs). But I can't quite bring myself to feel guilty about desiring hot water when I know much of the rest of the world doesn't have it; man makes himself the measure of all things, or however the old saying goes. And my having hot water here doesn't mean some woman in rural China is being cheated out of hot water - so often that seems to be the assumption of the guiltmongers - that because we have it good here in the West, somehow it's that someone somewhere else gets a smaller slice of the pie. And that's not necessarily true, at least not about a lot of things. (I mean- it's not like they're uprooting some poor African woman's hot water heater and bringing it here to my house).

I know the "politically correct" thing would be to feel terribly guilty about desiring hot water and maybe write an essay about how I am some kind of a "sister in suffering" with the people of the world who lack hot water now (and then shut up about it when the heater's actually installed). But, meh. I guess all I can say is: really sorry that a lot of people do live like this all the time. If I could wave a magic wand and make it not so, I would do that in a heartbeat. And I'm not dumb enough or puerile enough to believe that my having to heat water (clean water, that came out of the tap in my kitchen and didn't have to be hauled miles from the nearest spring) on my (electric and so, easy to operate) stove is in any way comparable to the experience of someone living in a remote village in the Andes.

But I still want my hot shower.