Thursdays are usually really, really long days. Amy gets to work at 7:30am, and I usually get her fruit cut up, her mid-morning healthy snacks and her morning allotment of 2 bottled waters all packaged together in her green save-the-planet reusable lunch bag (mine is black). Since I usually eat breakfast at home before leaving for work, I pack mid-morning snacks and my lunch. Amy works a mere 5-min drive from home, so she is able to return home for lunch, to let Suesse (see photo at right) out into the back yard, and to rest a little before returning back to work. I know our copious use of bottled water does not go along with the rest of the effort we put towards keeping our planet green, but we do have our reasons for that. Hanford, the city in which we live and the city which supplies the water that runs through the pipes in our house, has terrible water. I don't just mean that it tastes bad. It's awful, repugnant, disgusting, foul and repulsive in both taste and aroma. There is a lot of sulfur in the ground in this area, and that classic boiled-egg smell and flavor seeps into the water supply. It is so bad, that you are able to smell it if you walk by a house that has it's front sprinklers running. Not only is there sulfur in the water, but there is also arsenic. Isn't that what they put in rat poison? Maybe not, but it still is a bad thing to ingest, right? We get this notice in the mail every year, reporting that the arsenic found in our water is above the recommended level by the FDA or whichever governing body oversees contaminants in city water. It follows that with the reassuring (?) statement that it is not harmful to us. We got a whole-house water filter and spent a lot of $ on it. It is a big unit that sits in the corner of our garage and makes noises at odd times of the night. It has taken the sulfur taste and smell out of the tap water most days, but some days you still get that bad flavor to it. It doesn't take the arsenic out of the water, though, so we use bottled water for drinking. I'm sure there will be a movie made about Hanford and the surrounding Kings County communities in the future after everyone is dying of the long exposure to small amounts of arsenic. We're just trying to avoid being in that group.
Back to my first sentence... Thursdays are long days. I try to get to work at our office (CustomEyes Optometry in Fowler, CA... http://www.customeyesoptometry.net/ Ryan & Corey, is our website finished yet?) before 10am, when the first patient is usually scheduled. Our office schedule on Thursdays is skewed a bit later (10am-7pm), and Amy lovingly goes straight from finishing her work day at 4:30pm in Hanford to Fowler to help me with the evening patients and all the work that is left over from that day. We are lucky to leave by 9pm most days. In recent weeks, Amy's mom has dinner ready for us in nearby Kingsburg (many thanks to you, Nancy!) and her parents dog-sit our little Suesse while we are working. But today, Amy's parents are on their way up the Oregon coast to the beautiful Northwest, where they will embark on an Alaskan cruise. While I'm very glad that they get to be gone for 3 weeks and experience such unmatched natural beauty, that means that Amy and I will actually have to fend for ourselves these next 3 weeks for dinner, and Suesse will have to spend hot evenings in the back yard with her big sisters. Why do I feel guilty about that? Yes, we do love our dogs!
This is a random photo I found of an Iowa tornado from earlier this season. It's an incredible picture of a destructive, but fascinating wonder of nature...
So, I'd better stop all this computer stuff this morning and finish getting ready for this long Thursday. Amy is already an hour into her work day. How horrible am I that I complain when my 7-month-pregnant wife has it worse than I do? She is so wonderful... works so hard and usually has dinner underway before I get home. I am blessed by all my girls in this house, but I am especially fond of that one!
