Boiling disorders and the befuddled mind
In which water boiling orders are a great example of routine disruption
I’m a creature of habit and my morning routines are a prime example. Basically I have clothes laid out in the evening, I rise at the same time virtually every day1, and I do little tasks in the same sequence and so on as I prepare to make the long trek to work2. I have to do very little thinking and I can usually putter around in a relaxed way before starting a busy day of Microsoft Teams meetings, E-mail reading, document writing and fretting about the state of the world.
Disruptions can really throw me off. On Monday morning of this week I awoke to learn that a boil order3 was in place in my town due to water main issues. Some homes in my town were completely without water. Others, like mine, did have water supply but it wasn’t fit to drink, so it needed to be boiled thoroughly to be safe to drink.
One of my morning routines is to fill water bottles for household consumption.4 We always filter our tap water using a Brita filter pitcher and store the water in glass bottles. Since the tap water is closer to room temperature than a preferred drinking temperature, we like to let it cool off further in the refrigerator. We can be quite particular5 about this.
So, dilemma: not only was the boil order on but we didn’t have much cold water in the fridge. And this is on a day where I had to prepare to go back to the office for in person meetings. Fortunately I had time to prepare for this but at the same time two other household members were preparing to start work for the day and would want to take full water bottles with them. So we needed drinkable water ASAP and since I am the earliest riser I had to get going on the water situation.
So an interesting thing about Brita filters is that they are very sensitive to temperature. Hot temperatures will damage, even ruin the filters. So on top of it taking approximately 15 minutes to boil a big pot of water and sustain a rolling boil for at least one minute, the water would be too hot to filter, let along drink. As I work from home I wound up spending a lot of time monitoring the water until it was cool enough to filter, etc. A lot of unplanned time - like a couple of hours. But I managed.
Now, clever readers like you are positively bursting to ask the following question: why the hell didn’t you just go by some bottled water?!!? It would have saved a lot of time and headache.
Honestly, it didn’t occur to me. Three years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to go buy some water: I live within 2 minutes of two well-stocked grocery stores. These days… honestly, I try to avoid stores if possible. I’ve had three doses of COVID-19 vaccines and I should be able to get another booster next month. So I try to focus on what I can do with what I have on hand. And who knows, there may have been a mad rush on water that morning, which reduces any incentive to go shopping.
Dear reader, this post started out as a musing of how disruptions to personal routines can affect our lives and now it’s spreading to a second level, to public disruptions. It’s like… a virus!
But back to it: I think there’s a normal amount of brain fog that occurs to me in the morning and I might not have made the most efficient decision for this little dilemma. But I think the impact of COVID-19 health restrictions remains in my brain, even though restrictions are largely lifted at this point: I’m still not comfortable and I still want to follow precautions.
How about you? Do you find that the legacy of COVID-19 is a significant change as to how you react in situations, especially under stress? Do you react to problems differently now?
Unfortunately I sometimes rise earlier than I have to, I don’t take a lot of joy in this.
Most days it’s 14 steps from kitchen to basement.
Pausing to note that there are lots of places with regular and clean water supply issues. I hope those can be resolved soon, although I know some places have been struggling with this problem for decades.
I’ll save you the horror of my water bottle filling pet peeves, there isn’t enough free space on the Internet to adequately describe them. Oh, side note: none of us drink coffee or tea in the morning. Well, one of us but only rarely accompanied by some side-eye.
Anal. Or OCD.
Hi Mark, a boil order would throw me off too. But maybe not as much as my job is in drinking water protection. So I am one of those people who does not take the water from the tap for granted! I have a water dispenser in my fridge, but I do have a charcoal filter (similar to a Brita) that helps with the taste. If you want to lose sleep, have a look at PFAS in drinking water (subject of the movie Dark Waters in Netflix). Interesting times ahead with respect drinking water quality.
I can see how that could throw off a routine. Do you have services like Shypt or Instacart near you? You could get what you need through them without going to the store, though you do pay for the convenience..but still. Hope the situation got worked out without too much stress. Something none of us need any more of!