Twenty pounds pressure

August 2, 2018

... Michael ran back and got goggles for his mother ...

 Alice and I went to do the early morning watering on the new grass at the front of her family’s cabin.

She skipped along the path and around the cedar home to the water spigot and I followed her to see that she did it just right.

I watched her though I don’t remember if she did four turns to the right or the left. In either case the round handle flew off and water shot 30 feet in the air.

 I tried to turn the hose so that the water went on the lawn instead of beating down on the new tin roof.

... Miranda working valiantly ...

I unhooked the hose from the pipe but that did nothing.

A lot of solutions crossed my mind. Just wait until all of the water drains from the cistern across the road? Just go without water until Glen gets home at night.

Go get help by calling Brendan Robertson.

 I imagined that I would stand on Lurene’s lot line and call across to see if he was awake yet and willing to continued extended kindness to me.

 ... Arta circling Miranda ...
document the events with her camera

I couldn’t think of how to turn off the water to this cabin.

 My solution was to tell Alice, “How about running and getting your mother to help us. Tell her we really need her.”

Alice ran home and said to her mother, “Help. Explosion.”

I stood holding the water, now spraying 20 feet in the air.

I noticed that the crows were unhappy when they flew through it, flapping their wings and cawing. 

... set back to keep out of the spray ...

I noticed that the water was falling harder than I wished on the road-side lawn of weeds that I have been carefully nurturing.

Miranda came back, now with all of the children. First she made a search all around on the ground to find the wheel-like handle that had flown off.

Finding that, Miranda made about 15 valiant tries, but each time the nozzle got cross-threaded. 

“If only I had a pair of pliers that would hold this,” she said.

Just 15 minutes earlier Glen had unhooked a nozzle from another set of hoses for me, as he had picked up some business papers on his way to work.

... the water whips around ...

So I knew just the pair of pliers Miranda wanted, Glen having taken them out of the garage, and me having put them back.

In a display of cooperation, Miranda held all of the equipment and Michael twisted the pliers toward success.

The rest of us stood by watching.

“You can do it. You can do it.”

We all cheered when they were successful.

Michael went to water the grass at the lake-side of the house while Miranda and I looked for any water damage.

 ... her children, watching as she worked with the water ....

Seeing none outside, she went inside and the windows on the road-side of the cabin held tight

There was some water that had leaked into her bedroom on the lakeside, but that was because Michael had tried out the jet setting on her window while he was alone on the other side of the house in those few seconds when we left him unsupervised.

... Can she do it? ...

The jet setting.

 Such a powerful choice when squirting water at your parent’s bedroom window.

Arta