Handy Dandy (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Catsynth, Keith, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.   

This month, i am providing the prompts and they are being posted on my blog and by River.

mood

peanut

weakness

novel

ride

jump

and/or the following archaic or seldom used words

asunder (apart)

nary (none)

rantipole (behaving in a romping or rude manner)

Charlotte's colour of the month is Steel Blue.

Yesterday morning i was in the kitchen, in a happy MOOD, looking forward to #2 Son bringing our little PEANUT (Annie) over for me to watch while he and daughter-in-law work.

As i tidied the kitchen, i reached for the faucet, turned it on and got...nothing.

It made me JUMP, as i feared the worst, our water line had sprung a leak.

Running outdoors to see what was going on, i saw this from the front porch.

New fiber optic cables are being laid in our neighborhood.  For a few weeks now, they've been sending the people out to mark where everything is underground, gas lines, sewer lines, water lines, other cables, it's a regular jungle down there.

The WEAKNESS in the system is, the people who come out and mark it go by the maps, and sometimes things are not exactly where the map says they should be.

No one had gone all RANTIPOLE on us, doing it on purpose, but the backhoe had in fact run into and ripped our water line ASUNDER.

A nice gentleman in a salmon colored shirt told me he was very sorry, he was digging with the shovel to get to the place where he could use a water key to turn the water off.  I asked if we needed to call a plumber or the water company and he said neither, they are responsible for repairing anything they damage.  That was good news to me.

He also said one of the men was going to make a parts run in a few minutes and would also pick up what he needed to fix the water line, that we should have water within an hour or so.

I thanked him and went back in the house and as i reached the kitchen, all thoughts of doing dishes now placed on hold, the old words of the rhyme about the ocean came to me, "Water, water, everywhere, and NARY a drop to drink."  Only in this case, the only water was in my own water cup, the pitcher in the refrigerator, and the case of bottled water we keep in case of a storm and a boil water order.

My Sweetie came downstairs in a hurry and i told him what was up, and then Annie was dropped off.  Her first request was, "Wash hands water," which is her way of saying she wants to climb on the little stepladder and wash her hands and then play in the water.

I told her the water was "broken," and we went outside to see the equipment.

photo

A "pick-em-up truck," and quite a RIDE at that, had joined the queue in front of our house.  Annie would only let us get so close before she said, "Stop here!"  Eventually i could see a very nice gentleman in a Steel Blue shirt cutting the kind of pipe you use for water lines and using plumbing sealant on it, and i knew he was a past hand at this very thing.

Annie and i were out there when the first gentleman said, "Where's your nearest outdoor faucet?  We want to open it up before we turn the water on, so if there's any dirt in the line it flushes out before it can get to the pipes in the house."

I told him it was on the side of the house where they were, and next thing i knew i could hear water gushing from the side of the house, a welcome sound.

They let it run a few minutes, then we went in, turned on the kitchen sink, and were rewarded with the usual sound of water hitting bottom of a stainless steel basin.  Annie got to "wash hands water" and the dishes were done and things went on.

As a bonus, i got a Words for Wednesday story out of it, not a NOVEL, of course, but just an interesting Tuesday morning event to write about

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Today is:

Black Cow Root Beer Float Day -- the ice cream and root beer combination was supposedly first served on this date in 1893 by Frank J. Wisner, owner of Cripple Creek Brewing, and he named it after the local Cow Mountain

Hanawa Bayashi -- Kazuno City, Japan (parades and music in the merchant's quarter, through tomorrow)

Hot & Spicy Food Day

Ibumin Earoeni Day -- Nauru (Day of the Tribes)

Jeshen -- Afghanistan (Independence Day)

Manuel Luis Quezon Day -- Quezon City, Philippines

National Aviation Day -- US

National Medical Dosimetrist's Day -- American Association of Medical Dosimetrists (medical radiation safety experts) 

Potato Day

Qi Xi -- China (Double Seventh or Chinese Valentine's Day, the 7th day of the 7th moon, the day all the magpies in the world form a bridge so the cowherd and the weaver can meet across the Milky Way, which separates them; it is also celebrated in Vietnam as Thất Tịch and is the inspiration for Japan's Tanabata Festival and Korea's Chilseok)

St. John Eudes' Day (Patron of Baie-Comeau, Quebec, Canada)

St. Sebald's Day (a/k/a Sebaldus) (Patron of Bavaria, Germany; Nuremburg, Germany; against cold weather and freezing)

Vinalia Rustica -- Ancient Roman Calendar (Festival of Ripening Grapes)

World Humanitarian Day -- UN

World Photography Day

Birthdays Today:

Snuffleupagus (year unconfirmed)

Jennifer Morrison, 1979

Matthew Perry, 1969

LeAnn Womack, 1966

Kyra Sedgwick, 1965

Kevin Dillon, 1965

John Stamos, 1963

Adam Arkin, 1956

Cindy Nelson

Peter Gallagher, 1955

Mary Matlin, 1953

Jonathan Frakes, 1952

John Deacon, 1951

Gerald McRaney, 1948

Tipper Gore, 1948

Bill Clinton, 1946

Jack Canfield, 1944

Jill St. John, 1940

Diana Muldaur, 1938

Franklin Story Musgrave, 1935

Willie Shoemaker, 1931

Don Ho, 1930

Gene Roddenberry, 1921

Malcolm Forbes, 1919

Jimmy Rowles, 1918

Ring Lardner, Jr., 1915

Philo T. Farnsworth, 1906 (forgotten inventor of television)

Ogden Nash, 1902

Coco Chanel, 1883

George Bellows, 1882

Orville Wright, 1881

John Dryden, 1631

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Animal Clinic" and "Acrobat Ranch"(first Saturday morning children's programs, on ABC), 1950

Today in History:

The Roman Senate is compelled to elect Octavian, later Augustus Caesar, Consul, BC43

Augustus Caesar dies, 14

Crusaders defeat the Saracens in the Battle of Ascalon, 1099

Mary Queen of Scots arrives in Leith to assume the throne, 1561

Five people are executed for witchcraft in Salem, Mass., 1692

Presentation of Jacque Daguerre's new photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences, 1839

The New York Herald reports the discovery of gold in California, 1849

The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio, 1934

Hurricane Dianne kills 200 and does about $1 Billion in damage, 1955

Leonard Bernstein conducts his final concert, ending with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, 1990

Several hundred East Germans cross the frontier between Hungary and Austria during the Pan-European Picnic, part of the events which began the process of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

A series of strong storms lashes Southern Ontario spawning several tornadoes as well as creating extreme flash flooding within the city of Toronto and its surrounding communities, 2005

A team of divers discover the wreck of a Swedish warship, part of King Erik XIV's fleet, that sank in 1564 in the Baltic Sea, 2011

The monsoon rains finally ease up in Kerala State, India, where flooding has already claimed 350 lives and left 200,000+ in relief camps, 2018

Apple becomes the first US company to be valued at $2 trillion, just 2 years after it reached the value of $1 trillion, 2020

The drought in Europe uncovers river "hunger stones" which were set in rivers in warning of famine; the one in Děčín on the Elbe River, with an inscription dating from 1417, simply says "if you see me, then weep," 2022

Following the death of 117-year-old Maria Branyas, Tomiko Itooka of Japan becomes the world's oldest person at age 116, 2024