Aug 16, 2019 20:21
Back in my camp days, I bought myself a Brita pitcher. The nurse had had one for years, and the other senior counselor had been bringing one, but she stopped coming and I realized she'd had a good idea. They have well water at camp and it's not always palatable, especially if it's not cold. Since, toward the end, I was drinking mostly water, I decided to take the plunge, so to speak. Plus, I'm pretty sure I had a coupon. :P I remember a trip down to Walmart on one of my band days, picking out the red slimline one. I was going to use it for a week out of the year; I didn't need a big one.
It worked out so nicely. We had a fridge in the staff house, where I could keep it cold. I'd use the water from the bathroom sink since there wasn't another good alternative in the building, and besides, it's getting filtered anyway. I'd acquired multiple camp-labeled water bottles over the years and brought this large blue one to help fill it up. Every time I refilled another bottle, I'd add back in a blue-bottle-load to get filtered for the next time I'd need it. I recall using it at least twice a day, once in the morning to reload the water bottle I'd drink out of, and once in the afternoon when I'd have a single-serve packet of Gatorade or something similar in a different bottle. What can I say, I used multiple water bottles, but they came in handy, especially when I'd need to empty the Brita upon packing up. I also told the other adults that they were welcome to use it, just so long as they refilled it.
Fast-forward to now, it's been two years since I last went to camp, and the water from my bathroom sink has tasted funny since my dad replaced the faucets about a couple years ago. One sink is better than the other, but they're both off-tasting. I've thought about putting the Brita in there for ages but needed a place to put it; I'd rather keep it under the sink so it's not out in the open and exposed to things. I'd recently shifted things around and found a space, so I grabbed it the other night and went, okay, let's see how this is. Now, again, it's been two years since I last used it, and it had been used enough that it was probably time to change the filter, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the water tasted kind of...moldy. Yum. I did actually take a second sip to make sure it was the water and not my imagination, and...yeah, that's not good, time to change the filter. I should have the paperwork somewhere to tell me which filters to get and then I should be back in business. Slowly I'm integrating my former camp stuff into regular life. All my camp soap is gone by now, for example. These were the bottles I'd bought back around the time when there weren't any caretakers and we had to supply our own, except the girls all brought their own soap and the boys didn't care, and then we did in fact have caretakers who actually did have soap to use, and eventually I brought the soap to work because the bathroom in the back building is basically just like camp without caretakers, just in a single stall, so there you go. At least I had soap when I needed it.
water,
camp