No Respect for the Mother Water

In my house we have water pouring all day. We even bought a fridge that has an opening to expel water and ice at our convenience. We call it the world’s best invention, next to the coffee maker—at least I do. Growing up my parents would not allow us to drink water directly from the faucet and, at the time, there wasn’t the craze for purchasing little bottles of water; so, on Saturday’s my father would take us to the springs (at Wompatuck State Park) in Hingham, MA and stand in line with glass bottles in hand to fill up for our weekly supply. In fact, my father was so health conscience (and still is) that we would have to use the spring water to make tea or coffee as well.

To this day, as one might imagine, I cannot use anything but bottled water or filtered water, hence the purchase of my handy dandy fridge's water filter system. And before we purchased this fridge, we were drinking bottled water like every other normal person, but when you have an autistic child with a case of OCD and has the need to take a sip of her bottled water and pour the rest down the drain no matter what I did to try and stop her—she just couldn't seem to help herself, but it was the equivalent of pouring cold hard cash down the drain.

Instead, we welcomed the arrival of our new refrigerator, ahhh, and she purrs, I mean pours so nicely.

I've noticed, though, through the last few years, especially in recent years, that whenever I fill up my glass of the crispy clean cold filtered stuff, including filtered ice cubes, oh, did I mention it makes all different size ice: whole, cut, crushed … oh, my. I’ve noticed that my glass doesn’t stay filled for very long. Meaning that either it is "evaporating" directly from my glass or someone in my household thinks that whenever they see a glass of ice water that it’s theirs for the taking, or sipping--in this case.

So I've discovered that it is my kids who are the culprits and, lately, it has turned into a fun little game of where's mom's glass, gotta have some water. Now I haven’t said much until recently because I just can’t take food or, in this case, water out of the mouths of my kids. A mom just can’t do that, but a dad—not problem. Yeah, I’ve seen that too. Dad’s water is sacred but is now stealing from the mom supply. So, yes, it’s getting out of hand.

In the past I’ve tried putting lemon wedges in my glass to “let them all know” that this glass of water does, in fact, have an owner, and a caring owner she must be to add a hint of vitamin c-packed fruit to her water supply; but, alas, this too has not worked. As I would occasionally hear from listening to the sounds of the house—mothers do this regularly—my son say “Oh, what’s this a lemon” and I would return to the room where I left my glass and it would be empty and a lemon wedge would be most humorously stuck between my son’s teeth—cute kid.

Meghan, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so kind; she would see the lemon floating in the glass as an "obstruction of justice" and I would be thinking that this could, in fact, deter her from actually drinking my water—Oh, high hopes. What I mean is that I know my girl and she would never have any part of a nutritious piece of fruit--especially one added to her hourly water supply. And since she has OCD, this could be a very good sign—for me. So I remember smiling and watching her and thinking that she just might walk away--this time. I would be saying to myself with one discerning eye on my baby girl: Yeah, that’s right, put down the glass and back away and nobody gets hurt!!”

But it didn’t work because this clever girl simply shoved her not-so-aseptic hand right into my glass and removed the offending piece of fruit with a grimace and flung it across the room—the fruit that is. Nice.

As of late, I literally got to see it to believe it. My son grabbed my glass while I was standing in front of it and all the while I was making him his favorite breakfast of pancakes. So with a spatula in hand, I watched him just sucking down my freshly made ice cold water and said to him,

Me: hmm, is that your water?
Him: silence because still chugging
Me: waiting, watching, pancake-flipping
Him: placed the glass back down on the counter while letting out a most content sigh, and with his back turned: “Oh, I didn’t know.”

So NOW I’ve got it! My kids must really love this fridge far more than I do because apparently water just pours itself right into a glass and on occasion even shoots out a wedge of lemon—how about that! Bet you don’t have one of these!! ;)