Since Noah was born, I have consumed, on average, roughly 120-150 ounces of liquid every day. Of that, 75-90% is water (coffee, herbal tea, or very watery juice), and of that, I drink about two-thirds at home.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any. Neither do 50,000 of our neighbors.

On Thursday, a massive water main 5 miles from our house broke. Thursday was a rough morning, and we didn’t manage to get going in time to hear NPR, so we fed Noah water, drank water, made coffee, washed our dishes, and generally behaved normally.

This morning, we read in the newspaper that our community is supposed to boil all tap water for 3 minutes before using it to drink or bathe. It’s full of icky bacteria.

Um. Ok, one, that sucks. I’m from Milwaukee, so I take these water safety warnings Very Seriously. Can you say cryptosporidium?

But two, why weren’t we alerted??? The water main broke at 4:30 am on Thursday, and by pure luck, we found out we were in the affected community around 7:30 am on Friday. After our coffee. (Yeah, great.)

We still haven’t gotten any kind of official notice! Hello? Local government? You HAVE TO TELL PEOPLE if you expect them not to USE THEIR WATER.

And although this may be shocking for the local government to learn, some people do not subscribe to the local paper or watch the local tv news every day. I swear, I’m not making that up. The only way to make sure they hear about these kinds of things is when the government tells them. Specifically. Personally, somehow.

I like the idea of a flyer, but the reverse-911 system they claim to be using would work too. If it worked.

The online version of the newspaper informs us that we may be stinky and dehydrated until Sunday! Local TV news informs us that animal lovers have bought all the water at the local grocery stores for the shelter in the community.

Right now I have about 3 gallons of water cooling on the stove, maybe a little more. Tomorrow Noah and I will go on an adventure to a grocery store out of our neighborhood to buy some bottled water.

But this sucks. And I really hope that no one gets sick, especially that no one gets sick because they weren’t notified about the problem.