I'm Environmentally Challenged, er, Friendly.

Since a lot of my blogging friends are of international origins, you may not be aware that Australia is actually in the midst of a pretty horrible drought. Our dam levels are diminishing and to put it simply, we need it to just start fucking raining already. (And keep it up for a few weeks. Or months. Not bloody likely.)

Where I live, we're on minimal water restrictions; no sprinklers, no washing cars with hoses, little things to salvage whatever water we can. Even so, our water levels continue to shrink pathetically. In other states the restrictions are even stricter, with showers being limited to under four minutes, and higher fines being put into place. It's not looking good.

Here at home, we're busy doing our little bit for the environment too. (And no, I'm not just trying to justify the reason why the grass on our front on lawn is well and truly dying. We're just terrible gardeners.)

Our kitchen has a 'double' sink, one smaller half and one larger half. My mum went out and purchased a round and slightly flattish (totally a word) bucket to place in the larger sink; its job is to collect any stray water that usually would go down the drain while we're using the sink while cooking, cleaning or doing whatever else one does in a kitchen sink. (The possibilities are endless.) The idea is that as the bucket fills up with water, we take it outside and use it on our wilting back garden.

Since I've been lazing around at home for the past few days while my eyes get back to normal (they're getting there, but the dryness is horrible), yesterday morning I was given orders to clean the kitchen. Which is fair enough. I'm at home anyway. And other than squinting at the computer monitor updating blogrolls and selling off old textbooks on Ebay, I'm not really doing anything useful. After pottering around doing nothing for a few hours, off I trudged to the kitchen. Half an hour later, said kitchen was all clean and sparkly. There was just one thing left to do: empty the water bucket.

Now I'm not too clever at the best of times, let alone when I'm . . well, actually, I don't even have any excuses to insert here. My common sense is just plain pitiful, really. I could have been logical and lugged the full bucket onto the counter near the door, opened the door while I was bucket-free, then grabbed the bucket and stealthily evaded the dogs before getting rid of the water. I could have even simply yelled for some help, since dad was working from home and was right around the corner. Oh no. Much too easy! And I am an independent woman who doesn't need any help, thankyouverymuch.

Instead, balancing the water bucket precariously against my bosom, I trudged over to the still closed back door. Shouting at the dogs to stay put or else, I held the bucket steady with my chin, flicked the latch and opened the door with my toes. The dogs surprisingly behaved, so I stepped carefully outside, closed the door with my toes once again and hobbled over to the garden to dispose of the water.

Rusty, my somewhat excitable wee chihuahua was happily trotting along beside me, following my progress and probably wondering what the heck I was actually doing. Feeling insanely proud of myself for accomplishing SUCH an important task all by myself, I felt a case of the warm fuzzies come on. Seeing Rusty sitting beside me, especially after having him not do the bolt inside whilst I was juggling both the door and the water bucket, I offered him a big smile and knelt down to give him a pat.

All but drowning him in dirty kitchen sink water in the process.

Oops.

I couldn't believe what I'd done. He was literally dripping wet.
And remember, he IS an extremely small little dog.
And the bucket? Was kind of big.
And extremely full of dirty water.
I felt absolutely terrible.

That is, until I saw him sniffing himself excitedly with a wonderous expression on his face. Most likely wondering where that smell of kitcheny goodness was coming from. That's when I saw him wag his tail at me, turn around to his behind and proceed to lick it all off.

And that's about the time that I peed my pants with laughter.

We're pro-environmental, Rusty and I. Fighting the Australian water shortage one blonde moment at a time. And damn proud of it, too.