Water, water everywhere...

When I was seventeen, I moved from Ingersoll to Waterloo. It marked a watershed moment in my life in many ways. In one respect, that is literally true: I shed my naivete about water.
I'm not sure what the water in London is like nowadays, but back in the 80s you could drink it from the tap. Not only could you: almost everyone did. I'd heard of bottled water, but I thought it was reserved for emergencies--contamination, severe drought, things like that. It would have never occurred to me that people would drive to a grocery store to buy something that you could more cheaply obtain from your kitchen tap.
Then I got here.
This city has water that borders on undrinkable. Various areas are occasionally afflicted with brown grit, but even at its clearest our tapwater tastes strongly of chalk and sports little white 'floaties' that look like tiny swimming maggots. Very occasionally since 1990--under the duress of extreme thirst--I have steeled myself and drank water straight from the tap. Contrary to the laws of Nature, Waterloo tap water will dry your mouth out and leave you thirstier than before you sipped it.
Still I would refuse to buy bottled water, opting instead for a Brita pitcher that would render Waterloo tapwater into London tapwater (or perhaps Parry Sound tapwater, which tasted even better way back when). Of course, because I am the laziest creature this side of a napping tree sloth, I would then proceed to drink anything but water to avoid the onerous task of refilling the Brita.
Actually, I don't really like water all that much, for the same reason I don't like vanilla ice cream.
Too plain, too tasteless. I need to add something to both things to make something I'd actually want to ingest. In the case of vanilla ice cream, a couple of teaspoons of chocolate syrup does the trick. For water--almost anything. Fruit juice, maybe. Carbon and a bunch of cola-flavoured chemicals, even better.
Of course, there are times when nothing but water will do. Real water, I mean, pure water, not from the reservoirs in Waterloo. Eventually, one of those times found me far from my Brita pitcher. I shelled out some money and discovered Dasani water.
Dasani is one of those things you either love or hate. Many have told me it tastes like pool water, with a bouquet of tire. I think it's great. The only thing better I've had out of a bottle--and believe me, this was in my piss-money-away-like-it's-water-days--was something billed as "highly oxygenated" water. I could never figure out the chemistry behind this stuff (if you add oxygen to H-2-0, don't you have H-2-o-2 or some such?) so I just ignored it and enjoyed the taste...when I had the money to do so.
Eventually I didn't. Back to the Brita I went.
I am now married to a woman who sucks up water like a Shop-Vac. You're supposed to drink eight to ten cups a day. That's 1.5 to 2 litres, and sometimes I think Eva manages that in her sleep. (Aside: where the hell does someone find the time to drink all that? A cup in the morning, a cup at lunch, a cup at supper, and a cup before bedtime and shit, I'm halfway there. Not to mention any more water and I'd be pissing out my eye sockets all night, every night.)
Still, I'm trying to drink more water, I really am.
I found myself, as of last week, approaching the Brita-pitcher Event Horizon, the point at which I no longer have the time to do mundane things like eat, sleep, or go to work because I'm constantly refilling the goddamn Brita. You may think we're raising our puppy on champagne, but the fact is Waterloo tap water is unfit for even dogs to drink. We were worried about Tux's disdain for his water dish, so I started giving him Brita water, and lo and behold, he would drink that. And then Ken would have to refill it. AGAIN.
Our Price Chopper, besides selling ten SKIDS of bottled water a WEEK, goes through ten or more of those 18-L jugs of spring water a day. Last weekend, sort of on the spur of the moment, we jaunted off to Wal-Mart and bought a cooler that fits those jugs. It looks like we'll go through one and a half jugs a week, so we're currently costing out the cheapest source. And my Brita arm is slowly recovering, thank you very much.