Just in case

First thing on waking, I cleaned up the kitchen as usual, which had been a right holy mess from the night before. Then I settled down at the dining table, in the spot beside the big window to work. It was rainy and dark out, so the lights were on inside the house. I looked around at one point, and kitchen looked so shiny and clean, so I took a picture. 

Then I looked across the room where the arrangement my son-in-law made for my husband for father's day was still adding color to the room, so I snapped a picture of that, too. Then I thought about another photo to share, but first, here's the back story of how it came to be.

Sunday night, I lay awake long past midnight, scrolling on Tik Tok, tumbling down many, many rabbit holes, the way one can on that mind-stealing app. First the algorithm was feeding me one video after another explaining that I had been quantum leaping between timelines for the past several years, and giving me points of evidence to convince me that this was indeed the case. I was frankly fascinated by the idea that I could exist simultaneously in several different timelines, though I wondered why I had chosen to tarry in the one in which I am currently conscious, where our leaders have now gone to war for dubious reasons under rather nefarious influences, not that anything is clear to us mere onlookers, who knows what's happening behind the curtain, but it looks bad from here, let's just say that. 

In any case, at a certain point the app started feeding me videos of people predicting world war three, some insisting it had already begun, others giving advice on how to protect yourself should it actually happen, and for some reason I was taken with a video saying the first thing that would occur if my city was attacked is the electrical grid would be knocked out, and that would mean we wouldn't be able to get any water, and the next thing I knew, at 3AM, it seemed like a good idea to just have some extra gallons of water in the house, just in case. So I pulled up Instacart, that's a grocery ordering app on my phone, and I put four gallon jugs of water into my shopping cart and paid, and it said it would be delivered to my door at seven the following morning, and then I turned over and went to sleep.

At 7AM on the dot, the intercom rang and I buzzed the delivery person in. I heard them in the hallway on our floor moments later, leaving the water bottles outside the front door of our apartment. I burrowed under the covers, thinking I'd bring them in later when I got out of bed. I was still dozing at the ungodly hour of 8AM when my husband was leaving for work. He bid me goodbye and opened the front door, where he stopped and called out to me. 

"There is water out here. Did you order bottles of water?"

"Yes," I mumbled from under the covers.

"Do you want me to bring them inside?"

"Yes, please," I said.

I heard what sounded like a lot of effort and floor swishing for four gallon jugs of water. I was confused, but not enough to get up and investigate. 

Then my man called out, "How many did you order?"

"Four," I called back.

"Why?" he asked me.

"In case of World War Three," I said.

I guess he's been married to me a long time, because he only said, "Okay, they're in. See you later," and was on his way. But I was awake now.  Minutes later, I wandered into the hallway and found this.

Four cartons, each with six gallon jugs of water. I have to tell you, the price couldn't be beat, because it didn't alert me that I was ordering cartons, not single jugs. Or maybe I was cross-eyed at 3AM. In any case, if they knock out the electric grid, guess who will have water.