The Way We Are by David Sedaris

In case you did not get a chance to read the article by David Sedaris in last weeks New Yorker, here is a taste. Follow the jump for the rest:

"In Paris they warn you before cutting off the water, but out in Normandy you’re just supposed to know. You’re also supposed to be prepared, and it’s this last part that gets me every time. Still, though, I try to make do. A saucepan of chicken broth will do for shaving, and in a pinch I can always find something to pour into the toilet tank: orange juice, milk, a lesser champagne. If I really got hard up, I suppose I could hike through the woods and bathe in the river, though it’s never quite come to that.

Most often, our water is shut off because of some reconstruction project, either in our village or in the next one over. A hole is dug, a pipe is replaced, and within a few hours things are back to normal. The mystery is that it’s so perfectly timed to my schedule. This is to say that the tap dries up at the exact moment I roll out of bed, which is usually between ten and ten-thirty. For me this is early, but for Hugh and most of our neighbors it’s something closer to midday. What they do at 6 A.M. is anyone’s guess. I only know that they’re incredibly self-righteous about it, and talk about the dawn as if it’s a personal reward, bestowed on account of their great virtue.

The last time our water went off, it was early summer. I got up at my regular hour, and saw that Hugh was off somewhere, doing whatever it is he does. This left me alone to solve the coffee problem—a sort of Catch-22, as in order to think straight I needed caffeine, and in order to make that happen I needed to think straight. Once, in a half-sleep, I made it with Perrier, which sounds plausible but really isn’t. On another occasion, I heated up some leftover tea and poured that over the grounds. Had the tea been black rather than green, the coffee might have worked out, but, as it was, the result was vile. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d try more than once, so this time I skipped the teapot and headed straight for a vase of wildflowers sitting by the phone on one of the living-room tables."

read the rest HERE