I'm raising a good little citizen

Well, divine hubby sometimes calls me neurotic. Especially when I make him pull over to the side of the road (only in a residential neighborhood, not on the freeway) to pick up a plastic bottle some idiot has hurled thoughtlessly out of the car window! I'm discovering in my old age, I've become quite the little Nazi about things like recycling, returning shopping carts to the cart corral (don't get me started) and wasting energy. If you look carefully, you can see I'm getting a little green around the gills, but don't tell Al Gore. He calls enough as it is...

I have noticed that every day, when I leave at 8:05am to take Chase to school, there is a river I have to splash through right by the entrance to our neighborhood that continues down the curb for nearly an entire block. No geyser is visible, but there is a swamp surrounding some big green plastic box-thingies in the grass, which makes me think they are related to the problem.

To make it worse, I live in LAS VEGAS. Not known for its abundance of H2O. So, I complained and wondered about it every day to Chase. Out loud, in escalating frustration.

Me: Look, that water is there again! I wonder if something is broken, or if they (who is they??) know this is happening? Hmmmmmmm.
Chase: bleep, bloop, deedle dum (he's mindlessly playing his Gameboy in the backseat)

**This exact conversation happens every day for nearly three weeks and then yesterday, wonder of wonders, from the backseat I hear:**

Chase: Yeah, somebody ought to call somebody about that. That's a big waste of water! bleep, bloop, deedle dum
Me: Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

So, it took me 10,000 different phone calls to 10,000 different people who didn't know what the heck I was even talking about before I found the right person yesterday. Or at least they pretended to know what I was talking about while pretending to write down the information. I figured I'd give them until Monday, then I'd call again, because there was just no way I had actually FOUND the someone I needed to find to solve this problem!

This morning at 8:05 as I drove mindlessly through the entrance to my neighborhood, Chase piped up (tragically, the Gameboy was left in the car at the repair place, so he's a little more observant than usual).

Chase: Hey - where's the water? No lake this morning! I guess somebody fixed the problem!
Me: (Smiling, not actually having noticed the lack of water on the road) I guess somebody did.

Then Chase made me stop to pick up a Dasani bottle on the road...he's a chip off the old block!