Day 36 What's going on

 

I wish I knew what was going on or where to start.....

Weather or not, here it comes

I awoke in Houston this Monday morning to many things. First up, a call from our Caretaker at the farm that a chicken passed in the night, and looks to have froze. My heart sank, as I felt like this would be the first of many this week. But the heat lamps, I say. She said there's no heat lamps on, and I immediately look at my Nest and Barn Cam's to see the history of a night of off and on electricity, with the last known time of it up and going at 6:10 am and a temp of 48 degrees in our house. The night did not allow enough electricity to get the house heated, as the electricity kept going off and on to give any consistency. Ugh. 

And then she says, all the heated water buckets are now frozen solid and there's no water available in the buckets. She kicked her heel of her shoe in them, and was able to knock a window of the ice off, to allow the animals water.....until it freezes again. With it being 8 or 10 degrees, that won't take long. I'm now realizing that all my efforts of heated water buckets and heat lamps are useless. Just like I've been told before. It's all great, until the electricity goes off. My heart is racing trying to think of what to do. It took me almost 8 hours yesterday to drive back to Houston at 35 and 40 mph, and now I need to be back home and manage all that's happening there. Luckily, the caretaker will be back Monday evening to evaluate the situation. I'm restless.

JK, right?

I sat at the kitchen table to get to work for all of maybe an hour when it happened. The WiFi went down in the apartment. Weird, the electricity is still on. But there's no internet, tv, WiFi, nothing. I'll give it a minute, and it'll come back up. Lunch arrives and it's still down. I contact the owners and they say there's widespread outages, and they have no ETA. Welp, looks like no work for me.....for now at least. 

So it seems everything in Houston is closed. Not everything, but most everything because Houston does not usually have snow, ice and 15 degree weather. MD Anderson is closed today and David was notified last night via his patient portal. They even closed for Tuesday as well, and made his oncologist appt a telemed appt. To summarize, no radiation for Monday and Tuesday, and no chemo at this point either. Upon a closer look, MDA has extended his radiation and chemo into NEXT week now. So wait, Friday isn't his last day after all? Welcome to another week, it says, just not in those words.

I'm confused

Someone has taken my snowglobe and shaken it so hard that I feel like I'm inside it and can't see anything. No electricity in Gunter, no WiFi in Houston, no treatments for David, and we still need to figure out how to navigate the Houston streets to get the Rent Car back this Monday morning. Let's roll the dice here.....keep it safe at the apartment and pay more days waiting for better roads to drive it on OR take a risk and drive it to the rental car place and get it returned. We pick option B, because it's around noon and we figure people have paved the way on the roads already. Plus we need to go to the grocery store. 

We each respectively go out and start a vehicle and warm them both up, the truck and rent car.  We caravan slowly past all the traffic lights that are NOT on or working, with cars willy nilly everywhere. So many places with no electricity, and most traffic lights are not even blinking. They are blank, and not on at all. There's certainly no police or direction for the traffic and I've not seen anything like this before. Most every business and fast food place is closed. We inch along and get to the Enterprise, pull in and get the car parked. It's closed, of course. We drop the keys in the Drop Box and off we go. 

We had already driven by one Kroger, with a line of 25 people waiting outside to be allowed in. Let's pass on that one. We drive to another Kroger and it's closed because there's no electricity there either. We then start to drive home, and happen to pass a HEB. The line looks to be about 20 people deep outside, and at 18 degrees, we decide to go wait in the line and grab some groceries. This is exactly what I tell my daughter NOT to do. Don't wait until the last minute, do this all ahead of time. Uh no, we didn't. I've been caught up in too many other things. 

We make it into HEB, shop and inch our way slowly back to the apartment. That's the big outing for the day. Houston looks like a ghost town. HEB had a hand written sign that said they were closing today at 5 pm. I'm so confused by all this. I've fallen in the twilight zone, and I'd like out, please. No, the universe says, this is not over yet.

What to do

Now back home, I'm still not able to work as there's still no WiFi/Internet. I'm beside myself now. I check my Nest and Barn Cam......yep, the electricity is still out in Gunter. It's 3 pm and I get a call from our Caretaker who asks about hay for the donkeys. I let her know our other neighbor will be dropping a few square bales of hay over the fence for them, as I gave them some this past Saturday as well. (Thank you, Gina and Ed!) I was supposed to get another round bale for them on Sunday, but you know how Sunday was. That wasn't going to happen with that weather. 

The Caretaker (she lives in Gunter, too) said their electricity is also out (since 6 am as well) and it's now 20 degrees in their house. Fast forward to her coming over to feed the animals their evening meals, and she goes inside our cold house, and there's no water and it's freezing cold inside our house, too. No water inside now, and certainly no water outside. The house is frigid cold inside. It's been about 12 hours without electricity and things are not going well. There's no water, and what is there, is frozen - and that's never a good thing. 

Decisions, decisions

Now it's Monday evening, David and I then decide we need to go back to Gunter and 1) start a fire in both fireplaces in the house, 2) set up the propane heater/burner in the barn, 3) get gallon water jugs from the store to provide to the animals, and 4) figure out how this all fits in with David's treatments.....cancelled or not cancelled? We don't know. More bad weather is predicted for Wed. What to do next.

All in all

Luckily, we spoke to Angela (also in Gunter) who is willing to go check things out tomorrow afternoon on the farm, weather dependent. Will a pipe burst in the house? Do we turn the water off? When will we get electricity again, as Oncor has no ETA for us. We have so many unknowns going on, and what's crazy is, by this weekend, none of this will matter. What will matter is the aftermath of busted pipes and flooded floors, God forbid. What animals will survive this days long freeze. All in all, we have no control over any of this, and can either 1) drive back in the morning and go figure things out, or 2) wait til Saturday and see what happens. 

It's very dependent on David's MDA schedule. Will they remain closed? When will treatments begin again? We just don't know. What we do know is we will put this all in God's capable hands. We will pray about it. We will hold good thoughts and know this will all pass. 

Tuesday will come, then Wed, then Thursday......

We'll get there, my friends. I don't know how. I don't know what is going to happen next. I just know in the long run, it's going to be okay and I'll keep my thoughts positive to drown out all the possibilities that freezing weather and no electricity can bring. This is where I swallow hard. 

I hope this finds you all safe. I hope you all are okay. I hope that your friends and family are warm and have supplies for this dire situation. I'm thinking of you all, and of your particular situation. 

I'll keep you posted,

C

I don't know what Tuesday, Day 37 will bring, except that it will be one day closer to the weekend. I'll take that. As Lauren says, time will pass, that's the sure thing. What you do in that time is what's important. I'll marinate on that, and try to make the best decisions that I can. Saturday will come, and all will be well. We'll take it day by day.