Winter came to Texas

We had ordered groceries last week, but the supplies just weren't there. I went shopping on Saturday. 

The  grocery store was nuts. Everyone (including me) was super focused on getting what they needed and getting out. There were a few times I found myself on the verge of yelling at someone for just parking their cart in a place that jammed up everyone from going around them. Or for moseying around just a smidge too quickly to go around without running into people going the other way.

At one point, I felt like I was suffocating. My first thought was that one of the idiots wandering around with their mask not covering their nose had given me Covid. I realized pretty quickly that this was ridiculous: you can't get symptoms that quickly. I decided to just relax and make the best of it. Laura said that's exactly how she feels when she gets stress asthma.

I took pictures of the egg section. It was empty except for a few broken ones that people had left behind. One of the stockers apologized for the emptiness and explained that the truck hadn't been able to get through. I shrugged it off and told him it wasn't his fault. He deflated a little and told me he was glad I felt that way. He'd been chewed out for it twice already.

I don't understand why anyone would think it was his fault. Then again, they were probably just looking for an outlet.

Laura sent me with a list, and I improvised around it. She said that I bought a lot more than she would have, which turned out to be a very good thing.

 I went out again to try to get brunch for all of us on Sunday, but everything was closed. On the way home, my car had a lot of trouble making it up a couple of hills.

We turned off our water to try to keep the pipes from freezing. Our side of the cut off didn't work. We filled up our bathtubs and pretty much every glass, bowl, pot, and pan in the house. Again, this turned out to be a good thing. Then Laura decided to try the city-side cutoff. I was planning to get out in the morning and buy a tool for it, but it's loose enough to turn by hand. Apparently, this is a fairly serious crime.

Laura put in a call for a plumber to see about fixing the cutoff valve that didn't work. They were supposed to show up on Friday.

Laura and Mal spent the first night with me in our bed. Mal's the opposite of a blanket hog: he just kept kicking them off.

When we got power on Monday morning, I let my manager know that we'd been without power for most of the night and didn't know how long it would last. He told me not to worry about it because almost everyone was in the same boat.

Monday night was really the worst. I think it was the coldest, and the one where the snow really hit. We pulled Mal's mattresses into the living room and camped out in front of the fireplace. This is the first time we've used it. Mal was really scared of it. He was afraid one of the cats would jump in. Or that, after it went out, it would spontaneously combust.

On Tuesday morning, Laura went next door to ask our neighbor if we could buy some firewood. I was going to do it, but the thought of asking for help was just too much for me to handle on top of everything else. She told me that it probably worked out much better that way. He sells firewood, but wouldn't take our money because of Mal. He loaned her his wheelbarrow along with about a day's worth of wood.

Power flickered on and off enough that I didn't even bother trying to work.

We mostly had power Tuesday night, so I signed in to work on Wednesday morning. They sent out an early email telling everyone who has power to act like they don't to reduce demand. They told us to just take a couple of days off. Then they sent out another message late Thursday night telling everyone to also take Friday off.

It must have been Wednesday when Jonestown sent out a boil water notice, with a warning that the treatment plant didn't have power. They said they could get everything going again once they did have power for 12 hours, but begged everyone to take it easy to give the tanks a chance to fill back up once they did.

Austin did the same, about the same time frame. People started getting irritated about then. It's tough to boil water when you're also trying to minimize your electricity/gas usage.

I just saw a message one of my team members sent out on Thursday: he still didn't have water, but he had power for the first time in 3 days.

The water situation didn't matter to us, since we didn't want to turn our water back on until we were sure the freezing weather was past. Actually, I'd have risked it when we started running low. But Laura managed to capture enough snow melt to keep flushing the toilets (I helped by bringing in pots full of ice and snow to melt before anything thawed), and we had plenty of drinking water.

That next door neighbor showed up Wednesday morning. He'd loaded up his truck and was driving around the neighborhood to see if anyone needed firewood. We offered to buy again, but he still refused to take our money. We hadn't used his first load, so we told him to take it to someone who didn't have any.

It could have been a nice week long holiday, if we hadn't been worried about minor details like freezing to death and flushing the toilets. Shutting down the Austin part of Indeed was probably a really good decision from a business perspective. I know that I was too wrung out and emotionally exhausted to do good work.

Once it started thawing, we wound up with a lot of water dripping out of one of the light fixtures on our porch. We knew we needed to do something about it. I was too scared of the electrical implications to do anything about it. While I was waffling about what to do, Laura opened it up. I was worried about a water gusher. But the glass is cracked, so there really wasn't much more than the dripping. It extended from that fixture to both sides of the seam in the wood.

Laura got in touch with a friend who does roofing (and has worked on ours a time or two) to get a professional opinion. He told her something about ice dams, and that the Texas building code just isn't up to handling these sorts of events. He figured that everything would be just fine after it had all passed and the roof had a chance to spring back into normal shape. She read a little more about ice dams and got paranoid about it getting worse once everything froze again over night.

So she broke out the ladder to see what we could do about it. I started out just holding the bottom (which is my normal job while she cleans the gutters), but she couldn't really accomplish much. So I climbed the ladder to see if I could come up with anything. I wound up sweeping a bunch of snow into the gutter, and dropping a bunch of ice chunks straight to the ground. I'd forgotten how terrifying ladders are. I couldn't really tell whether I'd made things better or worse, but we didn't have any problems after that.

In the process, I did something weird to the ball of my foot. It hurt for the next day or so, but feels better now.

Laura took that wheelbarrow of wood back to the neighbor. I think she also made him a plate of cookies.

That Friday plumber appointment flew right out the window: they sent out messages and updated their website to tell people they were swamped. They asked people to not call or message them. They were working their way down a prioritized list and promised a 24 hour warning. They did contact Laura at one point to try to figure out how bad our situation was. She told them to move us down the list, because we were probably out of danger. Though we really hoped someone could get out soon to check for leaks.

We finally turned our water on yesterday. We could tell there was a slight leak, and Laura was really nervous about it. I was thrilled enough about just having water that I didn't care and was willing to just live with it. Even though I've had that job and know better.

I went back to the grocery store (this time in Lago Vista) and bought another car load of snacks and instant meals. It was even more packed than things had been pre-storm. But this time everyone seemed giddy and just thrilled to be interacting with other humans. The cashier seemed pretty shell-shocked. She didn't actually react to me until I told her how grateful I was that she'd come to work that day. She warmed up and told me that they're doing their best.

 

This time I was able to bring home some food from Sonic. The car hop was pretty disgruntled that they still can't serve drinks, but agreed with my excitement about having running water again.

Laura kept going outside to check the water meter. So she noticed the gushing leak sound.

Well, Mal noticed it first. He tried to tell her that he heard a scary noise outside the bathroom. But he's terrified of everything (including my old recliner and my bathrobe), so we didn't really pay any attention.

Anyway, Laura turned the water back off. Then she led me out to see whether I had any ideas. I didn't.

We could tell that it was coming from under the porch by Mal's window (and the bathroom). It was really close to one of the sections I just fixed. It was obviously too big to leave the water on. So we shut it all back down.

This was pretty crushing for all of us (except possibly Mal who just felt vindicated that he'd told us so).

Laura decided to throw in the towel and go to her parents'. It took me a while to process through the bleakness. I decided that I didn't want to try to work from there on Monday: I'm too attached to my two extra giant monitors to be happy with just my laptop. D decided to stay behind in case anything major came up and I needed help.

So she bundled Mal into the car and headed out last night. Oh, and she let the plumbers know that everything had changed (they did tell her to call if that happened).

I got up this morning and went to brunch. There's a Mexican place down the road named El Rey that I try really hard to patronize (because restaurants in Jonestown have a terrible time staying in business, and I really want to do what I can). Normally, I try to get there every other week. I was planning to eat there last Sunday, but they weren't open. I pulled into their parking lot and thought about what I wanted. I decided I actually wanted an omelet from Gloria's, which is probably my favorite breakfast place in the vicinity. So I went there instead.

Lots of people had the same idea. There was quite a wait list. Most of them don't respect Covid enough and wanted to sit inside. I got a patio table almost immediately. The hostess was a bit upset about the conditions out there (everything was wet, with lots of tree debris blown in), but I assured her it was fine. I ordered an omelet for me and the burger that I was planning to get for D a week ago. Then I settled in to read.

I'm not sure why I checked my phone when my food arrived. Laura said the plumber was at our house and couldn't get anyone to answer. I told her to stall him, because I could be home in about 10 minutes. I got a to go box and asked them to hurry up on the burger and fries. While I waited, she told me that he'd already pulled the porch apart and thought the problem was this lousy irrigation system that someone had half-baked. We've never used it, and we tear up the lines whenever we run across them. He offered to cap it off.

I rushed home, but he was gone when I got back. The leak was fixed, but he wasn't willing to leave the water on with no one home.

I turned it back on and felt a little sick because it looked to me like it was still leaking. I couldn't hear anything ominous, so I sat down and ate. It hadn't even had time to get cold. When I finished eating, the water had stabilized and stopped.

And that was pretty much that.

I started the dishwasher (which is bursting at the seams), then reveled in being able to flush the toilet and brush my teeth.

I still felt pretty lethargic and overwhelmed, but I decided to try out an anti-procrastination technique. Just get started on something. Give it 5 minutes and see.

So I broke out my bookshelf and started working on my latest problem. I had so much fun sawing the wood that I kept going. And then I chiseled out a place for one of the pieces I'd just finished sawing. Before I knew it, it had been over 4 hours, and I was racing the sunset to get that piece glued into place.

It amazes me how good exercise and sunlight are for depression. Now I feel happy and excited about getting back to my day job in the morning.

In the morning, we have groceries scheduled for delivery between 10 and 11. Laura's planning on heading home as soon as Mal wakes up, but she figures they'll still beat her here.

The thought of getting back to "normal" is almost overwhelming.

On that note, I'm finally going to wash my glasses and take my first shower in over a week.