The days are weird. I think that if Billy Joel wanted to rewrite his song "We Didn't Start the Fire" he could get a whole song out of just the last 11 months.
I have a student in Vietnam. I tried to email him to let him know the class was canceled on Monday while the power was out. I guess the message didn't go through because when I got back on email last night (Wednesday) there were several emails from him asking if there was going to be class. I wrote back to him and told him "Texas is frozen," we expect to be able to have class again next week.
What a sweeping, ridiculous, and painfully accurate statement.
The first day of the snow (Sunday) the kids were so excited. They had never seen snow in Texas- and so they went out and played (briefly) gathered some snow for snow cones, marveled at the icicles, and wondered at the awesome display of nature.
The first night of snow the power cycled on and off a few times, but I went to sleep sure that it would be back on and stable in the morning. I woke up at 7:00 AM on Monday to get ready for my online class, and just before class was supposed to start, the electricity went out again and didn't come back until 11:00PM on Tuesday, but it wasn't stable. It became stable by Noon on Wednesday.
That doesn't seem like a long time. It is at least 40 hours with nothing, then some rolling outages before it became stable.
For us it didn't really matter because of the kindness of neighbor-strangers-kid's friends'-parents.
All the houses on our street were out except four. Of those four, one neighbor knocked on our door and said, "If you need a place, come to the house with the hearts."
We of course said, "Thanks so much, but we are fine. We are sure it will come back any minute. It's not that cold in the house ... we're fine."
A few hours later it was getting cold in the house. Our neighbors with the hearts happened to be our kids' friends' parents. We had met the kids, but not the parents. We told the girls they could go over to their friends' house to play. The mom said it was fine for them to spend the night. She said we could come over to spend the night. She said "Come over for dinner." She said, "Are you okay? I can bring you dinner." We said, "Thanks so much, but we are fine. Everything is fine."
And the temperature continued to drop in the house. at 10:00 PM it was 50 degrees and we decided to go to bed. We stayed in bed until about 10:00 AM. The temperature was 45 degrees, and I had had enough. I said, "We need to leave. We can go to a hotel, we can go to our friends (20 minute drive) or we can go to the neighbor's house." It really only made sense to go to the neighbor's house, so I packed it up and walked three houses down.
They are a family very similar to ours. Three daughters, two working parents, two dogs (formally two dogs for us.) Their house is even very similar to ours. We have a lot in common, but we have been about living our busy lives that we have never met.
It was a blessing for sure to be able to look out their window and see if our power had returned or not. It was a blessing that we were all warm and comfortable and in the company of new friends. It was a blessing that their power stayed on, and that they knocked on our door. It was a blessing that we took the chance to take the kind offer to join them.
Our power came on and we hung out at their house for, well- most of the day to "make sure." I finally came home, but my husband needed to stay longer to finish the movie marathon they had started. We might go back tonight just to hang out. :)
Now the temperatures are slowly rising- the icicles are melting. The snow is less powder and more slush. The weatherman says the temperatures will be up to the 60s this weekend.
We are not aware of any lasting damage. We haven't found any broken pipes or equipment. So, again we are blessed in the mess and that's the only way to look at it.
