it was cold

 So you probably heard about the horrible weather in Texas. I will let you know that indeed it was cold..very cold for this warm weather loving Texas girl. 

We were hearing about rolling black outs and we went all day with the power on. I cooked dinner on the stove (all electric house) and I thought we might skate by without losing power. I was chatting with a friend at 6:45pm...and it happened. Everything went black and the power stayed off. There was nothing rolling. It was just off. It was too early to go to bed. So we just got the candles going and curled up under our blankets. We dripped faucets etc in hopes of not having our pipes burst. 

The next morning it was still stupid cold outside...like 4. And we had no power. We were so miserable. It only got down to about 50 in our house but it felt much colder. We were just so chilled. I couldn't cook anything or make anything warm because we are all electric. So we decided we would try to go for a drive in the car to warm up. It had snowed pretty heavily (for us) but the 'big roads' around us were decently clear and we could drive. So we drove around and got warm then found a restaurant open and got some warm food. But then it was time to go home, which we all dreaded.

But when hubs walked in the house to go back out and open the garage door manually, he saw that our power was restored. And praise the heavens, the heat was on and the house was no longer miserable. So hubs tried to get some work done and I was dealing with some lingering issues from the power being off etc. Then I heard it.. a loud pop and loud running water. Then I saw it...water coming from under our dishwasher. I started yelling at my husband to turn the water off at the curb...he was already headed down there as hearing water in the wall is never a good sign, even if its not all over the kitchen floor. So he got it shut off and we started cleaning up the water and soaked about ten towels with water mopping up the water.  Thankfully we kept the water contained to the kitchen...instead of the new LVP flooring we just put in a couple years ago.  

We were due another round of the nasty weather that night but I also had the plumber coming. I knew if he couldn't make it to our house before the next round of bad weather, we would have to go a day or two without water. So we were able to find some bottled water at a gas station and I had my hubby get us a 5 gal bucket and some extra cat litter..so we could all use a bathroom without needing water. AWK. Thankfully they came and got the leak repaired, so we had water. And our power only went off once more for about 45 minutes.

Thursday of last week, we got the rest of the repair done, the wall patched etc and I finally have everything put back where it goes. No dishwasher in the middle of the kitchen floor. All my bottles etc that go under the sink are put back now. 

In the middle of all the other chaos,  we had a boil water notice for a day. So it seemed like every time we had our situation figured out, we had to start over again. We both had decision fatigue after this fiasco was over. And I also had moments of looking at the weather forecast and knowing it wasn't going to be above freezing for several more days and wondering how long we were going to be without water and power. Almost all of our pipes froze but miraculously only the one in the kitchen broke. I had prepared for us to be 'in' all week but not to be without water or power. So my meal planning utterly failed and that was a bit tricky also.  I'm not gonna lie...I was a bit concerned about how we would stay warm if our power out continued for days. It was scary, stressful and so tiring. 

So thankful for warmer days and beautiful sunshine!