Power went out around midnight (shortly after my last post here). We had flashlights handy so that wasn't a big deal. I actually went to sleep while my husband stayed away through the storm. I woke up a couple times to the window rattling (even with the board) and threw the pillow over my head and went back to sleep. Woke up the next morning around 10-ish, to one of my neighbors knocking on our door to make sure we were okay. Headed outside (it was drizzling) and looked around. Our front yard had little to no tree limbs down, but a lot of leaves. Backyard, well...let's just say our tree is a *lot* thinner. It was about 3-4 feet high in branches. Our fence (which is very old) and trellis (also old) were both still standing (even though we'd kinda wanted them to fall).
Our street faired pretty well. The people diagonally across the street, unfortunately, had a tree fall on their house, and punch through. Lots of damage there, but as they hadn't stayed, we didn't know it until yesterday. We walked around a bit and took some pictures, then headed in to eat. Headed back out and found that around the corner, several people were taking a tree off a house - this one had just leaned up against it, dented the gutter and broke some of the shingles off, etc. So we started helping out there - got the tree and branches down, etc. Then we headed back to our house for a bit, so that we could get the two or three branches off our roof, and dragged some of the bigger branches out of the back yard. I went ahead and cleaned our front yard - raked the leaves and bagged 'em, and dragged the branch to the curb. Then we headed down the street and helped out some neighbors who had several big trees down in their front yards. After dragging all of that to the curb, I raked two more yards. Thankfully, by this point, we had half-pressure water, so we were able to shower. We then broke curfew and had a cookout at on of the neighbor's houses. There were about 20 or so of us there - that had all be out and working all day. Of course, we didn't get in trouble about curfew (even though we were there until 9:30pm) because one of the neighbors we'd helped was a cop.
Sleep that night wasn't so good. It was starting to get warm in our house without power/AC, but it was still cooler and dryer inside than it was outside, so we left the windows closed. We woke up the next morning on our own and started clearing out our backyard. Naturally, it had rained in the morning, so that wasn't so cool. Cleared it out and got all that mess to the curb. One of our neighbors offered their extra fridge/freezer for us, so we moved our frozen foods to them. Then we showered and headed over to my mom's, cause they were going to start cooking all the meat they had that had thawed, and wanted someone to help eat it. At some point, my brother rather gloatingly called and explained that the power was back on at my dad's house. While we were over at my mom's, we found out that a friend of ours from church (who is a widow) had a tree fall on the side of her house, so that was our next project. Thankfully, it didn't do much damage, but we had to cut and run cause the curfew of 7pm was still in effect. The weather had cooled down at this point, and was much more dry and cool and breezy, so we finally opened our windows, and read books by candlelight until we were tired. Sleep that night was horrible. I woke up Monday morning feeling like I hadn't slept at all - which I'm pretty sure I hadn't. Not to mention SORE as all get out. Apparently all this labor used muscles I didn't even know could hurt.
Monday morning's task was finding my husband's wallet. He couldn't remember where he put it, and we couldn't find it anywhere (though searching through the house with flashlights isn't exactly easy). So while searching, I started putting some things back to where they normally go. Anyways, after walking down to use our neighbor's internet to cancel my husband's debit card (and eating breakfast at their insistance), and checking with the places we'd been working to see if it'd fallen there by chance, we headed back. And guess what? Lo and behold, it was under the bed. Right next to his black dress shoes. <sigh> Yes, that was an adventure. Anyways, by then, it was getting warm, and we were still both exhuasted. Water pressure was back to normal, and since we had opened the windows, we went ahead and started our water heater back up (yeah gas water heater! - we'd turned it off to prevent the house from heating up in the mean time, and to be safe in case something went wrong with the gas line). He mowed the back yard (yes. He mowed the back yard) so that at least that was back to normal, and then we took (hot) showers and headed over to my mom's again for another very meaty meal. We played rummikub and talked for a bit. My boss's boss finally called and wanted me in at work on Tuesday, even though she admitted I was the only one she had gotten in touch with, and that if I couldn't come in, I didn't have to. She told me to call back and let her know if I'd be there later. Shortly after that, some other friends of ours called to state they'd just gotten home and there was a tree on their house. I called my boss's boss back and told her I'd be helping with the tree and not at work. We headed home to see if we had power - which we still didn't. Tired and frustrated, we finally decided that we wouldn't get power anytime soon and came to my dad's house to crash. By crash, I mean, I was given a sleeping pill and sent to bed cause (as I admitted myself) I was very cranky and exhausted.
Got up this morning after a GOOD night's sleep around 9ish, and headed out. Stopped by our house to get a rake and work gloves (still no power), and clean out the refrigerator/unplug it from power (to keep it from stinking forever), then headed over to our friends' house. I started helping by raking in the front yard, while they surveyed the damage in the back. Called in the calvary (my mom and my stepdad with his chainsaw) and spent roughly 5 hours clearing the tree from their roof and backyard. At soem point during this, my mom and stepdad moved on to see if others needed help, so we spent the last 2-ish hours with just the four of us working. But yeah, that was a mess. Thankfully, they didn't sustain any major damage to their roof. Their back-door neighbor finally came out and started clearing his half of the mess after we'd pretty much finished. Went back to my mom's for re-heated cooked meat (yeah meat!) and then checked back at our house again - STILL no power. Reluctantly, we packed up and headed here (my dad's) again. I've got to be at work tomorrow morning, and will need an alarm and lights to shower by to get there on time. Ugh. I'd rather be helping people clean their yards!
Anyways. The biggest kicked about this, is that the people ACROSS THE STREET from us NEVER LOST POWER!!! (okay, no bitterness there). Yeah, so that's why I refered to us using one of their freezers and one of their computers. We've seen Centerpoint trucks around (even in our neighborhood, which is indeed, nearly all underground powerlines), but still nothing for us. Other areas have been going back up like crazy, though - there were street lights tonight, when there weren't any last night. Ah well, at least I *do* have someplace I can stay where there is electricity, even though it is awkward as heck to be even temporarily back under my dad's roof after so many years.
Some random tidbits elsewise:
-HEB has ice, and had a "2-bag-limit" for a while, but lifted it. Still no perishable foods there, though, last we checked.
-A lot of the stop lights are gone. Not just swung funny, or dangling from their cords funny, but....gone. 4-way stops are pretty much the norm at the moment.
-The (main) streets were the first things cleared, though some idiots that were driving through our neighborhood immediately after the storm passed drove over sticks and popped their tires. Somehow, that makes me laugh, as they really had no business being there gawking at us while we were hard at work removing tree limbs.
-Cell phones are blessings and curses. Blessings when you're trying to let people know you're OK, etc, (like in the case of me calling averly to have her post here). Curses when you have people calling you every 2 hours to find out the newest "updates" when they have TV and AC in a different city, or simply want to you know if you have internet (cause they have power and no internet, when you have no power).
-Eating only two real meals a day and working outside all day while drinking lots of water apparently causes you to lose weight very quickly. I'm not counting on it staying off, but I'm certainly hoping to keep it that way!
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