Mother nature is still angry

I had cleared my calendar in order to finally go to Houston to check on my house after the passage of Hurricane Harvey a month ago.  However, mother nature had the last laugh. We are under flash flood warnings and it has been raining heavily and will continue to do so for a couple more days.

Actually, it would be difficult to even try to make it to San Antonio as Uvalde, Texas has received a lot of precipitation and many roads are closed.  I was surprised that one of San Antonio's television stations sent a reporter to Del Rio to cover the expected deluge.

This morning my arms, legs, and back hurt from bailing all the water yesterday.  Mom's old house needs a lot of TLC.

I had to go into town as we were running low on everything.  At both HEB and Walmart had to wait for the rain to die down but at least we are stocked up in case they put up the barricades out of the subdivision as is the case when it rains a lot.

Good night.  May you all have Terlingua Dreams.

Heavy downpours / No Electricity

The skies got dark and thunder and lightning made themselves present around 6:30 p.m.  My mother only has one show she watches and that is the Lawrence Welk Show on PBS. Informed her that with our worthless Dish satellite that goes out at the slightest hint of rain or wind, she would probably miss it.

True to form we lost the signal and soon after the electricity went out at approximately 6:50 p.m. We were hammered by strong winds and heavy downpours. Once again we got so much water in such a short period that had it not been for the fact that I used mulch bags to dam up the windows where the water got in the other time it would have been a repeat performance.

Unactivated horse pine pellets

This time I could not go outside to bail water as there was lighting involved. The house got hot fast and it brought back memories of the two weeks where we suffered without air conditioning. After the storms passed, the neighbors began to congregate outside in their effort to keep cool. With the storms gone, I had to go bail water once more.

I only had half a sack of horse pine pellets but they certainly came in handy.  If you are not familiar with them, they are used to facilitate the clean up of horse stalls and soak up horse urine. In my case, they soaked up backed up water,

Once wet the horse pine pellets look like vomit

By 9:00 p.m. the neighbors across the street had their electric service restored. Our side of the street and the neighbors in back of us stayed without electricity.  To make matters worst, since I seldom use my cell phone it had not been charged in days and the battery was down to 20 percent.

In an effort to contain our mail clutter, I signed up mother for e-bills on most of her utilities. Thankfully, I remembered that I still had the bills I had to present at the Department of Public Safety so Mom could get a Texas ID card and was able to report the outage. The service tech said it would not be until midnight, so we went to bed early.  At 3:55 a.m. I felt the cold breeze of the A/C hitting me in the face. We were without power for nine hours and I still do not know why. With no more internet data available and speeds worst than dial-up will have to wait until someone fills me in.

Good night.  May you all have Terlingua Dreams.

Bailing water

It got very dark around two o'clock this afternoon, it looked more like 8:00 p.m.  It did not take long for it to start raining cats and dogs. The leak in the kitchen that sprung up last year but had not leaked since started up again.  The fireplace another culprit started leaking as well but we keep two containers in there in case it rains and we are not home.

The thunder and lighting began so I went to my room to watch TV knowing fully well that the signal would go out anytime. I barely slept last night and I got up early this morning, so decided to take a nap. Just then a bolt of lightning hit and the rain came down even harder. Decided to go check the leaks and then went to what was originally a reading room for my father but that since his passing has become a catch all room.

All of a sudden I see water on the floor, lots of water but this room has never had a leak and I do not see one in the ceiling.  Then I see that the water is coming in through the window.  I panicked trying to think what exactly I had in the boxes that were getting wet.  Where are the towels? Oh yeah, they are in the trunk of my car in the garage. I then accidentally tripped over a bag of horse pine pellets I had forgotten I had. If you are not familiar with horse pine pellets it is used to make the chore of cleaning stables easier.  I truly believe my dad had a hand in me stumbling into it. I spread it around and the water was easily absorbed.

I went outside and started bailing water to keep additional water from coming in. The rain was cold so I came inside threw on a heavy sweatshirt and put on my rubber boots. I was soaked from head to toe when I finished but felt a sense of accomplishment to have adverted a tragedy, well at least a tragedy in my book.

Three hours later it began to rain again!  The windows are almost floor to ceiling and this had never happened before. Tomorrow I am going to buy some sand and some more horse pine pellets. It is almost 2:00 a.m. but I am afraid to go to sleep.

Good night.  May you all have Terlingua Dreams.

Spurs Corner

Who would have thought that the second oldest player in the NBA, Manu Ginobili would be the highest scoring Spurs in Game 3?  I love you Manu, I have finally come to terms with Game 6 and 7 of the 2013 Finals.

If our luck was not bad enough we lose another player in David Lee :-(