Hello from the formerly-frozen hellscape, part 2

In retrospect?  That should have been a sign.

That is a 135-car pileup on Thursday, the 11th.  Before all the actual ice and snow started.  (There's a decent article about it here, but fair warning - video at the top auto-plays, so if you don't want to see cars stacking up...)

I mean, don't get me wrong... this was kind of a sign too:

I am roughly north of Dallas and Fort Worth, so deep, deep into the blue.

But honestly?  Snow and ice here isn't that unusual.  We get a couple of inches, everything shuts down because it happens like once a year and nobody knows how to drive on it - and it usually comes with ice and we have way too many overpasses and nothing but sanding trucks - and that's it.

Except... there was this:

And that thing on Monday is a five.  We don't get single-digit temperatures here often.  Like... sometimes we get a 9?  Mostly we get teens and twenties.  So that was gonna suck...

This was pretty shitty too:

And y'know... by this point, we're all bracing for cold and that was really it.

I mean... by Friday afternoon, this had shown up and I was threatening to leave the state:

THREE?!

Aaand we ended up here:

The fuck. I did not know that "igloo" was an option for the day.

Because what the fuck, why not.  It's not like any of my friends actually had teleportation rituals or technology to get us the fuck out of this cold.

For the first day or so, the whole thing was kind of fun, ya know?

Fun fact: this dog in this coat?  Will pee.  But he will not poop.  Apparently butt flaps mean one cannot poop.

I annoyed the shit out of one of my BOs with questions about whether I should bring up Cessa's blanket. ("No."  "Are you sure?"  "Yes."  "Okay, but it's gonna get down to negative numbers and snow."  "She is a beach ball and they'll chase her away if she's wearing the evil striped blueberry costume."  "But... cold and snow."  "You can bring it up if you really want to, but even if we put it on her, it'll get taken off so she can share the round bale and the shelter."  "...Okay, fine.")

Dragon temporarily got a blanket - oh my god, my not-quite-a-yearling wears a 63" blanket - and promptly shed it.  We think because that blanket didn't have leg straps and that wasn't noticed in time to fix the problem, she or one of her pasturemates just kind of... peeled it off her.  It was still buckled and everything, which is impressive.

And then Monday hit.

Around 2 AM, my husband and I both woke up out of a sound sleep.  We keep a big fan running at night, both as white noise generation and because our bedroom is somehow the warmest room in the house, despite being right across from the AC unit.  And when the power shuts off... the fan shuts off.

And then, an hour later, when the power comes back on, the fan comes back on.

And then, an hour after that, when the power shuts off again, the fan shuts off.

We weren't smart enough that night to actually turn the damned thing off, so it kept us up the rest of the night.

All day Monday, the power cycled on and then off.  On and then off.  We had a period of about 3 hours in the middle of the afternoon, which let the house warm back up to normal temperatures, and then back to the hour on/hour off cycle yet again.  I spent half the afternoon working on a blanket I'm crocheting for one of my BOs; it's in that awkward stage of "need to sit down and sew bits together," so this seemed like an ideal time.

Granted, we also found out as the sun was setting that we had... two AA batteries, four AAA batteries, two 9-volts, and a 4-pack of Cs of questionable age.  And approximately half a dozen battery-powered things that needed... you guessed it, AA or AAA batteries.  Fortunately, all of those had fresh batteries.  We also had a dead box of small matches (matches die; who knew?), a box of long matches, and the worst long-necked lighter in existence... and two tea-light candles and a pair of emergency candles that I just realized I failed to point out to my husband - oops.  And our chimney hasn't been cleaned in the... erm... fourteen years we've been in this house, and god only knows if the church that owned the house before us ever did it.  So we weren't having a fire, that's for sure.

That evening was when my parents let me know that after rolling blackouts since midnight, they were entirely out of power starting around dinner.  Concerning, but not the end of the world.  Also spawned this piece of conversation, which is at least good for a laugh:

By Tuesday, this was becoming less fun.  We were smart enough to not turn on the fan before bed, so we sort of got a full night's sleep (It was too quiet. I could hear the dog digesting, I swear to god.).  Power continued to come up for an hour, drop for an hour.  Come up for an hour, drop for an hour.

Well, ok.  Let's be realistic here.  It was never an hour.  It was 50 minutes.  Or 70 minutes.  Or 48 minutes.  Or 55 minutes.  Always came up at roughly the same time - we started on the half hour, but by Tuesday morning were on the hour - but we'd lose power at slightly different intervals each time.  I thrive on order; it was driving me insane.

Parents continued to be out of power, and it was upper 40s in their house.  Because we were getting intermittent power, we stayed upper 50s into lower 60s in the house the whole time, but... they did not.  My parents are creeping up on their 70s, so that was concerning.  They were doing their best to stay warm, but only so much they could do.

It snowed overnight.  Midday, we got word that the city wanted us to conserve water; the water treatment plants had lost power, but it came back up.  That said... with everyone dripping faucets to keep pipes from freezing, they were concerned that if the water levels dropped too low, we might have to boil water.  Note to future self: next time they say this, start hoarding water...

We woke up Wednesday to more of the same.  Fortunately, my parents woke up to power; their driveway is quite steep, so they couldn't just back out and I really, really didn't want either of them out there trying to clean it off... but they were 20 miles and an overpass over a lake away, so I wasn't getting over there in my little blue car.  I woke up that morning ready to start calling around to see what volunteer organizations were running rides to the warming station.  Well, ready to call when we had power, anyway.

It was, theoretically, starting to warm up at this point.  Lowest temperature was -3 on Tuesday morning; Wednesday morning was a comparatively balmy positive 3.

That was the good news.  The bad news... y'all, we have a fire hydrant very close to the house; our water pressure is insane.  But midday Wednesday, we had half an hour or so where we didn't have enough water to fill a toilet tank after flushing.

And then the boil water notice showed up, about the time the water pressure came back.

Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to boil water when you're on rolling blackouts?  Like... we had pots staged on the stove and the minute the power kicked on, someone was in the kitchen to stand over them until they boiled.  Bad experience, 0/10, would prefer not to do again. Only was not completely intolerable because I have tried home brewing in the past and had 11 gallons worth of water storage just... right there on hand.

Thankfully, some time around midnight Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the power cycled back on and stayed on.  I was able to get on and work for a little while Thursday morning, until just after lunch, when a circuit breaker switch in our breaker box failed and took out the damn internet with it - only time the entire adventure where the power was on, but we didn't have internet.

And then... Sunday, it was 75, because Texas.  The snow and ice are gone without a trace; you can barely even tell that we had precipitation at this point.

As of Saturday morning, the boil water notice has been lifted; we have drained all the things and refilled them with fresh, clean water, including the ice maker (and that was a bit annoying). Things are surprisingly back to normal in my area.

My household was very lucky.  We were careful, but we were lucky.  Barn folks were also lucky; the farmhouse at the barn lost water for 12 hours or so, because someone forgot to winterize the pipes in the crawlspace (oops), and they now know where all the holes in the siding are, but that was about it.  All the horses are fine, and for the most part still unclothed.

I have... so many thoughts and opinions and feelings about the Texas power grid and this whole situation.  It comes down to: Texas is stupidly gerrymandered - like, the district I live in only didn't make it into the court case a few years ago because there were three districts in Texas that were worse.  The state is governed as it is because everything is shifted around to keep the GOP in power.  We are reaping the "rewards" of politicians who gave their corporate donors all the deregulation they wanted, enabling them to not spend any more money than they absolutely have to and avoiding federal regulation.  Winterization costs money, so nobody wanted to pay for it... so fully 40% of our our generation got knocked out by winter.  Mostly coal and gas and oil plants went down, along with one of the nuclear plants and some of the wind farms.  People are dead.  If you want to show up here and blame the average Texan for this shit, go away or be blocked, because I am in no mood to fuck around.

WT-Actual-F, Mother Nature

 Y'all.  Y'all Northerners?  Please keep this shit in the future.  Actually cold winters are terrible, and so is ice and snow.

I don't recall if I've specifically stated it, but I'm in Texas.

Yes.  That Texas.  The one that is a giant-ass trash fire right now because it's not so much a "great state" as it is "a bunch of Republicans and oil barons stapling the rest of us into one big straightjacket and saying everything is fine."

...I'm a little angry right now...

Anyway.  Not in the worst-hit areas; those are farther south than me.  We didn't get skipped, but we are far and away not the worst off in this disaster of a state.  We had rolling blackouts from late Monday - thankfully one hour on, one hour off for the most part - until midnight last night and are under a boil water notice.  But my household is fine, the BOs are fine, the trainer is fine, the horses and the dog are all fine.  It's not great for my anxiety that none of my animals will wear clothes when it's fucking freezing, but that's a minor thing.  Even my elderly parents are fine, although they didn't have power for 48 hours and will not listen when I tell them not to try and clean their very steep driveway by themselves.

More later; right now I'm just glad to be back online and functional.

All's Quiet

So hi!  It's been a while!

Turns out, when it's raining every freaking weekend but two for the last three months, not much horse stuff gets done. lol I mean, I've seen Cessa?  She's fat and happy?

Not that you'd know it by photos. Silly mare.

The two weekends it didn't dump inches upon inches of rain on us... we couldn't really ride because it's breeding season, and between three stallions and a boarder whose horses can't be out in the big pasture with the rest of the herd, there's no room (and none of us are comfortable enough yet for trail riding!).

So it's been quiet.

And wet.  I mentioned wet, right?  Like, I don't want to complain too much because it's better than the decade of drought we had, but... um.  Could the rain maybe happen on Monday instead of Friday or Saturday?

At least my roses are happy.

All quiet on the stupid weather front

First week of January:

Second week of January:

Third week of January:

Fourth week of January:

Aaaaanybody want to guess how much barn time I've had this month, when it's an hour drive to the barn so I usually only go on weekends?  And when the ground is so saturated that it's taken four days for our normally dry back yard to dry out?  And when neither my BOs nor I particularly want to be outside in 30-45 degree weather, especially at the barn where there's not much to block the wind?  (Although we all have freakish husbands that like the cold and/or think that our idea of cold is far too warm because they're from points well north of Texas.)

Anybody?

Yeah.  I'm not thinking about it either.

I know we're not suffering from the godawful cold of the Midwest or the feet of snow, but this is so gross for our winters.  We're having 20 to 40 degree temperature swings in 24 hour periods - literally, 70 one day, 39 as the high the next, and 25 that night - and we usually only see that in the spring.  We haven't really had any snow or ice (and I know I'm gonna regret whining about that next month, which is usually our winter weather month), but the one day we did have snow, it was just... depressing.  It snowed during the night, and by the time we woke up... there was snow on the cars and that was about it.  Everybody is getting sick.

Just... ugh.  Ugh.

It's all adding up to quiet time for the blog.  Literally the extent of my excitement this month has been the discovery that one of the squirrels that's nested in our trees stole a dog coat from some poor Chihuahua or something somewhere, shredded it, and is discovering how terrible a nesting material it is every time the wind blows.  Although I have to say, whatever dog that was, it had to have been round when it wore the coat; I found the base of the coat first, which is how I know the size of it, and since then, I swear to god I've picked up enough fluff for a big dog coat.  I know for sure I've filled 2 plastic grocery bags, and there's more out there.  It just keeps coming.
 

Yeah, ok. I'm a little whiny and grouchy at this point. I have a cold clearing out and a spouse down with food poisoning. Doesn't help that today's the anniversary of putting Justice down - something that doesn't bother me too much day-to-day at this point, but is definitely not the happiest of memories.

Anybody else super ready for spring? lol

Ahh, fall

Ahh, fall.  That wonderful season where if it's not raining, it's dropped 40 degrees overnight and there's no way in hell you want to get anywhere near the bottle rocket that used to be your horse to try to do anything productive.

Yeah.  It's been gross.  I brought Cessa's blanket up to the barn, and that's about all we've accomplished.

I mean, I bought a mini Breyer that kinda looks like her?  That's about all I've got.

The star's a little big, the snip's a little small... but it's close!  lol

So there's this guy with a boat, right...

Seriously.  It's gonna be a long winter if we spend all of it with me riding one weekend (in this case, last weekend) and then unable to ride for two weeks because it's raining from Thursday/Friday until Monday/Tuesday.  The forecast for this weekend is five to seven inches... again.

I mean, the good news is that every time I ride, we figure out that we need less tack?  On advice from one of the BOs, we're going to try a simple French link D-ring next time, so good-bye weird, floppy Western bit!

Also, please allow me to present a crappy drawing to illustrate why we cut my mare's entire mane off.

Yes, that's right - we had the trifecta of "multiple fairy knots tied together into massive dreadlocks," "partially rubbed out mane," and "what the fuck, that piece of mane is like 2 inches long and standing straight up."

So tired of 2018

So I got to ride my horse... once.

And then it rained. And this weekend, it's raining.

All the rain.

And on top of that frustration, last Friday we had to put down our cat of 11 years.

It wasn't really a surprise - she had malignant breast cancer removed the year we lost our dog (I honestly thought we would lose her that year), with a prognosis of 1-3 years.  Not only that, but her dental in the spring had turned up a severe heart murmur (no lie, you could feel her heart pounding if you touched her chest) and the early stages of kidney disease; a midsummer vet visit to inspect a lump on the undercarriage suggested the cancer was back as well.  We decided not to remove it - in no small part because of the kidney disease and heart murmur.

The last couple of weeks, she was slowly declining - not eating enough, although she did still eat, and doing a lot of weird little things.  Like... this was a cat that would not stay under a blanket with you... but she spent a whole night under one with me.  She wasn't terribly interested in lying on feet anymore.  It wasn't anything I could nail down as "she's done," but it was all a bunch of weirdness that had me on high alert.  Then she stared having accidents, and she'd never had one in the entire time she lived with us.  It was time.

So hug your pets for me?  Especially the kitties.

And 2018 - you, sir, are on fucking notice.  That's three this year.  You'd better be done.

The day she came home

Judging you

Sometimes, all you can say is 'cats!'

Unexpected excitement

"It's raining. Why are you even here?"

We had this great plan for the weekend!

Saturday was a wash due to various obligations, and Sunday was "pick up horses from the trainer" day.  So Monday, we were all going to get together and get on our 60-90 day broke horses and pretend we've ridden more recently than... ugh, at least a year ago? lol

And then it rained.

There was some registry business that needed to get done, so I packed up the car with too much stuff and headed up there anyway.  I mean, why not?  We could always socialize for a while.  And maybe it wouldn't have rained yet by the time I got there, so we might still be able to ride.

Yeah.  About that.  The thing with tropical systems around here is that they always come from the south.  And the barn is north of me.  And when you're driving north through rain that's moving north...

So we ended up camping out under the arena-side cabana, since the rain was mostly nice and straight.  We zipped up the fabric on the side where the rain was coming from and then did up the mosquito netting on the other sides to keep the spray out.

Similar to the cabana. Not exactly the same, but that general idea.

And that was fine and good, at least for a while!  Herd got stupid between rainstorms, which was fun to watch as they galloped around and boss mare reclaimed her spot at the top after 90 days at training.

Then all of a sudden, it started raining really hard, and the wind kicked up a little.  So, being sensible creatures, we all got up and reached for the sides to zip up the fabric on that side instead of the mosquito netting.

As I was reaching for the fabric, I looked up and saw this weird, ultra-fast-moving cloud starting to sprint across the sky.  "Huh, that's weird," I thought.This was followed by, "Oh, fuck," as the wind that was making the cloud go that fast hit us, grabbed the cabana, and lofted that sucker up over the table and towards the arena.

Now, bear in mind... this thing is set up next to the arena.  It's also next to the pasture.  So on one side, we had a herd of horses and a six foot fence.  On the other side, we had a four foot fence and a very curious gelding who went, "Oh!  The humans are doing something!  Let me go see what they're doing!" and came trotting over.

So the three of us each grabbed a part of the cabana and pulled.  There's probably 10-15 feet between where it was set up and the arena fence, and we managed to anchor it just enough that it ran up against the fence and didn't go over - and thankfully the wind lasted maybe 30-60 seconds.  And then two of us yelled at the third to get the hell out from underneath the cabana as it was trying to collapse on us after it landed, which amusingly is the only yelling that took place during the whole thing (and it wasn't so much yelling as an incredulous, "Get out of there, omg.").

TFW your cabana is made of cheap, thin metal and the wind tries to Mary Poppins it...

Now, let me assure you: this cabana was anchored into the ground.  It wasn't just sitting there.  The wind actually pulled the tent stakes holding it to the ground out and pulled it out of probably 3-4 inches of packed sand that was on top of the tent stakes and around the foot of the pole.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when your cabana gets caught in a microburst.  Had never been out in one before.  Wouldn't recommend, per se, but it was exciting.  lol

I should note that everyone is fine.  Well, everyone but the cabana, which was made with cheap-ass thin metal and crumpled like a sheet of paper in a couple of places.  It's all good, though - enough of it is salvageable that the plan is to make a wooden frame for the top pieces so we can re-hang the curtains and the roof and give it wooden legs anchored in concrete.

The surface of the sun

Things are quiet around here right now, and there's a reason for that.

Well, isn't that sublime...

"Barn time" has kiiiinda turned into "if we convene before noon, we might do something horsey, but if we don't, there is now a pool next to the arena, if you actually want to be out in the sun."  And none of us are morning people.

On vet day, I got a text to the effect of, "No weird breathing while your mare was running around being an idiot, so I'm saving you the money."  And sure enough, Cessa was back to her normal self the next weekend, so whatever sinus gunk she had going on cleared up nicely.  Since then, I've... fed her cookies a few times.  If she came up to the fence.  Because we are living on the surface of the sun right now, and screw walking across 30 acres just to say hi. lol

Laz graduated from his beginner obedience class!  Still needs some work on things like attention span and listening 100% of the time and not just 10% of the time, so we're going to work on that and see about introducing him to ranch dogs.  :)

Happy dog did not like wearing the hat, but setting it on him was fine.

I have also now had my first contact with someone convinced that pits are evil, so... that was... an annoying thing that happened.  In my neighborhood, even, and at a house we regularly walk past, so thanks, dickface.  I wanted to hear about how you think my never-met-a-stranger dog is going to kill and eat other dogs and children.  Thaaaanks.

 

All quiet on this front. And wet. Did I mention wet?

Ah, Texas.  Gotta love the weather - or move far, far away.

After an unusually dry winter, suddenly we had this:

Three of those limbs should be way up in the sky.

Yes, that's a solid 1/8" ice on those tree limbs.  Something - sixth sense? - told me that morning when I came back from an errand, Don't park in the driveway.  Don't do it.  It's not a good idea.

See that pavement to the left of the tree?  Yeah, that's the driveway, where my car would have been.

So thank you, random sixth sense!

This was one of the weirder ice storms we've had; everything not on the ground froze over.  The ground, however, was too warm - it was 70 the day before, because Texas - so all the roads were was wet.

The next day, it was in the 60s.

It then rained for five days.  And not a little rain.  Depending on where you were, you got 5-8 inches of rain.

Two days of dry, and then it rained again.  Depending on your location, you got another 2 to 5 inches.

Another couple of days, and then more rain.

This past Friday, BO#2 and I had the following conversation, which I think sums up most of February nicely:

But there's good news!

Someone is penciled in for pony boot camp, starting the end of this month!

She looks thrilled.

Now all I have to do is...

Thank you, autocorrect.

You know, make my horse look respectable by removing the giant-ass bramble from her tail while trying not to laugh like Muttley.

So call me crazy...

But I'm thinking this whole "weather" thing might impact my barn time this weekend.

Cropped from a photo that BO #2 sent me.  That is not dirt.  That is water.

Justice standing right at that fence corner in January.

I'm told the pasture is "horrible" there.  The main pasture at BO #1's place has a lot more high and dry ground, but has been known to sprout rivers during heavy rainfall.

This is, I should point out, before we know how far inland the hurricane is coming.  The area where the barns are got somewhere between 5 and 10 inches of rain in the last week; I'm in a drier area (this time) and we still got 3-5 inches.  This is just the extraordinary rainfall that's been happening this year; we were under flood warnings today, and I swear the same storm sat over my town for 5+ hours this morning.

We're 300+ miles from the coast, so I expect we'll get some wind and some rain, as usual; how much depends on exactly what Harvey decides to do.