Let’s talk about this past week in Texas (and many states across the U.S.).
It’s been a tough one.
And I can now say, without a shadow of a doubt, that I will never wish for snow here in San Antonio (on behalf of my snowman-loving babies) ever again.
Like, ever.
We’re just not built for it.
Admittedly, there are so many people out there right now who have it far, far worse than we ever could. So please don’t think I’ve lost sight of that for one, single second.
But the past few days at our casa haven’t been great.
And this is our story.
But first...one of the funny texts older bro passed along a few days ago when things were getting rough. Pretty much sums things up:
And, now...let’s dive right in.
DISASTER 1
Oh, how I curse the naïveté of my last post on Monday, when I waxed poetic about the wonders of being outside, playing in the (rare) snow and enjoying such beautiful family time in our special little winter wonderland.
Yeah...NO.
Little did I know that less than 24 hours later, things would take a very grave turn for us.
It was lunchtime on Tuesday, when I was in the kitchen making sandwiches for the kiddos, and water started trickling from the ceiling lights above me.
Not being my first—or second, or third, or fourth, or fifth—leak in this current house—I knew immediately in my gut what was happening.
I herded the kiddos into the living room, hollered for the hubby (who was in another room), and just started shouting things like, IT’S LEAKING!!!!! TURN OFF THE WATER!!!
While he ran toward us, slipping and sliding past the gushing water and around the corner to the laundry room so he could race outside and turn off the water by the curb (yes, that’s where all the valve shut-offs are located down here), the kiddos and I just watched it pour and pour.
And about four minutes after the first trickle of water began...the ceiling collapsed.
Now. After the collapse (and associated shock and awe and fear), I had an immediate jolt to shift into action mode. Because the water wasn’t stopping, the ceiling damage was spreading, and I had no idea how large the collapse zone might get.
So I moved the kiddos to the safest corner of the entry, farthest away from the immediate danger, and started running around like a madwoman, grabbing their shoes and coats and iPads and chargers and any warm clothes for them I could find downstairs (and, yes, my most valuable jewelry, and my Kindle, as my two most prized possessions), so we could quickly evacuate if the water just didn’t stop.
Mind you, the temperatures at that time were in the teens, and we were snowed and iced into our neighborhood (that sits on a hill) so there wasn’t much of anywhere we could go. But, still. I couldn’t very well let my kiddos stand inside a house filling with water.
And as it turns out, those freezing temperatures and snowy conditions are part of what hampered the water valve shut off.
First, because it was frozen.
And second, because it was buried beneath many inches of snow at the curb, near our property line.
The hubby actually unearthed and turned off our neighbor’s water valve (both of ours sit side by side on the delineation of our property line) before unearthing and shutting off ours. Poor neighbor was in the shower at the time.
Oye.
It was a really terrible 10-15 minutes.
And by the time all was said and done, the entire downstairs (with the exception of about 10% of the surface area) was under standing water.
The minutes and hours (and hours) of aftermath, surveying the damage, shoveling muddy insulation, drywall and grime out of our house, and wet vacuuming as much of the downstairs as we could—for eight hours—before it soaked into the hardwood was just tough.
But in a weird way, the hubby and I have proven time and again to be a fairly efficient and calm disaster duo.
If you’ve followed along on this here blog for any length of time, you know that this house here in SA—throughout the process of renovating it, and apparently, the process of continuing to live in it—just doesn’t seem to like us.
We have been through many trials in this casa of ours, and at the time of this particular event, I truly just felt in my bones a general lack of surprise.
Instead, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, caring for the kiddos and shoveling and cleaning and dry vacuuming until I could barely move my arms (I knew nobody could possibly make it to us to help with disaster clean-up for days), while the hubby dove into the business side of the disaster, spending hours on the phone with the insurance company, and the multiple sub-contractors that we needed to immediately line up for a situation like this.
DISASTER 2
Little did we know that things would get tricker the following day, when we lost water completely.
It was reported that the water outage covered about 30% of San Antonio residents, and we were lucky enough to be among that unfortunate group.
But we were lucky—and smart enough—to fill up a bath tub worth of water the day prior, when we’d heard of possible outages, so when the worst happened, we had drinking water available, as we aren’t bottled water consumers in our household and didn’t have any on hand.
Hilariously, it was on the day that we lost water completely that the city issued a boil water notice, as the water levels and pressure citywide had gone so low that the water might not be safe for drinking.
But we just laughed and thought: we don’t have any running water to need to boil!
Oye.
Another blessed stroke of foresight: not knowing how long we would be without water, we knew that we needed preserve that bath tub water for drinking as long as possible, but we could use pool water in our toilets to flush them.
So that evening, we took a couple of empty storage bins from the garage out to the backyard, and filled them up from the pool.
Halleluiah.
Because we had no idea that the third in our trifecta of disasters was about to strike.
DISASTER 3
All things considered, this one seemed minor and like, well, of course, why wouldn’t that happen, given everything else.
Basically, shortly after filling up our storage bins with pool water, just before the sun went down, the hubby noticed the water level of the pool receding quite rapidly.
And, yup. The pump had broken. And all of our pool water was gushing out.
At that point, I was just ready to throw in the towel, and just started praying hard, hard, hard that we maintained our electricity, as it was the LAST link to civility and keeping me sane—especially given the challenges of heating our house in single-digit temps with a giant HOLE IN THE CEILING that connects straight to the attic.
And again, I was so grateful for our decision to fill up those storage tubs with pool water, because by morning (after another freezing night, and then eight hours of continual snow), the remaining water in our pool froze up, and we had no access to it for flushing toilets.
Oye, oye, oye.
ON THE PLUS SIDE
Now, with our three disasters laid out above, let me take a moment to talk about the blessings, as there have been MANY.
Group Chat
First and foremost, we have a neighborhood group chat set up on an app, that includes at least 20-30 women from our neighborhood at this point. And having access to so many neighbors during this unprecedented time has been invaluable.
So when our burst pipe disaster happened and the hubby couldn’t initially get the frozen water valve to turn off, I sent out an S.O.S. of sorts for any neighborhood men to come help, and two came running.
Though the hubby eventually got it shut off on his own, they were there as moral support. And each left briefly after the water was shut-off and came back with wet/dry vaccums, which were a huge blessing.
For the record, one of those neighborhood hubbys I had met briefly once before, and one was a new introduction. Talk about first impressions!
Such generosity is just amazing to me.
Plumbing Assistance
The second major blessing to come from this group chat: about a few hours after the initial pipe burst, another neighborhood hubby came knocking on our door, sent over by his wife, who’d read the group chat about our chaos. This gentleman owns both a construction company and an A/C company, has 20 years worth of experience, and was like, do you want me to solder that pipe?
And we were like: EXCUSE ME??? Say, what???
He literally walked across the street and down a couple doors (where he lives, even though we’ve never met), grabbed his truck and tools, came back with a blow torch, and sealed the dang pipe.
I truly had no words.
Guardian Angel, is the only thing I could call him in that moment.
I don’t know that I’d call it a long-term fix, but he sealed the pipe enough that he assured us we could turn back on the water to the house, and that blessed 12 hours or so of time before we lost water is what allowed us to fill up the bath tub with drinking water.
Food Support
Lastly, through that group text chain: two different women (who I know casually through a former neighborhood Bunco group, pre-Covid, but haven’t actively seen in ages) sent their teenage sons walking down the snowy streets bearing packed up food for our kiddos so the hubby and I could keep working on our disaster clean-up without needing to stop to deal with mealtimes.
The kiddos were pumped to picnic upstairs with the random and new-to-them snacks and sandwiches and drinks that were so generously provided. And we were able to keep plugging away at clean-up.
I mean...the kindness was ASTOUNDING.
Pool Assist
And speaking of kindness...when the pool pump burst, the hubby was able to reach one of our pool company employees to discuss any triage he might be able to do. And though there was nothing at the time, that employee later came to the house (around 9 p.m.) because he lived nearby and the roads were decent that night, before another round of snow, and he knew it would be a quick fix if he just brought the right pipe.
And between the two of them, they capped off the leak and were able to stave off any further gushing water from the pool.
Mitigation/Clean-up Timing
This final on-the-plus side subject will require its own post tomorrow, but the gist is this: we were “lucky” to have our burst pipe water disaster incident happen so early in the week, before so many people and households and companies piled up with needs for vendors and contractors.
I’ll share more tomorrow, but we already have a mitigation company ripping things apart to uncover the extent of our disaster in order to move things along, and I just have NO WORDS to express how grateful I am that we already have the ball rolling.
Now.
The final thing I’ll say on this subject for this particular post is this: I have no idea why these sorts of things happen. And I certainly have moments of feeling sorry for myself, as we’ve faced more than our share of heartache due to things related to this home.
In fact, on the morning of our burst pipe, literally just two hours before the flooding, I led my crazy babies in an out-loud prayer, thanking God for the electricity we still had and asking him to watch over this house and keep anything from happening to it. The hubby and I even had a conversation thanking our lucky stars and wondering if we’d been through enough already in this house that we were being spared during the storm.
Oye.
I truly believe God has a plan for all of this mess—and really, all the yuckies we’ve been through since our move to San Antonio—though I don’t yet know what it is.
I just know that God has FOR SURE poured his blessings upon us through the past few days in very small ways of people lending a hand, and I’ve made sure to express my gratitude to each and every one of them.
It is NO SMALL THING to put some good out into the world. Especially during disaster circumstances.
And I’ll try to remember that as we navigate these next yucky couple of months.
Stay safe, stay sane (stay warm), peeps.
Despite all that we’ve been through in the past few days, there are so many people out there much worse off than we are, and my prayers are for them, tonight.
Over and out.
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