Still No Power

While the rest of the world and most of Houston has finally gotten their power back, I am sad to report that we still do not have ours! We are still living at my Mom's house, waiting for the lights to come on, for our home to dry out and magically smell better. Don't know when that is happening.

The power situation is slowly getting resolved though. We've had an electrician come out for the last five days to work on our power outage. This includes installing a whole new circuit breaker box, power mast on the roof and rewiring stuff, etc. The box was so fried, he said we were lucky our house didn't burn down. Whew!

(Oh, and by the way, thanks to our awesome neighbors who have helped us in the recovery process of our home. Thanks so much!)

Since it took us a while to pull carpets out, the situation at our house is pretty gross and moldy. And its a wreck since we've had to move everything from the dining room (also used as a play room) into other areas of the house. Dark, totally disorganized and musty from lack of air circulation...ugh!

But it will get better. We are slowly working on things. The electrician is finished, the inspector has approved it, and the power company is coming this week. Hooray! And all in good timing since Emma has been asking, almost daily, if we could go home soon. I feel so bad for her. But I know it will get better. Right?

Back to Dance
Today we took Emma to get a haircut, finally. I've been hesitant to do it since her hair is so thin already, but it has been looking quite stringy lately. Her hair also falls into her eyes a lot, which my Mom swears is the reason why she is always falling down. I don't know about that. Might have more to do with double vision and balance issues, but a haircut couldn't hurt. So we gave her a cute little bob with bangs. See photos:

Above: Harlow and Emmy
Above: "Dance Pals" Amelia, Harlow and Emmy

Emma and I were able to go dance class today and see our friends for the first time in a long while. She did really well, and didn't fall down much until she was playing tag with her ballerina buddies. Tag is such a tough contact sport, isn't it? I was really happy that we were able to go. A little nice normalcy, finally.

Our therapy sessions (PT, OT and Speech) have now been moved to only twice a week, so that helps with getting her back into her old life. We are figuring out a school schedule and will hopefully resume it this week. She is still really fatigued and doesn't have much of an appetite, so that still worries me. The other thing is her sleeping habits, or lack thereof. She takes up to 2 hours to go down at night. Constantly tossing and turning, it's really heartbreaking and a little annoying, truthfully. Especially when I'm lying in bed with her trying to get her to sleep.

Chili's Fights Cancer
I totally forgot to post last night, so I hope you had a chance to participate. I'm such a jerk for not reminding everyone. Doh!

Today, Monday, September 29th, Chili's restaurants nationwide were campaigning to raise funds to fight childhood cancer. Yay! For one day only, today, they were donating 100% of their proceeds to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, the number 1 pediatric cancer hospital in the country, to help find a cure. That is a pretty big deal. When was the last time you heard of a huge national chain of anything contributing 100%?

We had dinner there and I was sad to see that it was really empty. I asked the hostess if they were busy today at all, and she said it was totally dead. I hope other Chili's nationwide were busier than the one I was at. Next year I'm going to invite everyone for a big dinner event to show our support. Doesn't a margarita sound nice?

Rescheduled Dinner
Finally, I hope you all were not too dissappointed at not being able to go to Emma's Benefit Dinner at St. Rose this past Sunday. It was postponed due to Hurricane Ike and power outages. We still do not have a date set as of yet, but it will likely be early November.

It should be a rockin' event. I've heard the auction is not to be missed either. I will update you with more info as it comes. Thanks for hanging in with us.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Hannah singing with a little help from Emma. Brightens my day, hope it does your too.

# 16,265

The reasons why I signed this petition:

Because we are not going down without a fight.
Because 3 1/2 is too young.
Because she's my baby.

Please sign it. Cure Childhood Cancer Petition.

Mr. Clean, Where Are You?

I told Mike about the phrase I coined-- Meat Water--and he was laughing so hard, repeating it all day long. "That is so funny," he said. Yeah, its funnier to hear than to clean up, that's for sure.
We finally made it through the week. The first week of Hurricane Ike's aftermath. It's been a crazy week.

You have to wonder what happened to people who had weddings or funerals scheduled and couldn't move them. One of them was my best friend Jess. She had her wedding (finally) scheduled for Sunday the 14th. Too bad it ended up being the day after the Hurricane Ike tore up the town. She already had family fly in internationally and many more on the way. They had to ride out the storm with no power or water right along with the rest of us. Welcome to Texas, folks.

Jess moved the wedding to Friday, and Mike and I had the most wonderful time there. He said it was the happiest I'd been in a really long time. I agreed. It was a beautiful, intimate wedding and a breath of fresh air in my chaotic life. I finally was able to dress up for once. Unfortunately, Mike had gone to four different dry cleaners, all of whom were without power, so my dress was not so fresh that night. Oh well. I figured the alcohol would mask any scent. Ha ha. And it did.

Meat Water: A Hangover Cure Alternative
Needless to say, cleaning a defrosted refrigerator is not easy when you've been drinking the night before. I do not recommend it.

Saturday, Mike and I went back to the house to clean up the refrigerator and remove the boards from the windows of the house. Amazing thing what letting the sun in will do. It almost made the smell go away--but not really. Remember, our house is so old, that the windows are painted shut and only doors open to let air in. Come for a visit, you'll love it--I promise. (Sarcasm.)

We slapped on our bio-hazard suits, latex gloves, and face masks and got to work on the dying food in the fridge. Ok, I seriously wish we had bio-hazard suits but we did don masks and gloves. According to Mike rotting meat does not come off your hands for days. I trust he knows a thing or two about rotting meat. I let him do most of the emptying and I did the clean up. Either way it was pretty gross.

He gagged a few times on beef and pork smells, but I think the shrimp was the all-around stinky winner. For your viewing pleasure:

Bag O' Meat

"I'm going in." Please make sure you give him a hard time regarding the above photo! Come up with your own caption and leave a comment below--there is a "comments" link at the end of this post. (Ha ha.) We need a little levity around here.

Meat Water: On the floor and in the fridge. Yummy!
"Wait, is this still good?"

Guys tarping the house a few days ago. We still have no power...see the power line under the tree? So much fun around here.

By The Way
Even with our hurricane situation so sucky, I've still been thinking a lot about Childhood Cancer Awareness Month--this month, September. It's almost over and I haven't done a darned thing about it. So frustrating.

Next month, I want you all to consider this: Everytime you see a pink ribbon, every day that you hear the words "fight breast cancer," I also would like you to think about the 11 children that lost their fight with cancer that day. Yeah, eleven kids daily.

Then think about how much money didn't go towards research to cure childhood cancers.

I feel bad about it. I read something, a Forbes editorial piece, that said that the reason why the Childhood Cancer issue is underfunded and relatively unknown is because "for one thing, children with life-threatening diseases exhaust their families emotionally and often financially; even after recovery, neither the children nor their parents find it easy to advocate for themselves." It goes on to say "unlike other health care lobbies, they do not have the energy to march in the streets and call for action."

And its true. I wish I could. The author Helen Jonsen put it so perfectly "it often takes one person's passion, born of pain, to raise awareness and start a movement." I really hope I don't have to endure much more pain, real pain if you know what I mean, in order to do something about it.

Where the Real Fun Begins

Nothing like a little hurricane to shake you up a bit, I always say. At least we still have our home, albeit a bit messy, and our health, right?

I hope everyone is safe and sound and recovering from Ike. Thanks to everyone who has text messaged me and offering places to stay with power and such. We are doing ok. We're back at my Mom's house who has power and water now so we can cook, shower and watch DVD movies of the Backyardigans...over and over and over again! Ugh. Somehow I have Internet access--which is why you should secure your wireless networks, FYI.

The weather in Houston is really nice lately. Low humidity with highs in the low 80's/high 70's and at night its about 60 degrees. Yay. I guess its fall here now. This means that without power, its not so bad in the Houston. Power is being restored slowly through out the city. They start off with places that are most important: hospitals, fire and police departments, etc. Then they make their ways to the individual homes, where the quote is still 2-4 weeks in some areas. Our house will likely take weeks as the power line is completely tied around the tree. The lines for gas stations are ridiculous; wrapping around the streets until the pumps are empty, which happens by mid-afternoon.

Emma is doing well. Still tired, but that might have something to do with the fact that we are totally displaced and our schedules are more screwy than ever. Some nights she won't sleep until 11pm, constantly asking for her own bed. She still may be feeling the effects of radiation too, as doctors say it will take about a month for appetite and energy to come back. Hannah just passes out anywhere you put her, so she's not so bad. Both are bored to tears though.

Meat-Water: Not For The Faint of Heart
I took them out yesterday for a drive, hoping to find a Blockbuster open near my Mom's house. It wasn't. I should've known, but I just couldn't take listening to Backyardigans again. So we drove over to our house to see what was going on.

The house is still boarded up. No one was there. Mike had a crew come out to tarp up the roof and remove the tree from the top of the house, so at least we were protected from rain. I walked up and put the key in the lock. I could already smell the horrors lurking inside behind the closed door. A wall of moist, putrid air hit me as I pushed the door open. Ugh!

Even through the dark it was evident what a wreck the interior was. Carpets soaked with water, roof debris on the floors, refrigerator completely defrosted, plus the general mess we left behind in our haste. Pages of dry books on the shelves in the other room began to warp from the humidity in the air. A stale, musty smell circa 1946 filled the entire house.

If you are experiencing the aftermath with me, if you still have no power, then I probably don’t have to describe what a defrosted refrigerator is like. A few days before the ice melted, I put down a few towels; an attempt to control the imminent mess. Now, streams of defrosted, pinkish-brown meat water stained the towels and the white kitchen tiles. I didn’t even open the fridge door. I’m afraid of what will happen when I do. I am SO not looking forward to cleaning up.

Ike, Ike Baby

(Thanks to Jesse and Vanilla Ice for that title.)

We survived the storm. Now we have to survive the aftermath.

Hurricane Ike caused lots of damage in town. We live about an hour away from Galveston, so we were not in the evacuation zone. But we should've left. Had I known we would be without power for 2-4 weeks (WEEKS, for pete's sake!) as predicted by our energy company, we would've been long gone to Austin.

We decided to stay in town; our previous attempt at escaping hurricane Rita 3 years ago was too frustrating. It took us about 10 hours to get to Austin, normally a 2 1/2 hour trip. So we decided to hunker down in Houston. We spent all of Friday preparing for the storm, boarding up windows and packing to head to my Mom's house in the Heights, not too far away.

Now we are stuck with no power, no water, no Internet access. Right now the kids, Mom and I are at my brother's apartment in West Houston. One of the only places in town with power. I think the whole of Houston is here too. No parking. They have air conditioning, power, some food, but more importantly, cartoons. But there is still no water. I can't remember ever feeling this grimy before. We will likely not stay here for too long, though.

Garden UH-Oaks
Our neighborhood is known for its beautiful oak trees, one of which we got to witness up close. A tree fell on our house. We have a hole in our ceiling, the roof is trashed and there is water in the dining room. Fantastic! Our luck is just dandy, huh?

But the kids are good. Emma is doing fine and Hannah is grumpy as usual. My parents live in a new townhome complex nearby with no trees, thankfully. Hurricane Ike started kicking up winds at about 6pm Friday evening. We were glued to the television watching this enormous storm make a bee-line for our city. Man, was it huge! We lost power about 8:30pm or so. We used flashlights and lit candles for the outage, but Hannah and Emma made a game and kept blowing them out while singing the "happy birthday" song--it was kind of funny.

They didn't sleep well during the storm. Winds were whipping the back of the house which was where the kid's room was. It sounded like a freight train running over howling wolves. Emma kept tossing and turning in the heat and waking up in the middle of the night, as did Hannah. She was asking for some warm milk to soothe her back to sleep. Problem was, there was no power, hence no microwave, and only a stove that was electric. Unfortunately, cold milk did not do the trick.

The next day, it was still storming. Hurricane Ike came in overnight and made landfall on Galveston Island at about 1am or so. My Dad had this awesome emergency radio/flashlight with a mini TV that works on batteries and crank power. We were able to tune into the TV stations all night long, in black and white of course. It didn't stop raining until about 9am the next morning. The wind did not subside until that afternoon. Reports have it that 2.1 million customers are without power. That would be the entire population of Houston, really. The city is sold out of generators or otherwise price gouging in parking lots.

After a day of being unable to cook, get cool, or use water, my Mom took the kids over to my Aunt's house who also lives nearby. Her neighbor's tree fell onto their yard, knocking out their power lines as well. Fortunately, they do have a gas stove and water, so they were able to cook some food up for the kids. Mike and I were at our house assessing the damage and went back to pick up Emma and Hannah a few hours later.

When we got back to my Aunt's house, I was amazed by how huge their tree was. It just missed my Aunt's house by about 2 feet and took down a wooden telephone pole as well. I asked Emma what she thought about the storm to which she replied "it is such a mess." Yes. It really is.

Our Tree, In the Middle of Our House
(Thank you Madness)
Getting to our house doesn't take that long from my Mom's. We exited the freeway and decided to take a peek at the neighborhood to see what Ike did. Ashland street has about five different streets running perpendicular to it. We usually take a right anywhere and buzz through to our side of the neighborhood. Only this time it didn't happen. Every single street had a giant pine tree blocking the road and making it impassible. There were fallen branches, trees, leaves and debris everywhere. It was so sad. I felt this terrible anxiety attack coming on, just knowing that my house would be destroyed when we got there.

And it was, sort of. At first we were so relieved to see that the big tree in front didn't crush the house. Whew! As Mike predicted, it did break and fall over, just nearly missing the girls' room. We sat in the driveway relieved, wind and rain still falling on the car. Then I looked above our roofline and noticed that a new tree was there when it wasn't before. We walked to the back of the house using the neighbor's driveway as ours was blocked. Sure enough...tree on the house. Ugh. I don't feel like talking about it right now, sorry.

Toilets Don't Work Without Water
This is something you totally take for granted until you have NO water. The bathroom thing sucks. We filled our tub up at our house with water before we left, but when we got there it had drained out. Great. So we are at mom's with her bathtub full and taking buckets of water to flush the toilets. You really haven't lived it up until you can say you've flushed your toilet with bucket water. Ha ha!

Mike and I came back from our house Saturday morning and brought back some rations: mac and cheese, bacon, hot dogs and a camping stove fueled by a propane tank--yay! This is how we are cooking our meals and heating water for instant coffee. Poor Mike is totally going through Starbucks withdrawls. Mike makes fun of me and says its the closest I will ever come to camping. I have dubbed it "urban camping." Emma and Hannah spent the afternoon fighting, coloring and making a general mess.

The kids were so miserable being in the heat and humidity. We opened all of the windows up at my Mom's but open doors worked better to let more breeze in. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes started coming in. Then night started to fall. They were crying hysterically. Hannah is afraid of the dark, Emma wanted to play video games or watch TV. And they were cranky since they couldn't nap very well in the heat.

After a candlelit dinner of rice and any meat that was defrosted in the ever-melting freezer, we finally made the decision to bail to my brother's house for the kids' sake. Driving on the freeway was FREAKY. No lights on the major highways and the streets were pitch black. There is a city curfew on the Houston streets for the entire week. No one is allowed to be outdoors after 7pm until 6am. I swear, it was a scene out of a movie. Just eerie.

I Don't Want to Wait in Vain
(Thanks Bob Marley.)
We are pretty much stir crazy around here. Not much for any of us to do but wait until the power and water come back on. Maybe we can get to some kind of normalcy then. Well, then again, maybe not.

For those of you not in Houston, some photos for you:

No gas.

Before the storm.

Mike with the sexy headgear flashlight

Coalminer's Daughter

Neighbor's house
Well said.
On 34th and Shepherd.
Water on Alba and 34th.
Neighbor #2
Neighbor #3
Roof of a pawn shop on Ella. Literally. Ha ha.
Aztec Rentals on 34th.

The bayou near TC Jester and 18th.

"Urban Camping" or how to cook bacon with no microwave.
No Starbucks equals desperate measures.
Hannah's hair curls when steamy outside.
Its cooler without clothes.
Feed me!
God telling me its going to be okay through smiling hot dogs. Ha ha.
How do you like the tree on my house?

Water damaged sign.

Fish With Umbrellas

We are looking down the barrel at hurricane Ike, poised to make landfall on Friday afternoon. So I've been trying to tune into the news all day long, but Emma won't let me.



Em: Mommeeee!!!! (whine) I want to watch Wubzy, pleasseeee!!! Why do you have to watch the news?!



Me: Well, babe, we have to see if the storm is coming. See, its really big (I point to the TV). It might be coming to the beach.



Em: The beach? But what about the fish? Fish don't have umbrellas.