Winter? In Texas? Who let it in?

We have had winter in the herewegoagain household for the last two whole weeks. This is serious stuff. Perfect Daughter informed me, when she was four and we lived in Connecticut, that she liked Texas better because "in Texas we don't have winter, we have cold fronts." She was so right. My memories of sitting shaking in the car in Westport (looking for Paul Newman to stroll by), waiting for the heater to kick in so my gloved hands would be able to bend around the icy steering wheel, walking in crunching snow that just made my feet wet and cold, slipping on icy steps that just made my pride deflate...all of those memories always made me appreciate a good South Texas winter:

Day 1: "It's going to be below 50 tonight! Put your jackets on! Maybe a hat! Wheee!"

Day 2: "We had ICE on the car windows at 6 am"

Day 3" "Mom, I can't find any shorts. And I think I got a little sunburned".


Yep, usually we have three days of chilly weather, maybe a little rain, maybe some ice, and then---poof! It's 80 degrees again and we are picnicking at the park.

SO, last week when the forecast was for a "hard freeze" well below freezing, our first thought was "cozy". "I'll make chili", I said. "I'll make a fire," Rowdy said. "I'll make cookies," sweet girl said.

It was all so exciting.

I did mention to DH that the temps were going to be rather frigid, and were we prepared with wrapped pipes at our well house? He assured me we were, because, well, golly, we survived that 10 degree night last year and all the other little dips of the past 19 plus years. We put the kitchen faucet on "drip" and we went to bed, snuggled under extra blankies and full of chili and chocolate chip cookies.

At 4 a.m., Rowdy came in.

"Mom", he whispered, "I think the pipes are frozen".

I leaped out of bed, "No way,"..."I dripped the kitchen faucet!". Well, there was no drip now. Nothing out of any faucet, just eerie quiet.

DH got up and went out to the well house. He came back and pronounced it broken. It must be broken, because it wasn't anywhere near 10 degrees and we DID wrap the pipes. Nothing was frozen, it just wasn't pumping.

At 6:30 am, I was calling the well company, begging them to come out. She told me water was out all over town and they would come when they could...probably today, but they weren't sure. DH hauled water from the pool so we could use the toilets. At that point, the electricity went out. In less than 20 degrees, in a house built for Texas summer, it got cold quickly. Winter was so much LESS fun.

We found out later that our lovely electrical grid for the great state of Texas (the state that claims its economy would do very well if we just seceded from the United States), couldn't handle the load, so they instigated rolling blackouts. Since we don't have water if we don't have power (our pump is electric), that might have caused the drip to stop, the pipes to freeze and the house to get really, really cold.

I had no idea then that we were in for three full days of pioneer life. The well guys came out that evening, we stood in 14 degrees with a wind chill in the minus-double-digits and they told me, "Ma'am, it's not broken, it's frozen". Huh? But, it's never frozen before. I have HEAT LAMPS out there. They looked at our sad little lamps under our sad little tarp roof and said, "Ma'am, it's frozen solid". They gave the pipes a little pass with their acetylene torches and then informed me it "might take awhile". They couldn't get back to their still warm truck fast enough.

That meant that Rowdy and Sweet Girl got to go out there with heat lamps, space heaters, blow dryers and a creme brulee torch and try to thaw it. I did feel somewhat brutal as I watched them through the window, but someone had to keep the hot chocolate going. They also had to keep a fire going because the electricity kept going out. Oh wait, that put a damper on hot chocolate.

Instead of a hot sunny day following the misery of the cold front, it just got colder the next day. I finally was near the end of my bucket-dumping-in-the-toilet rope, when Rowdy got a trickle going. Then water! Lots of water. I opened all the faucets wide open to let the water in. It was bright orange with rust, and immediately clogged all the filters, but we didn't care. We cleaned them out, and started laundry. We dumped all the buckets of pool water outside...didn't need them any more! We sat in front of the fire and listened to the faucets run. And run. And run. And...stop.

What? We leapt up, and found that there was no more water. But how could that be? We certainly were letting it run. Rowdy and DH bundled up and headed out to the well house only to find that the 2,500 gallon water storage tank was empty. Because, it too had frozen, and the only liquid water that was left had poured out of every faucet into our house in the last four hours.

The next morning, as the children broke the ice on the pool to bring up the buckets for flushing, and as they prepared for another day of torching the pipes, I did have a fleeting moment where I considered just running away. To Florida.

Since it was day three of the freeze, the weather nicely got up to 38 and things did start to melt. After about three hours of work, they thawed the pipes to the tank and it began to fill. Once it filled, we turned on the faucets and we had water! But no hot water? We were certain the hot water tank was also broken because, (say it with me), "it has never frozen before", but the hot water guy on the phone told me, "Ma'am, it is frozen". So, back in the garage with the heaters and dryers and such. And then we figured out it was STILL frozen under the sink in my BATHROOM. In a heated house, for crying out loud.

I will never, ever, live in Montana, Idaho, Utah, North or South Dakota or Wyoming. Or anywhere else that gets this cold and stays that way for more than three days. I am a delicate flower that needs warmth and sun. And working plumbing.

SO, everything finally thawed. All was well with the world. We dumped the pool water again. Life with indoor plumbing is soooo much better than life without it. I was humming in the kitchen, planning a real meal with real dishes that I could really wash in really hot water when Sweet Girl emerged from my bathroom. "Um, Mom?" she said. "I think your toilet is broken".

Yep, it was. Pouring water out of the tank. The lovely tank that so recently had just been filled the right way, via pipes.

We turned OFF the water to the toilet. We started to go to the pool with our buckets. Then, joy! I remembered..we had water at the sink! These words actually came out of my mouth:

"Oh, this isn't bad at all. I can fill the buckets right HERE and then use them to flush."

You know, it really is the little things in life that make it worth living.