How we weather the weather down here: Thursday’s Disappointment
This morning, I woke up.
Power, check. Already we were doing better than yesterday.
I filled my varied makeshift buckets and headed out to the barn. Would I make it to the barn without spilling the water? Would I find Ro tangled up in her blanket?
Yes I would, and no I wouldn’t.
I pulled the blanket off Ro and turned her out to stretch while I set about cleaning her stall, sorting out her water, and prepping her breakfast.
Within an hour, I was back in my truck and headed home. No hangups. No disasters. Life was being disappointingly unfunny.
But no worries: the news was adamant that we were all going to die by noon. I headed home with high hopes. Surely, by this evening, there would be an adventure in the making.
Noon came and went. The snow and sleet… didn’t.
Evening came. I headed out to the barn on bone dry and empty roads. All of Houston apparently believed the news and had headed home early. It was rush hour, but there was no rush. I was still driving like a stoned grandma, thanks to the latest round of water buckets in my car, but no one was honking at me or passing me in exasperation.
It was weird. Twilight Zone weird.
I got to the barn and turned Ro out again. She’s so over this whole thing it isn’t funny. She walked around for a bit, and I encouraged her to gallop a bit, but she really wasn’t in to it. Remember when I said she was humoring me? She’d canter off for a few strides then stop and look at me. See? I did it. Can I have dinner now?
I left her and went to do chores. Stall, clean. Feed, prepped. Morning feed…
We have a stand-in feeder taking over the morning feed, so the normal feeder doesn’t have to kill herself trying to get to the barn in potentially hazardous conditions. Since he’s not familiar with the routine, we were leaving feed/hay in front of the stalls for him. He could just dump and go, no worries about amounts or who gets what.
This is an ingenious plan.
The problem with this plan is that the barn alleyway was filled with piles of hay and feed. My truck was filled with 20 gallons of water that I needed to get in Ro’s buckets. I was pretty sure I could get the truck in the aisle and up to Ro’s stall, but backing out again… I think backing up in straight lines is overrated. I had visions of running over all the hay piles and feed buckets.
Fine. I carried my buckets to the stall.
That, my friends, was the only hitch to the entire day. I had to carry some water down the barn aisle.
It’s pathetic. This is the best that the Historic Storm can throw at me?
On the way home, I stopped at the liquor store to see if they had my cider yet. It’s special order. The store owner was originally skeptical when I said I would buy it if he could get it. “Of course we can get it,” he said.
Today, he said, “It’s still out of stock. You weren’t kidding about it being hard to find, were you?”
Small victories; I knew what I was talking about when I said “if.” He says I’m on the top of his supplier’s list, though.
In the meantime, he stocks some imported British cider, and that’s almost as good. I think he stocks it just for me. I can’t wait for this summer; I’m going to introduce him to pear cider.
But for now, for tonight, I headed home with my cider and snuggled in with my cats. Once again, we have avoided disaster. Everyone is safe and comfortable. Some of us are more comfortable than others, but I don’t have the heart to kick my ancient cat off my lap so I can go get my Cheeze-Its.
And the Historic Storm, I have to say, is a disappointment.
We didn’t die by noon. We didn’t die by the evening commute. We still haven’t died. I was promised snow and ice and sleet and none of that has appeared. I am losing faith.
This is it? This is winter? Some sub-freezing temps without any precipitation whatsoever?
Bah. The groundhog and I thumb our noses at Winter.
Thus for winter storms. All hail Spring!
How we weather the weather down here: Wednesday’s Woes
Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling a little more groggy than normal. I turned on my computer monitor so I could check the news and see if the world had ended yet. When the monitor didn’t turn on, I pressed the power button a couple more times just in case.
Look, I’m not a morning person. Some mornings, when I first wake up, my toothbrush is confusing. Trying to figure out why something that should be working isn’t working is hard when you are in that state of mind.
It finally occurred to me that my computer must have been updated and then shut itself down. I turned the computer on. The computer didn’t come on.
When the kitchen lights also didn’t come on, I finally realized the power was out.
Ah ha. I opened my fridge and looked hopefully for something that wouldn’t require heating, before realizing that I probably shouldn’t open my fridge until I figured out how long the power was going to be out for. Figuring that out required knowing why the power was out.
At times like this, I start to understand why people own smart phones instead of the antique relic that I have. My phone can barely get text messages. It certainly can’t look up things on the internet for me.
But hey - my rent was due. I threw on some warm clothes and took my check to the office, figuring they would know what was going on. They might have, if they had been there. The office was closed and dark. I was in the dark. And the cold.
The day was not starting out well. At all.
By the time I got back to my apartment, the power was back on. I checked the news, and discovered that the cold snap had overwhelmed the power grid. The Powers that Be decided to implement rolling blackouts to help balance the load. The articles were almost cheerful: power will be out for 10-45 minutes, but no critical services (hospitals, etc) will be affected. The articles were suspiciously silent about whether the homes of the Powers that Be were included in the rolling blackouts. Enquiring minds want to know.
For a moment I thought longingly of my first apartment, which was on a hospital grid. Even during Ike, we never lost power for more than a couple hours.
Then I figured that my neighborhood had obviously already been hit by our blackout, and we were good for the day.
Just as I settled into work, the power went out again.
For the rest of the morning, I had power for an hour to an hour and a half, then lost it for thirty to forty five minutes. Every time I thought we might be good and I might be able to run a load of laundry, the power would go out again.
For a day that hadn’t started out well to begin with, it sure wasn’t looking up, either.
By early afternoon the power came on and stayed on. The news reassured everyone the blackouts were done, and then warned ominously: cut your power use down during these peak times, or else.
This is why, and I’m truly sorry for the people who ran into me, that I showed up at the barn later that night wearing dirty, stinking clothes. I couldn’t do laundry. Or else.
I’d heard the pipes at the barn might be broken, and I also figured that even if they weren’t, the water would be pretty cold coming out of them. I decided to bring water from home when I went out; it would be warmer and Ro would be more likely to drink it.
This meant that I had to find containers to put water in. Preferably containers with lids. Preferably containers I could lift after I filled them with water. Slowly, I added things to my truck: my large cooler, my smaller water cooler, a plastic kitty litter tub. Meanwhile, I was kicking myself. After I bought my trailer, one of my first thoughts was that I should get three or four five-gallon water containers from somewhere, so I could bring water along for trail rides and such. Do you think I did that yet? Of course not. I added a couple one-gallon jugs to the truck as well. And then I was out of containers, so that was going to have to be enough water.
I’d wonder what my neighbors think of me, but I really don’t want to know.
On the way to the barn, aware that the lids on some of these containers weren’t so much “spill proof” as “decorative,” I drove like a stoned grandmother. Turns were exaggeratedly careful. I sped up and slowed down at a pace that would have exasperated a turtle. But, more importantly, I made it to the barn without spilling any water.
And then I pulled the cooler out of the truck and dropped it.
Kidding! I’m kind of surprised I didn’t; that sounds like something I would do.
First barn task: pull blankets off Ro and toss her outside to run around.
As soon as the sheet came off, it was clear the cooler underneath was a bad, bad thing. It had slipped back behind her withers and was binding her shoulders. Maybe I should have bought the irish knit after all; at least I would have had a cool irish knit sheet out of all this. Now I just have one fugly cooler.
Although Ro was a little stiff when she first went out in the paddock, a couple buck-and-gallops later, she appeared happy as a clam. I left her out and went back to clean her stall and sort out her water.
While I was trying to figure out how much more hay to give her—she was practically bedded on hay already, but obviously I couldn’t put the cooler back on her, so she’d be left with just a sheet overnight—my friend showed up bearing blankets she had scrounged up. She thought one might fit Ro. We blanketed her guy, prepped everyone’s dinners, and I went to bring Ro in.
By now, Ro was excited. It was cold. She was nekkid. She’d been out running and bucking around. And she knew her dinner was waiting.
“Blankets” were not on her agenda. Standing still for a blanket that had to go over her head really wasn’t on her agenda, but she only fidgeted a little bit. She humors me an awful lot. I’m not sure why.
Fortunately, the blanket fit even better than the sheet I bought her, and it is much warmer.
By the time I left, Ro was tucked in even better than the night before. For a day that hadn’t started out well, it was ending ok.
But Thursday was starting to look bad. Snow that had been forecast to arrive Friday morning was now forecast for Thursday afternoon. Contingency plans were being made for Friday morning, on the assumption that no one was going to be able to get to the barn safely (an assumption predicated on the stupidity of other drivers, and not necessarily our ability. I know for a fact that I could make the drive in, but not if I had to deal with stupid Houston drivers as well as the conditions).
The coldest weather was behind us, but according to the forecasts, the worst conditions were still to come…
How we weather the weather down here: Tuesday’s Adventures
Since I lived in the far north, I know how to deal with cold weather.
You move south, where there is no such thing as cold weather.
That was working out pretty well for me, until now.
But early this week, the Historic Storm began making headlines. Four letter words like snow began showing up in forecasts. Articles began to say things like hard freeze.
I made my preparations: I bought some Cheeze-Its and called it good.
I mean, really: how long could it possibly stay cold down here?
Tuesday morning, I was woken up at o-dark-thirty by wind attempting to break my windows. My young cat, realizing I was awake with that sixth sense cats have, jumped off the windowsill and into my arms. She was so cold I nearly got frostbite.
I drove to work in the wind, morosely watching the temperature according to my car. I’ve never figured out how accurate that thing is, but my car thought it was around freezing. Fine. Whatever. The sun would come out and temps would rise.
This is the South. They don’t do winter here. Not for more than a couple hours, anyway.
But as the day wore on the wind got louder, the temperature kept dropping, and little details from the news articles began to start nagging at my brain. Things like snow on Friday. Tuesday. Friday. There were a couple days missing in there. I looked more closely at the numbers. It was going to be freezing for days.
Around lunch time, another thought bubbled up and finally caught my attention.
I don’t own any blankets for Ro. I do have a cooler, but it’s much too big for her. Normally, this is not a problem—for the few brief cold snaps we’ve had, I’ve tossed her extra hay and let her winter coat do its thing. But for a prolonged cold snap, for a horse not acclimated to freezing weather…
I made a call to a friend who had said previously that she might have some blankets. She was also checking out options for her horses.
She called me back later—we needed to find blankets for all three.
Some people would plan ahead. Order online. Or at least be at the tack store the moment it opened. By now, it was early afternoon. We knew our odds were not good.
She headed to one tack store. I headed to another. At the store I went to, all the employees were huddled in the blanket area, checking stock. They told me they’d been on the phone non-stop with customers wanting to know what they had left.
“Really?” I said, inching closer to the handful of medium-weight blankets left. “You’d think people would plan ahead…”
The problem with calling in, instead of being there in person, is that the person in the store can snag available blankets while they pow-wow with friends in other stores. She who has her hand on the blanket gets first dibs. I called my friend to let her know that there was one blanket that might work for one of her horses.
With only five blankets left, it’s amazing even one was in a size we needed.
Then I started looking at sheets and coolers, to see if I couldn’t cobble together some sort of layered option for Ro. The sheet part was easy; I even had some selection there.
When I started looking for a cooler, my options were a really, really ugly green thing—think someone started with that awful military green and then made it muddier—or one of those Irish knit anti-sweat sheets. I chose warm but ugly and bought the cooler. Given how desperate people were, I’m sure even the anti-sweat sheet was sold by the end of the day.
That night at the barn, we got everyone tucked in. The sheet/cooler option seemed to be working ok for Ro, and I tossed extra hay to make up for the fact that it wasn’t really an ideal setup.
Given my total lack of advance preparation (I’m not sure buying Cheeze-Its really counts as preparation), things looked to be going well. Ro was tucked in, munching on hay to keep warm. I was tucked in on my couch, munching on Cheeze-Its and snuggled up with the cats to keep warm.
By the time I fell asleep, I was pretty sure we were set. Four days of cold weather? No problem. We survived Day 1, didn’t we?
I think the weather gods are overreacting a bit
Look, I know I said recently that winter was over.
It was foolish.
In the extreme.
But I think this Mega Monster Storm the weather gods are throwing at half of the United States is a little bit of an overreaction.
I am so sorry everyone. I forget sometimes that I have super magical powers when it comes to bad weather.
Mea culpa.
Holy Crap—It’s winter!
As someone who suffered through more years in Alaska than any sane person should, I have very definite understandings of the seasons.
There’s Road Construction, that season when the weather is pretty decent and the days are long and the roads are full of orange cones.
There’s Winter, when the weather is very cold and everything, including my eyeballs, is frozen or freezing, and the roads are full of ice and snow.
There’s Breakup, when the weather is above freezing and everyone is wearing t-shirts because 40 degrees is t-shirt weather, and the roads are full of the sludge.
And then there’s Summer. It’s a brief Thursday in June or July. No one is sure what happens on it, because it comes and goes so quickly.
Now that I’m in Texas, I’ve had to revise my understanding of the seasons.
There is Spring, where the world is green and beautiful.
There is Hell, where the world is hot and humid, except when it’s hotter and more humid.
There is Fall, where the world is cool and kind of rainy, and we love it because it’s not Hell.
And there’s Winter, which happens on one night in December of January. It drops below freezing for a period of hours, and stuff freezes.
We had Winter last night.
But before we had Winter, we had a couple weeks of generally manky weather. Ro hasn’t really been worked since mid-December, with one thing and another, and I was scrambling to find a way to fit her up despite the mud that rendered the arena and nightly turnout generally unusable. We spent a lot of time in the round pen, to neither of our pleasure. I’m glad it’s there, but it’s small.
Whenever I could, I’d leave Ro in the roundpen while I mucked her stall and did other stuff at the barn. The round pen isn’t necessarily bigger than Ro’s stall/run, but it’s a change of scenery. Plus, it’s amusing to see her trying to look over the top of the solid walls. It’s like watching a kid jumping up and down by the candy counter.
Ro was not nearly as amused as I was, and would remind me every time I walked by that she was in there and her food was most certainly not.
Still, we were making what progress we could.
And then, last night, everything was finally dried out just enough that turnout would have been ok—still muddy and mucky, but not horse-eating muddy and mucky.
That, no doubt, is why an Arctic cold front swept through. I swear the world is conspiring to make my life difficult.
There was still enough puddles in the paddocks to make turnout on a night with a hard freeze ill-advised, especially given the lack of turnout the horses had had up to that point. So I pulled up to the barn, resigned to yet another round pen session, when I realized—I could turn Ro out in the largest turn out paddock and go eat dinner. She’d get a couple hours to stretch and run around a bit. That would be much better than the round pen.
When I let her loose, I was sure she’d go galloping off. I would have.
But no. She sniffted the ground, looked at me, then wandered over to the fenceline by her buddies, who were hanging out in their paddocks.
And she stood there.
Power to the Ponies! Equine Solidarity!
She wasn’t going to have fun if they weren’t going to have fun.
I gave her the evil eye—so much for my brilliant plan—and went to muck her stall. As soon as I was out of sight, I heard her galloping across the paddock.
So much for the Equine Solidarity Movement.
Before I headed out to dinner, I went over to make sure everything was ok. She was standing by the gate at that point, but for all her I’m-not-having-fun posturing, she sure didn’t want to come in—as soon as she saw me coming, she turned and walked off across the paddock.
At least she got a couple hours out, though. And she’s out tonight, up to her hocks in hay. It’ll get cold again, but there was no standing water in the paddocks to worry about. Hopefully this means the arena will be ridable tomorrow.
And hopefully this means Winter—or what passes for Winter here—is over. We’ve had our day or two of freezing—now it’s time for Spring!