Some updates...

It has been almost a full week since the storm hit. We are still without power, but we are making it ok. Slowly our city is churning back to life. Here is a light timeline on how things have been progressing:

Saturday:

The worst of the storm hit us around 3am. We woke up at 1:30 and turned on the tv but the cable was already out. After some really strong wind gusts we got up and went to the hall. We put Lilly in our large mesh dog crate (we didn't want to cram her in this tiny cat crate) and we drug the dog bed and several blankets and pillows. We had a wind up radio and a lantern type light that both were turned on all night long. My phone let me watch the dopplar radar until around 5:30am or so before that got too slow. During the really really bad part (4ish?) our front windows were vibrating like they were about to break. It was at this point that I started to feel sick (someone told me later they think it was the really low pressure). We lost power at 2:45am. At 6:30 the winds didn't seem as bad so we gathered up the pets and went to bed. I slept about 2 hours and then we got up to survey the house. Thank goodness, we have no damage. Our tree is pretty light now, but we lost zero windows and our roof is fine.
Later on that morning, Donald and Jimmy came over and we all talked about our experience. Lee pulled the big branches up to the curb and I took a short nap around 2pm. Napping is hard when you own Schnauzers. They bark out the window at EVERYTHING. And since so many people were outside milling around, they had lots of people to tell off. Saturday nightw was terrible. It was so hot and muggy and we could barely sleep.

Sunday:

Donald and Jimmy came back over and we all started charging our cell phones in the car. Jimmy was so full of pent up energy that he raked our front yard! I swept the porch and cleaned up my flower box. Donald and I walked the dogs to the Bayou to see how full it was. It rained cats and dogs Sunday morning (the last thing everyone needed that had trees in thier roofs...). Later on Donald and I hopped in the car and drove around to find a grocery store that didn't have a line wrapped around it. HEB had a short line and they were letting people in, but they didn't have power and therefor all perishables were NADA. But we got some cookies and bread and such.
I am sick of grilled food!

Monday I went back to work and took all our frozen meats with me! It was so nice to have A/C and INTERNET!! Monday night my cousins drove down from Palestine with a Generator and 12 gallons of gas for it and hooked it all up for us. So now we can watch tv (the cable came back on Wednesday) and keep the fridge going. That is nice because ice was super hard to get and we were about to just have to let everything we had saved ruin.
So now we are just waiting. Centerpoint has us in the "By end of day Monday" timeline for our zip code. Tonight we are going to stay home again but tomorrow morning, Teddy has a vet appt for shots and then we are going to pack up some stuff and head over to Dave and Jennifers to stay the night. Hopefully by Sunday we have power.

The dogs are doing fine. You can tell they are a little freaked because nothing is normal, but they are generally happy and ok. Today they are at day care because the weather is heating back up a little bit. We didn't want them in a hot house all day!!! Plus this way they get to play all day and get some energy out.

Through the stress, I went into survivor mode and stopped eating much. I have since lost 7 pounds and still have kept it off :)

Things are calming down. You don't see lines for gas anymore. Grocery stores are getting re-stocked with meat, ice, dairy, frozen, etc. I am so mad that I lost most of my frozen goods. I had the best freezer going. All kinds of frozen veggies and meats... i could make a meal really easily! All the meat is here at work, but I lost all my veggies. Boo!

I just want to be normal again. I want to cook dinners and bake cookies and just relax. My house is a mess and we need to do about 2 loads of laundry.

And on top of all of it, i missed my Great Grandma's funeral. How do I deal with that? I cried all the way home yesterday (which took an hour). I cried when I got home...

Then Lee and Donald went to the store and got big steaks! Plus trash magazines for me and cookies! We watched a movie and the night felt so normal for one.