Tuesday, February 03, 2009

My Cold Week in Hell!!

So, everyone has probably heard or seen about the ice storm that hit Oklahoma to Kentucky last week - well, we were lucky enough to be right in the middle of it!

Last Monday, I was at work, and it started raining about noon. The rain was starting to freeze after only a few minutes on being on the vehicles - which caused a small panic to those that had to travel out of town to get home. By 1:30pm, I was ready to head out the door - and all the schools in the area were closing. I got home a little before 2:30, and a few minutes later Payton got home from school. Being that our house is very prone to power outages during ice storms - I decided to head to Oklahoma and stay with my mom with the girls.

The trip to my mom's was a scary one. Not even a mile from my house, a car had flipped upside down coming around a corner - and the backroads were just sheets of ice. Luckily, I only had 1 backroad to contend with before getting on to the highway. After a very scary car ride, we finally made it to my mom's. That evening we kept power, although it flickered several times. Tuesday, we were also lucky enough to keep power, although there was about 2 inches of ice on all the trees and power lines. Tuesday night it snowed - and being that none of the ice had melted, it put the accumulation up to about 4 inches. By Wednesday morning, the powerlines around my mom's house just couldn't stand the weight - and we lost power. The ironic thing was that Steve stayed home - and he had kept power the whole time, and had power after mom lost hers. Mom is lucky enough to have a gas stove, but has an electric water pump - so without power we were able to cook, but no running water. Also, she has a fireplace and a kerosene heater that kept the house warm despite of the below freezing temps outside.

Thursday was the first day that temperatures were going to be high enough to melt some of the snow and ice, so my family decided that being as Steve had power at my house - we would all head to him. Well, we waited until about 1pm before leaving so that there had been some melting - and just as we were heading out the door, Steve called to tell me that he had lost power. :( Because of that - we had no choice but to stay at mom's. We still ventured out to the store, because we were in serious need of bottled water and basic supplies. The weather was so bad, that it took my dad 30 minutes to be able to get out of the driveway, and he got stuck on the way to the store. I had problems getting up a hill, as I just kept sliding backwards. After a while, we finally all made it.

Power didn't come on all weekend, and yesterday Steve and I decided that we needed to find somewhere else to stay - as we still needed to get to work, and my parent's house is a 2 hour drive from where Steve and I work. A friend of ours told us that we could stay with her for a few days, as she lived in town and had power. So, that's what we did yesterday. It was so nice being in a home that had a running shower and power!! We got a phone call at 7pm last night that our power had finally been restored at our house!! YEA!!! Being that it was so late, we decided to stay with my friend - but that's where I'm going as soon as I get done with work and school today. It will so nice to get home - it sux being away for so long - and sux even more when you have no power or water. Something like this has really made me appreciate the little things in life, that's for sure!!