Start of the weekend

Little by little, life gets back to normal.

We have all our utilities back since Tuesday. The phone line was the last one to be fixed. We never lost water during the storm, and we have a gas stove and water heater, so we were always able to cook and take a hot bath. Having grown up in Puerto Rico and experiencing several big hurricanes in my youth, I kept telling Gabe and Paula we were very lucky, and that they had no idea what a huge difference it makes to have running water and the ability to cook, even without power.

Sunday and Monday we had been hunting for generators. Everybody else in Houston had the same bright idea. The lines at Home Depot and Lowe's were huge, and they had nothing available, no idea when they would get more, and no clue how many they would get. In any case, by Monday afternoon I had given up hope of getting a generator and was pondering what to do with the meat in my freezer, most of which was still frozen, but starting to thaw. Gabriel found ice at a supermarket in the Inner Loop, about an hour from us. Shortly after he got home and I moved all the meat to a cooler full of ice, the electricity came back on. Was I glad about that!

School is out until Monday for Paula, but Isabel's daycare opened on Wednesday. Gabe and I have been working from home. Poor Gabe pulled an all-nighter two nights ago.

The gym has been closed, and I miss that terribly. I also missed having my coffee with milk. Supermarkets lost a lot in this storm, and some provisions are slow coming. We finally got milk Wednesday night.

All of these are very minor inconveniences. Overall, I think the impact to our life has been small. It could have been much, much worse. It has been a lot worse for residents of the coastal areas, even for some of my neighbors who sustained water damage. We were lucky.