The ice storm cometh

It's cold and rainy outside now. This is the leading edge of a two-day ice storm that's headed our way. They're only predicting1/4" or so of ice here in our area, but that would be enough. I'm not worried so much about being homebound, but I'm concerned about the power going out. We're a very energy-intense family.

We do own a generator. Kara and I bought it back in 1999 as everyone was preparing for the disaster that was to be Y2K. It's still in the box, unopened. It, along with our 72 hour kits, are 15 miles away in a storage unit. Most of our earthly belongings are still in the storage unit. Most of them will only come out of storage when the weather is good enough to have a yard sale. Why we paid thousands of dollars to move things that we will never be able to use is one of the mysteries I haven't the time to ponder.

Anna and Alyssa are at a birthday party tonight. It's a sleepover, but only Anna will be sleeping over. Alyssa is going to cry all the way home when I go and get her, so I'm not looking forward to that. I should be able to find the house this time, though.

I got lost taking them. I've only been there once, and it's dark tonight. I figured I could find it OK, since it has a window on the right, the garage on the left, and it's for sale by owner. There are WAY to many houses in that little subdivision for sale by owner. After carting all of the sleepover gear through near-freezing rain to not one but two wrong houses, Anna refused to go to the door until I could prove that the third house was right.

Work on the house is creeping along. Someone from the church came last night to help me take the cabinets back out of the kitchen. We're replacing them with wire shelves, as the 4 coats of hard seal we put on the cabinets (specially formulated for the chemically sensitive) wasn't working as expected. We probably should have tossed the cabinets in the first place, but we decided to give them a shot.

We also have a water system that is ALMOST in. It looks really nice, with the big stainless steel tanks. It was supposed to be operational on Tuesday, but it's still in process. The guy putting them in was going to finish tonight, but he forgot one of the main parts. He's going to try and come back tomorrow. If I don't sound convinced, it's probably because of the aforementioned ice. But if the system works half as nice as it looks, we'll be in business.

I'm sure it will work well, and make a huge difference, because it is the most expensive component of our house remodel. And it has been worse than major dental surgery just getting it in.

But that's another story for another fifteen minutes.

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