Iowa!

I wrote this Sunday afternoon and I was planning on posting it last night, but we had no electricity.

Today has been great sort of. You see last night at 6:15 our electricity went out. And it hadn’t even been twenty minutes since I had called Kinky to warn him, about thinking twice, before going to Kerrville, because we were under a severe thunderstorm watch until 11:00.

Around 6:30, thinking that our phones were out too, Tony told me that he was going to drive up to the top of the Kerrville pass, so he could call the Bandera Electric Co-op to report our power outage.

At 7:40, our phone rang and that startled me, because earlier, when I had picked up our portable phone there had been no dial tone and the only phone that was ringing, inside The Cabin was from this one.

 So I cautiously picked up the phone, even though I was scared to, because of the lightning strikes that were nearby. “Hello?”

“Nancy, are y’all okay?” Our dear friend Jim asked.

“Yes and no,” I said. “We’ve been without electricity for nearly an hour and a half and…” Then Jim went on to tell me that he had just looked at the radar and it looked like the storm was right on top of the rescue ranch. And I believed it.

After a brief visit with Jim about the weather conditions and Kris, I gave him Kinky’s cell phone number and asked him to please call Kinky to let him know that the electricity was out.  Then I heard thunder and I quickly put the phone in Tony’s hand, because better Tony get struck by lightning than me.

At 9:22, our power came back on, I was thrilled, so I immediately called Jim, to tell him that we were fine and for him not to worry, because the power had just come back on, while Tony was busy plugging everything back into the wall.

As soon as I hung up, the phone rang—it was Kinky. His loss of power was no longer and he just wanted to make sure that our electricity was on, too.

Then at 10:15 we had a major storm with thunder and lightning and a little pea-sized hail, thrown in for color, so we quickly unplugged everything again.

And then 12 minutes later our electricity went out again. We figured they had to fix something, so we waited. Finally, at 11:48, Tony called Bandera Electric, from The Cabin. Then we decided there was nothing else for us to do, but go to bed. So I turned off our lantern and turned off my red candle.

I got up this morning, at 6:29, expecting our electricity to be back on, but sadly it wasn’t.

So later on, after Tony did his morning chores outside, I fixed us a delicious breakfast—a tall glass of water, that I obtained from our water cooler dispenser and of course it was not cold. And we each drank two glassfuls. Talk about delicious!

Trying to be in a more positive mood about our situation, I jokingly asked Tony if he wanted to watch television with me and that made us both laugh. Then I dusted off my television and we sat down, in our chairs, in the big room and watched my television do nothing, but collect new dust, for about ten minutes or so.

Around 10:30 this morning, Tony went to go check on the creek’s water crossings and when he returned, he said, “We can make it over to Kinky’s, but not the other water crossings, yet.” So we jumped into Buttermilk and went over the river, into the woods, to get to the Lodge.

“Hi Kink,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “I tried to call first, but your phones are down.” Then we had a fun visit with Kinky and Scott, out on the porch, with The Friedmans.

About 40 minutes later we heard some thunder rumbling, so we adios-ed our friends and high-tailed it back over to the rescue ranch. And by now, Tony was starving, so I gave him our last  banana.

Around 1:30, I asked Tony, “Do you want me to fix us lunch? Water is all we’ve got, but I can put it in bowls and we can pretend it’s soup.” Tony tried to chuckle, but I could tell that he was pretty stressed out about our situation and that he was probably wondering why it was taking so long to get our electric meter back to costing us money, again.

A little while later, we went and ate lunch, at The Apple Store, in Medina. Tony ordered a cheeseburger with no onions and I ordered their chicken salad plate. And the funniest thing happened while we were waiting, in line, to pay the cashier.

Some nice woman told the cashier that she was from Iowa and touring the Hill Country. Another woman who was checking out some wind chimes overheard her and says, “We’re from Iowa, too and we’re here visiting relatives. Then they started telling each other where they lived, in Iowa.

And when it was my turn to pay the bill, they were still talking about Iowa this and Iowa that. Then one of them says, “We have wooden shoes!” I looked over, at Tony and he winked at me and that nearly caused me to burst out laughing.

Then the other friendly couple, says, “We have wooden shoes, too! They are so expensive we waited until our son’s feet had quit growing to buy him his pair of wooden shoes.” And they were still talking and bragging about their wooden shoes, as we quietly exited the Apple Store. And Tony and I were still laughing about their wooden shoes, as we climbed back into Buttermilk to come back home. 

It is now 3:32 and we still don’t have any electricity or running water. Tony is outside filling up the dog bowls again, with more water that he got from the creek. And The Cabin’s temperature is 81.1 degrees and slowly rising.

I have to quit writing now, before my computer completely runs out of juice and I am hoping that I will get to post this tonight, as soon as our electricity comes back on.

To Be Continued...With A Happy Ending!