Give Us Rain!

Well, that was close! A few days ago, we were coming home from the vet and noticed the traffic was heavier than normal, fire trucks kept passing us, and ahead in the distance was a whole lot of black smoke. As we neared our neighborhood, we saw that one of the major side streets was closed and that the fire was less than two miles away from our home.

We pulled into our driveway and many of our neighbors were in their driveways packing to evacuate. It wasn't mandatory at the time, but it was too close for comfort. So we immediately headed in and started packing a couple of suitcases so we could head out. We grabbed the important paperwork, a few sets of clothes, many toys and movies, and departed on back roads to a nearby town where we met a friend at Dairy Queen to discuss what was going on (and enjoy a Blizzard of course). By the way, we found out later that in these situations, you should also bring a utility bill as proof of residence. And something that has moved WAY UP on my To Do List is to buy a safe so we can keep important things in a convenient, centralized location.

It was surreal as we sat there watching the smoke around us. We were still close enough to smell the smoke in the air and see ash flying around. Another friend invited us over to watch the news and hang out until we decided whether or not we could head home or if we should get a hotel room. Thankfully, a couple of hours later, it was deemed safe enough to go home. We kept our bags in the car just in case we needed to make a quick exit, because the winds did shift a few times and the neighborhood across the street was ordered to evacuate.

The drought conditions, here in Texas are beyond horrible and I've never seen a population wish so intently for a hurricane to head this way. I know my friends back home in the mid-Atlantic would love to ship us some of  their rain and we'd gladly take it. The forecast is slightly humorous at this point because someone called it 'wishcasting'. The last day of the 10, or however many, day forecast is the only one calling for a 20-40% chance of rain. Then as the days go by, that day continues to slide to the last day of the forecast. It's been that way for quite some time now. Anyways, I'll mark this down as another experience we've gone through with lessons learned and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for multiple days of rain.