Dancing In the Dark

As I sit in the beautiful, air-conditioned library at Rice University, after having a fun though stressful weekend, I'm still smiling. The struggle to keep my head up gets a little bit bigger with each turn of events, but I am trying to push through the small mess we're in with a good attitude. As I tell my students, "for success, attitude is equally as important as ability," and if I don't have a good attitude, I won't be able to do my work tomorrow.

You may be wondering why I've chosen "Dancing in the Dark," one of my all-time favorite Bruce songs, to be the title of this post. Well, it's the perfect descriptor for this weekend.

I arrived home on Friday after my first exhausting week of teaching, and thought that my house was a little toasty, but just that we had turned the A/C down and it needed to kick back on. I was wearing jeans, it's Texas, and I was warm. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Except for when I flipped the switch for the ceiling fan in my room, nothing happened. And the light switch didn't work. Neither did the one in the bathroom.

We'd had a thunderstorm that morning- that must be it! The powerline must have gotten knocked down. Except that the traffic light on the corner worked... Maybe someone blew a fuse in the house before she left for work? I looked for the circuit breaker, found it, realized that I had no clue what to do with it once I found it, and caught a quick glance at the calendar across the kitchen. August 24th. Shoot.

The JVs before us had left us a note- make sure that your utilities are all set up before August 24th, or else they'll be shut off! We knew this, we talked about it, and we waited for a bill to come for us to pay. We were told that the Houston Program Office would be setting up our utilities.... and they thought we would be setting up our utilities... so no one did anything, and now we're hot and in the dark.

Casa Helen Prejean to the rescue! Once I called Karen at work in a panic to set up the rest of the utilities and see what she could do about the power situation (she's the house bookkeeper), called/emailed approximately every adult in Houston I know (not many, but still a lot), and texted the other house to let them know that we'd need a place to crash, Rachel came home. Then Megan, Eva, and Cassie, and after Karen and her boss Maria sorted things out with our utilities, we went to pick Karen up at work.

We ate the ice cream in the freezer (priority), packed the rest of our food into a cooler, and packed clothes and pillows and loaded up in my car and headed to our temporary home on Wichita St. It's honestly been a lot of fun for the weekend, kinda like a giant sleepover. Luckily, Casa HP has a lot of extra beds and had a lot of extra room in their fridge, so we were welcomed with open arms. It's been like one giant super-community!

We are, however, quite anxious to get back into our own house. The other community has been so gracious in letting us take over their living room, but enough is enough. Fingers crossed our power will be back tomorrow, and I'll come home from work and walk into a nice, cool house. It's been fun... a little funny at this point, but did y'all know that it's really hot in Texas? And a little bit humid?

I'm trying to keep my head up throughout all this mess. We went to a great mass at St. Anne's in downtown Houston this morning, where I saw Chris and Ryan AND Mr. and Mrs. Reed!! (Kathleen Reed, my college roommate's parents and sister and brother-in-law) It was so nice to see familiar faces! We went to the ministry fair at St. Anne's after mass, and we were able to get information on what seems to be a lot of cool volunteer opportunities throughout the city.

Yes, I know I'm already volunteering a lot, but it would be nice to meet people outside of the world of JVC! Also, I could probably dedicate an entire blog post to Chris and Ryan and how amazing they have been to me already- I am probably the only teacher at CRJ (or in Houston/Texas/the US) to have leftover duck, green beans, and delicious potatoes for lunch on the first day of school. They are definitely looking out for me, sending me home with a lovely bag of goodies beyond my delicious lunch, and I will be eternally grateful to the Reed family for all the amazing things (and people) they've given me over the years- the gift of friendship is truly amazing.

This whole ordeal is definitely frustrating. It could have absolutely been avoided and I'm disappointed that we had to go through this, but it has definitely been a DEEP look into living simply. Lots of JV communities don't have A/C (Tom doesn't in Philadelphia), and lots of my students don't either. Not having electricity in the house is, yes, quite annoying, but lots of people in our surrounding community of Houston use it sparingly because they have to financially. We had a place to go, and people to help us sort everything out. We're not evacuating our home because of Hurricane Isaac (yet...). We may be in the dark, but if you put it in perspective, we're definitely dancing.





So, that's all for now... hopefully my next post will be a lot more upbeat :). Here's to the second week of school... and Labor Day in sight!

xo

You can't start a fire, worryin' about your little world falling apart.