Houston, we have a problem

I've been in Houston for the last 4 or 5 days.  Not a good travel choice, as my good friend Tropical Storm Imelda reminded me, once I got there.

The airline did try to warn me, sending me emails telling me I may want to change my plans at no charge because of the storm, but the DOWNTON ABBEY MOVIE WAS OPENING ON THURSDAY!!  Yes, I flew across the country in a tropical storm so I could go to the movies with my daughters.  Stop judging me, it was a good movie and we've been looking forward to it for ages.

My flight on Thursday was only an hour delayed, so I thought things were going my way.  We had a relatively smooth landing in Houston, I got off the plane the went to the passenger pick-up area to wait for my girls to come get me.  That's when things went bad.  My first clue things weren't right is when I went to the pick-up area and there were only about 8 cars sitting there, 2 of the police cars, and none of them were moving or even turned on.  As a matter of fact, only 2 of them had people in them.  If you've ever spent time in a post 9/11 airport, you know that this is NOT a thing.  Turns out that after much texting and calling with the girls, that all the roads and from the airport were under water and the airport sent out a tweet telling people to not come pick up their passengers, that they had food and electricity and they'd be fine.  They never actually told any of this to those of us sitting in the airport waiting for our rides, we had to find out through comparing notes with fellow stranded passengers and calls to our Houston contacts.

After waiting at a complete stand-still for an hour on the road to the airport, the girls gave up and managed to find a place to turn around and went back home to wait for further updates.  4 hours later there was a break in the storm and they found out through someone on Twitter (NOT the airport) that there was one lane open, so they jumped in the car and got their momma.  YAY!!  So 5 hours after I landed, I finally walked into the door and I was officially there.  The drive back was apocalyptic.  There were abandoned cars sitting all over the place, some tire deep in water.  People were driving through ditches in an attempt to get out of parking lots and jumping the curbs to avoic roads that were under water.  And, worst of all, all the theaters were closed, so we had to postpone the movie until Saturday night.  😲

Friday it was still raining, so I spent the day juicing limes.  What?  Doesn't everyone juice limes when they're on vacation visiting their kids?  Someone had given the girls a huge case of limes and they were making the whole house smell funky.  Since the girls were busy, I just juiced away, made a pitcher of limeade and a lime pie.  So the citrus portion of our program was definitely covered.

Saturday we ran errands and did random stuff until it was movie time.  But right before we left to go, the girls discovered an injured baby squirrel, wrapped him up, brought him in the house and named him Alfred.  *sigh*  It's like these critters know then they've got a couple of suckers around. 

We went to the movie (AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!) and it was AWESOME.  It was fun being in a theater with a bunch of people who also knew and loved all these characters and laughed at the inside jokes and snarky comments together. 

Sunday we brought Alfred to the SPCA, then spent a ridiculous amount of time there so Angel #4 could pet all the cats.  I had an uneventful flight home, got in about 10pm last night and here I am now.  So, we're all caught up for the moment.