An ode to the worst Valentines Day ever!
One year ago the worst winter storm in Texas history descended into Austin and after a busy weekend prepping, Lucca and I went home and planned for a snow day. I kept waking up and taking photos of videos of the snow and how displeased Lucca was.
I woke up on 2/14 and made some coffee and took a shower. When I got out of the shower something felt wrong. I couldn’t describe what I was feeling but it bothered me enough that I called my dad and asked him if he thought if I should drive up to Work and Woof to make sure everything was okay. I’m not used to being away from the business and given that we had had so much snow I was just uneasy. He of course said no and I of course threw on my winter jacket, loaded Lucca up into the car and began the 20+ minute drive to Work and Woof which honestly I can only describe as one of the dumbest thing I’ve done in this lifetime. The constable who watched me fishtail on Dittmar probably agrees.
Once I pulled into the unplowed parking lot I knew I had made a huge mistake. Then panic truly set in when I walked in and immeaditely stepped into 2 inches of water. The rest of this story might be a little spotty because to be perfectly honest I think I blocked most of it out. I ran to find the leak which was coming from our back bathroom by the grooming room. Water was pouring from the ceiling but because it was flat ceiling I couldn’t see where it was coming from. It was 8 degrees outside and maybe 30-40ish inside because as anyone could tell you even with the heat on in a 7,000 sq ft building its hard to keep warm at that temp.
I started making phone calls, first to my landlord, then to my mom and dad and finally to 911 who very politely told me I was not a priority. I knew I didn’t have the tools to shut off the water main which controls the entire business park no matter how many times people told me I had an individual one so I just tried to control the spread of water the best I could. My mom suggested putting down kiddie pools but quickly those filled up so I took mop buckets and scooped water from the buckets into the shower all the while balling my eyes out because 911 had essentially told me they didn’t know if or when they would be able to come rescue us.
After getting myself dangerously wet I moved to the main dog yard and started pushing water out of the roll up door which barely worked but I couldn’t sit there I felt like I needed to keep moving. I came onto IG LIVE and explained to my clients what was happening and trying not to cry at the same time. One of my amazing neighbor clients came and walked around with me to make sure I wasn’t missing the water shut off for the building and then offered to come back later. Finally after what I think was about 3 or 4 hours my dad called back and told me to leave. Now if you know me, sometimes people call me dramatic, I like to think of it as a touch theatric but I remember shouting “I feel like the captain of the Titanic, I can’t leave” to which my very calm and level headed father proceeded to remind me that the water has ways of escaping and so it wasn’t going to rise any further. I pulled everything off the ground that I could, grabbed Lucca and headed out the door, I actually think I got back on IG to update everyone when I heard sirens. They were for us.
6 AFD firefighters got out of their truck and had me show them around. God bless because they actually assigned one to me because I was clearly not okay. They made me sit on the couch while they looked around and after many back and forth calls finally got the water shut off for the complex. Next they looked for the leak which required them to bring in the jaws of life to make huge holes in my ceiling to find the leak. (Don’t worry, below you will find photos and videos from that day). They cracked jokes with me and tried to keep it light and they did a pretty good job. I’ll never forget the captain came up to me and said “I have good news and bad news. The good news is we turned the water off, the bad news is is that the water will likely freeze and this will become an ice rink”. I started laughing hysterically because why not? I couldn’t fix it now and I had no idea what was going to happen next. That really confused them. They asked me if I needed a ride home so they had me follow them down South Congress in the tracks of their snow chained fire truck until I could get home safely. What followed was 7 weeks of chaos but that’s a post for another day. I write this not for sympathy but because in a lot of ways I still don’t talk about it much, I always leave out the part where I cried hysterically for 3 hours shoveling water like an absolute lunatic, and I laugh about it now because we survived but writing this now felt very therapeutic and not to mention so many of you met us after that so maybe it’ll give you a better glimpse into who we are. It was hands down one of the worst days of my life but as we know at Work and Woof, we always rise.
xoxo, Jill
