Yesterday

was a horrible day.

We woke up the morning after two tornadoes hit our area. At 6:30 a.m, it was light enough to start using the chainsaw to get the tree off the roof and the large branch off the trampoline. Everyone pitched in and moved branches to the brush pile. No serious damage.

So we come in to take showers and there is no water. We don't know why. I call the guys who put the new well in last August. Asked if they could come out on Friday. They seemed more concerned than I did that waiting a day would mean our house would go without water for a day. I told them, "We went three weeks without water last fall and we are going camping this weekend, which is like voluntarily becoming hobos, so a day without water isn't too big of a deal. Besides, Friday is payday and I'm fairly certain you'd like to get paid."  He chuckled and said they'd put us on the schedule.

I drove Charlie to art camp and the damage all over town was shocking. Melody and I were coming home from church during the storm. While stopped at a light, the wind was whipping my van sideways. A few blocks ahead we saw what looked to me like lightning hitting a transformer. The series of white and blue explosions were surreal. If we weren't just a few blocks from home, we would have pulled over and found shelter.

At the beginning the storm, Dowlan went to go pick up a friend who normally walks home from work. His car was hit by a snowcone stand that had become airborne. So I spent part of my day yesterday driving up to his office to get his car and take it to be looked at. On the way, I got pulled over for an expired tag and got a ticket. I ended up sitting in a restaurant for over an hour waiting for the person who was going to 'be there soon' to come look at the car.

I got home and took a nap. It was one of those painful, restless naps where you're never quite unconscious.

Then it was time to pick Charlie up from art camp. Then it was time to take Dixie to see her therapist.

Dixie has been seeing the same therapist for pretty much the duration of the time we've lived here. So not-quite three years. She is pretty widely agreed upon as the best person in town to work with kids who have experienced trauma. In the last couple of sessions, the therapist has told me that she's hitting the limits of her expertise and we need to start looking into new options. These are all at least two hundred miles away.

Dixie's good times have been getting better and better while her bad times get worse and worse. A couple of recent extreme behaviors brought us to the conclusion that, if anything else happened on a similar scale, it was time for more in-patient therapy.

We didn't even make it home.

Guys, I don't know what's ahead for her. She's in in-patient care now. Depending on whether or not they can help her, we may be looking at longer-term residential programs in San Antonio or Austin.

Dowlan's got the day off, since we'd planned to leave for the mountains bright and early this morning. Now, camping and running water are the least of our worries. Hopefully, we will lose our hobo status later this morning. The car can be fixed. The tags and tickets dealt with. Everything else that I worry about in life seems so small now because my little girl isn't home.