It's been raining in Austin for what seems like a year. In reality, it's been some portion of everyday for a month. It's really starting to get on my nerves. I woke up today feeling depressed, and actually the last few days have been full of foggy brains, headaches, and irritability. Initially, I assigned this to gluten. I binged on pizza over the weekend, which felt amazing at the time. But the next day? I sort of hated my life. So I ate more gluten (because it tastes amazing!!!), but then my gross-attitude symptoms never subsided. Yesterday I was totally gluten free, and today too, hoping to right the ship.

We took the boys to the Austin Nature and Science Center at Zilker Park. Going on adventures is usually a sure cure for the blues for me, but it was hard to me to get into this one. We got a late start, we didn't have any snacks in the house so I knew we'd have to spend money downtown for lunch (for some reason, spending money on non-grocery store food except on special occasions feels like a personal failure in preparedness. Does anyone else share this irrational thought?) and rain was in the forecast later in the day.

The boys had a good time and looked through lots of animal bones, and preserved bugs. We saw multiple owls, a bobcat, a skunk, ducks, opossums, and foxes. The especially liked wading in the stream and skipping rocks. But around this time, I was getting angry hungry- hangry. Where the sides of your stomach seem to be touching each other. We left and went to find lunch. We finally headed to P. Terry's--a burger stand similar to In-n-Out. A double-double later and I was in good shape. Which makes me wonder, can red meat cure depression? I can definitely pinpoint some other slumps that we helped immensely by Rudy's BBQ. Maybe it's an anemia induced mood? At any rate, I'm thankful for today because it gave me the green light to be an emotional eater. For all three people out there who read this blog, when you know I'm going through a rough time and I'm overwhelmed by life, don't bring me flowers or cake. Just bring brisket. Beef for the win!

Later that day was when the epic storm came causing lots of flooding and damage to certain areas of Austin. There were tornado warnings in our area, but we threw caution to the wind and played board games on the living room floor instead of hiding out in the closet. When you live in Ohio for 5 years and hear tornado sirens frequently, you take tornado warnings differently than most Texans. Thankfully, we had no damage to our house or neighborhood.



Before things got too crazy, the boys enjoyed some time outside in a downpour.



The lot behind our house is a
big drainage area. This is a little while after the rain stopped. The picture doesn't do it justice. The water was the size of a high school swimming pool.





The morning after the storms, our bed looked like this: