Feb 23, 2020 — Sitting in a warm house, with water and electricity, and the temperatures well above freezing at last, I can share about last week…but this won’t be one of my funny posts. Because there’s NOTHING FUNNY about what Texas went through last week: SNOWMAGEDDON2021 was cruel to so many for so long. 8 days of sub-freezing temps in TEXAS. Even in San Antonio and Houston!
Texas: where MOST people do NOT OWN heavy winter coats. Where we are NOT PREPARED for weather typical of the north.
First, it was an ice storm that wrecked many a car, followed by an unheard of amount of soft, fluffy, perfect snow, but with temperatures staying well below freezing for days upon days, then more freezing rain to create a dangerous crunchy crust on top of that snow. Forget driving! Even walking was risky. Then to add insult to injury, more snow and temperatures still refusing to rise past the magical 32 degree mark! A solid 8 days. You couldn’t leave or you’d crash your car.
With such weather comes power outages, freezing pipes, and bread and milk shortages everywhere. At least we had natural gas on our side! We even got an ominous notice from Texas Gas Service to please conserve or there would be outages of natural gas, too.
It was like camping in our own house, but way more surreal. We were way luckier than most being that we had power except for 13 hours on Wednesday. But we had freezing pipes scares and ultimately determined that our whole outdoor pvc sprinker pipes are toast.
It was a cold prison for many. And layer on the mental prison of: WORRY and UNCERTAINTY.
The constant worry: about yourself, your family, your house, your neighbors, all those suffering…it permeated my blood. Helplessness.
There’s always an element of helplessness when a natural disaster strikes because it’s big and wild, and unpredictable and uncontrollable. You are at the mercy of it.
Dorothy said it best: “there’s no place like home.”
And when “home” is threatened, to the point it was for Texas for 8 DAYS…with ongoing repercussions…still, there’s no place like home.
Here are a few things we learned during SNOVID-21:
-how to turn off the water at the street (only because I have an awesome neighbor who showed us
-that batch cooking is a brilliant strategy always even if you’re not worried about losing it all due to power failure (playing the #useitorloseit game)
-that “whoa, Nelly!” my house gets messy and dirty fast when there’s snow outside
-that if you start hunting in your own house, you often find things you didn’t realize you had
What could you literally NOT survive without? What would you really love to have in any type of emergency?
Make a list. Put together a bug out bag. It’s basic emergency preparedness.
There are a million resources online. So pick ONE. And make some plans. Even if you NEVER need even one single flashlight in there, it will be so worth the time and peace of mind knowing that you have made some tiny effort to know how you would proceed in a situation that threatened you, your house, your family and/or pets, so that you could be ready to take care of them. And not suffer needlessly. Peace comes from preparing.
CALMLY.
We are.
“SNOWRREAL” (snow+Texas=SNOWRREAL)
Peace, y’all. Thank for reading:)
