Quarantine Journals - Snow week, energy crisis, holy moly, Part I

Boy, I have some catching up to do, but the good news is that we finally have POWER and now I can actually write about everything that has been going on. 

You've already heard how our Valentine's Day ended (I think?).  So let me catch you up on what happened next. 

I woke up at 2AM Monday morning when the power had gone out.  I turned on the white noise on my phone and encouraged Penny to go to sleep.  Within half an hour, it felt like the temperature in here was already dropping drastically.  It was 5 degrees outside.  When she woke up for the day, I pulled her into bed with me and we cuddled until the boys were up.  It was already super cold.  The kids just wanted to play and have fun, but Richard and I were freezing.  I got up and started to get food together for them to eat, candles to see better. I put towels under all the doors, closed curtains and blinds, and Richard brought a ton of blankets in here. We made sure both the kids were well dressed, but they were not really phased at this point.  I still couldn't feel my feet from the night before, so I was feeling pretty miserable. 

After a couple of hours, it became obvious that the power wasn't coming back on any time soon.  Some people were saying it might take DAYS.  I told Richard we were going to have to get up and come up with a plan.  Our cell service was terrible and it was nearly impossible to get any kind of updates. Even texting was spotty. I had texts from Carmen and my dad saying they had both been without power this entire time too.  The internet was playing it casual, calling them rolling blackouts, but there was no rolling happening here.

I really wasn't prepared for this... didn't have any great ideas on what to do.  I lit more candles, gathered up flash lights and lanterns to light the house with. There was a good 6" or more of snow outside.  The kids ate lunch in the living room and they were starting to get really restless, so I put a movie on the ipad for them.  The house was really getting desperately cold, so Richard went into the backyard and dug around until he could find some firewood.  He found about 3 pieces and got a fire going with that and some paper.

Then power came back on around 2PM and we started trying to warm up the house.  But I kept the thermostat low because I didn't want to overwhelm the "grid" that was clearly overwhelmed.  In retrospect, I wish I had not been so conservative about this.

At 3PM the power was still on, the house had gone from 50 degrees to 64, and I told the kids they could go outside and play in the snow.  They had a blast.  The snow as so soft and fluffy, blowing everywhere.  Not quite sticking together enough to try and make a snow man, but such fun to stomp around it.  They were running all over the place, digging in the snow and throwing it up in the air.. or at me.   We had a little snow ball fight. I tried to freeze bubbles but it didn't work.  Oliver was diving into the snow like it was a ball pit. He was SO HAPPY and never EVER wanted to go back inside.  

And then at 5PM the power went out again.  I am glad that I had encouraged Richard to fix an early dinner, so we had a warm meal and the power went out about half way through it.  The kids had been watching their movie again, so we moved back to the ipad when the power went out.  We went to bed freezing our butts off again.  I piled up a bunch of blankets into both of our beds, and then I slept with Penny so our body heat could keep each other warm.  It worked well as long as we were under the covers.  

Throughout the evening I had been getting texts from Coppell saying to conserve water and from Atmos saying to conserve gas... it was like there was no where to turn to stay warm.  

I felt the power come on in the middle of the night, but only for about half an hour, and then it was gone again.  My dad had still been completely without power this entire time.  SO many people had.  Pipes were freezing, but none of ours, thank goodness.  The city was opening up warming stations all over to help people.

From Judge Clay Jenkins:

Breaking:

Electric Reliability Council of Texas

is currently asking all transmission companies in Texas to shed an additional 2k megawatts in transmission to customers. This brings the total shed to 20k megawatts. Dallas County currently has 350k @oncor customers without power. This is the most so far.

The additional shed coupled with increased demand will likely increase blackout numbers and times.

We should discuss how Texas let this happen. I understand your anger. I'm angry too. But tonight-right now- is about human and animal survival. Check on and help one another!