More or less normal again

 It's been exactly two weeks since that eye-opening winter storm.  Here's hoping we never have to go through that again, but unfortunately, the chances are that we will.  And that brings up the scary thing for a possible next time.  IF the grid had gone out like they say it almost did, then we would have been without power for weeks and eventually our water would have gone out also. What could we do to be better prepared next time?  Well, we think we would be ok as far as food goes.  It wouldn't be pleasant but we could do it.   As long as the gas doesn't also go out, we can at least stay warm by the fireplace.  We were EXTREMELY lucky to have never lost water.  After all is said and done, I think I would rather go without power than without water.  So, it's the water.  How does one store so much water to keep things going for weeks on end?!  We did have three big bins full of water outside and after receiving a warning from a friend, also filled our bathtub with water.  Not sure how long all of that would have lasted us, but I hope we never have to find out.  My brother Andrew says hard-core preppers have the means to make their own water!

Fernando and family came to stay with us for two nights because they lost water at their house on the second day of the storm.  They came to stay with us on the 5th day of the storm.  By then the weather had thawed the streets and it was safer to drive.  So they had spent 5 days melting snow for flushing toilets.  They did without baths and fortunately had plenty of drinking water.  

Of course, the stores were emptied of almost everything from their shelves.  Some of that was because the power failures caused things to go bad but most of it was people desperate for food and paper items.  We ventured into a Walmart Neighborhood Market once and it was just like the beginning of the pandemic.  So eerily empty of almost every kind of food or staple. 

We happily had Leo here at our house for school twice last week.  Things were back to normal by then except for being unable to get a few high demand items from the store, like milk.  It was nice returning to some sort of normalcy.

Doing a drawing lesson

PE time!

We've also passed our two week wait from having the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.  Yes!!!

Round Two

This is totally unbelievable.  So much snow here again.  BUT, this time it is bearable because we have power.  So we can enjoy the scene in warmth.  And have hot meals!  It was just a miracle to us to have our power on all night.  It seemed like we won the lottery.

Every single one of our plants did not survive the first storm.  It was just too cold for too long.

It is now 2 in the afternoon.  The pictures above were taken at around 10:45 this morning.  It is still snowing at this time.  And our power has still been on.  
 

Historic Weather Event Feb. 15 and 16

We were so happy when it started snowing late in the evening on February 14th.  Everyone was outside their houses even at 11pm!  BUT, little did we know how hard things were going to get.

How it looked outside the morning of February 15th.

Where we spent most of our day on February 15, since the power kept going on and off all day long.  It never stayed on long enough to get any good heat going.  We decided to just turn off our central heat because it didn't seem good for it to be going on and off so much.  There was nothing we could do about our refrigerator.  Thank goodness for our gas fireplace.  We at least had a relatively warm place where we could hang out.  

This wouldn't have been bad at all except most of the time we had no internet - not even data on our phones.  We could text, but not much more.  Sometimes we were lucky to catch a time when it seemed data was working but that was rare.

Dinner on February 15th

Power was now coming on a lot less and for way less time.  It went off for good at 10 that night so we had no heat all night - on one of the coldest nights ever.  It was maddening.

How it looked outside on February 16th

There was still no power when we got up this morning.  We turned the fireplace back on and warmed up there a little before venturing into the ice cold kitchen to get some breakfast.  After breakfast, we basically just vegged on the blanket (which was now on top of a gymnastics mat) in front of the fire.  I was down now to wearing a jacket and a cap when away from the fire.  At 12:20, the power came back on.  We SCRAMBLED!!  Not sure how long they'd be giving us, we rushed to make coffee/tea and heat something up for lunch. We also scrambled to get one of our cars out of the garage because the garage door wouldn't work without electricity.  Once getting a car out, we discovered that the garage door wouldn't close back up.  We learned today, after being out there in the ice cold weather for longer than we cared for, that we can manually open and close the garage.  So, that was good.  Finally, we got the garage door closed again.   After lunch, amazingly enough, the power was still on so we risked taking a shower.  Got our showers in!  On this day, we moved the couch to in front of the fireplace.  Excellent move because we were higher off the floor and the back of the couch walled in a lot of the heat around us.  So it was even more comfy.  The power went back off at 5:30 and didn't come on again the rest of the night.

We got a good five hour block of power on February 16th between 12:30 pm and 5:30 pm. but that was all.  The rest of the time we were in the dark and cold.  Guillermo said the power came on for about an hour and a half during the night.

Today is February 17th and we currently are in a block of power. (10:21 am) 

When we got up, it was freezing cold in the house again.  There had been no power since 5:30pm the day before (except for that hour and a half during the night).  We lit the fireplace again and just sat there before deciding again to brave the cold and get something to eat.  While we were eating there on the couch, the power came on (around 9am) so we did the scramble again.  The hardest thing is not knowing how much time you are going to get.  We decided to risk it and also wash a load of clothes.  We got the clothes washed and then they only got 20 minutes in the dryer.  But that's ok.  We have good racks to hang clothes up on.  It reminded me of living in Spain.  I remember those days of washing a load of clothes, hanging them up outside to dry and then 20 minutes later having to bring them back in because it got cloudy outside.  Clothes just didn't dry there if they weren't in the sun.  So, it felt the same.  Little bit of time in the dryer, then take them out and hang them on a clothes drying rack.  

So, it ended up that our power went off at 1:30.  We just hung around on the couch in front of the fireplace after it went off.  We had NO idea if we were going to be allotted an additional amount of time later in the day or not.  We scrambled like happy kids on Christmas morning when the power came back on at 6:30pm.  We were going to try to get a hot dinner in!  So, we had a good dinner in front of the TV in a warm room.  We couldn't believe it when it was time to go to bed and the power was still on.  We decided to even risk taking a shower!  We got our showers in and the power was still on.  Amazingly enough, the power stayed on all night.

2nd dose of Pfizer vaccine today

Just finished getting our shot!

This time around, for our second shot, the set up was so much better than for our first shot.  The room was bigger and everyone was able to space out better.

Guillermo waiting in the section where they monitor you for any reaction to the vaccine.

On our way home!