74 Hours

You know when you see those movies or read those stories where almost everything that could go wrong does? This is one of those. And it's all true.

February 14th 2021-

My family had just spent an amazing Valentine's Day together. We were hanging out just watching movies and playing Wii games. My little girls and I were playing Just Dance and my husband, son, and I were playing Super Mario games together. The day couldn't have been more perfect. But it was cold. So cold.

We were warned of a winter storm about to hit here in East Texas and were told to be prepared. We tried. However, in a world that's still trying to pick up the pieces of what Covid has wrecked, it wasn't easy. Especially for my family.

I'm gonna take you back to February of 2020-

Before Covid hit, we took another huge hit where we lost everything. We ended up moving clear across the United States to stay in California with my mom, who already had a full house. That's where we were when Covid fully hit and the lockdowns started. We were stuck there during the looting and riots. We were stuck there during the fires. We faced the rolling black outs of the California wild fires, inhaling the thick smoke day after day with the threat of Covid and stay at home orders still in place. On top of the madness going on outside of the house, inside was falling apart as well. There were 13 people, 2 dogs, a cat, and a fish in a four bedroom house. My grandma was very sick and the doctor said she was only expected to live a few more months. Everything was falling apart.

There were a lot of heightened emotions and there was a lot of arguing. We were intertwining 5 different house holds and a lot of mixed personalities and every one was stressed out because of being stuck in the house for so long. Not to mention, all the stores had been picked clean by Covid hoarders and it was really hard to get groceries and toilet paper for our house hold. It was crazy. After months, the hysteria was still full blown in California. Masks were mandatory everywhere and they were trying to push for double masks as well as masking in your car and at home if you had others living with you. Deaths and infections were said to be rising daily and the news was nothing but talk of Covid and looting.

September 2020 -

Finally, after seven months, we were able to make the move back home to Texas. We had found what we thought was a cute little duplex in Tyler and were on our way. We packed up our car and kids and made our way there. Right away, the trip started out with a few bumps. We were in the middle of packing up and my husband was locking up the trailer so we could go. We realized we had forgotten to load something, so as he went to open up the lock on the trailer, the key broke off inside. We tried to call a lock smith, but they couldn't help for hours and we were crunching for time. We were supposed to be at our new place in just two days and if we weren't there, the landlord said she was going with someone else.

So we left, with the trailer still locked. We made it to Amarillo where we called another lock smith and spent the night in a hotel. We were able to get it open, but now there was no lock at all. That's how we made the rest of the trip. It was around 2 a.m. when we finally made it to the house. We pulled up to a house that looked a lot different than what the pictures showed. We hopped out of the truck and started walking up to what was supposed to be our new house.. through a massively over grown lawn.

We twisted the door handle and stepped inside, hopeful. We were met with a horrible musty smell and walked into a filthy house that had obviously not been taken care of very well. My husband looked defeated. I knew what he was thinking. He did not want to put us and our three kids into a house like this. "We will clean it up. I told him. It will be great." We rolled out a mattress pad and sat on it with our Whataburger. We prayed and then ate with the kids.

The next morning, we headed towards the storage unit we had rented before leaving Texas. We had gotten rid of just about all of our furniture before leaving and had put the little bit of stuff we had left into a small storage unit. We had our bed, the kids toys, a book shelf, a few dishes. Not a lot, but enough to try and get us on our feet. The kids were excited to get their toys back, some of them were Christmas toys they hadn't even really gotten a chance to play with before we had left for California. I was excited for our bed. We had been sleeping on the floor for months and I couldn't wait to get a good nights sleep.

The excitement was quickly washed away when we discovered most of what we had left had been damaged by rats. The bed was covered in droppings. It looked as if rats had given birth on it. Oh well, had to count our losses there and move on as well. What choice did we have? We salvaged what we could and brought it back to the house. My husband unloaded the stuff as I begin to deep clean the house. We placed all the boxes into what would become the kids play room and cleaned and scrubbed everything else.

I asked the landlord if she had even had anyone clean the house at all because there were wads of hair in the drains. Dirt everywhere. Dead bug carcasses. A horrid stench. In one of the closets, there was hair and what looked like blood on the wall. There was writing on a few of the walls, and words scratched into doors. In the kitchen, an old bowl of cat food in one of the highest cupboards that I couldn't even see into without climbing on the counter. This place doesn't even allow pets. She said she had hired a cleaning crew. I told her she should get her money back.

The front door looked as if someone or something had tried to chew it's way in. The bath tub literally had foot prints of dirt in it. It was a mess. We scrubbed. We bleached. We swept and mopped. We had to burn candles and plug in scented warmers to the wall in what was going to be the play room. There was a foul smell that just wouldn't go away. When the weather is warm, you can still get a hint of it. Have you ever had a vase of flowers or plants and the water turns a brownish green color and gets all slimy? It smells horrid. That's what that room sometimes smells like. We did all we could to get it to be at least habitable. We had given her most of the money we had saved up, we had to make this work.

Then we started to unpack. I opened up one of the boxes to find a live bark scorpion. Growing up in the southern California desert, you would think I would be accustomed to them, I wasn't. I was horrified. Especially with little kids in the house. My husband wasn't home at the time, so eventually, I just called my landlord who actually did help me get it out of the house.

The next day, we had a snake in the house. Followed by another scorpion on the porch. Things were not going well. At this point, I was worried for my kids especially. I was afraid of sleeping on the floor when all these critters were making their way inside, but we dealt with it. Over the next few months we dealt with our landlord admitting that she just "hillbilly rigs" things to work when our stove went out, and when our counters were literally falling apart. She showed how racist she was by saying she hires "cheap black labor". It had been a nightmare. We were beyond ready to leave at this point, but weren't financially stable yet.

February 2021-

My landlord hired her brother to come in and work on mold I found under the sink. While he was here, he just walked around the house, helping himself to everything like he knew where it all was. I had found out earlier that they would come into our house when we weren't home, which is illegal according to Texas state law. He knew where to find the broom, the dish towel, stuff like that. He also made it a point to always talk to my three year old and tell me, "She's fine" and "It's ok" for her to go into the bathroom and help him work, even though I had been telling her multiple times to stay out with me. This guy was and still is a stranger, she didn't need to be around him alone in a bathroom.

This guy came to the house almost every day for a week.. except the days that my husband was home. He came by once when my husband was home and immediately left saying he would come back the next day.

At that point, I messaged my landlord to tell her my husband and I could deposit the rent money into her bank account on Saturday, the 6th of February. That I couldn't go earlier because her brother was constantly at our house trying to find new things to fix, even though I had told him multiple times that we didn't need anything else fixed. Add to it that he wouldn't do anything when my husband was home and had spent most of the time walking around the house like he was a guest. She told me that it was fine.. but then proceeded to harass me. She said we were going to have a late fee for not having it in her account on the first. She told me that we should have just leave her brother there and deposit the money. She didn't find anything wrong with his behavior as they had already come into our house without permission on several occasions, even though I had asked them not to.

She then told me to pay rent through PayPal to not get a late fee. Against my better judgement, I did it. A few days later, she was at my door demanding that we pay the almost $30.00 fee that PayPal charged her to collect the money and it was at that point, I contacted Legal aid to help me. They told me we weren't responsible for the fee and when I told her that, she started to ignore me.

Fast forward to Valentine's Day-

My family and I got to spend that awesome day together and then the weather get's cold. Colder and colder. We have had no time to prepare for anything because my husband has either been at work, or we have had this strange guy in our house. My husband had brought home 3 candles and we had just got batteries the last time we were at the grocery store. We were prepared to possibly lose our power.. but not the way we did.

We lost it before the sun came up the next morning. I had finished up some laundry, and I thank God that I did because my kids jackets were in there as well as some warm pajamas for them. We went to bed and over the night it went out a few times. It stayed out between 3 and 4 a.m. Monday morning. We didn't think much of it. We just figured it would be back before too long. We had snow earlier in January and the power was out for the whole day but we had made it then. We would now as well.

The day passed. The weather dropped. The snow kept falling. Still no power. The house was cold. The windows were freezing over. The kids were shivering. We hadn't had anything warm to eat or drink all day. I messaged the landlord asking about the fireplace in our house... after all the problems we had faced, I wanted to know if it was functional before even trying to start a fire in it. She ignored me. I messaged again saying, "Please answer me." I told her I had cold shivering kids in the house. No response.

We eventually just had to try our luck. Our house smoked up pretty bad at first, but we did eventually get a fire going. A man down the street had sold us some wood. We all cuddled up together on the mattress pad in the living room again. We still don't have furniture. Our kids have beds now, but as I said, the windows had iced over at this point and there is no way they were staying in a frozen room. So we gathered up all the blankets and snuggled in front of the fire. We were able to shower normally the first night. But it had to be done quickly, because the waters temperature was dropping fast.

We went out once as a family to try and find something hot for the kids to eat but had no luck. Everything was closed, which really wasn't too surprising, but even the grocery stores were shut down. Our car swerved quite a bit on the frozen roads and after that, my husband didn't want us to go out any more.

He would be the one to brave the ice and snow to try and provide for us. He was the one who went and found us more wood after out first small pile was burned away. He went and grabbed us some essential items from a gas station and was gone for two hours just trying to find some supplies with little luck. He came home shivering and barely able to talk because it was so so cold. I cannot stress enough how cold it got. All of his skin was red, his teeth were chattering, he was shivering and shaking.. but he still brought in all of the fire wood and the little bit of groceries he was able to get a hold of.

He filled up our ice chest with snow and put some of the stuff out of the fridge inside so that it wouldn't go bad while we were waiting for our power to turn back on. By this time, our stuff wasn't too warm because the house was really cold, but some stuff in the freezer door was starting to defrost a bit and we didn't want to end up losing the only groceries we had.

He then started up a fire and kept it going for the next four days almost completely by his self, which is a lot harder than it sounds. The wood was wet. It was covered in snow. The fire place was clogged up and smokey. It was falling apart because it got more use in those few days than it may have ever had. We were breathing in smoke every day and night and would get headaches, but at least we were somewhat warm. This house is barely equipped to handle a family living in it, let alone play shelter to a literal historical snow event.

After all of that, we started losing water pressure. There was hardly enough to leave it running to keep the pipes from freezing.

We ended up trying to cook some top ramen over the fire. It wasn't much, but two out of three of the kids ate it. Over the next few days, we popped some pop corn over the fire and we found some hot dogs in the freezer to roast. Other than that, it was all chips and crackers and brownies I had made the day before.

The nights were cold. There wasn't a lot we could do because the house itself was so cold. The kids couldn't really play in their room because it was blistering cold in the entire house except for around the fire place. The days felt like they never began and the nights felt like they would never end. They were long and extraordinarily cold and dark.

The kids did pretty good without power. Better than I thought they would. We read books and colored and just tried to stay warm. We tried to sleep to pass time. We eventually found out our water was (and still is as I'm writing this) contaminated due to the water companies losing power. We have a boil water notice. Trying to boil water in a small metal frying pan over a fireplace fire.. is not easy. That was how we bathed for the remainder of the time. Our house is all electric. When we lost power, we lost hot water and heat too.

I mostly had my phone turned off, but when I did have it on, I spent my time checking our news and local groups for updates and sent text messages to Oncor trying to find out when we would have power. To which they mostly replied with the automated message of being aware the power is out and trying to identify a time it would be restored.

It was frustrating. And so cold. Some great things did come from it though. I saw our community helping others through Facebook. I saw people offering rides to strangers and delivering drinking water to those who needed it. I saw Chuck E Cheese offer cheap family deals for pickup because two employees were stuck inside and cooking up all the product they had left for families without power. I saw a day care give away free milk to families who needed it.

I also saw a lot of really rude people laughing at everyone in Texas. People saying that other states get snow way worse than this and telling us all to shutup and to never go to Denver or Canada because we couldn't handle half of what they get. People are dying here. Animals in sanctuaries and zoos have literally frozen to death. It isn't funny.

I'm gonna speak as someone who has lived in different climates and try to explain to those people as nicely as I possibly can. This was called an "Ice Age" type of storm. This was a historical event for Texas. A storm like this has not been seen here since 1899. I lived in Yosemite California for a few years before moving to Texas. We got snow all Winter. We lost power for days on end. I'm not new to snow... or not having power. Yosemite gets at least a foot a day during the winter. I've worked in it. I've driven in it. I've chopped firewood. I've salted it, shoveled it, played in it.

This was not like that. Texas is a dominantly humid state. We have humidity and in East Texas, an almost constant cover of clouds. Our trees and foliage are saturated with moisture. This state isn't really equipped to handle the cold.. not to mention this kind of cold. This wasn't and isn't typical snow day cold. This cold is the type of cold that is said to be causing frost bite in about 15 minutes. The moisture in the air is making everything colder.

Have you ever tried lighting a campfire with saturated wet wood? It isn't easy. My husband did an amazing job keeping our fireplace going for 4 days. It was hard. So, I mean, you can have an opinion on how stupid and unprepared Texas was for all of this, but that's like telling Canada to Handle our heat, hurricanes, and tornadoes... and to be prepared for it ahead of time... during a global pandemic.

To those who have sent your prayers to Texas, we appreciate it. There are still a lot of people going without power and water. The roads are ice and the store shelves are empty. People have lost pets and loved ones. Homes and cars are damaged. We are all just trying to make it at this point while we get warmer weather. I have thanked God for getting us through what we have gotten through so far. I thank God for giving us back our power.. we went 74 hours without anything and it was so so cold. I pray that everyone else is fortunate enough to have their water and electric situations sorted out quickly and that no more lives are lost to this storm... and I hope that if you read this, you understand a little bit more of what it's been like here in Texas for us.

It's hard to prepare for something when you're already dealing with a literal global pandemic as well as a horrible landlord and personal issues. It has been a crazy ride and I hope it is all almost over.

In retrospect though, I have to say, I still feel blessed. Our lives over the past few years have most definitely been a crazy journey.. but I can't imagine doing any of this with anyone else. Everything happens for a reason, as they say, and though I haven't quite figured out the reason for our struggles, I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end.

I'm gonna close by saying, never take a warm meal, or shower for granted. I always have said that no shower feels better than a shower you take after a workout. Turns out, I was wrong. Nothing feels better than a shower after you have been forced to use a cup of hot water you boiled over a fire for four days.

Heads up, Texas. We did it. We made it through another storm. Now if we could just get all this ice to melt...