The Big Texas Freeze 2021

We knew it was going to be cold. Really cold. We saw it coming in the 10 day forecast. How cold, we didn't know, but the distinct possibility of below 0F cold was starting to gain traction. I cancelled my daughter's birthday trail ride *again* (first time was because it was going to rain) because the weather on Saturday was going to be a high of 34. The prediction for the Monday low fluctuated between 0 and 9 in the days leading up to the weekend, and by Friday, Chris and I decided we had better go to Costco to stock up on some supplies to hunker down at home for the next 4-5 days. We tried to get firewood, but everywhere we looked, it was sold out. I guess this probably should have been my first clue, but it wasn't.

By Sunday, we were expected to get 3-6 inches of snow. I've lived in Missouri and Vermont, both places which get down to sub-freezing on a regular basis, with plenty of snow and/or ice. I kept thinking, for Texas, this is kind of unusual, but of course, the alarm bells never went off in my mind about even the remotest possibility of a prolonged power outage.

We got the notice that school was canceled for Monday and Tuesday for inclement weather. There would be no virtual school. Back on Wednesday they said - at least for now. We did one more go-around the house. My little backyard garden that I had put in last spring would mostly be a goner, I forecasted. Maybe I would try a hoop-house option this year, my thoughts wondered to spring for a moment. Back to the present, I hoped at least the Brassicas could survive the cold. As the temperature started dropping, I kind of doubted it.

I had covered all the spigots with insulated bags, but found that I had very much missed one pipe. The Rolodex in my mind went to a yellow pool noodle in the garage, and I quickly grabbed it. Chris and I cut it to fit the pipe, wrapped it with tape and a scarf and patted ourselves on the back for being so 'responsible'.

Monday morning there were inches of snow on the ground. We woke up to the power being off and it being chilly in the house. But, by 7:30, around the time when I log on to work - Yes, telecommuting since the Pandemic - the power had just come back on, the house was warming up.

It was a few hours into work, talking to a co-worker on Skype, when I was in mid-sentence, and I looked down to see that my laptop wasn't charging, and that I had been talking to a dead mic for at least a few seconds. I had been telling my co-worker earlier about how my power had gone out that morning, so I hoped he inferred that it had probably gone out again.

It was at this second power outage - and after we played out in the snow making snow angels and being pulled around on a boogie-board-make-shift sled - and the Facebook feeds starting to blow up with Texas news about widespread 'power rolling power outages' that Chris and I realized that we may have been a little naive to think that the power would just come back on. Now we started thinking about the possibility that it wouldn't, and we needed to take action.

In our bag of tools, we already had a few things:

We had a fireplace. A fireplace in the family room, which still apparently had natural gas flowing through it. Normally the gas is used to just get the fire going, and then we would turn it off, but in this case, we thought, worst case, as long as its flowing, we can run it on low, along with the firewood.

We had a small pile of firewood. As I said, we had tried to get more on Friday or Saturday, but everywhere had been sold out, and so we were left with what would turn out to be about 8 hours worth of burn-time.

We had a shed with several untreated Cedar planks - extra from our backyard garden plots we had put in last year.

We had a generator. We had never used said generator. We didn't even know if it worked or how to work it! When the Pandemic started last year, Chris had started telling me that he wanted the Tesla Powerwall. Out of curiosity, I looked it up and thought, 'well that's nice and all but really, why do we need that? We don't even have solar panels! We should just get some solar panels first, and then see.' Long story very short, we ended up going with a solar company that included a small hybrid Gas/Propane generator that could supposedly just plug into the house if need-be.

We had two tanks of propane, one which I didn't know how much fuel it had due to being hooked up to the grill, and one that Chris believed to be full.

The reason we had never run the generator was the stupid fact that we didn't have the right oil, and we kept forgetting to get the right oil.

Even on Saturday, it occurred to us that we should get the 'right' oil, but somehow it never was a priority. By Sunday I was asking Chris, 'are you *sure* we don't have the right oil?' But by Monday, I looked at the manual myself, and then rummaged through the garage in hopes of 5W-30. Apparently, the manual had recommended 10W-30 for most temperatures (most probably the last time Chris looked for oil in the garage, the temp would have required it), but for the temperature we were at <20F, 5W-30 was required. I scrounged and first found 10W-20, but then miraculously found 2 qts of 5W-30. Bingo!

We got to work on the generator. We had to figure out how it worked to find out if it worked. We hooked up the propane, followed the instructions, opened the choke, turned the key. Nothing. We read the instructions again, double checked everything to make sure we were doing everything in the right order. Tried it again. Nothing.

Ok, Youtube time.

I searched for video's on how to work this thing. Was there something we were missing?

How many engineers does it take to...

After several videos, I realized that we had been doing everything right, but the battery on the thing must be dead. Well, I didn't even know it had a battery so, that was a good start! We found the battery, hooked it up to the jumper cables on our ancient van (which was not sounding too good in the 10 degree - and dropping - temperatures). Luckily, it did the trick, and the generator started up. We let it run for a few minutes, but because I didn't know how much fuel we had - or how long it would last - I turned it off while we tried to find a cable to ground the generator to earth ground. Again, at that point, we were still thinking we could just plug the thing into the house through receptacle that the solar company had installed.

After not finding a thick enough grounding cable (12 gauge) and having no luck splicing a few smaller cables - could not find the wire strippers anywhere! - we concluded that the earth ground from power plug to the house was good enough. Another question popped into my head though - sparked by watching the videos on Youtube - by adding power the generator and powering the house, were we supposed to do something to make sure that power did not feed the grid instead? All the videos that I had watched talked about turning off the main-breaker, so as to not add power back to the grid and possibly electrocute someone working on the lines upstream. I figured that this was already built into the solar circuitry, but I wasn't sure, so out of an abundance of caution, we turned off the main-breaker, plugged in the generator and went inside to see if anything had turned on. Nothing.

I scoured google again, called my aunt and uncle with solar panels, and called around to the solar company and tried to get ahold of someone. Meanwhile, Chris had been checking to see if there is actually power coming out of the generator by plugging in his phone. It charged. We knew that the generator was generating the voltage required, so we had hopes that we were just doing something wrong with the plugging in part - but of course we couldn't know without looking at the wiring diagram which we didn't have.

Much later, after my own searches concluded that the main-breaker should have no effect due to the solar power panels with the automatic shutoff to the grid, my solar rep got back to me and told me I shouldn't need to turn off the main breaker.

OK, that's good. We jumped the generator again, went over, turned the main-breaker ON, and plugged her in. Nothing. Well, there must be some internal switch in the locked panel that we can't get to. No electrician was going to be able to get out to us today anyway. So, we moved the generator back into the garage. We didn't have any long power cords to run into the house, but I guess I thought, we'll be fine.

'Hey, we have firewood and cross-our fingers, natural gas, to help keep the fire going, so, how bad could it be?' I asked myself. 'Also, Oncor said that these were 'rolling' power outages,' I reasoned, 'which means we should get out power back on in a little while right?'

I am an optimistic soul, a give-the-benefit-of-the-doubt person, a romantic, and it turns out, yes yes, quite naive.

The rolling power outages turned out to be not rolling at all. They turned out just to be outages; prolonged with no timeframe given as to when they (Oncor) might decide to switch you back on, or - as it turns out - for how long they might keep you on.

By Monday night, we had burned through all the real firewood we had had. We had kept it going during the day to keep our little one warm while we worked outside on the generator. At one point, we found her snuggled up next to the fire, warm, and snoozing. We had some comfort knowing that she was cozy, while we were outside freezing. We were trying to keep it that way.

At this point, one might ask, why not just go stay at a friend's house? Why not just go stay at a hotel?

Well, my parent's live in an RV, which could have housed us, but our two little sheepadoodles had been forbidden from the RV since we had first gotten them last year. Also, being relatively new to the area, we don't really have a lot of close friends to where we would ever want to impose. Finally, the closest hotel that either A) had power and B) had availability was probably 5 hours away in Oklahoma somewhere.

No, we couldn't abandon the puppies, and no, we wouldn't impose. We would camp out in the living room, next to the (now dwindling) fire.

The power came back on at 8 pm.

"Mom, is the power going to stay on now?"

"I don't think so, Darlin'."

We rushed to put food together and cook a meal. Heated up the oven, threw the food in, and hoped that the power would just stay on long enough for the food to cook through.

It didn't.

About 40 minutes later, the power was shut off again.

My meal that was half cooked in the oven, inedible. In defiance, I said, "Fine! I'll cook it on the fireplace!" And started scooping the food into aluminum roasting pans and covering it with aluminum foil. I stuck it right on the open flames.

Drumsticks and brussels sprouts take a long time to cook! They also don't cook at the same rate. By the time the chicken was done, the brussels were pretty much charcoal. But at least I got some protein in the kids before camping out and bundling them under blankies.

My older daughter took the couch, wrapped in 3 blankets. I had pulled my younger daughter's mattress downstairs, and she and I would sleep on that.

Unfortunately for Chris his recliner was in a half reclined position, and couldn't move it to fully reclined. He cursed himself for not having put it all the way back, but I thought it was sort of hilarious.

It was about 9:30 pm when Chris started cutting up the cedar planks. His sawzall was thankfully battery powered and charged, so we sawed through 2-3 planks, and we bagged them up like little would chips and stored them next the fire. When we started consuming them, we realized they burned really fast. I knew that Cedar, a softwood, was going to burn pretty fast, but I didn't know *how fast*. When we started feeding the fire Cedar, we had to replenish the chips about every 10 minutes or so. And, Cedar crackles! It crackles so much that my older daughter actually complained, because it was keeping her awake. I had to remind her that it was the cracking and warm or the no cracking and cold. Being thirteen, she just rolled her eyes at me and didn't complain any more.

I slept lightly, every half hour, rationing the planks to the fire. The 5 year old was with me, and I was confident she was warm enough, as she was sharing my body heat.

I woke up at 5 to find the fire had burned through all the planks, and the low flames were being powered by the gas. I started throwing on the crackling cedar, and hoped it didn't wake the kiddos.

By 7 am, my parents were texting. They didn't have power either, but their little RV runs mostly on propane, or can run almost independently on propane. They invited us over for breakfast.

A hot meal that was not cooked on a fireplace gas stove and didn't taste like really really bad bbq? We were elated at the thought.

My parents were gracious hosts of course, and put out the full spread for us. They let me use their shower. But I was careful to only take 5 minutes to conserve water and their propane.

By 10, we were speculating on what was going on with the grid. How could this happen? Chris was already razzing me about needing a battery back-up storage, and we all sort of decided that that would be ideal. We have solar, we are producers now, maybe we should just store some of that for situations like this? But how often could this really happen?

Tuesday's plan was to make sure we could run the generator, and scrounge more firewood. Chris went to Home Depot to get 50 foot extension cords and the 'firewood'. We had decided the day before that going to get more planks of wood and just cutting them into blocks would be our best bet. As it turns out, Chris reported back that others had this idea as well (of course, because people are resourceful) and there was a line of people all grabbing up the untreated pine studs. He got what he hoped was enough - 8 planks.

We knew that propane was a scarce commodity by now, we just didn't know how scarce. I was on the phone for an hour trying to figure out if anyone had propane. I contacted Blue Rhino, asking when the next delivery would be and where. They got back to me with a list of places that still showed stock of propane tanks. I said thank you, but quickly realized that the person giving me information had no idea that the stores that still showed having quantities were not even open, due to the power outages. No one was answering the phones, and when they did, the gist of what they said was, 'We don't have any, and we don't know when we'll get more, and our power is out anyway, so we may not be able to sell it to you even if we did have it.'

I wanted to keep my two precious propane tanks for my parents, just in case they couldn't find any, and now realizing that the propane was going to be close to impossible to find, I decide that I had better try and get some gasoline to run our generator. One problem, I needed a gas tank.

So, I started calling. The auto stores answered their phones! Did they have any gas cans? "Sweetie, we sold out of those. Yeah, sorry, we sold those in two days what we normally sell in a year."

I decided that my best bet was to just go in and ask. So, I just started driving around and going into gas stations, asking if they had gas cans. I had unfortunately accidentally left my wallet in the car Chris took. I almost didn't think I would be able to go out until he got back, but then my older daughter handed me 80 bucks and said, "Spend it wisely," joking of course. I just grabbed her cash and left. I was beginning to get a little disheartened, after going to the big gas stations where I was hopeful that they would have one stashed, but they didn't. I called our local mechanic to see if I could at least borrow one.

"You could, if the shop weren't shut down. I'm at home an hour away, sorry."

I continued to pull up and walk into gas stations asking. Finally, at a 7-11, I pulled up, scanned the aisles, and after seeing only bare shelves, I went up and asked the clerk.

"Do you have propane?"

He shook his head.

"Do you know when you will get propane?"

He shook his head.

"Do you have a gas can?"

"Gas can? Let me check." He came back in a few seconds with a red 2 gallon gas can in his hand. My heart leapt. "I have one more. You want?"

I jumped for joy and handed him the cash.

$21 bucks for a 2 gallon gas can. I was elated. I couldn't buy gas there because of a software glitch with his system, so I headed over to the closest other gas station.

Cars were already lining up, I got in line, and then instead of hauling inside to try and pay and then go back out and fill up, I asked the Lady in front of me if I could pay her cash, if she would fill me up.

She said sure, "They only have premium left. Is that alright?" I looked down at my cash. I didn't have change.

"How much is it?"

"$2.67."

I handed her 10 bucks, she looked at me and said, "are you sure?"

I just nodded and fumbled with the gas can, but she took it, her hands nimble and knowing, opened it, filled it, and closed it off for me. Then she showed me how to open it. By that point, there were people backing up behind me trying to get in line, and I took my little hatchback stick-shift and maneuvered myself out of the gas station mess. The cold was starting to get to my fingers, and my toes had started to go numb (even with my two layers of socks!)

I rushed back home and started filling up the generator, which held 8 gallons. Not knowing how long 8 gallons would last, I knew I had to top it, and then have my 2 gallon gas can filled as a back-up. That meant that I had to go back to the gas station 4 more times. Chris got home and I grabbed my wallet. He was cutting up all the planks and gotten the power cords, but Home Depot was out of space heaters. We had two electric blankets.

Back and forth I went, the total trip back and forth with filling the generator in-between was about 30 minutes. All the traffic lights were either not powered, or blinking red. I took the corners slow, and saw all sorts of people slipping and sliding. At the gas station, there were lines for gas, and when I got up to the pump, the pin pads didn't seem to work and kept throwing me errors. I tried four cards, tried to go inside, the doors were locked and no one was inside. I went back the pump, determined to try again. This time, the chip reader worked, and it let me pump. I gave a sigh of relief. Two gallons please! I made small talk with an elderly gentleman at the other pump.

"Brutal," I say, and shook my head.

He just nodded and said, "You have power?"

I shook my head again, "Nope! You?"

He shook his head and said "No power at mine either." He smiled at me and nodded again, but I noticed his eyes looked worried and sad.

I finished pumping my two gallons. Fingers were really starting to get cold, and my gloves were speckled with gasoline spots. I hopped in the car and tried not to crash on the way home. The smell of gas was burning my nose, but these Pandemic masks helped shield the brunt of the sharpness. The scene of the man at the pump with sad eyes stayed with me the next three trips to the gas station.

At least there was still gas.

Meanwhile, reports from my parents were more dire and more hopeful at the same time. They had started calling and driving around for propane. They drove an hour south of DFW, looking, calling, stopping. No gas stations had any, the filling stations that they normally went to were all out, or had no power. They did find one that had propane, and they got in line, however, they soon were told that the place had run out and a truck was going down the line to inform everyone after a certain point that they had better go elsewhere. They drove out of town, came up over a hill, and saw propane trucks and a line of people with propane tanks. My dad quickly pulled over and got in line. They said the had propane, enough for them, but the wait for be long. Probably two hours, and the temperature at this point was dropping again. They had no power, but they were manually pumping out of the trucks, and they were taking credit card numbers the old fashioned way, but preferred cash or check.

My dad stood in line, and my mom rushed to get cash at the Kroger. The power was out, but the workers asked what she needed. "I just need to get cash," she said.

"The registers are running off of back-up power, so we can get you cash."

Back at the propane line, it was slow going, he sent me pictures of people ahead of him and behind him when there seemed to be progress forward.

He had been standing in line in the 8 degrees for about an hour and a half when a man in a souped-up truck and cowboy get-up parked at the front of the line. He chatted up the men working.

Aside, at this point in the story, my dad points out that the workers were working as fast and furiously as they possibly could with no breaks, diligently and with a great sense of urgency, as well as an impending realization that they would indeed run out of propane before everyone in line could have their fill.

The man in the cowboy get-up and souped-up truck continued to chat up the workers for a minute or two and then asked, "I'll slip you boys a few bills if you would be so kind as to fill me up next."

The people of the front of the line - who had been waiting for two hours - tensely and silently waited for the workers to speak.

"Sorry sir, but I can't do that," the lead said. "Not only can I not do that for you sir, but if you go wait back at the end of that line," he turned his face with a quick nod in the direction of the 60 person deep line, "I may not have enough propane for you sir."

The cowboy get-up man looked irritated and quickly stormed off in his souped-up truck.

The guy in front of my dad turned to him and said, "Pretty boy." My dad knew what he meant, too good to sit in line and shiver in the cold, hoping he would get some dregs; proud enough and entitled enough to try and skip the line, blatantly bribing the workers in front of everyone. It was preposterous.

But it happened.

Later, we joked that maybe he should have offered everyone in line some cash to skip the line. My dad just shook his head and said, "I don't think anyone would have taken him up on it. No one."

Back to my final trip to the gas station that day, I stopped by an appliance store that was open, looking for a space heater. The just shook their heads, and then asked me if I needed a new couch, TV, or a treadmill. "I'm good. I was just really hoping by some magical chance you had space heaters." No such luck.

Back at home, I had my reserve gas tank in the garage, we would set up the generator soon. I was looking forward to putting my feet up with some of my home-made wine. Maybe if we had a raging fire, we wouldn't need the space heater. But, when I looked at the pile of wood from Chris's trip to Home Depot, I thought, "that is not enough." Pine burns almost as fast as cedar, another softwood (thank you freshman high school wood shop class!) I realized I'd have to go back to Home Depot and see if they had any more. It was about that point I think when we started receiving messages from the schools saying that classes would be canceled for the rest of the week due to ongoing outages and water issues in the area.

The Home Depot parking lot was a sheet of ice. I slid into a parking space, carefully shuffled inside, and asked right away, "Wood?"

"Firewood? Yep, down in Lumber." He was greeting others coming in and I heard someone ask for space heaters. "All out," he said matter-of-factly, a confirmation of what Chris had already reported earlier.

My toes were already icicles and I couldn't feel them hit against the ground as I ran down to lumber. I saw at least 5 carts filled with pine boards, and I was a little worried they would be out, but the workers were in a lull from the plank cutting, and so one worker was able to show me where the planks were. "How many?" Their supply was dwindling.

He took the planks and cut them for me and sent me on my way. Back in line, a lady asked me if she would need lighter fluid. I was struck by the sense that there were a lot of people who were less prepared than me, and that made me feel sad and anxious. When it was my turn to check out, I glanced over and saw a space heater in a man's cart, walking out. I quickly asked the cashier, "I just saw a man with a space heater in his cart, do you all-"

She cut me off, bent down, and pulled out a pristine box with a space-heater inside, "I have one right here," she said. "You want it?"

I walked out of Home Depot like a million bucks. We were going to be warm. We had a generator, a full tank of gas, 50 foot, two electric blankets, a fireplace with enough wood to burn for at least a day or two, and now, a small coveted space heater.

It took some setting up. The biggest reason was the grounding. We had started up the generator and made a blazing fire inside. It was warm. And then, Chris realized that we hadn't grounded the thing - they day before we had decided that the plug into the house would provide the grounding, but we would need to ground it if it weren't attached to the house ground. We had tried this before, but had failed because we didn't have the right wire size and no wire cutters. However, in that case, the generator was not a floating ground like it was now; this time, however, I realized that we *did* in fact have a 12 gauge wire from some electrical work that my dad had done recently to the garage.

"Will this work?" I through the perfect sized wire at him.

"What the?" and then he looked at it and said, "cool, that'll work."

He trimmed up the wire, and then we went outside and grounded the screw to earth ground.

Then we turned her on and let her run, again. This time, confident that we weren't screwing anything up. The only thing we had to watch out for was the 20 amp fuze.

After we plugged in the space heater, the electric blankets, plugged in the phones, the laptops... I really wanted hot tea, and so I ran the electric kettle. I tripped the fuze! We realized that even with our little generator going, we still had to be careful and truly do the math on the power consumption of each of the appliances we were running - we were still in an emergency situation.

The space heater, electric blankets, and the pine blocks keeping the fire place ablaze improved second night with no power tremendously. We had reclined the couch all the way back so Chris could get a better night's sleep. He took one of the electric blankets. "This blanket is genius! It doesn't take much power AND its way better than putting pocket warmers in your socks!"

The 13 year old even said that it was kind of like camping and she was having fun. My five year old was calling it a sleep over and asked if we could watch a movie. My parents were safe and warm with their propane back at the RV, and so I was a little more at ease. With one kiddo bundled under the electric blanket and the other one next to me, I fell asleep, the fire a little more quiet than the cedar crackling the night before, thinking about how grateful I was for warmth and and a sense of security.

The lights came blaring on at two in the morning. We all woke up. Oh wow, maybe this is it, I thought, and then I just shook my head and was like, 'nawww.' But, I didn't want to waste the gas, so I went outside and turned the generator off. I plugged everything bag into the wall, turned out the lights, and turned down the fire, and fell back asleep.

At 7 am, we awoke and were freezing again. The power had turned off again, and I cursed myself for not keeping the generator going, or not waking up at whatever time it went out again. But then my parents called and offered another hot breakfast.

Yes please.

We went, and had another wonderful breakfast, with eggs and coffee and potatoes. Thank goodness for their full propane tanks!

After breakfast, we went home, and my mom called right away telling me that there was an hour wait at the gas station and all the pumps were out of gas. If I was going to refill that tank, I had better do it.

The breakfast buzz wore off and I quickly grabbed my now gasoline laden gloves, dumped the full gas can into the generator and rushed to the gas station.

There was a line, but not too bad, but I noticed little signs on all of the nozzles. I got up closer, thinking the worst, and then it said, 'premium only'. I squealed with relief... now will may card work?

It did.

Two more trips to the gas station and I was back to where I started after 5 trips yesterday. A full tank in the generator and a full gas can. My dad called me and asked me what gas station I was at, because all of the ones he had seen were out.

The day before, the shortage had been propane, but now it was gas. And the news started coming through that some parts of DFW also had lost water or were on a boil alert.

By Wednesday afternoon, the power was back on.

Would it stay on?

None of us could even hazard a guess. If it did, we would be happy, but if it didn't, we were prepared.

It stayed on.

Thursday, besides the rotten food in our fridge, things returned to some semblance of normal. Although, when I logged in on Thursday, I felt like I had lived an entire chapter of my life while other co-workers never did experience the power outages, and their inner lives may have remained fairly unperturbed.

Walking around the neighborhood, we noticed that the neighbors across the street never seemed to lose their power. And even, the next door neighbor on the left, their outdoor lights continued to shine bright, while we were left in the dark. We laughed later that most of the neighbors thought we were the crazy ones, running a loud generator, struggling in the snow in the sub-zero temperature, working in the garage and on the side of the house, running cables into the house, leaving and pulling up 10 times. For a normally quiet street, we were probably quite a spectacle.

By Friday, the snow had turned to slush, the aisles at the Super Target were cleaned out of any perishable item besides a small, pathetic pile of cabbage, some beat-up looking cucumbers and maybe a few cobs of corn. It reminded me of my crippled little backyard garden, my little baby salad greens, chard, kale, collards and brussels all destroyed by the 'freak' cold snap. My daughter's list has contained eggs, salad and milk. Walking through the empty aisles, masks dawned, and slightly traumatized from the ordeal, it felt like we were living in an apocalyptic future zone, where humans were living in scarcity and having to make-due and fight and/or suffer over limited and basic resources.

We realized, that first night throwing cedar chips in the fire and the long lines at the propane tanks, and the bare shelves at Target; that this apocalyptic future could actually be quite the new new norm depending on how destabilized the climate becomes and how non-functioning our governments become. I went from crazy suburban happy-go-lucky-work-from-home-mom to a rugged, individualistic survivalist in three days.

I feel incredibly lucky of course. And guilty. Scrolling through the news, I see a story of a boy who died of hypothermia, a family whose house caught fire and only the mother survived, many friends who had broken water pipes, home damage, boil water orders from cities, exorbitant electricity bills. That could have been me and my family, I know. Should I have done more for my local community instead of going into survival mode and thinking only of myself and my family? If I had been more prepared, I could have been in a better position to help.

I see politicians passing the buck (or worse, trying to escape the cold for somewhere a little more comfortable and warm) and the back story of a crumbling power grid that regulated itself and wreaked havoc by denying the risks. I wonder if I am in some way culpable, is there more I can do for to try and make sure this never happens again?

Worse of all, I see people continuing to deny climate change.

Deny climate change.

How?

In my mind, the theory makes sense. Poles are warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the earth. That shrinking of the equatorial and polar temperature differential is weakening the jet stream, and allowing stronger extreme fronts to escape into regions that it normally wouldn’t, as well as other phenomena like hurricanes becoming more severe. Science is catching up with data to back up the theories but they are not self-fulfilling prophesies. The poles are heating and melting; the climate is destabilizing. But humans can do something, if only together.

How can we stabilize each other and agree to band together and halt what seems to be the exorable march towards this apocalyptic future?

It seems impossible.

And yet, I keep faith because my daughters remind me. The older one reminds me that many young people get it, that climate change is a serious threat, that they can give us the strength and resolve to tackle the seemingly unsurmountable problems that face us as a society. She reminds me that we can have both: individualism and accountability to each other and the environment. My younger one reminds me the joys and wonder of playing in the snow, splashing in lakes and rivers, the hugeness and beauty of the forest and the sacred magic in every ant (they are 'cute'), butterfly, and bee. My daughters remind me that the climate and the biodiversity and beautiful places that sustain us are worth fighting for.

Let’s compromise, let’s synergize, let’s build some basic agreements. Let’s try to trust that everyone has the future generations in mind. Let’s not turn a blind eye to the problems at hand; let’s prepare for a better future, not a worse one…

We are trying to do our part. A suburban backyard veggie garden, a compost pile, solar panels. The solar panels help us feel that we are putting our money where our mouth is. My husband and I are still mulling over the Tesla Powerwall. Is the investment a good one? We wonder, "What are the odds that this happens again in the next 10 years?"

If the climate and regulations keep heading in the same direction, we think the chances are pretty good. Of the many things that this big Texas freeze taught me, it's that being prepared is invaluable in an emergency.