Now that life has somewhat gotten back to normal, I wanted to share my experiences over the last week. Saturday, the 13th, I got married. My dad officiated and it was short and sweet and quite complete. The ceremony was filled with wisdom and a constant reminder that our marriage relies on Gods love and he is truly the third strand in our rope. We had cake and punch and other finger foods. My mother put together a beautiful spread of snacks and that cake was phenomenal. She’s truly a talented party planner and I couldn’t have put that together without her. And the best part, there was a storm so it only lasted an hour and I got to put my jammies on afterward and enjoy time with my husband and my parents.

The next day, the storm started moving in more and my community started moving into emergency preparedness mode. Drip the faucets, turn up the heat, ice the sidewalks, etc. Monday morning, I woke up freezing cold and dead quiet. I came out and of course, my mom is doing her thing. Making coffee on the stove, making biscuits on the stove, all while bundled up. We played some games and ran some errands while we prayed the power would come back on. You couldn’t even get through to the power company to get an estimated time of restored power. By 6pm when it still wasn’t on, we made the decision to take the guest apartment at my work. Meanwhile, my GM who lives a block away from me, is trying to figure out where to go so she can plug her oxygen in.

I honestly wish that was the end of story. At 7am Tuesday morning, my bus driver calls me from down stairs, telling me a pipe has busted and the dining room is flooded. I ran downstairs in my pjs, no shoes, and my glasses. The pipe that burst had been in the ceiling of an apartment (vacant one thank god) and had caused the ceiling to fall. Me being a resourceful person, got the water off as my executive chef called in a plumber. We spent the next hour shop vacuuming the dining room while the plumbers did their thing. A huge shoutout to my staff, especially Robbie, Rosa, and Zuly. Without hesitation they went to work cleaning up and making sure our residents were safe and knew the water was off.

As fate would have it, when it rains it pours. Not even an hour later, we lost power. Now a lot of people asked why a place that houses seniors doesn’t have a emergency power back up? Well we do, but it’s for emergency lights and in their newer buildings, emergency plugs in every room and hallway. With us being an older building, we only had emergency lighting. Technically we’re independent which means most of these people are in good health and not have extreme medical needs, but I have multiple people on oxygen. Thankfully I was able to find one working outlet, but we had one extension cord. So who gets it? Who gets to have their oxygen machine running?

So as we’re standing there, praying we find a way to get oxygen machines plugged in, the power comes back on. But now we have to get into preparedness mode because we wouldn’t know if it was gonna be a rolling black out. Thankfully, family members came and brought extension cords and for the sake of safety we ran extension cords to the emergency plug for oxygen machines. Now because we didn’t have a kitchen during this, my executive chef made an emergency trip to the grocery store. As you can imagine, they were barren. He went to the deli and asked for the entire turkey to be sliced up. When he said that, the kid asked to clarify if he wanted the whole thing. He said it was for 88 elderly people so ya the whole thing. The manager was behind him and asked what else he needed. The manager said they just had a truck come in and hadn’t had a chance to restock so he went in the back and got him bread and chips to go with the deli meat. Shoutout to HEB for taking care of our people. You really saved us.

I don’t think I slept much that night, waiting for the power to go out. Waiting to make a run downstairs in my pjs to make sure everyone was okay. I thought we made it out of the woods by the next morning but sure enough I woke up and at 7:30 the lights went out again. Thankfully, it was for two hours this time. We made it through Wednesday and by Thursday the ship had straightened out. I finally was able to go home and sleep in peace.

I saw a lot of posts talking shit about how Texas doesn’t know how to handle a little snow. Let me tell you, I may not be a Texas native, but in the four years I lived here, it’s snowed three times, and only one of those times was it enough snow to close things down. But not once have I experienced something like this. I’ve experienced snow storms, I’ve lived in a house with no heat in the winter, but having an entire town, almost an entire state, without power and water for Multiple days. TeXaS ShOuLd HaVe BeEn PrEpArED. Y’all are dumb. We don’t even own winter clothing out here in west Texas because it’s cold maybe one month out of the year. Last year we got an “Arctic chill” when it dropped to 31 degrees. Homes are built for the heat we get not the cold. People literally died because of this storm and the negligence of the Texas power companies. There were no supplies left to buy. They literally had warming stations set up so people could just come for a little bit to warm up. Furniture stores were opening up and letting people come in to sleep. But everyone wants to say Texas should’ve been prepared. How do you prepare for entire power grids to go down?

Thank you for listening to me vent and hopefully everyone comes out of this a little stronger and more compassionate. I’m ready for that warm west Texas sunshine.