Let it Snow, Let it snow, Let it Stop

As many of you know, if you have read my blog for a while, I live in Texas.  And for most of the time I love it but not this week.  We have had snow.

 

This is not unusual for Texas.  We get a little snow about once a year and usually in January and February.  But let me emphasize it is a LITTLE snow.  Maybe an inch or two and usually it last for a couple of days and then it melts as the temperature gets back to normal.

 

But this year the below freezing temperatures have gone on for a week with a couple of more days of this still to go.  Homes, businesses and cities in the south aren’t built for this.  Our homes are not insulated as well as those up north.  In the city I live in which has about 100,000 people we have one snow plow and that is usually at the airport (it has been visiting the city this week).

 

Even if the streets weren’t plowed, you can drive on snow (if you go slowly) because the snow can give your car some traction.  But what it does here (and usually does for those 1 or 2 days of winter) is ice up.  We get rain or sleet that covers the road which freezes asnd makes it difficult to drive.  This year we first had ice, then snow, then ice and then snow with some areas getting more freezing rain.  What do you do, you stay home. 

 

But to add to the discomfort many people in our state are without power.  There had been an increase of usage of electricity that the power companies can’t keep up so it either goes off altogether or you have rolling power outages.  That means some neighborhood will have power for an hour or so while others don’t and then the reverse happens, those with power lose it and those with out  get it. 

 

Now if your house isn’t insulated properly, you might also lose water.  Either pipes freeze (as with me) or as in the case of my city the increase usage of water created a shortage of water (we had one water facility lose power which meant the water couldn’t be filtered or pumped out to customers.)

 

So what do you do with all this?  You make do.  I know my pipes freeze so I collected water to drink.  I melted snow to flush the toilet (in that case I am happy to have had snow to melt).  Some people without power kept their food in coolers outside.  It was colder there than in their refrigerator.

 

I saw one story on the news where a family put up a tent on a mattress on the floor in their house, put blankets on top of the tent and slept together in the tent. The blankets and their own body heat kept them warm. They made do.

 

I heard other stories of businesses with power letting people come in to get out of the cold.  Churches open up their halls to help people get warm.  And restaurants helped with meals at these places.

 

Now I am not writing this to complain (well, maybe a little), what I realized through all this was to be grateful for what I have.  I am grateful that I have had power during all this.  Grateful that I had food in the refrigerator (and had bought the ingredients for soup.)  I am grateful, as I mentioned above, to have snow to melt for the toilet. 

 

And that is what is important in any situation, gratitude.  Be grateful for what you have in any situation..  So if anyone out there reading this has power, heat and water, be grateful that you do, because some folks in Texas (and to be fair, other states in the south as well) don’t.  Be grateful and maybe send some warm loving prayers our way.  We can use all the warmth we can get.

 

©2021 Cheryl Fillion