I know y'all seen the news, I've gotten texts from errbody asking if we're good and such. Well let me tell you how things went for us. I wish I could sort things by day but to be honest there were a few days there that ran together.

I've lived in the mountains, I've got a lifted Jeep with lockers and it's fine for snow, I've crossed the Rubicon in snow and ice in the Jeep. I know how to navigate this stuff, but the reality is nothing is fine for ice. Being the knucklehead that I am I've got plenty of stuff for snow camping. Also we've got a nice place, some acreage, pool, etc.

We knew it was going to get ugly for a couple days. Ice storms are no joke, and we did have time to prepare for hunkering down a few days. We had no idea it was going to get as bad as it did. I went to HEB the day before and stocked up early. Good thing.

Weather happens, and when it came in it was pretty fun. Wow, look at those icicles and such! Wow the snow is like glitter. Whoa can you believe it's 10 degrees?!

For the record, it doesn't really snow here. We got a few inches a while back and it was pretty cool, but it went away after a couple days. It does that every few years, no big deal. Kind of what we were expecting here.

After a couple days it was getting cold. Really cold. It got 1 degree here, the "feels like" was minus 12. Now that's something we're not used to. We've got wells and rainwater. We don't have sewer, we have septic and get propane delivered. Only service available here is power.

Shit got real once the power went out.

I've got a rainwater system we put in last year, we've got a well too thankfully. It's all in a well house and I've got a heating system that turns on once it hits freezing so the pipes don't freeze over. Everything was fine (albeit cold as shit) until the power stuff kicked in.

Power goes out a couple days in, okay now what? It's dark outside, 1 degree, what the hell do I do now?

Went and shut off the breakers for the pool, that's going to freeze.

Went and got the generator (keep your generator maintained folks!).

I left the well house, it is inside but it's not insulated all that well. I don't want to lose water, but I don't have pressure pumps without power. Okay let's see what it does tomorrow when the power comes back on.

Power would come on for an hour sometimes, we could heat the house for a bit. But the water's out.

Go to the well house, realize I'm not going to be able to maintain this without power. I have to shut the valves or it's going to freeze and burst, then I've got a real problem on my hands.

Generator was a nice supplement. I could make coffee and such.

This is all in the first two days. It was raining but it was so cold as soon as it'd hit it would freeze, 1/4" ice had accumulated on everything.

Day 3, it snowed overnight. Cool I can get some traction! Power's still out. We made a bunch of coffee and put it in a thermos and went to go visit some neighbors, making sure they had a nice hot cup of coffee. I know how I felt waking up day 3 without power and needing some coffee, so I thought it would be a good idea to do something nice and take the opportunity to make sure my neighbors were doing okay.

They were thankful, and people were all in different stages of being. Nobody had power, which means nobody had running water. We had some neighbors that were sitting in their bathroom because they ran out of propane. Apparently with a couple people and a couple candles you can get a bathroom up to 70 degrees! We brought the wife to our house, her husband wanted to stay because of the animals. Honestly, I'd do the same thing.

Day 4, power is still fucked. Pipes are frozen solid now. We're using the pool to fill buckets so we can flush the toilets. I'm the only one with a pool, so my neighbors are filling buckets with snow and waiting till it melts so they can flush. I've got 5 neighbors I'm keeping close contact with, people are starting to get low on necessities but we're all good still.

Day 5-6, these are all the same to me. I can't differentiate really. Just fucking cold as fuck. Power is doing this 30 minute on, 30 minute off thing for a while... then it's finally getting to 3 hours on and 90 minutes off. I'm thankful we had SOME power, but it sure would have been nice to know what the schedule was.

I'm low on fuel for the generator, I've got a couple gallons left so it's only on when it gets cold. I'm low on fuel for the Jeep, I've made a few runs back into the hills to check in on people. One neighbor has a downed power line. Another ran completely out of water and propane. Another had some gasoline. I was able to keep the Jeep going and dropping off water here, propane bottles there, get gas for the Jeep over there. I'm only making a trip a day, still tons of ice but I've got a winch if I need it.

Okay now the power went off for good. After a day I'm able to figure out it's just me and my next door neighbor, we share a transformer. Shit. They've got show ponies. I was able to get them some warm water for the horses, we took it over there and polished off the rest of their whiskey. Because we're adults.

I'm using the generator for an hour at a time to watch some news, heat the house, charge the phones, make some coffee. We're still flushing with pool water, the pool froze over so I'm out there breaking up the ice every couple hours. I'm over here playing whack-a-mole trying to keep things together.

Day 7, last day... it's gone freeze tonight but tomorrow we're getting 35 degree weather! The power got fixed overnight, thank you line workers! I went to work on the water, the dang ol' 30,000 gallon water tank froze! The pump is submersed and was throwing a code that it couldn't prime. I was able to get the well primed, pipes thawed enough to get some well water in the house. Not good for drinking really but it's something to work with. Still worried about the septic so using toilets sparingly, I'm peeing outside and pooping once a day. We're somehwat comfortable now with power and heat. Neighbors with downed lines are still out but they went to another neighbors house.

Day 8, 20 degrees this morning... It felt like summer. The sun came out, hadn't seen that in a week! Things are melting, broken tree branches everywhere. Found a couple of the septic sprinklers somehow (gone mark these with flags) and I think we're good here. Go into town, not really expecting much but I'm going stir crazy. Cars are littered along the highway, in ditches and abandoned. It's like a warzone over here. HEB shelves are empty. Like communism empty. PVC isle at Home Depot had a line that was around the store. Have you ever seen an isle with a line?!?! Lots of broken water systems everywhere. My rainwater is turning on but I've got a leak, I can fix this but I have other things to tend so since the well is working.

Anyway, I went and got some supplies that I needed and then hit the pub. Had a few beers. I fucking needed that.

It's been a long week. We made it. We looked out for each other. We provided when others needed. We did all we could and it turned out okay. And we're stronger because of it.