I do have the heater on but I have the thermostat set way down so that it's not running it is using some electricity just to be on as opposed to off but it's not running
I took some GABA
And I feel less anxious
And I suppose you could say that I should be making some productive use of this time
But the productive use that I'm making of this time is experiencing it
The one thought I can't get out of my head though is salsa
What exactly is salsa
Anyway
Perhaps counterintuitively my desire to live off grid has never been higher
Okay well now I'm turning the heater fan on so that's increasing my electrical usage a little bit
But I'm trying to be conservative
To help them out with their shortage problem
And we'll see what the bill looks like too
I mean this is a heavy usage when it's on for heating and you know if the heater bill is higher I'm not going to be surprised
but their rate supposedly went way up because they had to buy it on the open market blah blah blah and the way they've got it all set up whatever b******* and supposedly before they turned any power back on they got the right to pass the bill on to the consumer
And I'm supposed to be on a flat rate 2-year contract which I guess I'm in the second year of now or maybe it doesn't start until April anyway I'm supposed to be on a flat rate contract so they should not be able to pass on their $9,000 kilowatt-hour or whatever but we'll see I didn't read the contract closely enough to see if there was a loophole somewhere and I'm not sure even if I had read it closely if I would have caught it because the energy terminology is a little tricky I mean I did read it
but they're saying that there might be some business closing because businesses that are used to having like a $15,000 electrical bill might have a $200,000 electrical bill because they're on variable rate I did not want variable rate because I do not trust them
The whole point of having a contract is that you know how much you're going to be paying otherwise with the point of that
My mother had electricity for the coldest night but she has some burst pipes so she doesn't have any water well I don't really have any water either I have a little trickle
I seem to recall
January was supposed to be the hard month and the rest of the year was supposed to be great it doesn't really seem like a qualifies for great
I mean I'm okay
I'm doing a whole lot better than a lot of other people are I guess I feel like that they didn't really warn me for the right things to prepare for so I'm just really lucky that I'm okay because you know what they told me to prepare for was not at all what we ended up with
I was prepared to be in the house
I was prepared to not be able to go out
I was prepared for short periods of time without electricity that wasn't really what I ended up with
But at this point at least from my experience it's stabilized with you know like a few hours on a few hours off
So you know I'm able to well I was able to cook food anyway I guess cuz I had the camp stove but I don't know I don't know why I'm so anxious
I guess
The being stuck in the house was already getting to me and then going to the studio was really relieving a lot of that but now it's too cold to even go outside and there's ice everywhere
And the power off and on and not knowing not knowing I think a lot of not knowing is what's causing the anxiety
Plus I never really thought I had anxiety growing up I thought I just had depression and then I found out that I have anxiety but I forget
Cuz mostly it's kind of low level
And I don't have it all the time
but for some reason when there's a crisis on top of a crisis on top of a crisis it gets my anxiety up a little bit
But you know even with the 17° weather and the no heat and not knowing the trick about the pot plant pot what do you call those things ceramic no terracotta like terracotta pot and bricks and tea lights to make the stove heater thing for the room of course I don't have that stuff so it's all very fine and good to tell me that I can make that but I can't make that
I do have some tea lights but not very many because mostly what I've got is candles those big like I don't know 32 oz jar candles or whatever it is that you can buy at the grocery store and the pharmacy and whatnot
Whenever those go on big sale I buy a bunch of them for the hurricane supply and then I have a few just you know nice smelling candles too and then I had some other candles so I mean I've got a s*** ton of candles
I think you probably can't throw a rock in here without hitting a candle
not like I'm burning them all at once now but what I mean is when I went looking for candles I had a lot more candles than I thought I had
And for the 17-degree weather with no heat
I pressed into service this wool Peruvian rug that I kind of got as a wall hanging
And then another rug that I had extra that's made out of recycled Coke bottles so it's not breathable so that was handy too
So I mean it was a lot of blankets a lot of blankets and rugs and you know not all of them were like full blankets size it was like every throw and you know whatever and it was actually pretty warm
Except for the top of my head
And I have a hoodie I know I have a hoodie but I could not find it I maybe it's in the laundry or maybe is it possible that I left it at work and just didn't think about it for a whole year I don't know I know I was bad about taking a jacket to work and then forgetting it at work but I did go back to fill in paperwork you'd think if I had left a jacket you know I would have known seeing it somebody would have told me something I don't know I'm going to be very unhappy if I lost my rumble cusp hoodie but I couldn't find it
and I didn't want to go looking in the dark for a hat I hadn't really thought about needing that you know so I ended up just putting the sheet over my head and that worked really good and my first thought was oh my god you're going to suffocate in the night and then I was like you know the sheet is a lot less thick than a mask so you'll be fine and as soon as I thought that I just fell right to sleep I didn't have a problem
because it was weird I had all those blankets and I was wearing you know pants and have this skirt that I'm kind of wearing as a semi-dress thing because I don't know anyway I don't know a lot of clothes and then I was under all those blankets and I was warm I'm wearing socks That's like a sign of the apocalypse
I hate socks
but even though I was under all the blankets and I was warm it was weird because my head I mean it was like I could feel all of my body heat seeping out to the top of my head and so I was warm but I was cold it was a very strange sensation
and as soon as I put the sheet which is not thick I mean it's like a sheet I can't remember if these sheets are 100% cotton I think they are but maybe not maybe they're 50/50 I just don't remember I got them at Sam's and they're supposed to be fancy hotel sheets like 400 thread count or something but they were not real expensive because they were at Sam's
Like years ago when I had a Sam's card
And I just put that over my head and bam no more heat leaking out my head it was weird
Anyway I hope you're doing okay
I don't think your state is having this problem
I didn't even know Texas was on its own power grid I mean I probably did but I forgot
Why do the Republicans only care about power and graft and b*******
I mean they just do not seem to give a damn about actually governing
And in 2010 I think it was 2010 that they gerrymandered the state really bad so it's really hard for Democratic candidates now because they gerrymandered all the districts so that the Democratic areas got split up
I was really hoping that this last election the Texas legislature would go blue but
But no
but you know I don't know how much you know about what goes on in Texas
and I'm not going to say that I know everything that goes on in Texas like that I'm so up to date on all the Texas politics now not saying that
but when El Paso was asking for another morgue truck because they didn't have enough places to put the bodies Abbott was in court saying that the cities didn't have a right to overrule his orders to open restaurants
And the court said that the cities didn't have a right to overrule him so as they're asking for more morgue trucks because they have too many dead people from covet he's making them reopen the restaurants
and then there's the charming lieutenant governor who was the one who said you know we should throw Granny on the funeral pyre so that we could maintain the economy
And then this fiasco
I'm sorry that was a little bit of venting
I'm just kind of frustrated
And the whole country looks at us like we're all just a bunch of Republicans and that is not the case and there are Republicans here
And there are a f*** ton of people that like guns
I just think that it would have been better
This whole situation would have been a little bit easier to deal with if what they had said is you know hey all of our planning and charts and whatever have never taken into account like the whole state of Texas being in the teens temperature wise like ever
And you know panhandle to del Rio in the teens is going to use a whole lot more power than we ever anticipated so you know we don't know what might happen and we're going to try to maintain everything and our plan is to do these 15 minute to an hour rolling blackouts but you know we aren't sure so you know you might want to prepare for extended periods of power outage you know and then maybe we would have thought about well what might we need if we were in super cold weather and the power was out for a long long time like you know 40 hours
Just saying
Because if they had warned us and they had to have known that there was a possibility
so if they had warned us at least they would have warned us you know and if it didn't happen that way well who's going to be unhappy that it's not as bad as it could be right
and now all this well if we don't be really careful then your power might be out for a month well I already don't think a whole lot of their competency so that doesn't make me less stressed
So whatever
I'm okay
You're okay
Everything's okay
I just need to get back to a positive attitude
It's kind of all an adventure
I love you very much sweetheart 💋
