HVshirt – Surfing Makes Me Happy Humans Make My Head Hurt Shirt

 I sent a message to a friend in Austin who lost water after we did. I told her to collect buckets of snow to melt to use to flush the toilets. But we don’t have any such experience with cold-weather catastrophes. Texas doesn’t have those. My 14-year-old daughter is not happy when I make her evacuate for a hurricane, but when I tell her to wear her coat in the house because we’ve lost power and the dishwater in the sink is starting to freeze, she blinks at me. Our climate catastrophe personas don’t function in this new kind of crisis. I was too scared to cry, so I drank large glasses of wine. When the water pressure bottomed out and then failed, and the toilets stopped filling, we braved the roads and made it to the only grocery store in our area that still had bottled water. A handmade sign pasted above the already overpriced alkalized water instructed customers to limit themselves to two bottles of water each. Just two. So, I grabbed armfuls of weird vitamin water and mini cans of Sprite. When I got into the car with my packages, my husband, an economics teacher, remarked, “At least they aren’t price gouging,” and shrugged his shoulders. You’ve got to count the small victories. Later that day, I sent an Instagram message to a friend in Austin who lost water after we did, and I was happy I could help her with the wisdom our few hours of lead time afforded me. I told her to collect buckets of snow to melt to use to flush the toilets. She replied, “That sentence is below the Cameron I know.”

Ultimately, we were lucky. Our power was only out for seven hours, though many friends and family members, including my parents-in-law, also in their 70s, were shut down on and off for four days. Our family is fortunate to not need electricity to power lifesaving medical devices, like 75-year-old Vietnam veteran Carrol Anderson, who died in his pickup truck searching for his last oxygen tank after the power went out. Dozens in Texas lost their lives, including 11-year-old Cristian Pavon, who, according to the Houston Chronicle, died in his bed in a house without heat, hours after playing in the snow for the first time. Though we went five days without potable water, we were able to fill a water jug we bought in 2008 before Hurricane Ike from the trickle in the sink to boil and cool enough water to brush our teeth with, cook with, and drink.

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