The aroma of a Butterscotch Bundt cake is swirling throughout the "now warm" house from the oven, for which I am beyond grateful that I can use today. How comforting this simple scent can make me happy and feel as if things will turn out okay. And how much I realize I take for granted in an " every day simple life", when things stop working and make a simple life .......difficult.
As most of you know, my husband and I live in Texas. And if you have been watching the drama unfold on the news, we among the millions were unpleasantly "shut off" from electricity during one
of the most unusual and frigid nights known to Texas. Snow, ice, and the temperature dropping down to 3 degrees on Monday(the 15th) made us grateful to be in the warmth of our home and sound asleep in our bed...........when at 3:00 AM I awoke and realized the house was freezing and in pitch black.
I hurriedly made a fire in the fireplace and we were trying to wonder why the power had gone off.
Thank goodness for our fireplace, although the rest of the house was freezing, we had comfort in our living room from the constant fire.
The next morning, the realization that this power outage had been done to us on purpose by the power company, left us in shock and frustration.
We knew this terrible cold storm was coming and had made preparations by gathering wood and placing a space heater in our well house to prevent our water from freezing. Because of the outage........our well and inside plumbing froze.
Power did not come back to us until Wednesday.........for which we are grateful...........but we are still without running water........... We still have snow on the ground and the ground is rock hard frozen. It will take days for it to thaw out......along with the worry of busting pipes.
To hear of how the power companies have failed us and to learn that they now plan to charge us and astronomical fee because they are privately owned..........makes it even more stressful. I do not know how we will be able to pay such a fee if these rumors are true.
However, through this all.........we had fireside coffee..........and I made many treats and meals at the fireplace and we enjoyed talking.........about" whatever" with the absence of politics and the news of calamity on the television.
Before the snow, the sleet and ice came......... the trees dark from the moisture and frozen in layers of crystal ice looked as if they were caught in a black and white scene from an old movie. I always think the woods are lovely like this.
A spider's web looks like a large snowflake caught on the twigs
During the day with no light, I sat by the large dining room window , which provided bright light for me to work my embroidery. I stitched and watched the wild birds and deer come up for feed.
When we got our power back on, I was so grateful to find emails and messages from dear friends wanting to know if we were okay. Words of encouragement and prayers said did my heart such good!
In spite of the frigid cold, I took a walk to capture the sunset on the ice and snow, which made the sky in soft colors of pink and the landscape in soft lavender. I have never seen a winter sunset like this before.
This brought to mind the words of Gladys Taber...........
"There is, I have found, at least one good or lovely thing in every single day. Everyone has sorrows, endures difficult times, but loveliness abides if we look for it."
I hope this finds you in comfort and warmth and with something good or lovely to
enjoy with your day!
*************UPDATE 2/19/2021******
Thank you all for your words of encouragement and just wanted
to say that today was sunny and almost all of the snow has melted.
To answer Beatrice P Boyd's question on how I made the cake without
water? We are stocked up with drinking water and I used that
for the cooking and baking.
During the cold snowy days, I went out each day and scooped up fresh snow.
I then melted it, stored it and have used it for dish washing, cleaning, and flushing.
Hopefully by this weekend our well will be thawed and we
will have running water
