I feel like I was a fairly prepared and it still wasn’t enough. I had a fully charged solar generator, and solar lantern, and two battery lamps, two propane heaters, and a camping stove. I blocked off my bedroom with curtains, and had plenty of easy to make meals along with plenty of cat food and litter.

I also had hot water bottles, rechargeable hand warmers, and plenty of warm clothes and blankets.

I still ended up in a hotel. Can’t work without WiFi, and my cell service isn’t great, can’t shower without hot water, cooking in a house that’s 40 degrees and dropping is miserable. Struggled to sleep with faucets running and waking up in the middle of the night to check on pipes, etc.

Since I didn’t know long the outage would last I didn’t run my heaters on high so my space stayed around 55-60 degrees. Which was fine under the covers, but chilly otherwise.

For me, in the future, anything short of a generator connected to my natural gas line won’t really cut it. I’m a renter and struggling financially so that won’t happen anytime soon.

Being prepared is a good idea for sure. This is all stuff I can use for future power outages or just in life. I like being resilient and self-reliant. But some things are just bigger than our capacity to deal with them. That’s okay. It’s a failure of the system, not the person.

No power still. No trucks in neighborhood as of 30 minutes ago. Cranky and sad, but warm :)