How does the saying go?

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.

My wife’s last week, in a nutshell.

On Thursday, February 11, my eldest daughter and she flew off to Austin, Texas. She was simply accompanying my daughter back to her home after spending a good deal of time here with us and, we hoped, well after any COVID-19 craziness with the traveling during Christman/New Years.

The flight there was fine. My wife, who has already gotten both Pfizer vaccines, accompanied her on the flight, got to Austin, and all was fine.

The trip was meant to be very brief. She would fly back home on Monday, February 15. One week ago today.

Mother nature, alas, had other plans.

For those who’ve been in a cave the last week, an icy blast hit the middle of the country starting on Sunday February the 14th. Snow fell, the roads iced up, and Texas was quickly exposed as a state that, thanks to deregulation, had an electric grid that simply wasn’t up to the chill.

Worse, for many water pipes froze and burst and roads were undriveable. Austin -and it seems the entirety of Texas as well- doesn’t have a good snow clearing and/or salting system. As someone who lived in Canada, what I saw on the news and heard from my wife about the situation there was something which would not have caused a problem for people in my (very) old stomping grounds.

But in Texas, it proved paralyzing.

The flight scheduled for Monday was cancelled. She rescheduled for Wednesday but, as the situation played out, it was clear Wednesday wouldn’t work either. The roads remained incredibly dangerous to drive on -there was absolutely no chance they would risk driving to the airport and even the Super Shuttle service was not going- but it didn’t matter: The airports were essentially closed and all flights were cancelled.

Thursday, we hoped, she would finally be able to travel home but the weather reports were grim, along with the general news. People were losing their power and water and the weather was bitterly cold.

Anticipating losing water, they collected snow in my daughter’s bathtub to use for the toilet. Eventually, their water was turned off.

But Thursday the 18th, the third scheduled day for my wife to fly back, was cancelled out and, while outside getting more snow for the bathtub, my wife slipped on some ice, fell, and broke her arm in two places.

Yeah.

Luckily, by Thursday the roads were better to drive on versus even the day before, and my daughter and wife were able to go to an emergency clinic. My wife thought maybe she didn’t break her arm but an X-Ray quickly proved she had. Luckily, again, she didn’t break her wrist but a little below it, which meant she likely didn’t need surgery.

A temporary cast was made to keep her arm stable but a more permanent cast couldn’t be put on until the swelling went down, three or four days later.

By this point, my wife had her flight scheduled, for the fourth time, for Saturday the 20th.

By then the cold snap was in the process of going away and the flight took off on time and she arrived home a little early, though it was quite late at night when we finally got her home.

We spent Sunday relaxing as best we could and, this morning, headed to a Hospital which had an Orthopedics department and were able to see us.

She got herself another set of X-Rays and -finally, good news!- the break was relatively stable and didn’t require any surgery.

In a little over one hour, she was back outside ready for me to pick her up, sporting a nice blue cast over her right arm.

Meanwhile in Austin, my daughter’s water was back Sunday night and its looking like things are somewhat getting back to normal in that beautiful city. Better yet, she was able to gas up her car today (she was getting very low) and it looks like some of the grocery stores are filling up with foods.

Meanwhile, horror stories about Texas are still coming in, from the incredibly inept Governor and Senator Ted Cruz’s idiotic attempt to flee the state for Cancun. There are heartbreaking stories of people who froze to death, including an 11 year old boy, and one can’t help but shake one’s head at all of this.

In light of these tragedies, my wife breaking her arm and my daughter’s inconvenience is a small thing indeed versus the suffering others have faced.

It shouldn’t have happened yet it did.

I really, really hope that the voters of Texas remember this the next time elections roll around.

How the hell does this happen?

How the hell does a state as big and robust as Texas essentially go down for the count because of a winter system?

I’m in a rather unique position, on the outside looking in but on the inside my wife and daughter are there, “enjoying” the situation right this moment. They’ve been lucky. Their electricity hasn’t gone out yet, but as of yesterday their water was turned off.

In-freaking-credible.

They dare not go out to stores since Monday (not that many of them were open) but yesterday they did and later on, when I talked to my wife, she said it was scary driving along the road to a nearby supermarket to get some much needed provisions given they had to drive along some hilly terrain and feared their car would slide on the ice in the road.

This is the city of Austin, a beautiful, wonderful city, but like almost all the rest of Texas, they’ve been gripped by the incompetence of years of deregulation. They also don’t have, it appears, any snow shoveling trucks or other equipment to deal with a winter storm of this magnitude.

It’s amusing -to the point of volcanically infuriating– that governor Gregg Abbott has the cojones to state -on Fox “News”, natch- that somehow the electrical problems were caused by those Green Deal initiatives, including Turbines. Or that Rick Perry, one time governor, stated that… hell, its in the title of the below article, which also presents Mr. Abbott’s head spinning stupidity about Green energy (the article below is by Katie Shepherd and presented on washingtonpost.com):

Rick Perry says Texans would accept even longer power outages ‘to keep the federal government out of their business’

Never mind, Mr. Abbott, that countries with far harsher winters have turbines that work perfectly fine. Never mind that freaking Antarctica has functioning turbines. Oh no, they simply don’t work in winter weather, right?

Except…

The wind turbines account for some 10% of Texas’ total power grid. The failure is across the board, from fossil fuel to nuclear.

And the reason for this major failure?

Deregulation.

Seems Texas has their very own power grid and they don’t want no bothersome federal regulations intruding on their profits.

You know, the regulations that would have mandated protections to the grids in case of things like… oh… severe winter weather.

This is why wind turbines in places like Antarctica and Norway function despite winter weather which is much more severe and long lasting than that found this week in Texas. Their equipment is winterized while Texas’ equipment is obviously not.

But, hey, it works well on the right wing propaganda sites to blame people like AOC and Bernie Sanders -people who have absolutely zero to do with Texas- for the problems some 20 years of Republican rule have created, right?

Oh, and of course in the middle of all this and not to be outdone, Ted Cruz shows he’s willing to lower the bar even more for Texan Republicans (the below article is by D. Roche and presented on Newsweek.com)…

Ted Cruz accused of flying to Cancun amid Texas outages as photo goes viral

The photo:

Yup, sure does look like our good “friend” Ted Cruz aboard an aircraft heading to Cancun for a pleasant vacation while some of his constituents are quite literally freezing and/or starving to death.

Sheesh.

I really, really hope the people of Texas remember this when elections next come up.

POSTSCRIPT: My daughter in Austin just sent me this. Sounds right!