Being acclimated to the cold weather and having enough resources to stay warm (pellets, wood, electricity, gas) make winter not so dreadful as Texas's week after Valentine's Day. I'm reading Dorothy's account of a week and wondering why we complained so much - it's the doing it without power that made it horrible for people totally unprepared. I now have a propane stove (arrived via Amazon on Wednesday) and I'll go buy a couple of tanks early next week (I've gotten the vaccine but still am very careful about going out, preferring times when the stores are almost empty).

I have only been to one grocery store since the Big Freeze, when I had to clear out the side-by-side freezer and fridge of a lot of thawed produce from my garden. I still have a supply in the big upright freezer, and instead of buying anything new I'm working on moving stuff. I try to use the fridge freezer for my everyday stuff and open the big one only on occasion. I tossed things in jars that weren't preserved by brine or salt or vinegar (so I kept olives and pickles and such, but tossed the mayonnaise).

As I've continued to fiddle with it the big sewing machine tension is now all out of whack. I cleaned and oiled the machine again. There was a video on YouTube of a guy taking off and adjusting the upper tension on a machine almost identical to mine. The video moves at a snail's pace but I'll watch it through to see if I can't try that adjustment now.