We Didn't Get the Text, So Technically It's Allowed

At 4:52 p.m. my phone was face up on the kitchen counter next to a sweating glass of tap water. Both of us were waiting for permission.

The text never came.

For the record, and in plain terms: Texas grid demand hit roughly 87,400 megawatts today, July 21, about 2,000 megawatts above the record set in 2023. No conservation call was issued. That's the news. Everything after this sentence is me.

If you've lived here a few summers, you know the conservation text works like a church bell. It isn't an order, more of a reminder that God is watching your Trane. You get it, you sigh, you nudge the hallway thermostat up two degrees, you unplug the second fridge in the garage that holds nothing but Topo Chico and a ham from Easter, and you feel like a minor saint. Today the grid broke its own record and the bell stayed quiet. That left my household with a constitutional crisis.

Regular readers will remember the hallway thermostat from last week's box fan notes. It lives under blue painter's tape with 78 written on it in Sharpie, my handwriting, ratified in June. Today that tape went before committee.

Minutes of the Household Climate Committee, Emergency Session

Called to order: 5:01 p.m., kitchen, because the kitchen has the tile.

Present: Me. The Other Voting Member, who has asked not to be named on the internet, a request I have honored for nineteen years. One dog, nonvoting, lying flat on the tile like a dropped rug.

Old business: The 78 Accord of June. The Other Voting Member noted that the Accord was "signed under duress during a $284 electric bill" and therefore "lacks moral standing." I noted that the $284 bill is the moral standing.

New business, Item 1: Whether the absence of a conservation text constitutes permission.

The Other Voting Member argued that if the state's grid operator, with all its dashboards and forecasting and people who wear lanyards to work, looked at record demand and declined to ask anybody for anything, then the state has more or less given us its blessing to go to 74.

I argued that an absence of instructions is not an instruction. "If the cop doesn't pull you over," I said, "you weren't necessarily doing the speed limit."

"Nobody pulls anyone over on MoPac," the Other Voting Member said. This was ruled out of order for being true.

Item 2: Whether 76 is a compromise or a surrender.

The motion to try 76 for one hour "as an experiment" was tabled. Everyone in this house knows the hour of the experiment never ends. The ceiling fan in the back bedroom went on "for one hour" in 2011 and nobody has touched the chain since.

Item 3: The dog.

Unanimously agreed that the dog doesn't care and is fine on the tile. The dog was asked to comment and exhaled.

Resolution: The tape stays. 78 holds through peak. After 9 p.m., the Other Voting Member may "visit" 77. This is now known as the Nine O'Clock Concession, and I already regret it.

Adjourned: 5:19 p.m., when the compressor kicked on and we both went quiet to listen for the noise it made last August, right before the $640 visit from a guy named Rudy who said "oh, buddy" when he opened the panel.

Who Actually Turns It Up

The meeting is a joke. The question underneath it is not.

When the text does come, the people who answer it are people like my neighbors. That means the retired guy two doors down who already lives at 80 and treats his electric co-op statement like a report card. It means the young couple in the fourplex on the corner, running one window unit and a wet towel. It means the woman across the street, the one whose St. Augustine is still in hospice, who unplugs her coffee maker at night "for the grid," as if the grid is a sick aunt asleep in the next room.

These are the people with the smallest bills. They hear "please conserve" as a civic duty because, God bless them, they still believe in civic duty. They are the volunteer fire department of the Texas power grid. Nobody pays them. Some of them don't have the degrees left to give.

Meanwhile, drive down Cesar Chavez after dark in July and count the lit floors in the glass towers. Whole floors of empty desks are chilled to museum temperature so the ficus doesn't wilt. Look up at the lobby of any new building with a name like The Alder or Meridian or Lumen. Two-story atrium, nobody in it, the air cold enough to hang meat. I'm not saying any particular building is doing anything wrong. I'm saying I have never once seen a lobby get a text.

The conservation request is a polite letter that only the polite people open.

A Brief History of Begging

I remember when we didn't need the state to tell us it was hot. You knew because the steering wheel of a '94 Corolla parked at the Fiesta on 38th would brand the shape of your palm into the vinyl. You knew because the line at Amy's on Guadalupe moved slower. Everybody stood in the shade of the awning, then lunged for the counter one at a time like penguins. You knew because the pool at Deep Eddy filled up by 10 a.m. with the whole city floating in it like croutons.

We had window units and box fans and a general understanding that August was a thing you endured, not a thing you optimized. Nobody had a smart thermostat sending them a push notification that said Great job! You saved 4%! in a font designed by someone who has never sweated through a guayabera at a funeral.

Now we have record demand, a population that keeps doubling while the summers keep stacking up, and a household negotiation that runs like a city council work session. Nobody's in charge, everybody's tired, and the decision gets made by whoever's standing closest to the wall when the meeting ends.

Field Notes, 8:47 p.m.

The phone's still face up. Still no text. The record stands, the grid held today, and I'll take that, truly. I'm grouchy, not a monster, and I'd rather complain about a quiet phone than a dark one.

The Other Voting Member is standing in the hallway, thirteen minutes early, one finger hovering over the thermostat like it's the button that launches the missiles.

"It's not nine," I said.

"It's nine somewhere."

"It's nine in Lubbock in an hour."

"Lubbock's on Central Time."

Ruled out of order, for being true. The finger moved anyway. 77. The painter's tape is curling at one corner. I'll fix it tomorrow, when it's going to be hot again, and the phone will be face up on the counter again, waiting for somebody, anybody, to ask.