The Sun is Finally Shining

Bye Bye Katrina. Good riddance. Katrina followed us up here to Nashville and passed through. It's been gloomy and raining since our evacuation. Nothing too bad though, not even any lightning. The last of her doom has finally moved on. This morning the sun is finally shining. I took a long shower, brushed my hair and put on makeup so I don't have to feel like such a refugee. I can hear Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in my head singing, "You don't have to live like a refugee!"

They FINALLY have a reporter in Slidell and we were able to see some decent footage of our town on CNN. Miles O'Brien was interviewing a woman who works at my insurance agent's State Farm office. I'm sure we'll be talking to her sometime soon.

From reading the posts in local forums I've been able to gather that our neighborhood is definitely on the drier side of town. I don't see any reports about completely demolished homes in the area, so I think it's safe to assume that my house is still there. At least I hope so. Still no confirmation of that though, and no info at all about our neighborhood specifically (Meadowlake Subdivision). I did find one site that has several photos of the Slidell damage.

Best case scenario: Our house suffered loss of shingles and much of the siding and has plenty of broken windows (especially the glass room on the back that we could not board up). The wooden privacy fence is probably mostly gone. A tree or two might be down, but they were not very large or close to the house to damage the house. Food in the fridge and recently stocked freezer in our garage is probably starting to get rancid (we filled it up with a $300 trip to Sams last week). Maybe water got in the house, but it is gone by now if it did. Our storage shed in the backyard probably didn't fare too well either.

Worst case: Our house is flooded or missing the 2nd floor roof entirely, or completely demolished like so many of the homes in Gulfport. Looters have broken in and stolen everything. I'm leaning toward the best case scenario.

What we can definitely expect:

mud everywhere.

no electricity for 6-8 weeks (according to officials), which means no AC and temperatures in the 90's every day and very humid.

rotting garbage piled up in the streets that will probably not be picked up for months

no place to buy anything like groceries or gas

no school for at least a couple of months (or probably longer if the schools were destroyed)

no communication for weeks

nothing for our children but hot sticky boredom while the grownups try to sort out our lives again.

no going back to work for a while, and even then it will be a year or more before the bridge is repaired for hubby's commute.


So the sun is finally out. We're going to try to do some things to feel normal today. My sis is going to take the kids to a movie. Hubby is thinking about going to check out the local university and visit some collegues. Aunt Janette is sending some toys here to give them something to do while we are here since we didn't bring any with us. My friend Devra posted an article in her blog about dealing with children in stressful situations called Katrina and Kids. She talks about how important it is to try to maintain some kind of routine. Our routine is pretty much shot to hell, but at least we're safe and feeling loved.

Are we stir crazy? Perhaps a tad. The house is a little crowded with all of us camping out in my sis's living room (One bathroom, 7 people, 4 dogs, 3 cats), but no one is getting on each other's nerves (yet)! But now that the sun is shining and we've seen some scenes from Slidell, things are looking up a little at least for today my little family. I'm saying a little prayer for all those people in New Orleans who don't have a comfortable place to take refuge like we do.