Small Frys

We bought some new fish for our fish tank last week. We've had one lone fish for several months, and we decided he needed some friends. He did not evacuate with us, but stayed home to "ride out the storm", and we came home to find him happily swimming in a tank filled with green algae from not having a functioning filter for two weeks while the power was out.

We got guppies and mollies. One of the guppies had babies yesterday. The babies are called fry. We separated them into a little isolation box in the tank so the other fish don't eat them. Aren't they cute?! That's one of the mollies looking up at the delicious little treats.

Katrina Costume Ideas

People are finding this website while searching for "Katrina Costume Ideas", so I thought I would actually post some. My friends Jeannie and Mike, who have been staying with us while they gut their flooded moldy house, helped come up with these. We had a good laugh, which is a helluva lot more fun than a good cry:


Katrina Costume Ideas
by Laurel, Jeannie, and Mike in Slidell, LA



In the interest of simplifying the Internet, I have posted most of this article here:

Mardi Gras Costume Pics / Katrina Costumes

Burnt Down Their House

Another friend of mine lives in a nice neighborhood where only a few houses took on water. Her house did not, but the ones across the street from her did. Apparently one homeowner, right across the street from her, didn't have flood insurance or wasn't going to get coverage or something, because he is currently in jail for setting their home on fire.

I took a ride over to her street yesterday to have a look. The first photo is the side view from the driveway. The next photo is taken from the front of the house. There isn't much left except the brick and the stucco facade.

People do desperate things in desperate times. I guess he thought this was the way to get his homeowners policy to cover his losses. Unfortunately for his family, now they will get nothing, and their home is destroyed, and he is in prison.

More fires in town: A restaurant that had been used as a staging area for emergency workers burned down last week from an electrical fire. And, a couple of days ago, the paper reported that the debris field in the area nearer to the lake was burning out of control. We haven't had any rain for 8 weeks now, except for a tiny sprinkle when Hurricane Rita came through. We have a burn ban in the city of Slidell for just that reason.

Sis in the News

Check out my Sis all over the news in Nashville last night! My Sis is a Metro police sergeant and she is one good cop! I'm so proud of her.

Channel 2: Metro Police bust a major marijuana production Look in the left column on that page for the video link, "Major Drug Bust" which features my Sis!

Channel 4: House used solely for major marijuana growing operation Under the photos is the video link titled, "Record breaking marijuana bust", also featuring the lovely sergeant Welch!

Channel 5: Police Make One Of Largest Pot Busts In History


In one of the stories it says:

One thing that aroused suspicion was that NES bills for most of the homes in the neighborhood run about $100. However, this particular house regularly had an electric bill of around $500 a month.

Hmmmmm, I wonder if my lovely $476 utility bill this month is enough to get police around here looking for my secret basement. ;-)

Utility Bills and other stuff

We got our electric utility bill yesterday. August and September are usually our highest bills of the year because of the heat. A typical summer month usually costs us about $200-$250 and in the winter it is about $80. In our September bill, they estimated our usage from the previous month since they could not come out and read meters due to the storm. They estimated our bill at about half of what our previous month was, so our bill was around $100.

Yesterday I opened our October bill for the past month's use since we have been home and it was $476. Talk about sticker shock. Apparently they grossly underestimated last month, or there is something seriously wrong with our bill. According to our bill, our usage for the past two months (including the estimated month) was 5335 units, which averages 2667 units per month. This is on par with our July usage of 2690 units. But then where is the two weeks where we used no power at all? Our usages should have been MUCH lower. ....Unless, of course, there is a grow room in my house that I don't know about.

We are not the only ones with a bill like this. There is a whole story about it in the paper this morning in the article titled, "Utility Bills Back with a Vengeance". All I can say is "Ugh!!" At least the phone company didn't charge us for all the time the phones were out.


Our mortgage company finally returned our insurance check to us. They decided to make it easy for us and just endorse it and release the entire thing to us without forcing us to go through the song and dance of their inspectors, etc. Unfortunately they FORGOT to put the endorsement on the back of the check when they returned it in the pre-paid Fed-ex envelope I sent them! They said they would pay to have it overnighted to us because of their error, but I don't have much confidence in them after they "forgot" to do the very thing for which I sent the check in the first place, so I didn't take any chances. I sent another pre-paid Fed-ex envelope. I don't want them to "accidentally" put it in First Class mail which will take about two weeks to get here and probably get lost.


In other updates, my friend Jeannie has been getting contractors to come do estimates on their roof and all of the drywall in their house, and for the mold removal. Unfortunately since they could not get back into the house for 3 weeks, the mold damage is pretty severe. Her husband Mike had to go buy a regulator to breathe through since he seems to be very allergic to all the mold. Those regulator masks are very popular in New Orleans right now, and did you know that mold comes in every color of the rainbow?


The fencing company I called a few weeks ago finally came to give me an estimate for our fence. Jeannie and I are both discovering that the longer it takes to get the contractors to your house, the more the prices go up. I guess materials and labor are in short supply because of all the rebuilding.


Finally, here's an update on the Grave Tragedy that I wrote about last month. They have returned the tombs to their proper resting place at last in this story, TALES OF THE CRYPTS. Here's a photo from the paper. I couldn't find the photo on the newspaper's website, so this will have to do:.

Coming, Going and Blowing

My friend Jeannie and her family got here last night. They stopped by their house before they came over so Jeannie could see their house for the first time. All the sheetrock has been cut out a couple of feet above the floor and all the carpet has been ripped out. She took it really well, all things considered.

This morning they took their kids for a little drive around town to tour some of the damage. We told them to head over to the Eden Isles neighborhood to really get an eyefull of destruction. They are probably over there right now.

On Sunday, the garbage haulers came back and finished the job! They also managed to clean up Jeannie's neighborhood as well. They had a lot more debris than we did because of the flooding.

In the last couple of days we've had to bundle up and actually wear jackets since a cool breeze blew in from up north. Yes, I guess winter really is on the way. I know the rest of you have been having cool weather for some time now. It's been all the way down in the 50's here! I guess I'm spoiled by my shorts-wearing-weather 10 months of the year. Brrrrrrr!!! ;-)

The wind has been blowing hard the last couple of days and the plastic covering the gaping hole in next door neighbor's house has been ripping and flapping so loud that I thought it was thunder the first night. Here's a picture.

My neighbor across the street (with the renters who have the infamous huge pile of debris that they brought over here from New Orleans) finally got his official job transferred to Birmingham and told me this morning that they will be putting their house up for sale now. They will give their renters the option to buy it first, he said. A house diagonally behind us just sold and they were having an inspection done this morning. There are a lot of homes changing hands around here right now. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out. I will miss having my neighbor's daughter Jessica across the street. She was one of my kids' favorite babysitters!! I guess she would have gone off to college next year anyway.

We're almost done fixing our siding. Hubby installed the rest of the soffet and I was finally able to locate and purchase a roll of the metal sheeting we need for the trim (fascia). I had to drive a ways to get it. I also located a place to rent the big tool we need to bend it correctly -- it's called a "metal break". We should be tackling this home repair project next weekend since we'll be busy this weekend with our Halloween stuff and Hubby will be out of town the rest of this week.

Some Updates

The I-10 bridge has been repaired on one side and is open to two way traffic - one lane each direction. I don't think it has helped relieve the traffic though.

The Red Cross station that was handing out money to people here in Slidell has closed and probably is helping serve the people over in New Orleans right now. They are still operating some shelters here though. I just want to add that a LOT of people got money from the Red Cross here in Slidell. They gave out debit cards to families or gave them a check or a direct deposit into their bank account. It was reassuring to me to know that a lot of the money donated by people from all over the country REALLY DOES go right into the hands of the people who need it. Not only that, but with the debit cards, the users do not even have to pay sales tax, so they are able to buy even more for the money.

I was sorry to hear that my next door neighbor's 1st cousin was one of the elderly women who drowned in a nursing home in New Orleans during the flood. Also, the mother of one of my son's gym teammates had an uncle who was picked out of the floodwaters and taken to the Superdome during the flood. An older man who was with him had broken his leg and was taken there with him. While they were there, they had no food or medical help for 3 days. There was food there at first, but racial issues caused others not to share what they had with them, even with an injured old man. The older man died at the Superdome as a result. Very very sad indeed.

We're still waiting to hear if our mortgage company will make an exception in our case and release our insurance check to us immediately instead of holding it hostage. I am not holding my breath, but it's nice to know it's being considered.

The roofers came out this morning to fix one of the pipe caps that was not installed correctly. I was glad they made good on their promise to fix it, especially considering I had already paid them. Paid them a lot!

My friend Jeannie and her family are coming to town on Monday to assess their house and see what they can do. They will most likely be staying here with us for a week or two. They will be here for our Halloween party!

The trash haulers didn't get all the trash, and have not come back for the huge pile across the street as they promised. I hope they are really going to come back! Our regular garbage collection has cut its pickups in half starting last week.

Our local news channels are really focusing on the current storm in the gulf, even though it probably won't come anywhere near us. I think they are just really feeling emotionally tied to the poor Florida folks in it's path. I hope everyone there remembers to empty thier freezer and take it all with them in a big cooler when they evacuate! And don't forget your gas cans!!

Theoretically, Tulane is going to allow the research professors back to work on November 1st. This includes Hubby, although that may be difficult for him considering his building is one of the only ones left with no power. The sub-basement where the electrical stuff is located was flooded. They can't work in the building without power, so we are still waiting to see what will happen with that.

And that's it for today folks!

Da Prez

This is a picture of my next door neighbor Donnie with da Prez taken last month (by White House staff I think). Donnie works in the Folgers coffee plant in New Orleans where Dubya made one of his first visits to the area after the storm. Donnie was back at work pretty early after the disaster, and Dubya took a break from talking to the press for a few minutes and walked over and introduced himself to Donnie while he was working. You can see a can of Folgers coffee in Dubya's other hand in the pic.

All politics aside, it sure is cool to see someone you know with the POTUS (President of the United States). The photo is a little faded because it is a picture of a hard copy photo (my scanner is on the blink). Interestingly (or not), Dubya is a relative of mine on my father's side. We both have a common ancestor, John Howland, who came over on the Mayflower. Technically, Dubya is my 9th cousin 4 times removed, and 9th cousin 3 times removed to his dad, Big George. This makes my kids 10th cousins to the presidents. Not that anyone cares. I don't really care either unless it gets us invited to the White House for Thanksgiving dinner.

For all of my Democratic relatives who are probably reading this, I will also include another photo of W just to make sure they don't disown me for posting that first picture. Here's a photo I got from a friend that had the caption, "Why help never arrived." (feel free to chuckle)

About the same time Donnie was meeting W, my aunt and uncle and two cousins were fishing in Alaska on a boat with Hillary and Sen. McCain. I'll gladly post a photo of that too, even though the fishing trip was not related to the hurricane disaster. Perhaps I could start a new blog entitled, "photos of people I know with people everyone knows".

And speaking of Dubya stuff, here is a not-to-be-missed article by my favorite local columnist from yesterday's paper titled, "The Uptown Fridge Wars" where he talks about how Uptown New Orleans residents are using the "weapons of our mass destruction", in their quest for normalcy in the face of disaster. Good stuff.

The Garbage Trucks Are Here!

The garbage trucks are here! The news flew through the neighborhood as soon as they pulled into the entrance. My next door neighbor, Kathy, called to tell me they were here and everyone came out of their homes to watch. You would think we had nothing better to do. Some of us even pulled up lawn chairs to watch the debris dissappear. We remarked that it was a lot like a parade. Four HUGE trucks and a big crane-thingy that bites the trash and loads it.

Unfortunately, an SUV was parked in the street in front of the large debris pile across the street and they were unable to pick it up. The garbage haulers seemed friendly enough though, and assured us that they would try to get it tomorrow. They will be in the neighborhood for several days picking it all up.

Eye Opener

Today we took a little drive around town. On our tour, we drove through one of the neighborhoods that was near the lake. We keep hearing that what you see on tv or in photos really does not prepare you for the total amount of destruction around here. It's true. A photo just cannot capture the entire thing. We took a picture of this former house of which there was nothing left but the cement slab and a lone toilet still in place. The next door neighbors were living in their RV on the property. We saw a lot of that.

The houses in that neighborhood had debris piles as big as a house, and in many cases, the debris pile WAS the house. In this picture you can see a house peeking out from behind the pile. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to come home to something like this. While we are moving along toward normality relatively quickly in our neighborhood, these people are going to be putting pieces back together for a long long time.
This is Eden Isle neighborhood. The owner of the kids' gymnatsics club lives in here. We tried to find his house, but the streets are all so unrecognizable that we couldn't orient ourselves enough to find it. I'm sure it looks similiar to these though. The gym is back open again and the kids have been in classes. They have most of their employees back which is better than a lot of businesses around town.

The National Guard in Slidell have moved on and are not longer giving out MRE's and bottled water. We seem to have most of our critical services back in Slidell, so they have presumably gone over to New Orleans to help out all those folks who are just getting back in recent weeks.

It is nice to see some "normal" stuff happening again. I think most people here would agree with that.

Debris Pile of the Month

On the news the other night, they noted that over in New Orleans the trash trucks are hauling the debris out at an incredible pace, and if they can keep up that same pace, they will be able to remove all of the Katrina debris in just under two years. Slidell will not have to wait that long.

We've noticed a funny thing in some of the neighborhoods that have more manageable debris piles like ours. Slowly the piles are shrinking. At first we didn't detect it, but now it's getting very obvious. Most of it is due to the debris owners sticking one bag or two each week into the garbage can which is now being picked up fairly regularly (although they miss a pickup here an there). The garbage collectors will only take what is in the can, so no one leaves their can only half-full. I've also seen one opportunistic entrepreneur driving through our neighborhood picking up all the metal objects from each pile until he had a truckload - metal fence poles, metal roof fascia, chimney pipes, etc. I assume he was getting paid for a load of scrap metal. I was happy to let him pick through our pile and reduce it.

Another reason for the shrinking piles is that people in our neighborhood are starting to take pride in having a nice organized debris pile. (We admit to taking part in this debris organization ourselves). They separate out the tree and limb debris from the construction debris. We make nice neat organized piles of the siding, metal fence poles, cement pilings, neatly rolled carpet, shingles etc. We break down the smaller tree limbs that have had adequate time to dry and are easy to snap. Making the piles a little neater also gives the poor grass a fighting chance at survival underneath. That is really the only reason for living in a suburb anyway -- to take pride in growing grass. (Ha!)

You may have thought I was joking about the "yard of the month" award earlier this month, but our neighborhood really does have a Green Team that actually gives such an honor. I was definitely joking about us winning it though, because even my kids admit that we will never have the honor. They don't seem to care though, especially as long as they are allowed to climb trees.

Apparently now our neighbors are all competing for "Debris Pile of the Month". They'd better watch it though, if they work at it too much, they will reduce the size of their pile to zero, and have to try for "yard of the month" instead. A few people have already managed to accomplish this. In a few more weeks, we will be there too - assuming we can fit that big stump into the garbage can at some point. We already gave our big box of shingles to our roofers to haul away with the rest of our old roof, and our pile is slowly shrinking.

The large pile across the street is shrinking too. The homeowner who rented his house across the street came around today and spent over an hour re-arranging their monster pile. It looks very nice now - at least as nice as a debris pile can look. Perhaps I should nominate them to our Green Team.


Other notes about our family: My youngest daughter is feeling somewhat better. We can see why this has all been hardest for her. She seems to have lost the most in our family. She lost her backyard playhouse (she loved that thing), she lost her dog (when we took it back to my parents), she has also lost a large number of her friends (there are only 13 children in her class now), and she lost her routine at school since her school was one of those that flooded and they spent the first week doubling up some of the classrooms. She will be losing her teacher after December since her current teacher is one of the new hires and is filling in for the regular teacher who has been on maternity leave the first semester. Her current teacher would probably lose her job anyway since she is one of the new hires and they will be the first ones they let go next semester (see note from the school superintendent). These last couple of weeks have been hard. She's starting to adjust though, I hope. She still has her family and a comfortable safe house, so by most standards she has a lot. It's hard to explain that to a six-year old though. I just hug her a lot.

My kids asked if we could put out some of our Halloween decorations. I was thrilled to do something that felt utterly normal, so as soon as the roofers left, we put out our huge inflatable jack-o-lantern lawn decoration. We also dragged all the other Halloween stuff down from the attic (it was all covered in splinters and crud from the roofing nails punching through all over everything). We have more Halloween decor than Christmas decor. The neighbors are all getting excited about our annual Halloween block party that I have hosted for the past 6 years. They are looking forward to it this year more than ever. For some of them, it's the only time they ever really get to interact with the rest of the neighbors.

I am really looking forward to it myself. Our debris pile will probably look really good by then too. :-)

Roofers

Holy frijoles! It was LOUD inside the house all day yesterday. We had a crew of six workers stomping around ripping out the old roof and hammering in new shingles. It sounded like the whole house was coming down. It's SO much louder on the inside than it is on the outside, so I spent as much time as possible hanging out with the neighbors watching our roof installation. Those guys really work hard.

Here's something I noted as I went into Home Depot yesterday. They had a sign out front that said, "Yes, we're open" and below that it had the Spanish translation, "Estamos abiertos." I realize that seeing signs in Spanish is common in many parts of the country, but it is not common here in Louisiana. In fact, it is so uncommon, that I was very surprised by it, so I took a picture.

St. Tammany Parish supposedly has an extra 100,000 people in it right now -- most of them are relief workers and construction workers. Apparently many of them are Hispanic, including our roofers. Getting around town is very difficult since the traffic is horrendous with all the extra people. Also interesting is that it seems like EVERY single retail store of any kind has a "help wanted" sign out, including Wal-Mart. There are not enough workers for all the jobs since so many people were displaced, or else they all went to work making big bucks doing construction since that is where the money is right now.

Well, it appears that our crew has arrived this morning to continue working on our roof. They are all standing around on our lawn having a breakfast of Cheetos and cigarettes before they get started. The job should be finished by today. I'm glad they're here. Thanks guys! Gracias!

The Foulest of All

Ok, Ok, Ok. This is hands down the winner of the owner of the stinkiest fridge. A warehouse company in New Orleans has the unpleasant task of cleaning up their three warehouses full of 52 million pounds of rotting chicken.

More than a month after Hurricane Katrina turned what used to be row after row of 35-foot-high frozen towers of palletized leg quarters into an immense mound of unimaginable foulness, the mess still has not been cleaned up.

It is described in detail in an article titled, " Don’t you dare complain about cleaning one fridge".

Ok, so I have cleaned four fridges. One that belonged to my next door neighbor complete with maggots, one that belonged to my friend that sat for 3 weeks cooking it's grotesque putridity, and two of which were mine (although my sister did the dirty job part of those and I just swooped in for the detailing).

Let me just try to visualize that again: Fifty-two million pounds of rotting chicken.

Time to shut my piehole.

Fetid Fridges

I could not resist posting these pictures. I did not take them -- they are from our paper (see the complete collection here). This morning's paper had a collection of photos of repulsive refridgerators from around town that have become a medium for humor. We have quite a few fridges on my street that are sitting on the curb too, but none of them have anything funny to say like these do from New Orleans.

I guess I've had my head inside way too many stinky appliances lately because I cannot say enough about them. I was even taking apart our garage freezer yesterday because I am determined to find the source of its stench. Our freezer has been sitting open airing out for over a month now. When I tipped it to move it back to it's usual spot in the garage, some putrid water was leaking out of it. Somehow it still had water in it after a month of drying out! I cracked it open and found that some of the insulation was still wet. I am not giving up on it yet. By the time it's all over, it may be my Franken-fridge, because it will not die!

Anyway, these photos from our paper gave me a chuckle and so I had to share them. These two in particular seem quite fitting for Halloween. Speaking of which, my neighbors are all asking about my annual Halloween party. I am definitely planning to have it, but we have not planned our costumes yet. Usually I start thinking about this sort of thing 6 months in advance! I hope we can come up with something fun on short notice. Perhaps we should consider going as a fetid fridge or some other other abominable appliance. .....Nah.

Alligators and other stuff

Just about everyone has probably seen the photo of the huge crocodile that was reportedly eating New Orleans flood victims. It is a hoax of course, although the photo is real, but it was taken in Congo. First of all there are no crocodiles in North America. We have ALLIGATORS in the United States, not crocodiles. They are quite different. HERE is a photo of an actual alligator in someone's swimming pool from the flood. It is a small gator, but a gator just the same. And just as pesky! The photo was in our local paper with the following caption, "A young alligator floats on the water of Warren Pope's pool at his Gentilly home. Monday, October 10, 2005. STAFF PHOTO BY RUSTY COSTANZA".

Now that we've cleared that up, here's an update on what we've been doing for the past couple of days. The kids finished their first week of school. My two oldest kids have settled right back into their routine and seem happy to be back with their friends. My youngest is having some trouble adjusting to post-K life (post Katrina, or post-kindergarten, you pick). She seems to cry easily and is easily frustrated lately, much more than she used to be. I invited a friend of hers over for a few hours on Sunday and that seemed to help.

The paper published the school attendance for the week. My children attend two different schools. One had attendendance down 30% and the other was down 29%. This includes all the new students who just started attending since the storm. Wow. They are already discussing layoffs of some of the teachers in the district, but I think they will wait at least until next semester to see if more students return.

Our roofing company is supposed to start our roof tomorrow, but there is a shortage of roofing material now, and the contractor called me to see if we could substitute a different type. We're going to look at it in the morning to decide if it will work for us. I hope it does, otherwise, we'll be waiting a few more weeks for our roof repair. We don't have the insurance money straightened out yet anyway.

Our dog Oscar had another checkup for his injured eye today. He was full of energy at the vet's office. I guess he's feeling much better. His eye is still making good (but slow) progress. He has to wear the collar for another three weeks and keep getting the eyedrops. His next appointment is on Halloween morning. He's so lucky because he'll be wearing his Halloween costume all month. He gets to be a Direct TV satellite dish. Lucky dog.

Debris Humor

I'm so glad that it's ok to have a few laughs again. Saturday Night Live had some funny sketches this past weekend with references to Katrina, and our local paper has had some humorous stories along with the usual depressing stuff. One of my favorites was a song in yesterday's paper which was a takeoff of "My Favorite Things" from "The Sound of Music.".

They called it, "My Favorite Things Are Debris." It was written by Steigman and Donna Musarra with with help from a few other folks mentioned in the article printed here.

My Favorite Things Are Debris

Water is swarming with venomous species
Elegant swimming pools teeming with feces
The rash on my haunches is starting to sting
These are the things that Katrina brings.

Houses are burning and levees are breeching
Into my water the sewage is seeping
Horrible odors awaft in the breeze
Hoping I don't catch a dreadful disease

Helicopters flying and criminals shooting
I called the police but they're too busy looting
National Guard troops all over the town
Why did it take Bush two weeks to dump Brown?

First the Dome leaked
Then the Dome reeked
Damn, the fridge smells bad!
New Orleans covered in green, purple and gold
It's not Mardi Gras, it's MOLD!

(slowly)
Boats on the rooftops and lawns full of branches
President hiding on big Texas ranches
Blue tarps on houses as far as I see
My favorite things are debris!

Local columnist Chris Rose always has interesting descriptions of goigns-on around town. Yesterday he offered this advice in his column for people returning to the city: "Do not open your refridgerator. Ever. Again." With all that I've written in my blog about the putrid appliances, this is something I could really relate to. One of Hubby's grad-students returned to New Orleans recently to check his home and did not heed this advice. He made the mistake of opening the fridge, and said it was crawling with maggots and he slammed it shut immediately. Too late. The memory of that stench will now follow him for a lifetime.

Rose writes today that the streets are now paved with appliances and wonders like the rest of us where all of this debris is going to go. He wrote "The city used to measure the success of Mardi Gras by announcing the accumulated tonnage of garbage that was collected during Carnival season. Well, by that measure, Kristina was a very successful hurricane." And for every person that returns to the city to clean out their house, more garbage accumulates.

He also notes that it's impossible to accurately portray the stench in the city until a scratch-n-sniff version of the daily paper can be produced. I will not be holding my breath for that one. Or will I? :-)

We're definitely getting a new stench today. A front moved through last night and it's very windy. The air stinks again. The debris piles keep growing. But now I am armed with humorous thoughts about it all. What else can you do?

As I sit here and write this, I am looking out the window at the debris mountain on the lawn across the street from me. Here is a photo. It's been there for almost 6 weeks now, and we have no idea when it will be picked up, so we're just getting used to it now like everyone else is. Their debris pile is worse than ours, but it's nothing compared to the pile at my friend Jeannie's house which flooded or any every house that flooded. It's a lovely debris pile just the same. And at least now I can sing along and finally enjoy my view of the debris.

Laugh at Ourselves

As the city rebuilds and starts trying to get back to normal, humor is returning as well. This one is going around the internet and was sent to me by a neighbor a couple of days ago. I also saw it reprinted in the newspaper yesterday. Somehow the original author has gotten lost in all the forwarding, but here it is for what it's worth:


YOU KNOW YOU LIVE IN LOUISIANA WHEN ....

You have FEMA's number on your speed dial.

You have more than 300 C and D batteries in your kitchen drawer.

Your pantry contains more than 20 cans of Spaghetti Os.

You are thinking of repainting your house to match the plywood covering your windows.

When describing your house to a prospective buyer, you say it has three bedrooms, two baths and one safe hallway.

Your SSN isn't a secret, it's written in Sharpie on your arms.

You are on a first-name basis with the cashier at Home Depot.

You are delighted to pay only $3 for a gallon of regular unleaded.

The road leading to your house has been declared a No-Wake Zone.

You decide that your patio furniture looks better on the bottom of the pool.

You own more than three large coolers.

You can wish that other people get hit by a hurricane and not feel the least bit guilty about it.

Three months ago you couldn't hang a shower curtain; today you can assemble a portable generator by candlelight.

You catch a 13-pound redfish in your driveway.

You can recite from memory whole portions of your homeowner's and flood insurance policies.

You consider a "vacation" to stunning Tupelo, Mississippi.

At cocktail parties, women are attracted to the guy with the biggest chainsaw.

You have had tuna fish more than 5 days in a row.

There is a roll of tar paper in your garage (if you still have a garage).

You can rattle off the names of the meteorologists who work for the Weather Channel.

Someone comes to your door to tell you they found your roof.

Ice is a valid (and deeply interesting) topic of conversation.

Your "drive-thru" meal consists of MRE's and bottled water.

Relocating to South Dakota does not seem like such a crazy idea.

You spend more time on your roof than in your living room.

You've been laughed at over the phone by a roofer, fence builder or a tree worker.

A battery powered TV is considered a home entertainment center.

You don't worry about relatives wanting to visit during the summer.

Your child's first words are "hunker down" and you didn't go to UGA.

Having a tree in your living room does not necessarily mean it's Christmas.

Toilet Paper is elevated to "coin of the realm" at the Red Cross shelter.

You know the difference between the "good side" of a storm and the "bad side."

Your kids start school in August and finish in July.

You go to work early and stay late just to enjoy the air conditioning.

Getting Started with Repairs!

We've been back a few days and have been very busy. Here's the latest on what's been going on around our household:

Our blue roof was finally installed. I don't think it covers the leaking area though. We think the roof is leaking where it attaches to the second story of the house, and a tarp cannot cover that. We'll have it fixed soon though. They would not install a tarp over the garage since it's not a living area. I don't think it's leaking there yet though.

The kids started school on Monday. They were actually thrilled. Attendance in our parish was down quite a bit overall, but there were MANY new kids from neighboring parishes over in New Orleans who are staying with family here in Slidell, and will be attending our school for as long as necessary. The schools are giving every child in the parish a free hot lunch through November. The hot lunch is very popular here and my kids normally ate it every day anyway. The busses are running and most of the teachers returned. My youngest daughter's school flooded but they had a crew working around the clock and were able to open on time. Part of the building is still being repaired, so they are doubling up in the classrooms for a couple more weeks until they are done.

Hubby went to New Orleans today to meet with someone from the university to see if he can be allowed into his office to get his computer and some of his research material so he can work on it. He should be there right now. Hopefully he hasn't been turned away. Security on campus is supposed to be pretty tight right now, and they still don't have any power.


The insurance adjustor came and went over our claim. It went really well and appears to be enough to cover everything we need to repair. One tip for anyone who still has to meet with their adjustor: Have all your receipts already copied and ready to give him. It made things MUCH faster and easier. I think it also helped make our adjustor more amicable since it made his job a lot easier. We can finally get started fixing things!

Unfortunately now we have to go through a big song and dance with our mortgage company who was also a payee on our check, and we can't cash it without their endorsement. Basically the mortgage company will hold the money in escrow and send us 1/3 of it at a time to make repairs and then we have to call their inspector. After each inspection, they will send us another 1/3 of the money. What a pain, but at least we are not having any problems with the insurance settlement.

We are going to have to do a big repair to the ceiling in our living room, which I did not realize was going to be such a big job. The roof leaked and ruined the ceiling.

It's a good thing we saved our fridge because it would not have been included on the homeowners insurance.

Today we signed on a local company to do the roof. They will probably get started sometime in the next two weeks. Hooray! The first thing to get fixed! It feels good to have someone lined up to fix something finally.

Now we are working on estimates for the fence, the siding, the carpet, and the drywall/ceiling. We're doing some of the smaller repairs ourselves, such as repairing all the screens that were damaged. I fixed those myself already! They look great. hubby reinstalled the missing shutters and fixed some of the missing siding on the front of the house. It looks better already.

Dog update: Lulu, the Welsh terrier, is now living with my parents in North Carolina. She was their dog originally anyway, so she really just returned home. We have been having a terrible time trying to keep her from running away since the hurricane, and so many other dogs and animals are running loose everywhere. She does not play well with other animals.

Our pug dog Oscar went to the vet for another checkup on his eye. He is still wearing his big plastic collar, and he has a long way to go before the eye heals completely. It is making progress, but it is very SLOW. The vet is still very worried about it and says it may take up to two months to heal, and wants me to think about some other surgery options. Yikes. We're still giving him antibiotics and eyedrops 4 times a day. A little bit of his vision has returned, but not like it was. Poor old guy.

We went to the grocery store this afternoon and I was thrilled to see much more food! They even had the salad bar open finally! Real food! No more Spaghetti-O's!

All in all, things are moving along finally. It feels good to finally be able to get started with repairs, and to get the kids back to a routine.