Tired

It's been a while since I've written. My interest in the topic of recovering from Hurricane Katrina is really starting to wane. I'm just plain sick of it. My own little world and neighborhood seems like a bubble of normalcy, but all around me is misery, despair, frustration and drudgery, and everyone here is suffering from post-traumatic stress. It's getting to be just plain exhausting.

It's also hard to find anything fun to do around here anymore. Both of Slidell's movie theaters are still closed, so we have to drive a long way to get to a theater. Going out to dinner is a huge pain in the you-know-what because it's so crowded that you have to wait forever. Mardi Gras was really fun, but now what are we supposed to do for the rest of the year?

I just got back from a trip to California this weekend for a family reunion / party for my Aunt's 70th birthday. It was SO nice to be somewhere "normal". And yes, saying that California is "normal" might be a stretch for some people, but it was at the very least - functional.

Changes for our family may be coming. I'll keep you posted.

Back to Reality

Mardi Gras had two sides to it this year. On one hand, it showed the rest of the world that we are still here and that we will survive, and the city will persist despite tragedy. On the other hand, it might give people the misconception that everything is now A-OK in New Orleans again, which it's not. In fact, they are still finding bodies of Katrina victims as they start to bulldoze homes.

Now that our brief bout of fun and much needed break from dreariness is over, folks are settling back into reality again. Back to wrestling with insurance companies, searching for contractors, back to praying for reinforced levees, and back to picking up the pieces.

In times like these, small pleasures are greatly appreciated.... like Girl Scout cookies. The cookies came in this past weekend. My troop took some to a local grocery store. They sold faster than I've ever seen -- almost twice as many as we sold any other year during the same time period. In fact, we sold out of our cookie booth inventory in only one weekend.

I went to bring some cookies to some of my church members who live outside our neighborhood and got a reminder of Katrina reality. Things seem like they are moving along here until you realize how BAD so many people still have it.

I went into one friend's gutted out home that is under construction with everything they own out in the driveway in a POD, and they are living in one room with their FOUR small children age 7 and under while the rest of the house is being renovated. Next, I knocked on the door of a FEMA trailer in the front yard of another house to deliver their treats. Then I visited a flooded out house whose next door neighbor's house burned to the ground the day after the storm and caught their home on fire on one side too!

It could just as easily have been me living in chaos 6 months after the storm while trying to have my home rebuilt from the inside out. On the plus side, these families were SO happy to get their GS Cookies!

Fat Tuesday Fun

I've had a house full of company and for the last couple of days I've been under the weather with a cough and fever so this is the first chance I've had to post about our Mardi Gras. We had a blast on Fat Tuesday. Our crawfish costumes were a big hit and several people recognized me from my picture in the paper last week.

We got to town early and had a quick breakfast of beignets and walked around taking in the sights and having a good laugh with all the other costumers. Lots of people took our picture. We had a nice lunch, where Devra ordered "herself" (a crawfish dish). We ran into one of my neighbors, then we threw beads from a balcony to the swelling crowd below for a while, and had a great time.

We saw so many fun costumes that I couldn't even begin to describe them all. One of my favorite one was the big group of people dressed as giant maggots from their fridge. They were hysterical. I have a lot of pictures that I will get uploaded eventually when I get a few spare minutes. There were Katrina related costumes and regular whimsical costumes. Everybody was having fun.

The mood was just like it always is at Mardi Gras - fun and uplifting. People just felt glad to be there. Some people don't understand how we could celebrate like this considering what's happened, but I think the people of New Orleans needed this more than ever.

It felt good to be a part of it.