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.