Lost and Found

In the chaos following Mardi Gras at my house when the carpet installers showed up to replace our carpet, my friend Devra's jewelry was moved and her beloved necklace charm was lost. Today it was found by my youngest daughter - over a month after it first went missing. I still can't explain how it showed up, but I think it was trapped in a pile of my daughter's dolls and purses hanging on a tiny kid-sized chair.


This morning I had the weirdest experience in the Red Cross CPR class I had to take in order to run my Girl Scout troops. One of the women in the class would not SHUT UP. The instructor finally told her to be quiet and let him teach, and stop asking so many stupid questions. Later she got completely hostile when another person in the class tried to help her understand, and there was almost an altercation. Then during our break, the Red Cross volunteer CPR instructor began ranting and ranting about how horrible the New Orleans chapter of Red Cross is, and how they should have their charter pulled. Pretty soon everyone in the room had to share their opinions about what is wrong with the levees.

Then I drove home past all the apartment buildings with escape holes chopped through the attic and with the roof still bearing with the word "HELP" in large lettering. I watched for alligators on the freeway where the buzzards were circling above (a common sight even in pre-katrina).

And when I arrived home after lunch, I was on guard in case my kids had plotted an April Fool's prank for me while I was gone. I got them really good a couple of years ago when they got up for school on April Fool's Day to discover that I switched all their underwear in each other's dresser drawers. Now I have to watch my back. They played a few pranks on each other, but it's nearly Midnight and nothing happened to me yet, so I think I'm off the hook. I should have tried to get them again this year.

Maybe I have lost my sense of humor. Perhaps it will turn up just like the missing bee charm, and the re-opened movie theater. Note to self: Think of a fun prank to play on my kids next year!

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.

Parade Time

Saturday night the Endymion parade was rained out and postponed until Sunday. So, Sunday we took the kids to see the very beautiful floats of Bacchus which was followed by Endymion.

Here's a picture I took of our krewe wearing balloon hats that we made while hanging out with the crowds waiting for the floats to arrive.

Throw us something, Mister!

Costume Preview

The New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, asked readers to let them preview their costumes this year, so just for fun I emailed a picture of the whimsical creation that my friend Devra and I have planned. The paper called Thursday afternoon to ask if I could come join the photo shoot for the story they were doing. I couldn't resist.

This morning they ran the story about "fabulous and snarky post-K Mardi Gras costumes". The article is in the Lagniappe section of the paper titled, Grand Delusions.

The first paragraph of the story is particularly hilarious, and just so you know, I am the "crawfish lady" that is mentioned. At least, I assume I am the crawfish lady, since no one else at the photo shoot was crawling with rubber crawfish. The description of that scene in the cafeteria was definitely surreal as it is described. I especially like the first part that says, "Queen Elizabeth carefully applied his makeup".

Each paragraph describes our costumes and includes a photo, although the photos are not on the newspaper's website, so I have posted a copy here. My only dissapointment is that my photo is on the second page of the article which was not in color since color is a big part of our crawfish illusion. I am very pleased with the overall article though. Our spirit definitely shines. And my experience of getting together with other costumers who look forward to the fun and painstakingly plan their attire for the event is a memory I will cherish.

As we all left the photo shoot at the Times-Picayune to head home, we remarked to each other, "See you on Tuesday!" (in the streets at Mardi Gras).

And finally, here's Great site for photos of people in Mardi Gras costumes.

Throw Me Something, Mister!

Just a cute picture that I took of the kids after the parade on Sunday.

Carnival Time

The parades started this past weekend. Have I mentioned that I LOVE Mardi Gras parades? I attended a wickedly sarcastic French Quarter walking parade on Saturday night called Krewe de Vieux . Their parade theme this year was "C'est Levee" and there was a plethora of katrina related costumes including this one with a group of women in their haz mat suits proclaiming in Olympic spirit that they are "Going for the mold!" There were quite a few others that were so funny they had me roaring, but my camera batteries died and I was having too much fun to take pictures anyway.

Sunday we took the kids to a nice family parade in Slidell for the Krewe of Perseus. Their theme also involved recovery efforts and was lots of fun for the kids. Here's a photo of some "Blue Roofers". My friend Devra is coming in two weeks for Fat Tuesday. We have our costumes planned and we are going to take the kids to several more parades.


One sobering note: As I drove home Saturday night through New Orleans, I passed through an area of town that still has no power, no one living there, no life of any kind. House after house after house in complete darkness and completely deserted while they just sit decaying. I must have driven past houses for two miles before I saw life again and could find my way back to the interstate. The whole thing was rather apocalyptic.

Neighbor Roof

My neighbors across the street are having their new roof installed today.

That's their blue tarp all over the ground. The roofers use it to catch all the thousands of nails that come off when they pull up the old roof.

Some FEMA inspectors came to my door yesterday trying to find the owner of the other house across the street so they could inspect the trailer they put there a couple of weeks ago. Things were sort of mixed up because FEMA still has the name of the former owners of the house.

5 Months Since

Well, it's been five months since You Know What. I drove through a neighborhood in Slidell called Kingspoint, about two miles from my house closer to the lake, on my way home from running some errands today just so I could see the progress those folks are making there. It's easy to pretend I'm in a little bubble here in my own neighborhood where at least half of the folks have finished all the repairs on their homes. But outside the bubble, the flooded neighborhoods are a whole other horrible thing.

My heart just breaks for those who are there still struggling with their insurance companies to get money for repairs, and struggling to find contractors to do the repairs, and just plain struggling to put back the pieces of their lives. Almost every home in the neighborhood had a travel trailer parked outside for temporary living. Some of the debris was picked up, but there is a lot more from homes that are still being gutted.

It is going to be a long long time before things are even close to normal for those families whose homes flooded. I took this photo today on my drive to give you some idea: Click the photo to get a bigger more detailed image.

I hope that by publishing pictures like this that it will show the rest of America that we have a long way to go to recover, and will remind everyone to please don't forget us!