I'm ready for things to get back to normal...

And I have power so I probably shouldn't even think about complaining....

But, alas, we humans are creatures of habit and lack of normalcy makes us feel really uncomfortable.

I'm ready for the kids to be back in school. On Friday we will hit the two week mark with no school. I'm beginning to feel like our district is considering an all-homeschool model. We would be the pioneering district in the country! Thanks but no thanks. Mom is back to school but the kids aren't. That makes things a little challenging, schedule wise. And I know that the kids were just beginning to get into the school routine when all this happened. I can't even imagine being a teacher and having to start classroom management from scratch plus deal with all the reaction kids will behaving from the storm.

Speaking of school...Mom was just beginning to get into the swing of school. I had a schedule within my grasp. (Hadn't gotten it yet, but had promises of it!) and now we are back to where we started. Don't know nothing! And one of my clinical sites apparently lost their roof so who knows if/how that is going to pan out. Gives me a headache to think about it. I have two tests next week to try and get back on schedule with my classes and hubby is out of town so that makes shcedules with kids and finding study time even harder. I crave normalcy.

Next week, the insurance adjuster is coming out. I have no idea how that is going to go. I wish I could get a roofer to come and look at the roof before they come so that I can get a sense of what needs to be done. Even the little things that need to be fixed are overwhelming, how to schedule the repair people, who to call, when will they get to us, how to avoid getting ripped off. Whine, whine whine. I have it good compared to sooooooooo many people. But it is still reasonable to whine just a little!

Oh and one more thing...

The eye missed my house by about 20 miles. Still on my list of natural phenomenon that I'd like to experience I'll just move where I want to experience from my house to someone else's home in Florida.

General announcement to Wal-Mart

Thank you so much for being open after the hurricane. I'm sure it is hard to staff your store and keep things running right now. One little suggestion. If you have a store that is running on generator power and therefore does not have any fresh food (no dairy, eggs cheese, frozen, meat, deli or produce) please post that on a very large sign at the front of the store. This way if a person has a huge grocery list and starts on the side of the store with toiletries and housewares, she doesn't get to the grocery side with a half-full cart and realize that she can't get ANY OF THE OTHER THINGS ON HER LIST on this trip. In the post-hurricane world, THAT MAKES ME CRANKY!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for your support.

Hurricanes: The good, the bad, and the ugly

The Good:
1. Everyone around here is saying this...We met our neighbors! It is amazing what happens when you have no fence. You meet those people on the other side of it that have lived there for 3 years. Donnie and Tami are now our firends and we have plans to go out to dinner together when life gets back to normal.
2. I went 10 days without spending any money! (Well, that's not quite true. I spent $10 on amoxicillin for Natalie's ear infection but I treid to treat it with what we had on hand for 4 days before that!) No Wal-Mart, no grocery store, no gas, no nothing. This, my friends, is the true reason for the "economic meltdown" that apparently took place while Houston was storm shocked.
The Bad:
1. No school for a week or longer. I can't imagine what kind of torturous schedule the nursing school faculty is going to devise for us to catch up after missing a week of school. Aiyiyi....
2. While we didn't sustain the huge damage that some people in our neighborhood did, we have soemthing that we will have to fix. And our deductible (this is what they do to you when you live in a hurricane prone area) is $4500. I'm hoping there is unseen damage to the roof. I want a new roof...
3. It just breaks my heart to see people's lives piled up on the street outside their homes. When you ceiling caves in during a storm it is just devestating. Insulation is wet and everywhere, drywall has to be ripped out, then there's carpet and carpet pad, light fixtures that fell out of the ceiling, stuffed animals, mattresses, it just goes on and on. There's a family around the corner from us with a daughter who is a ventilator dependent quadriplegic (think Christopher Reeve). Their house was decimated. The debris from inside covers the entire front of their house piled up about 3 trashbags high.
The Ugly:
1. Many people lost all the food in their refridgerators. Thus, the garbage that is out at the curb is horribly stinky. Trash bags upon trash bags of rotting food. I actually ran outside and yelled "Thank You" when the trash truck showed up on Wednesday.
2. The storm debris that is piled up along the street is absolutely incredible. Hopefully we'll see the trucks out picking it up in thenext couple days.
3. Things just smell weird. I think it is a combination of rotting vegetation from flooding, rotting food, rotting fences, toxic off gassing from the damaged petrochemical industry along the coast (maybe not that...). Then every once in a while I get a whiff of the frier going at the donut shop around the block. Now that is yummy!!!!!

Just some pictures

Above is a before and after picture of an area called Crystal Beach. This is on the Bolivar Peninsula which was obviously decimated by our friend Ike.

Several fires burned on Galveston Island during and after the hurricane, mostly caused by transformers blowing out. The fires were left to burn themselves out. Our favorite restaurant and Houston landmark, Brennan's burned down during the storm. How's this for irony. Brennan's in Houston is owned by the same family that owns Commander's Palace in New Orleans. Commander's was devestated by Katrina and many of their employees were hired on at Brennan's in Houston. Since then Commander's has rebuild and has already said they will hire on some of Brennan's employees.
This is in my neighborhood. It is someone's trampoline that was picked up and dumped in the front yard. Judging from the damage in the neighborhood and some of the noises we heard in the storm we think there were lots of little tornados that touched down here and there during the storm.
This is my backyard. We didn't lose our tree but we lost several very large branches out of the tree. We also lost our fence. Our neighbors behind us had their swingset blow over. Ours is original to the house. Very Old and sort of decrepit looking...still standing!
More of our backyard. James has gotten it all cleaned up but it truly looked like a war zone after the storm.

Thank you poop!!!!

WE HAVE POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And it is all thanks to poop. Apparently, our section of our neighborhood is int he same grid as teh sewage treatment plant for our city which is probably a mile from our house. Sewage is considered a priority power user. And once the priority is on, the whole grid is on. Thank you thank you thank you poop. We are cool, dry, and comfy. My parents are still without power but are spending the night. We have tried to get word to other family and friends that there is cool, a/ced space available but communications are still sketchy and tonight my parents are our only guests. I honestly feel a little guilty about having power while other are suffering. A little. Just a little.

I know I said it twice last night but I'll say it again tonight. We were sooooooooo lucky. Neighbors had their houses detroyed as their roofs peeled away and the rain water poured in on thier homes. Those that escaped immediate destruction are now faced with throwing away hundreds or thousands of dollars in food that they can't keep cool. FEMA hasn't shown up. Ice is in very very short supply. Two grocery stores are open with 3 hour waits to get in the door. Gas is non-existant. I don't know why we have been blessed but i would feel a while lot better about our good fortune if our hose were full of cool, sleeping bodies tonight. God be with Houston right now....

SURVIVED

Well, we survived the hurricane. We have no power. Our fence is gone. Our backyard tree lost huge limbs. BUT we were very very pucky. Our roof held. Water came in under the front door and will probably require some repairs on the floor. BUT we are lucky. We have neighbors that have it much much worse. We have no power and it is so hot and humid it is gross. Thank you thank you God that our friends close by have power and invited us to spend the night. More later.

Its gettin kinda windy...

And Ike is still about 100 miles away. The gusts are pretty strong. Everything is battened down and now we just wait it out....
Here are some photos that I found around the local news stations from earlier int he day. The flooding is not from rain but from the storm surge that IKE is pushing onto the coast. Basically, the wind and energy from the storm is pusshing a wall of water in front of it, like a tsunami almost that the pushing the ocean up onto what was previously dry land.

Here comes IKE

So here we are preparing for IKE. Looks like we are going to take a direct hit. I have to say I'm a little excited. Remind me of that on Saturday at 2 a.m. when 120 mile an hour winds are buffetting my house and my kids are hysterical! Truly, if the eye of the storm passes over my house I will have marked a significant thing off my list of things I'd like to experience. It is op there with floating on the dead sea (done that, it was awesome) and seeing the Northern Lights (still on the list.)

These things I know are true....

1. If you are approximately 8 months pregnant and there is an able bodied man in the front seat of the car while you fill up the gas tank at Wal-mart, you are hanging out with the wrong people. (Yep, saw that...)
2. If you are trying to sell your house, comments from showings like "You were in the top three but they bought another house" don't really make you feel much better. In housing the bronze medal isn't an honor!
3. If you are the youth director at a church and you can't find the pastor's kid after a youth event, calling the said pastor (and your boss) to see if she has already been picked up is PAINFUL.
4. If you are a nursing instructor and trying to introduce the idea of non-physical discipline to a class repeatedly using words like "Violence" "Hitting" and "abuse" isn't the best way to get your point across.
5. If you are the president of a student organization and are holding your first meeting of the year, way over-buying on the lunch is a really good strategy to avoid speaking to a bunch of hungry, pissed off students.
6. If you are a twelve year old girl it is entirely possible to have a clothing crisis after spending $150 in birthday money on new clothes. (That one is probably the most bizarre statement I have in my list!!!!)
7. If you live along the U.S. Gulf Coast, late August and September are a great time to ignore the T.V. weathercasters and just look out the window occassionally. If it is really windy and humid pouring down rain you might want to get to high ground.
8. If you are a competitor to Apple, don't even try to compete with the I'm a Mac, I'm a P.C. ads. (Jerry, I love you but that was just pathetic.)