This boat washed up into a cemetary and is still sitting there. There was another boat right beside it, but it is gone now.

continuing on.......

After my neighbor brought over the pizza, I realized that the power was not going to come back on and the food in the deep freezer had to be cooked or thrown out. I opened the freezer and got out a few things that looked easy to cook, like sausage and cube steaks. I cooked up those on the grill and invited everyone over to help eat it. I left the rest of the stuff in the freezer to clean out later. (That will come back to haunt me). We all drank some warm beer, ate tons of meat, and then walked down to the house of a neighbor who had left after the storm. She had a pool that was not quite as green and debris filled as mine. We had a nice cool swim. I went home and used some melted ice from the cooler to rinse the slime and possible spiders out of my hair, and felt almost human again. I decided to be brave and sleep with my windows open for the first time since the storm. I slept 5 hours that night. It was wonderful.


I have to go back a little and document some of the damage to the house and my continued clean-up efforts. This was important since the clean-up of the house was one of the things keeping me on the coast.
We already knew we had roof damage and would need roof repairs and the whole thing re-shingled. A few days after the storm, I went up in the attic and realized that I could see daylight the entire length of the garage. We had not noticed that damage before and it looked like major structual damage. We also knew that we would need almost all of the ceilings in the house re-done . Luckily none of them collapsed, but they were sagging from the water and had holes in the sheetrock where the water broke through. Every day, I would get a bucket of water with a lot of bleach in it, and start sponging the ceilings to keep the mold away. The was so much water in the attic and in the insulation, that the water stains kept spreading for days after it had stopped raining. It took a couple of hours to do all of the ceilings, but I kept it up every day. The paint and "blown" ceilings would fall off with every stroke of the sponge, so after I bleached all the ceilings, I would go back and wash the floors where the paint and sheetrock had fallen. I also used bleach on every surface where the water had come through the ceilings. The water was a filthy brown color and I was worried about health problems from it. When I need a break from the bleach fumes, I go outside and pick up debris from the yard. There was a lot of it from all over the neighborhood and I made several large piles by the road. It seems like the amount of debris in the yard never changes because I pick up stuff each day, but then overnight, the wind blows more of it in from the around the neighborhood.
After something like this, you realize that damage is a relative thing. I have written estimates for repairs on my house and so far they add up to about 50% of the value of my entire home. That would under normal circumstances, be a huge amount of damage, but compared to all of the people who lost their home and everything in it, I never forget how lucky we are.
When I finally got up into the attic again, I realized that all of the stuff store up there had gotten soaked too. I have been going up there a little each day, and throwing out the stuff that is ruined, and trying to clean the stuff that I can. It is so hot up there that I can only work for about 40 minutes to an hour.

The picture above is the ceiling over my computer. We covered the computer with plastic and it received no damage. I was very grateful for that.

Sept 1st......and then the days after that.....

On this Thursday, we finally heard that they had opened a drop station for food and water in Gulfport. I jumped in the car and headed down to the location that was given out. When I get there, hundreds of people are already there lined up. Everyone is yelling and pushing and it looks like a riot beginning to start. I just kept driving. Later I heard that there was no food and water when everyone got there, and people were just really upset and angry because they had wasted precious gas to get down there and then not receive any help. I went back home and all of a sudden my cell phone beeped. It was back up. I looked at it and there was a text message from my friend, Pam, in Alabama. I tried to call her but kept getting the fast busy that means the circuits are all tied up. I kept trying phone numbers just to have something to do. I was going down the list of my friends numbers when all of a sudden I got a call through. It was the voice mail of my friend Karen in California. I breathlessly started talking as fast as I could. I told her I was OK and for her to call my sister Kathie and tell her that I was OK. I knew that Kathie would spread the word to the rest of the family. Unfortunately, I did not realize that Kathie had come home from Florida where she had evacuated, and she was in the same situation as me.....no phone service.

I kept trying numbers and eventually got through to Pam. I was so excited to talk to someone from outside the area that I just poured my heart out to her. I told her about the worry and stress and fear. I told her how lonely I was without Brad and how I was afraid of the riots at the food lines. After I spilled my guts to her, I felt better. I had no idea that I would not be able to get a dial tone on the phone again for several days. I still had not talked to Brad since he had left. I did not know it, but when he got to Chicago he started seeing the reports of the looting and chaos and the lack of any food or water. He was terrified for me. When he could not get any message to me through his bank, or any other way, he went to an internet site where he knew I sometimes posted. He appealed for help from anyone who may be close enough to get to me and give me a message. He got a lot more than that. Several wonderful ladies on the site called him and spoke to him on the phone. Pam saw the message and she called to say she had talked to me and told him everything I had told her. Another friend of mine who was near Brad in Chicago, called and offered to cook him a homemade meal. He was grateful for all of the help and support, but he was even more worried about me now than ever. Pam told him that I was afraid and he felt guilty about letting me stay home when he went to Chicago. He had tried to get me to go, but I had nobody to take care of our animals and I would not leave.

Meanwhile the heat index down here was 105F to 106F every single day. I finally got a little sleep....but just a little. I started sleeping three or fours each night, but never more than that. My head hurt constantly from the lack of sleep and lack of caffeine. I would drive down to the bank headquarters each day hoping to get a message from Brad or at least pick up some food, but find neither of those things. The bank had hoped to get supplies for the employees and their families, but all they had was water, soda and snackfood. I was thrilled just to get the water each day, and Calvin was happy with the junkfood. One of his friends was staying with us for the week after the hurricane and feeding two 15 year old boys was a problem. I let them fill up on the junkfood. Calvin refused to eat any of the cold cans of food that we had at the house, and he started losing weight fast. Even his friend, who is thin like him, joked that Calvin was anorexic.

The next day, I think it was Friday Sept 2, I picked up the house phone to check for a dialtone. I had been doing this everyday and suddenly on this day, there was a tone. I could not dial out, but I shouted for joy and told Calvin that we had a dialtone and that maybe we would be able to call out later on. Calvin looked at me and said "When it starts working, can we call and order a pizza?" I had been so stressed out over the past days that I just lost it. I yelled at him and told him that almost the entire city had been blown away. There were no stores, no restaurants, no banks, no gas stations.......nothing. I told him that it would be a long long time before we could just pick up the phone and order a pizza. I felt so bad for yelling at him, but I could not believe he had asked me that question. A few hours later, my neighbors came walking up with a stack of boxes from Dominoes Pizza. It was a surreal moment. Somehow, Dominoes had found a generator and started cooking and selling pizzas on the side of the highway. My neighbors bought several to share with everyone. Calvin took a piece and gave me a very smug look. He will never let me forget how I yelled at him. I was just happy to see him eat.

Suddenly things got much brighter.....

The first week after the storm continued to drag on with no easy way to get supplies. They had finally opened a distribution center, but it was a drive through center and the wait in line was several hours long. A lot of people actually pushed their cars slowly through the line to save gas. I decided to wait it out. I would still drive down to the bank headquarters each day to see if they had gotten any supplies in and also to check for messages from Brad. It was very discouraging to go there each day, because employees were required to sign in and every day I went in and had to explain that I was a wife of an employee who had been sent to Chicago. I did not see any of the employees there that knew me and the ones who did not know me seemed suspicious of me. I took Calvin and his friend in one morning to let them fill up on the candy bars and junk food and to get my usual one or two bottles of water. There was a woman there trying to load up some supplies into her vehicle and so I had the two boys help her. They loaded several cases of water and soda into her car and I realized that I could probably take a whole case of water instead of trying to take a couple of bottles each day. I had Calvin load one up in my car. As he walked out, someone saw him and became very upset. I think she may have also seen him loading up the other persons car and thought the boys had taken all of the water for us. She started talking very loudly and complaining about people who just walked in off the streets and took things. I was too upset to try to explain, so I just quickly left. When I got home, I cried for a long time. It was more than just the water. I missed Brad and wanted to hear from him. I was overwhelmed with the daily struggle to clean up and feed the boys and worry about the damage to the house.
That night as we sat in the hot dark house, I heard a knock at the door. It was 4 people from the bank. They told me that Brad had called them and wanted me and Calvin on a plane to Chicago that very minute. They had arranged for me to go spend the night at the bank and then catch a private bus to Baton Rouge in the morning. From there, they would arrange a flight to Chicago. I was thrilled that Brad had finally gotten a message through and the thought of leaving the hot dreary depressing house was a dream come true. That only lasted for a minute or two and then I realized that I still could not leave because there was nobody to care for our dog. Nobody in the entire neighborhood had fences up. I had Julie on a chain, but I had to check on her every hour or two because she would get the chain all tangled up or knock over her water bowl. I also really needed to try to find someone to repair the roof before it rained again. Then there was the daily bleaching that kept the mold away.
I told the people from the bank my concerns and they assured me they would take care of Julie. They said I could take her to Baton Rouge on the bus and from there, someone would find a place to board her. They told me I could think about it and they would come by early in the morning to see if I wanted to get on that bus.
Calvin and I talked it over and then my neighbor came over with news from Brad. She said that he had emailed her Mother in Ohio, and the Mother had gotten a call through to my neighbor. The phones were evidently up during the wee hours of the night, and Brad was going to try to call me then. Sure enough, he was able to call at about midnight. We talked for over an hour and I convinced him that I was OK and that I felt like I had to stay to take care of things down here. There were 20,000 other evacuaees in Baton Rouge and I was concerned that I would get there and not be able to board the dog. With Brad's (grudgingly) blessing, I decided to stay. A few minutes after I hung up, a friend and fellow employee of Brad's, named Terri, called me up. She lived in Baton Rouge wanted to know if Brad and gotten through and also to assure me that if I came up there, she would make sure the dog was taken care of. I decided to stay anyway, but the impact all of this had on my morale was fantastic. Just talking to Brad was a huge boost, but also knowing that I had an "out" if I needed it was good. It was also wonderful to know that Brad's fellow employees were so concerned about me that they would go to all of that trouble to help. Many of them were in a much worse position than I was.
Brad and told me that he and the others up in Chicago were working almost round the clock to get the bank up and running. They usually worked 21 hours and then slept for a couple of hours but at least once Brad had worked for 36 hours straight through. He was exhausted but in his element. He loves his job and thrives on the hard work. I knew that I had to make sure he was not worried about me, so he could devote himself to his job. The people down here needed their money so the bank had to get back up. 4 or 5 of my neighbors are school teachers and one of them told me that their paychecks were all direct deposited to the bank and payday had been the day before the storm. The money had disappeared in cyber space and she wanted me to ask Brad when they would be able to get their money. I did not think Brad would have the answer to that, but when I talked to him, he did have the answer. He said that was one of the first things they had worked on when they got to Chicago, and for her to go to one of the branches and the money should be in her account. It was and the teachers were all so happy to be able to get to their money. Some of them wanted to leave the Coast and could not do it until they knew they had money in their accounts. I was very proud of the job that Brad and his co-workers were doing.
Prior to the phone call that I finally got from Brad, he had talked to another one of the people on the message board where he had asked for help. One woman offered to send a shipment of supplies to the bank in Baton Rouge, and Brad's friend would see to it that the supplies were put on the bus to the headquarters here on the Coast. After she shipped out the supplies, that woman, who I had never met, got into the car with her husband and drove all the way from California to the Coast. They brought a bulldozer and some chain saws and worked their way through the damaged areas, helping wherever they could. I finally met up with those 2 people, Stephanie and Doug, about 4 weeks after the storm. They found an area that had been hard hit by the storm surge here on the coast, and they stayed in a camper cutting trees and clearing them for the people in that community. It amazes me that people can be so good hearted. All of the generous and kind people that have helped out in any way they can, have helped me in a way that does not involve chainsaws or food and water. It helped brighten my spirit and give me the will to keep on doing what I needed to do down here.

more pictures..