Katrina 1 year later

A ball of yarn that survived the house gutting.
It stayed there until the cleanup crew came to rid us of mold.
Somehing about this silly ball of yarn just cracks me up.
Knitting will get you through just about anything.


It is almost impossible to imagine that this time last year I was at my parent's farm watching the wind blow like crazy from their hurricane proof (we hoped) house. PeeWee was so little, Big Brother was kind of bored and we were amazed, watching the wind blowing like something on TV instead of real life. We were with My One and Only's family, who really hadn't wanted to evacuate. In fact, he would have stayed behind with them if they had not come, kicking and screaming. I'll give it to him that he had a feeling about the storm and told me to get all our papers together and brought some things he's fond of upstairs. He even rolled up the rugs and put them up high. He knew. Not sure how, but he definately knew.

What he and no one else didn't know was that our lives would change forever. Yet again. We'd already had a year to remember, with PeeWee being born early and travelling to California for her open heart surgery and the long slow recovery, not so much of her, but of the rest of us. We were pretty battered from the beginning but somehow we've come out on top. A little moldy, a little shattered, a lot more cynical. Many more grey hairs for both of us.

We came out intact, a lot closer, more guarded, and less likely to take things for granted. We learned that it really does change overnight. We'd learned that from PeeWee's entrance into the world, but I think this whole thing shook our world in a different way. I had planned to drive around the city today and take pictures of the evidence that still exists on my daily route of the damage and destruction, but since I can't escape the Thing, I now feel like documenting the damage may not be the thing to do. Maybe in a few days, but today I am sort of reeling from the fact that it's been a year and there is so little progress here.

I know it'll come though, because this place is a place that just shouldn't be here and somehow it survives everything. Near me, on my block, everyone's home. Two blocks over is gutted and boarded up, waiting to see if we can count on the government to provide us with real protection or if we're going to have to live with things the way they always are in Louisiana. I hope that we can keep up the momentum and get this city back. It's home, and I'll be staying here.

The debris pile in front of the house.
This is the third pile to be hauled away.
The first pile was the furniture that could not be salvaged.

The kitchen as I saw it when I finally came home to the gutted house.
You can see some counters piled on the floor- granite's heavy so it stayed there for weeks.
The dangling potholders have since been lost.

The kitchen today
Progress is good.