HalfAsstic.com

Today’s the day I get my glasses!  John is off work, so I have a way to get there and we just have to wait until one of the girls is here to stay with Henrietta.  It’s going to be wonderful to have a pair to wear all the time, because I can’t tell you how tired I am of not having the readers where I am trying to read at the moment, they’re always in another room.  Or maybe it’s me that’s always in the other room, after all I am the one that’s given to roaming around the house, not them.

OK, it’s now 10:55 PM and I am home with the new glasses on.  They aren’t that confusing, but I am not sure they were…”done” right.  When something is right straight in front of me it is very clear, but when I have to look slightly off to one side, either way, it is blurry.  I don’t mean very far either.  It seems to be this way with the far away vision, the mid range and the reading, all.  If I am reading a magazine and there are three columns of print, while having my head positioned looking straight at the first column the one on the far right is so blurry I can’t read it well at all.  I have to move my head or the magazine.  Is this asking too much of a pair of glasses.  I’ve never noticed anyone reading a book having to move their head in order to read across the page.

I think they didn’t “do” the prescription all the way across.

Well, God knows I have debated about this, but here’s a damn picture:

Somehow, at this point in my life, the “smart chick” look doesn’t bother me at all.  Not sure I can pull it off once I open my mouth, but up until then, I think the glasses I picked out help with the illusion.

They told me to wear them for a week and see what I think.  I think I’m going to call them tomorrow and ask why I have to be laser-sighted on target and physically aimed at anything I want to see clearly.

Now, I have to find someone to do something about those chipmunk cheeks.

OH!  Before I end this, I have a confession!  No!  Nothing juicy!  No, what I did today was make it over to Lisa’s AGAIN two days in a row now and I was going to take pictures of her gutted kitchen.  We went and visited and left and I forgot to take the pictures.  Got my glasses and went home and then remembered I needed to take them so John and I went back over to Lisa’s house AGAIN.  Got over there and looked in my purse for my trusty(?) camera and I had left it at home.

I really do think God didn’t want me to take any pictures today, cause he obviously made me very forgetful for some reason.

Well, today I spent the majority of my time at Lisa’s house with her three year old grandson, Bryen and her son’s girlfriend, Megan.  We worked hard and emptied out her entire kitchen, (except for the pantry), and put every single thing in any cabinet or on any counter top in her dining room on the table.  Now if those SOB’s don’t show up to put in those cabinets tomorrow I will, personally find somebody to castrate.  You just don’t take a woman’s, (or a man’s, for that matter), kitchen away from them and not follow through with your promises to give it back, only better.

Here’s Lisa, Megan and Bryen hard at work while I walk around aimlessly snapping pictures…as it should be.

Good Gawd.  That was a lot of shit to move into the other room.

These pictures, I offer as proof of how badly she needed this redo.  I have known Lisa for 13 or 14 years now and she has wanted to do something with this house for a very, very long time.  Well she is doing it up right!

Her walls are sheet rocked and painted really beautiful earthy colors.  It as so much fun picking out the paint chips!  We even had professional help!  (Lisa keeps telling me I need professional help… wonder if that’s what she meant…)

Living room with the couch sitting in the middle with the cushions upended.  The cat and dogs are not welcome.  Yet.  The furniture isn’t coming back in yet.  Still some touching up the painters have to do and SOMETHING has to get done about that fireplace wall.  We have plans for it.

I love the paprikaish colored wall thrown in just for good measure!  Lisa’s idea and she was on fire.  It is a short little wall around the corner and is just one side of the foyer.

I wish I had pics of before it was painted!  It was bad and dark, and paneled in the living room and the LR and hall, along with the kitchen, breakfast area and utility room all had tragic flooring.  The living room was an unfortunate carpeting choice that she made years ago, (with me there assisting) and it was a horrible, stinky, stained mess.  (Lisa and husband, Roger have two large outside dogs that tend to smell.  A lot.  And even with the giving of a bath, this is not rectified.  Stinky. Dogs.  They are supposed to stay outside, but someone I will not name, (starts with Rog and ends with er), tends to let the stinky dogs in when Lisa isn’t at home.  I think he’s scared to stay by himself.  I am sure he would dispute this.

This is in the breakfast room.  Can you tell we had only just gotten started bringing stuff in here at this point?

They also have two small inside dogs and a cat.  Housebreaking the dogs and having the cat puke hairballs all over the place for ages has just worn the sanitary out of the carpet.

The kitchen, breakfast area and utility room all had terrible old sheet vinyl that was original to the house, built in the 60’s.  Now it is this awesome large Italian porcelain tile.

Strange side note:  Every time Lisa takes pictures in her house with her camera she gets all those weird little circles and light spots on the pictures.  You can see them above and I think in all these shots.  I never have that problem so I brought my camera.  These pictures are with my camera and there are still all the weird little spots.  What’s up with that?  Are they haints?  If so there certainly are a lot of them and they better not smurf up the new paint job.

Oh!  That’s the little antique oak table I am SO GENEROUSLY GIVING UP OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART.  (I’ll kill her if she tries to put that thing back in my garage.)

Ok.  It pains me to say this but there is some bad news in the way of our friendship.  I am afraid I am going to have to report Lisa to the SPCA.  I even have photographic proof.  Before I show you these disturbing pictures I will explain what has, obviously, been going on.

Lisa has been contributing to the obesity, (I mean incredibly obese), of these poor, over indulged squirrels.  These poor guys don’t stand a chance if the cat ever gets out.  I watched one of them attempting to… scamper(?) up a tree and let me tell you, there was no scamper about it.  Poor squirrel looked like he was hauling a load of bricks up a ladder.  He may as well have been.

She buy bags of mixed seed and seduces lures attracts these little critters from the surrounding yards with her own brand of crack.  These guys can barely move.

There’s even a little one.  A baby, that she is trying to get hooked at the moment.

I think this little guy is doomed.  Here he is, so transfixed in his stupor he doesn’t even notice me.

Passed out Sacked out in a tree trying to recuperate.

Please remember these guys in your prayers…  I don’t think there is a Jenny Craig program for squirrels…

NaBloPoMo may be a HUGE mistake for me.  I am telling you that being forced to write every single day is making my blogs weak, people!

So far today, my good friend and recent birthday party and cake eating participant, Lisa, popped in for a minute and snagged a cute little antique oak breakfast table from my garage.  I have had it for a good while and wanted a round one to fit better into the little breakfast area alcove.  So when I got it, I stuck the square one in the garage where it is just taking up more space with tons of H’s crap.  I was happy to see it go and I hope it works out for her cause she is really sweet, but mostly because I DON’T WANT ANY MORE CRAP IN MY GARAGE AND I AM NOT TAKING IT BACK… *evil, maniacal laughter* Yes indeedy.  Her problem now.

Also, Rich, from across the street where the shindigs are almost always held, brought back over my little crock pot that we took there on Halloween when all the neighbors get together in his driveway and eat and drink and give out tons of candy.  We just turn out our porch lights and all collect there with bags of candy for one big bowl and then make sure the kids get several handfuls.  How’s that for a step saver?  It’s certainly more fun for the grownups.

He didn’t bring the lid to the crock pot back with it and I didn’t realize it until after he’d left.  Now, do I call him and ask if it’s over there and maybe he just didn’t realize that it went to the crock pot?  Go over and ask if her forgot to include it?  Wait for a ransom note?

Keelan is sitting here in front of me texting and it is annoying.

Speaking of annoying…

It is 74 degrees in this house and while I am comfortable with the ceiling fans on and the windows open, H is cloistered in her room and insisted on wearing a three quarter length sleeved shirt today.  She has the light sheen of perspiration on her brow and upper lip.  She is steadfast in her resolve.  This IS November and she WILL dress accordingly.  I don’t get it.  She has lived here, in the armpit of Texas, her whole life and she knows how hot it stays year round.  She’s a strange old bird.

And the really big news is that on Friday John was off work and we went out to eat at the Chinese restaurant we always go to in Friendswood.  We took Keelan with us, as H was here with the caregiver provider person.  Kessa called while we were there and she was close by so she joined us.  That was the first time in years that we have all gone out to eat together.  Usually one of the girls is stuck here with H or one of them is at school or work or some such thing.  It was fun and it makes me determined to do it again soon.

This is really sad and pathetic and I’m sorry, but sooner or later you’ll learn from your my mistake and stop coming back…

Hey, it’s only 3:30 now.  Maybe something else will happen!

OK!  Developments!  It is now 5:00 pm and older child’s boyfriend brought the lawn mower back he had borrowed and mowed the front yard and did the blower thing.

Henrietta just got through coming into the living room for the first time today.  Don’t know why she is being so anti-social lately.

This is getting a bit painful.  Not for me.  YOU.

That’s all I got people.

.

Well… not really.  But he could have!  And the important thing is… that that’s the story I’m going with!

It was, after all, John who caught the cabinets on fire.  He did!  NO!  REALLY!

A couple of months ago he decided he was going to make himself a tostada with some left over taco meat we hand and he popped a couple of tostada shells in the little toaster oven we have on the counter top.  I guess he set it to “Incinerate” and walked off.  Well, pretty much immediately the fire was pouring out of the toaster oven and the varnish on the cabinets was aflame.

It was exciting!

The strange thing is that the only emotion I can come up with is relief that it was him and not me who did it.

I wasn’t around when it happened, but he told me that he threw water on it.  INSIDE THE TOASTER OVEN.  I indicated that it wasn’t the brightest thing he had ever done as he could have electrocuted himself…but, then again he did torch some innocent tostadas…

I explained the theory of using baking soda to extinguish flames from an electrical source. (Assuming he didn’t want to go and get the FIRE EXTINGUISHER from the utility room.)  He informed me that he doesn’t know where in our kitchen the baking soda lives.  I showed him.  I am CERTAIN, within an inch of my life, that he will never need to know the whereabouts of the baking soda.

Unless there’s another fire.

Apparently there are some of you who are impressed by the fact that my rambling… goes off in so many directions.  You know, I go on about such differing stuff in the same post.

Are you sure this is a good thing and not just a sign of, well, at the best, disorganization, and at the worst, dementia?

I have to admit that I feel like it just comes from being really, really disorganized.  Not so much around here, but in my leetle head.  You should see me write.  Or rather I should see YOU.  I am intensely curious.

With me there is usually a lot of cutting and pasting and deleting and rewording.  It seems like not much flows that doesn’t get a major overhaul before it’s done.  Oh, and I never title it until it’s finished because it’s so strange by the time it gets done the original title never really fits anymore.

Is it like that for you?  I mean whether or not you blog, cause I have a few readers that I don’t think do it, but I could be wrong and they just don’t want me to find them.  Yeah.  That’s probably it.

Well I have just reread that and decided that I won’t go back and fix anything except spelling mistakes.  And believe me when I tell you that if I didn’t check for that you could come away not knowing that I said anything at all.

So please let me hear from you and tell me how do you do it?  And no.  This is not a cop-out on a post.  I really am curious.

Well, the good news is… I’m not dead.  I have just been on hiatus, hanging out with Mither and Pop.  They are down visiting and we are having a grand time.  We don’t have any big projects planned for this trip and so it has all been fairly relaxing.

While I have been relaxing a bit, it seems like I have fallen further and further behind on reading my blogs.  I am sooo sorry!  I have not forgotten you people and will get back soon!  At least I will be able to see when I begin trying to get caught up!

I have gone to the optometrist and gotten a prescription for my eyeballs.  Would you believe that my first pair of glasses is going to be bifocals?  How blind am I?  Well, I’ll tell you.  My distance is .25 and my closer up in your face is 1.75.  No.  I don’t know what that means either.  But I know I have to have bifocals.  I am getting the line-less kind, with a far, mid and close range seeing area.  I wasn’t so interested in seeing mid range as interested in NOT looking like I had on bifocals.  Did I mention that this is my FIRST PAIR OF GLASSES?  I was a little staggered.

Speaking of staggered…  I have a… family(?) situation that smacks of reality tv, like nothing else.  Think smutty, like maybe, Temptation Island meets The Girls Next Door.  Only no one is that attractive.

You may remember me referring to Auntie-poo, before.  She is Mither’s sister and my favorite person in the world, (Mither is sitting here insisting that I make it understood, except for her.).  Well, she has a son, my cousin, actually, who has a wife that is a true piece of work.  My cousin came home from work a month or so ago and his slutty wife told him she wanted him to move out that she had been communicating with a guy who is in prison and she loved him and they were going to get married.  As soon as he gets out of prison.  Come to find out this is going to have to be a June wedding, 2009.

June weddings are nice.

Anyway, getting back to my cousin, he has three children with this chick and was heartbroken enough.  She then proceeded to tell him that years ago right after their last child was born she was corresponding with another guy on the internet and they decided to meet at a Jack in the Box.  She told him that they had sex in the bathroom there.  At Jack in the Box.  When they met.  For the first time.

I can’t seem to wrap my leetle brain around this.  Maybe I’m not creative enough to think this “outside the box”. (Pardon the pun.)  But let’s consider this a minute:

1. When meeting for sex at Jack in the Box with a man that has never been met before does one just assume the restaurant facilities will be adequate?  Or does one hope the, ahem, gentleman has a van?

2.  In which restroom is the dirty deed carried out?  I mean Men’s or Women’s?  Miss Manners would definitely have something to say about this.  Or Emily Post.  If she wasn’t dead.

3.  If you are ensconced in a bathroom at Jack in the Box with your… lover, conquest, intended, slutmuffin, are you concerned with the type of paper towels offered?  I mean if it’s an upscale establishment with a roll of paper towels, that’s one thing.  You could roll those out on the floor and not have to worry about missing gaps in the coverage.

4.  Do you bring your own paper towels?  Oh dear.  Would this seem presumptuous?  Now, we wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression.

5. If left with only the folded paper towels that pull out of the dispenser one at a time, what do you do?  Move the party to the counter?  Sink?  Standing?

6.  Is there a lock on the interior of the door in the Jack in the Box restrooms?

7.  How long to you do “it”?  Too long and there will be people making racket outside the door and that will put a real damper on things.  Too short and your partner will be very unimpressed.

8.  What’s the rule about how old or big you can be to use a changing table?

9.  When it says “Family” on the door of a restroom, does it mean just relatives?

10. When it says “No shirt, no shoes.  No service” does it mean panties are optional.

11.  John wants to know, “Do you get fries with that?”

You know Witchypoo over at Psychicgeek has an advise column that I’ve been toying with different questions for here for a good while, now…  How do you think she’d answer,…..?  Hummmm.

We took Baby to have her groomed the other day and I must say that I still find myself breaking out into a snorting laugh when I look at her.

Let me preface this photo by saying that when you cross a peek-a-poo, (pekingese and poodle mixture), with a Pomeranian you get a… noteworthy dog.  I am going to be very careful with my adjectives here.  She really is quite cute in person, just because she is so gregarious and smart… maybe not so much because of looks.  The truly hysterical thing was losing all that body hair, and there was a LOT of it, made her ears even huger, if that’s possible.

Ears up with her trademark smile.

Ears down and caught with mouth open while reciting a line of poetry...mid-sentence.

Is it just me or does that first pic of her look a lot like the little critters in the movie, Gremlins?

Hello!  Today, boys and girls, I have been busy talking to Henrietta’s P. A. (physician’s assistant), home health care nurse, and the x-ray technician who came out to snap some glamor shots of her.

She’s got a totally bizarre and perplexing problem residing in her… (are you ready for this… go ahead and take a wild guess…) ass.

To make a long story short, (Yes.  I am aware nobody thinks I can do this. *sigh* Now I am going to have to prove myself…) She broke her hip a couple of years ago and while she was still in the hospital recovering from the hip surgery, they called me and said it was dislocated.  Doc said her muscles “contracted” and pulled her leg out of socket.  She would need surgery again to fix it cause it would just pull out again if he manipulated it back in.  Strangely enough, the old woman that makes the princess and the pea gal look insensitive wasn’t in any pain so she elected not to have the surgery.  I believe it was one of her cuter moments, she looked at me when I explained her options and said, “I don’t want to have surgery again, Krissa.  I’m old, already!”.  She was 84 and I didn’t argue with her.  So all this time she’s had a dislocated hip.  Or, actually, I don’t know why it’s called that because really her femur is dislocated from her hip.  Well, all of the sudden her leg bone has started… migrating around in her, butt.  Her hip is all wonky crooked seeming and the head of the femur is poking out in the thickest part of her gluteus maximus.  This makes it very painful to sit on for any length of time.  Her butt is bruised from the inside.

At this point I would like to point out that this was promised to be a short story not a normal one.

Anyway, the P.A. and I sat there by her bed poking around and talking about what’s up with her bones and placing bets on what the x-ray will show and what we think the different odd bits poking out here and there are going to turn out to be.

I do know one thing.  I see an operation in her future.  Before long that bone is going to start a bedsore that I won’t be able to cure because anytime she is sitting or lying on her back she is pressing against it.  Constant pressure.

John called while I was in there talking to the P.A. and asked what I was doing.  I said, “Looking at your mom’s ass with Darnell.  Do you want me to tell you about it?”  “No!  I gotta go, they’re paging me.”

The pansy-ass.

Here is the continuation of the whole Ike debacle.

Oh, I never did get the photos from John and he still has them on his jump drive.  In his pocket.  I am just not working out!  I will really try hard to remember to get them tonight, I promise!

Tuesday, September 16- Today I saw two hummingbirds and a housefly. Please God, don’t let anyone tell the mosquitoes how to get back…

There is candle wax ALL OVER MY HOUSE.

SO. FREAKING. BORED.

I can’t believe how awfully bad my carpet needs vacuuming.

I have decided I am not going to boil another pot of water for dishwashing. I have been inconvenienced enough already and if some sort of plague gets its start here, in my house… well, I’m sorry.

We are probably all going to die of dysentery. My next door neighbor said she never did boil the water for washing the dishes. I don’t feel I know her well enough to ask about her bowels…

Keelan went to meet the vet out at the barn as our horse and pony show now necessitates a visit. Dandy, (her mare), has a bad cut on the back of one of her ankles from… barbed wire(?). She got there and discovered, yet, another snake in her tack room. A couple of her friends were there with her, DJ and Victor and they, being boys, quickly and joyfully beat said snake to death with shovels. Eww.

Wednesday Morning, September 17- We got last Friday’s newspaper delivered to us. The first bit of outside news since last Thursday. The editor had a notation on the front page saying they are going to try to get the past issues caught up in the near future.

Our good friend, Roger, brought us over a generator and I hooked up the washer and dryer to it after I ran the fridge for about 6 hours. I then proceeded to do rapid fire laundry. Frantically.

As I was slowly rolling the refrigerator forward to reach behind it and unplug it from the useless hole in the wall, my grandmother’s 70 year old Kitchen Aid mixer fell off of the top of the fridge and landed squarely on top of my head. Dead center. I cried. That sucker must weigh 15 pounds and has a motor that could run a riding lawnmower. Keelan was frantic and I ended up feeling sorrier for her than me. It really did scare her to death.

Crap. I am watching a mosquito, (among the first of many to return), searching on the outside of the window. It’s the one window that is just cracked open a tiny bit because that particular screen was never found after the wind died down. Plus, the little dog keeps making her escape through that window every time she see’s someone walking their dog, so it isn’t open very much. I’m going to have to shut it because the mosquito is being persistent and will get in eventually.

OK, I’m back.

When I was done with the laundry I unplugged the washer and dryer and left the fridge hooked up while I plugged the TV and DVD player into the generator, also. (The cable was out well before they cut the power…probably as soon as the sun was behind a little white cloud. By way of explanation I say to you this one word…Comcast.) So we watched movies and sat and wondered what was happening on the news. What the surrounding areas looked like, death toll, what the evacuation looked like, etc.

The cicada’s are back… it’s gonna be a scorcher.

Thursday, September 18- No paper today.

Friday, September 19- THE ELECTRICITY CAME BACK ON!

Today is Monday, September 22, and they STILL don’t have everything completely full at the stores. At least they have opened the major highways back up leading into Houston. John’s store is getting as many trucks as they can spare to send him. He has worked 14 hour days EVERY day since the hurricane, and he is running out of steam.

My friends, a few neighborhoods away from us still don’t have electricity. Lisa is out of town, evacuated, and Roger is practically living at work. He is bringing over his clothes, which I wash and I’m cooking for him. Poor guy, I hope and pray they get their power back on soon.

Needless to say the Comcast services still aren’t working and I am betting another week at least. We will see. It would be fun to take bets.

We were really stupid when we signed up with them because we got a bundled service thing where our cable TV, internet, and digital phone, (whatever that is) are provided by them. Or not, whatever. So we have been without a landline this entire time and my cell bill is going to be exorbitant. My smart neighbors across the street never lost their phone service because THEY DON’T USE COMCAST.

Have I mentioned my loathing for Comcast?

Thursday, September 25- My friend, Lisa, was on her way home yesterday from evacuating to San Antonio and John was off work during the early part of the day. As we drove by her house on the way home I saw that her porch light was on! I called her immediately and told her that her electricity was back! What timing! Lucky dog never went without it the entire time.

OK, I am so glad to be back and will go immediately to read everyone as soon as I throw this miserable excuse for a post up!  You might want to wear a neck brace while reading… it jumps around a bit.

First of all I would like to thank my brother, Cam for updating everyone during my absence.  I really hope he only chokes a little on the vino he’s going to be drinking in beautiful Italy this weekend.  heh heh heh

Love ya Cam!

Today is September 27 and we just got internet up and working as of yesterday.  Two weeks after the stupid storm!  I started transcribing a post from a pile of scraps of paper onto Word Friday of last week, (when we got electricity back), and am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to successfully copy and paste it to the Wordpress thingy which acts strangely at best due to the fact that I am cursed with Vista.

Here goes nothing!

Hello there, interwebs! I am back, finally, and I missed you all! I am starting this on Friday, September 19, 2008 and am a bit flummoxed at the thought of trying to get caught up. Luckily, I jotted down notes here and there during the last few days. Following this paragraph is a fairly random collection of them starting Friday afternoon, Sept. 12, the day hurricane Ike laid us out. We just got electricity back at about 12:30 in the afternoon, yesterday. Six days after it went out. And while I know we have so very much to be grateful for and are truly blessed to have survived virtually unscathed, I can’t help but point out that living in this humidity and heat, without floor to ceiling windows on all the exterior walls, is a gruesome ordeal that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Well, OK, maybe that would be the perfect kinda conditions for my worst enemy, but my point remains that I can’t imagine hating anyone with that much intensity…you get my drift?

6:00pm Friday evening- the power company cuts the electricity. Winds are starting to pick up just a bit and we all know the big ones are coming. The preemptive electric outage is to keep people from injury, (and certain death), when the lines fall.

The following night is harrowing. H is given an Adivan and sleeps through the entire thing. (Thank you God, for Adivan.)

Apparently I will take anyone or anything in to shelter through a hurricane including, but not limited to, stray dogs and a 6 ½ foot red tailed boa.

The poor dog was left here when his crumby owners evacuated. They left the gate open and left. Just like that. The other neighbors and I were talking about it and the fact that one sweet lady down the street had taken him in. This was Friday afternoon and Ike was due to show up that night. She was saying that her chocolate Labrador was trying to tear down the door to the room where she had the dog, so I offered to take him off her hands until after the whole dealy-o blew over. He really was sweet and well behaved, just scared to death of everybody AS IF HE HAD BEEN ABUSED. The deal was that the house next to us on the corner with the trio of sweet little girls was going to take him in when it was over. Of course the next day my daughter’s boyfriend left the gate open and the dog went in the backyard via the doggy door and promptly left. So, in the rain, John and I drove around the neighborhood until we found him and I got out IN THE RAIN AND CHASED AND BEGGED AND PLEADED AND CONJOLED, and yes, cursed, that dog into letting me catch him and haul him into the car, (where anybody would want a wet dog).

I then took him to the little girls and dumped him on them. They were delighted and I still haven’t gotten any evil looks from their mother so, here’s hoping…

Keelan has a friend of some standing…with her at least. Anyway, this kid has a large family with three cars between them and other pets involved and he claimed that there wasn’t room for the tank that accommodates the huge ass snake and, of course, not the snake either. Am I easy or what? NO. Don’t answer that!

Saturday AM- It is rapidly becoming evident that I will be requiring a shower every 15 to 20 minutes. The temperature is hovering in the low 90’s with 110% humidity. From our front yard the neighborhood looks like….Bosnia. A total war zone. I turned to John and said, “Honey, I don’t think you’ll make it into work today…”

Big Mess! Hot, so very hot. The power lines are all underground in our neighborhood, but the one next to us has huge trees snapped off halfway up and just flipped up with gigantic root balls sticking up in the air. They are all laid over on the power lines. We can’t get into it for all the debris so we just drive by looking in from the road betweenus.

All we could hear was the constant chainsaw and generator noise backed by the incessant drone of emergency vehicle sirens and low flying news choppers with the occasional med-a-vac , Army and Coast Guard helicopter thrown in for good measure. All the windows are open and there is hardly a breath of air moving through this house. It is stifling.

Last night we had hurricane and, of course all the windows were closed tight and most were boarded up.I set the thermostat extremely low in the house during the day so it would be a cool as possible when we lost the lights. The cool air lasted partially through the night.

Well, when Henrietta said she was ready to go to bed I rolled her in there and got her ready and she said, “Oh, close the window, Krissa.” I said, no, we really would have to leave them open because it was too hot in the house with it closed. “Oh Noooo! I’m fine! Really! I’ll be all right. Just close the window. “ No, Henrietta. You’re room is directly across from ours and in order for us to have any kind of ventilation at all we need your window open. Then, (very pointedly ignoring what I have explained and attempting to act as if it is beyond her comprehension), “Oh no, Krissa. I CANNOT HAVE THE WINDOW OPEN. No, no… I never have and I don’t want it open.” By this time John showed up and backed me with the whole argument. She see’s that she’s not going to get her way….at least not easily, so she turns on the tears. We both stand firm and she shuts them off. I swear it’s like flipping a damn switch. I left the tacky venetian blinds she insists on having drawn at all times down and closed and had to sneak back in and open them when she was asleep.

I am told by my mother on my cell phone that we are supposed to be boiling our drinking water for 1 minute. So I am boiling huge pots of water on the stove to pour in the sink and wash dishes in. Thank God, we have a gas stove.

The entire house gets significantly hotter when you are boiling huge pots of water on the stove with no A/C.

You really can make coffee by pouring boiling water into a carafe with coffee and letting it sit for a bit and then pouring this disgusting looking sludge through a filter into a cup. I found that using a paper towel worked even better than a filter because it would conform to the shape of the cup better.

I would kill for an old fashioned board game of some kind. As of two garage sales ago, we got rid of all of ours.

By the time there was enough trees moved for us to make it off of our block, (a day later) we decided to try to make it to our friends house a few neighborhoods over. They had evacuated and had asked us if we could check on their house the first chance we got.

Our neighborhood has all the electrical and phone lines underground, but the one next to ours has even more mature trees and it’s all above ground. At least every other house had a huge tree either broken in two and lying on the lines and/or house or the trees were just lying over with a gigantic root ball pulled up and sticking in the air. It was crazy. We weren’t able to make it by our friend’s house that day or the next as there was no way to get there. The streets were impassable immediately around it. John finally got by a few days later on his way to work. Thankfully, they had no flooding and no trees on their house.

ALMOST OUT OF COFFEE.

You CAN read trashy novels by candlelight. NO, it doesn’t make sweating your body weight romantic.

My neighbors really are wonderful people and we all pull together really well when there is an emergency.

One really bizarre, other worldly experience was realizing that even three days after it was all over, there were still no birds/bird sounds or flying bugs. Saturday afternoon I went with John up to the grocery store he manages to see how bad it was or wasn’t and as we were driving through the parking lot I saw a baby egret sitting on one of those big metal grid storm drains. It just sat there as we passed by it and had one leg down in the hole and the other one clutching the grate. I thought it was stuck and had John stop and I got out and went over to it, picked it up and the poor thing just looked at me. It was clearly in shock. I believe it was thinking something to the tune of, “What the hell. Of course the human lady will pick me up. After the night I’ve had, what else could I expect? This is nothing”. I carried it over and put it in some bushes and it immediately scrambled under them better.

What is it with me and strange baby birds? Owls, Egrets, what next?

Sunday – John goes back to work and it’s a hell hole. Everything was wiped out, pretty much before he left on Thursday. The benevolent souls at the top of the corporate ladder, (or whoever), decided to actually close the store on the Friday of the storm. I must say that this surprised me somewhat as the storm was due to show up fairly late that evening. Believe me when I say that if Walmart or Target had stayed open, they would have, also. The thought was that they wouldn’t let the managers go in time for them to evacuate their families, so they would give them a few hours head start on getting their houses boarded up before the wind got there. And that, my friends, is as much as can ever be expected of these people. John had worked 12 hour day’s everyday that week in preparation for the storm, as had the other managers at all the stores on the gulf coast in the chain. When they got back to work on Sunday, they spent the greatest part of the day throwing out every last parcel of meat, frozen and refrigerated food. I came to find out the generator only runs a few lights and the registers if the power goes out and that’s all it did. They reopened with virtually empty shelves and zero meat, dairy and frozen foods.

People were understanding and patient, helpful to each other about information and standing in line.

Over the next few days things really went downhill fast. Trucks arrived as often as they could possibly get there and it became harder and harder to explain why WHEN EVERYONE RUNS OUT OF THEIR REFRIGERATED ITEMS AT THE SAME TIME IT IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SUPPLY THE DEMAND. Not to mention the bread everyone was going through, along with chips and snack items, etc.

Sunday night- Henrietta apparently has given some thought to the window situation and feels she did not put on her best performance last night. Tonight, she pulls out all the stops. She announces that she can’t sleep like that and she woke up afraid over and over last night. Bullshit. Not a chance. She NEVER wakes up when she’s taken an Adivan and she would have rung her bell if she was the least bit afraid. She argues with us both about it and continues to insist the window has to be down. She apparently has absolutely no regard for how anyone else might feel or how much sleep her own son may or may not get before he trudges off to work like a dog for 12 to 14 hours. Finally she tells us that we are abusing her by leaving her window open and I have had it. I got in her face and John looked l at her like he was going to explode. I unloaded a bit and she started to dry up some. There really is no end to her selfishness when it comes to her own little wants and paranoia’s. Needless to say her window stayed open. She told me to “Pleeeeease keep me blinds down, Krissa!” I certainly will. Until you are asleep…

Monday- There is not a word from her about the window or the blinds or anything else at bedtime. Halleluiah!

And the rest of the time until the lights are back on, (Friday), she doesn’t say another word about it.

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I will post the rest of the… story tomorrow and add the missing pictures.  Come to find out they are riding around in John’s pocket on his jump drive and he is at work, (where else).  I’ll get them when he gets home.  Things are still very disorganized around here and I’m having a hard time getting back in the normal groove.  Sorry.