We've all heard a thousand times in our lives that 'life goes on' -- and it really does. No matter what's going on -- life goes on. As I'm sure Luba mentioned -- we have a Wal-mart open now and we are able to get gasoline at many service stations. We're still staying at my mother's house while we try to get the mold and gook and nastiness cleaned out of what's left of our house so we can at least move back in upstairs. We had intended to be back there by the end of this past weekend -- but that didn't happen. Now we're shooting for the end of this week. Dave has had to go back to work now as well... Many of his co-workers are totally homeless.. or semi-homeless as we are. One of his co-workers so far is among the dead. It's very strange to try to find normalcy in such a place.. but that's what we have to do.
Semi-homeless. Honestly that's the new term for it. Our house isn't livable at the moment -- but we will have livable space again within the next month... It's all rather primitive and it will be for a while probably.. BUT, you guys, it's much better than most people are doing down here. We personally know about a dozen people who have an empty lot where their homes once stood... And we personally know several dozen people who don't have livable space as we do -- we were spared a lot simply because our house is on a raised foundation.. and because we have a second floor. We are some of the fortunate ones. All of these people I'm mentioning -- they all have families.. young children... They too need help.
You aren't seeing it on the news.. I know because we've had the national news for a few days now... And we search in vain for something really showing what happened here. I can tell you -- there is nothing untouched... This isn't about one city.. one area.. one county... Every area spanning our entire coastline and then about 60 miles inland has suffered extensive damage. I wish I could show you what I see when we go across town... The government housing projects have their modest little piles of keepsakes outside each apartment... The poorest neighborhoods have every personal possession thrown out at the street -- old armchairs repaired lovingly with duct tape and hand-me-downs that have found the end of the road... and the rich neighborhoods piled high with the most exquisite linens and furniture.. reduced to nothing. For miles... everyone lost everything -- some had more to lose than others... But we're all the same today.
The school where our boys go to school flooded as well... the damage is extensive and every desk, notebook, and table inside has been thrown out. Our church flooded as well and to add insult to injury the roof was torn off... But in October (we're aiming for October) - the kids from a neighboring parish will be coming to our school and to our church from now on. Why? Because there is nothing left of theirs.
Our house is being gutted - although our restoration crew is a lot slower than they said they would be. Power was restored in our neighborhood a few days ago and by some miracle our downstairs a/c unit is running. Dave also explained our situation to Foster's Heating & Air and they came out immediately to try to repair the upstairs unit so we could stay upstairs with the babies. It's running at least -- though they told us we were going to have to replace it eventually. Well, back to our restoration specialists -- they seem to really like having air conditioning and it's slowing down progress a bit. We also told them they could stay in the house while they're working on it -- they had been sleeping outside in a neighbor's yard because there are no hotel rooms for miles and miles. They stayed there a couple of nights but now we want them out and Dave was going to find them and tell them so. One of the guys had talked about moving in semi-permanently while he worked on other things around the house. As tempting as that would be because we really need the help -- we figure it would be even more disruption to have a stranger in our house and we'd very much like to get the kids back into a routine.
In any event - now that we have air conditioning we're thinking about heading home - we can live upstairs until we can repair the downstairs at least. I'd feel better there closer to the school and around more people so we can find out what's happening. The news is not a reliable source for us because they rarely mention Pascagoula in their reports.
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