Silence

The crew from CAM finished hanging the drywall early last week. It has yet to be taped or mudded or floated or whatever it is that people do to drywall to finish it... but just having something there to separate our rooms from one another is an improvement, to be sure. It's hard sometimes to keep up the patience -- to keep looking at the positive.

The last few days have been particularly difficult. They never came to fix the roof - we don't even have an estimate to replace the missing siding. There are still no floors - no usable furniture other than the beds - nothing pleasant to look at... And still no dishwasher either (Not that the dishwasher is that much of a priority but it would have been really nice to accomplish something.) Most importantly in my mind recently - we still have no money either. We can dream and plan and scheme all we want -- but the fact that we can't afford to make all of the necessary repairs remains.

The kids in our living room the day after Katrina...
Let's say by some stretch of the imagination that we would be able to restore the exterior and interior of the house to something close to its original state sometime within twelve months... There would still be no way on earth to restore the contents.

I hate to be so negative... and I'm sure this mood will pass too. I'm still grateful for all of the help we have received. Perhaps I simply feel a little lost now that we have been left on our own. Someone told me to go to amazon.com to make a wish list or two. Maybe that's just what I need to do today.