A Poem For Ike

Dear Ike,
It is YOU I don't like.
You are not welcome here,
so please don't come near!

So Ike, please, please, please don't come here!! Our state can not handle you right now. We don't want to see anyone else get hit with this storm, but we can't take it at this time. It is starting to look like Ike may be taking a turn towards Texas, which I hate to see happen, but I'd hate to see it come here worse.

So, we got our power back last night!! I have been doing those things that couldn't be done on the generator, like washing clothes. My next door neighbor plugged their washing machine into their gas generator to wash clothes and burned up the motor in their washing machine! Also, Lesley was able to reserve a few hotel rooms in Mississippi if we should need to escape from Ike, so we are feeling good to have a plan. I don't know if Walter will leave with me, but that is a decision he'll have to make if Ike is headed here.

This link is to the "Friends of George" website. I read about his $1 cookbook on a friend's blog and went to read about George. I bought the cookbook as soon as I read the story and I hope that you will too! http://www.friendsofgeorge.com/cookbook_order.html

Walter & I got out the pool equipment and vacuumed leaves and dirt from the bottom of the pool and ran an extension cord to reconnect the pool pump yesterday. As soon as the pool was starting to not look as green, the storm came and we haven't been able to get the chemicals right yet. I'm hoping we can get it right and will have a little more time to enjoy it before it gets too cold.

Tonight Walter & I are going to the Texas Roadhouse and YES, I go there mostly for the bread and butter!!! We usually have steak at Hilltop on steak night so we don't venture off to other steak restaurants often, but Hilltop is not opened yet and well, I want some bread!!! The Texas Roadhouse is in Baton Rouge so it's about a 30 minute trip over there, but it will be worth it!!

We still have those boys here and i'm not sure if their families will be looking for them now that their power is back on - well, at least I know that Bryce's is back on. I don't mind them staying longer, but wouldn't you at least want to see your kid after a week? We aren't sure when their school will reopen. I don't think power is back in that area yet, so we'll just have to wait and see. I work in a different parish and we go back to work tomorrow and the kids come back on Tuesday.

Questions & Comments:

Tam asked me what i'm reading. At this time, it wont be one of the 70 unread books on her bookcase, but some books that I bought to use with my kids at school. The main one i've been reading is called "Individualized Supports For Students With Problem Behaviors." Probably nothing exciting to the general population, but I am really working with changing some of these behaviors to help the kids fit in, excel in school, and stay out of trouble!!

I had a couple of comments from people saying they would love to vent about their families on their blogs sometimes, but can't because their family reads their blog. None of my family knows about my blog and I hope they never run across it! I don't vent about them much, but it is nice to be able to vent once in awhile. My brother has a blog that he didn't think anyone would run across and he was "outted" by Walter's nephew accidentally. I'm not sure if i've mentioned on my blog that my brother, Kenny, and Walter's nephew, Tommy, have been best friends for 20 years. They both live in Georgia now and Kenny had posted a story on his blog about seeing Tommy's apartment on fire on the 6 o'clock news one night! Tommy thought the blog was a good way to show everyone the story and to let them know about the fire, so he sent a link to all of his family, including us! I read the story about the fire and then decided to scroll through the rest of the blog and found this:

(From 2003) Considering the wife and I spent a total of just 41 hours in Louisiana this weekend for our Bizarre Family Pre-Christmas Christmas celebration, it was an eventful time. The highlights:
• The adoptive mother of my niece - who my middle sister gave up for adoption 21 years ago and rediscovered a couple of years back - came to dinner. Now I know why my niece always figured she was adopted. “Mom” is a troll, and clearly shares no genes with my niece, who is a really beautiful girl (if you look past the heavy Baton Rouge makeup and trashy style).
• My oldest nephew (second child of the middle sister) was working Saturday, so he came by Friday night with his girlfriend.
• My second-oldest nephew (first child of my oldest sister) brought his girlfriend along as well. They are both 18, neither finished high school, both work fast-food jobs and they live together not far from my oldest sister in Texas. I'd not met the girlfriend before, and was quite prepared to disapprove. Would you believe I came away liking and respecting her? She”s pushing the nephew back toward school and seems to give him the structure his life had lacked for a long time.
• The third-oldest nephew (second child of my oldest sister) is working on a hip-hop career, sports a new bottom-lip piercing and chain smokes with the approval of his mom. He's 16. But he's “off the dope” as my sister says, is making good grades and wants to be a landscape architect. The bright hope of the family.
• My youngest nephew (the third child of my middle sister) is going into 6th grade next year and just got accepted at Jimmy Swaggart's Christian school. And this is seen as a good thing … Public eduction in Louisiana is so bad, you see, that kids are better off with a Swaggart education than an East Baton Rouge Parish Schools one.
• I found out Saturday morning that my stepfather had invited his 30-year-old adopted son (my adopted step-brother, I suppose) down from North Louisiana for our Pre-Christmas Christmas dinner. He had no where else to go, I was told, because his younger brother (biological and also adopted by my stepfather) doesn't want him around because the older brother has recently gotten married to his (the older brother's) first wife's cousin. The younger brother is still friends with that first wife, and thus does not want his older brother - or the wife's cousin, I suppose - around at Christmas. The beat-down Oldsmobuick carrying my adopted step-brother, his cousin-in-law-turned-second-wife and four little redneck kids of varying heritage pulled up right as we were walking in the house Saturday. Taking in the Redneck spectacle on a security-camera monitor (a leftover from the Baton Rouge serial killer days) - my long-lost niece asked “Does the little kid have a mullet??”
• My parents were talking about finding the Paris Hilton sex video on the Internet … but the video they described was not the Paris Hilton video. I was scared to learn more about what they were actually watching, and why.
• My crazy aunt (the wife of my mother's oldest brother) showed up right as we were leaving Saturday night. Actually, her car appeared on the security monitor as we were beginning to leave, which greatly hastened our exit. This is the woman, you see, who two years ago crashed our close-family gift exchange and was so horrified to not have presents to give us that she excused herself ("I need to run out to the car"), snuck off to Walgreen”s, bought a few sets of cheap Christmas dinnerware and two hours later came back with makeshift gifts for all of us. No, none of us had presents for her.
• Somehow in all the excitement, I came down with Pink Eye.
I blame the kid with the mullet.

Now, this scene describes a family Christmas get-together at my house!!! I was pretty preturbed after reading this, although I do see the humor in it, but it taught me to be careful what I say on my blog, because you never know who may run across it! He's never posted anything about his family again either!

How about....Texas Roadhouse???

Well, let's just say I won the bet!! Our power came back on about 5 minutes ago!!! Yay!!! And I get dinner wherever I want and I think I'm wanting some of that awesome bread from the Texas Roadhouse!! Woohoo!!

And to top off this great news...my friend, Lesley, and I made a plan in case Hurricane Ike comes here. We are NOT staying!!! We are GOING!!! So there!!! We are trying to get rooms together in a hotel where Mr. Lesley's (or sometimes we call him Mike's) mother works and we will not be freaked out during another bad storm. More on this LATER...but we have POWER!!!!

My new love...

BUCKET TRUCKS!!! And this one is on our street!! And our neighbors directly across the river just got their power back!! And the little country stores a mile down the road just got their power back!! I think we're going to get our power back!!!!

And here is a picture of the condo we just moved from last year - where we rode out Hurricane Katrina! We were in the top unit at the end, right under the blue tarp and chimney that was ripped off during Gustav!

Saturday - day 6 with no power

As of this morning, 55% of our parish has power, so I'm hopeful that ours will come back on before the end of the weekend. My neighbor is convinced it will be today, and I hope he is right! Power or no power, I will be back at work on Monday. The schools in my parish do have electricity, so we'll go back Monday and the kids go back Tuesday. My west side schools may not be able to open for awhile though, so I hope things are ok over there. Baton Rouge's schools are not going to go back next week, although i'm not sure why that decision was made this early. It seems like they are in better shape there than we are with the exception of a couple of neighborhoods.

Walter & I took the boys last night to get some Military MRE's (Meal - Ready to Eat) meals and ice that was being given out in our area. The meals are completely self contained and includes an entree, crackers, instant coffee/tea, dessert, and a heater to heat the main entree. It's a pretty amazing idea and the food doesn't taste bad. I think it's great that FEMA provides food for those who need it. We wont go back for more because the stores are open and we are able to buy food, but we wanted to show the boys what was going on and let them have the MRE's. You get 12 in a box, so they split them up and are going to have them over the next few days. If you've never seen an MRE (this is only my 2nd time), they are amazing!


Then we went to Brewbachers for dinner and let the boys shoot a game of pool and enjoy the air conditioning for a little bit. This morning, Walter & I went to Walmart to re-stock our groceries. It is starting to look like Hurricane Ike may have his sights set on Louisiana and honestly, I don't know if we can take it.

I am really frustrated with my mom. She & my step-dad, John, live about an hour from us and were planning to come over here on Wednesday after being without power at all for 2 days and I have always let them know that they are welcome here. She had called and they were getting their things together to come here when I mentioned that the boys were here. She said, "oh, those boys are there? Will they be there the whole time?" I said, yes, as long as they don't have power at their houses, they will be here. She said, "oh then we will just drive to Houston (5 hours during normal times) because John needs the house to be quiet so he can work on his book." Now, just let me say that as much as I love John, he is the LOUDEST person you'll ever be around. Once he wakes up at 5am, nobody else in the house will get anymore sleep. He wears hearing aids in both ears and keeps the tv LOUD and talks LOUD, but I was willing to deal with that to have them here, safe, and enjoying the electricity that we have. I found it very selfish that they were only concerned with themselves and told my mom that. I also told her that besides the 3 boys, there could be other people here at any time because we invited anyone who needed a place to go. Times like this call for people to do what they have to do for each other and selfishness wont get you very far, especially if you need to stay at someone else's house. I was most upset with the way she talked about those boys as if they were animals, and don't forget, one is her grandson! She's never been a grandmother to my kids or my sister's, and that is something that hurts me often, especially now that my brother has a baby that she has decided that she DOES want to be a grandmother, but that's a whole nother post! Anyway, I suggested that they find other options for future storms unless they can handle fitting in with a house full of people and making the best of it. They are lucky they were able to get to Houston and that may not always be an option. Anywho, thanks for letting me vent!!

Walter thinks he has spotted an alligator living in our boat slip and i'm a little freaked out by that. The water is up over the sides of the boat slip, which would mean an alligator could walk on up into my back yard. He went out to try to take pictures of it, but didn't see it again.

Don't forget to watch my friend, Mover Dave, on Playhouse Disney on September 10th!! Here is a link to their website with games and activities for your kids. They already have a huge following and are teaching wonderful lessons to kids, so go check it out!! I grew up with Mover Dave and am extremely proud of how far they have come!!

I'm just sayin...

20% of the people in my parish who are with DEMCO have POWER!!! The closest town to the right of us is getting power back like crazy! Maybe we're next?

Day 5

We are starting to get some "official" statements about when to expect our power to come back on. Cameron's school is one of the ones that wont have power "for awhile" and it looks like another 7 - 10 days for our power, although our town isn't specifically mentioned in the statement yet. A town to the left of us says 21 days (Cameron's school district) and a town to the right of us says 2 days, so I'm hoping we're more like the town to the right!!!

I finally talked to Elizabeth yesterday and they are having problems with flooding at their house. They live in an area where water overflows from 2 rivers and she has water in her yard that is coming close to going in her house. I think both of the rivers have crested now, so the water should start going down. She said they are having to use a small boat to get from the street to her house. I asked where she is staying, and of course, she says AT THE HOUSE!! That girl! I told her they can come out here, so maybe they will do that. Landen is with his dad, but she has Mack (1) and he is driving her crazy. No doubt with no electricity and nothing to do.

Someone asked me if our generator is running my laptop - yes. It is a generator that is wired into 8 circuits in our house, so it runs nearly everything but a few lights and the air conditioner. It really doesn't seem like we don't have power because pretty much everything works. All of our ceiling fans, microwave, window units we bought to use when the a/c doesn't work, tv, everything really. There are outlets in each room that don't work, so you just have to know which ones do. It is very convenient and I will say again that it's the best investment we've ever made. When this one needs to be replaced in several years, we have already decided to buy the whole house generator that will run the a/c too.

Several people pointed out that my post about being lucky yesterday isn't all to do with luck, but has to do with my hard work and determination, and I have to agree. I am sure some good luck has been with me along the way, but I definitely have made things happen through my determination and hard work and I appreciate those kind comments!

Good news! No sooner than I published my post venting about having to feed everyone elses kids yesterday, Bryce's mom called to say that she had bought extra drinks & canned goods for Bryce during the storm and that he should go down the street and get them for the boys here. It almost made me think she knows about my blog, but i'm sure it was just a coincedence, but i'm very glad she thought to help us out a little with the boys. And yes, I said we are ON THE WAY and went and picked up what she had.

My next door neighbor finally got a repairman out here to see about his backup generator and the guy said he will have to order a part to fix it! This generator is BRAND new and probably cost $5,000 and it has not worked at all during this storm! Walter has worked on it several times, so I knew it wasn't fixable the way it is. They are getting by with a gas generator and you have to refill it with gas every day and to get gas you have to find an open station and wait for HOURS!

Well, I'm off to catch up on some reading!

Day 4 of no power

Things are really looking better today. The estimates for restored power are crazy (2 - 4 weeks), but I'm starting to hear of people in different areas of Baton Rouge having their power back on. Sean (Walter's son) called last night and has power, Walter's niece on the other side of Baton Rouge has power, and so on and so on. Now, I'm not in Baton Rouge, but we are only about 30 minutes away and I feel like ours will be back on before the weekend. However, ZERO percent of our parish currently has power. Walter and I have a bet about when the electricity will come back on; I say before 2 weeks and he says not until 3 weeks, so wish me luck because I have a dinner of my choice riding on this one!! Plus I would like having the electricity back on. I'm still waiting to hear from Elizabeth, but they don't have a "land line" and cell service isn't great right now. I am guessing she is at her mom's with the boys and I will try again to get through to someone over there today.

I don't usually vent on my blog, but today I need to just a little. Before I do, let me just say that I don't mind caring for other people's children, especially ones who otherwise might go without. I have had 2 extra teenagers here since Sunday and I'm glad they were able to stay here, be safe during the storm, and enjoy the electricity afterwards. It isn't costing us any money to provide the extra propane/electricity for them here or space in the house. They both stay in Cameron's room with him, so we still have plenty of room if anyone else needs a place to stay. They also don't cause any trouble and sometimes we don't even know they are here. But...have you ever fed three 15 & 16 year old boys? Good lawd! And if your 15 or 16 year old child stayed with someone for a week, wouldn't you send some snacks or something? And if your teenage son was staying with people during a time when stores are closed and food can't be found, wouldn't you at least ask if you could bring them something or do something? But no. Nothing. I am not surprised because one of them, Bryce, has lived with me off and on for over a year and his mother has never offered a dime for food or anything. And currently she lives about 7 houses down from us, but no. Bradley's grandparents probably don't have much to offer, but I'm just talking about a couple of bags of chips or a 12 pack of Coke. Part of the problem lies with me and I have learned one important lesson during the course of my life (well, i've learned more than one, but here is one i've learned) and that is nobody can take advantage of you unless you let them. I'm not going to demand anything or call and request food, but the next time a parent calls to check if the kid can stay longer, i'll just say, "sure, but we could really use some drinks and snacks for them." Now, lets pretend someone will call and ask!! I really hate to fuss or sound cheap, but we are supplying five people with food and drinks for at least a week and it would be nice to offer some help for them. I'm just sayin....

I sat out on our porch tonight and was really struck by how lucky we are. It might be hard in this situation to think of being lucky, but sometimes just having quiet time to reflect can help put things in perspective. I am such a lucky girl and I really have to say that I have everything I need and everything I want and I am very thankful. The only exception that I could think of is JP, but in all honesty, while he is in jail and could be for the rest of his life, I still have him in my life and can see him, talk to him, write to him, but I can't make his decisions for him and I have let go of that.

What I came up with for my own life:
*I have a relationship with God
*I have a wonderful husband who treats me like a princess
*I have 2 healthy sons who mean the world to me
*I have Elizabeth and her boys in my life and words can't explain how great that is
*Walter & I have our dream home that managed to keep us safe and comfortable during a terrible storm
*It took almost 20 years, but I met my goal and earned a Master's Degree
*My Master's Degree landed me the best job in the world working with kids I love more than I could tell you
*I have some of the best friends imaginable
*I have my dream car
*I have a pool (so it's a $300 Walmart pool - I love it!)
*We live on the river and have a boat (being on the water is my favorite thing ever!)
*My parents, brother, & sister are great from a distance!
*I have the best in-laws imaginable

What do you have to be thankful for in your life?

Speaking of JP, he called this week to check on us before the storm and said he is doing ok. He is biding his time until the trial in December and seems to have a positive attitude about everything. He and Walter's oldest sister have really bonded through writing to each other. She is 70ish and it's amazing to me how much they enjoy each other's friendship. I pray that he will be released soon and I can take him to visit with her sometimes. I would also love for him to see his Maw Maw & Paw Paw who live near me before it's too late. Neither of them are doing well and I don't think they will be here a year from now. It's very sad. But JP is doing ok and that is what is most important right now.

Questions & Comments:

BlogStalker asked if there is police presence to stop people from looting and honestly, in my area, we have never had problems with that. I saw the National Guard at the place that was supposed to be giving out supplies near our house yesterday, but that was just to protect the area and people handing out supplies (which weren't really being given out at that location). But, I will say, I have not ventured more than 5 miles from our house since before the storm on Sunday, so i'm really not sure what it looks like "in town" and at the stores, etc.