THE day ... Happy Birthday to me?

My birthday ... Monday August 29th. Chris will never again forget my birthday (I don't think so anyway).

Early Monday morning everyone slowly moved into a spot to sleep. Chris, the kids and I slept in their oldest daughter's bedroom, with the TV set to the news. I woke up and was watching some of the continuing coverage when the lights went out. We lost power sometime around 6 in the morning. The wind was really strong, but there was not much rain. Jim had a large generator and we were able to connect tv’s, the microwave and fridge, and a window unit air conditioner in the living room.

My Dad called me a little later that morning to wish me a Happy Birthday and to make sure that we were managing ok. Birthday? It was my birthday? Oh yeah, in all of the excitement I’d forgotten. What a way to spend my birthday. It will certainly be one that I never forget.

For the most part, we all hung out in the living room (with the sole air conditioner). Though at some point during the day I disappeared into the bedroom where we had been sleeping and took a nap. I woke up to the smell of hamburgers and French fries. Jim had fired up the grill and cooked lunch. We had comforts that I know we would not have had at home. Still, I could not help but wonder how our house was doing and if we should have stayed home.

As news reports came out of New Orleans, things did not look good. There had been a lot of damage, and there was flooding. But it was not as bad as some predictions where levee breaches could have occurred in a category 4 storm. We still knew that we would not be able to return immediately. Jim's house was welcoming, but a little crowded and we did not want to wear out our welcome.

So, after talking with Chris’s mom we decided to head farther west to Chris’s grandmother’s house. Chris’s grandmother had been in a nursing home for about 7 months. Her house was sitting empty. The electricity and gas had not been turned off. We were warned that it was dirty, but still neat and organized. And it had a roof and beds.

Monday afternoon we made the 2 hour drive out of Baton Rouge to Washington, Louisiana. Washington is a small town, population around 1,200. Just outside of Opelousas (which is just outside of Lafayette), it is a typical small farm town in the Cajun area of Louisiana. The house is a small farmhouse on a country highway, with no telephone (it had been disconnected months before), an old barn, and lots of spiders in the trees just outside of the house. The bees of Chris’s childhood had returned. One wall of the living room was filled with bees. Chris remembers that years ago they had to remove parts of the wall to remove the bee hives and the bees. They are back so the kids had to be careful when playing outside. But, we had a roof over our head, with electricity and running water.

We're on our way. Much later than I had hoped, but still, we got out in the morning. I picked up my mom, her evacuation supplies, and her cat and swung back to our house to grab the kids. Chris was going through the last minute preparations. He also thought it would be a good idea to do a bit of cleaning (mop the floors and run the vacuum across the floors so that when we returned mid week for work and school, we would have less to do in order to get back to normal). I still can’t get him to admit that mopping and vacuuming was a complete waste of his time.....but in the end I think you'll agree with me. ;)

We had relatively smooth traffic to Baton Rouge. The normal 1 to 1-1/2 hour drive took less than 3 hours. That was actually pretty amazing. The Contra-flow plans that the state had implemented actually made a big difference and went smoother than the last time they had attempted to use both sides of the interstate to get people out of the city.

Then … our first obstacle. I left my mom and the kids in the car while I went to check in. I had in hand my printed confirmation, and walked up to the hotel’s front desk. She didn’t have me on the list. She couldn’t find me in the computer. Her boss came up and pulled us up on the computer. Our reservation had been cancelled. Some mix up about the credit card. Obviously the required “contact information” phone number and email that they required I give them was not actually so that they could contact me. I called Chris who was quite upset. I had my mom with her temporary leg no longer fitting properly having trouble moving around, two kids and 3 cats in my van – with no place to go. There was not another hotel room in the state.

He talked to the manager who became very rude. The manager said he was also the owner and could do whatever he wanted (I am guessing at Chris’s threat to go above his head). The manager told me that my husband was very rude to him, and that he had planned to find me a room but would do nothing to help me because my husband was rude to him. First, I don't believe that for a minute because he told me that he could not help me and that I should leave, and walked away and outside - giving me no indication that he was going to try to help me find a room and every indication that I should leave his hotel. That was before the phone conversation. Chris said he wasn’t rude on the phone (though I don’t know – I know he can get forceful when he feels he is right). I can tell you that I just sat through a customer complaint resolution seminar and everything this manager did was 100% the opposite of what a business should do in a situation where a customer is not happy. I am not saying he should have even given us a room – that is not my complaint, but it was how he handled it. Franchise or not, I will never ever stay at a Microtel hotel again (not that I had in the past). I was desperate, scared for my home and my family, and had no place to go. I was treated horribly.

My mom, with her ill fitting leg walked into the hotel (took her about 15 minutes each way) to cancel her reservation, with the hope that maybe they would have pity. They happily took the cancellation and then promptly ignored her. Is it pure evil of me to hope that one day this inconsiderate and unkind hotel owner would one day loose his home and business to a storm as well?

We sat in the car, unsure of what to do. Chris called a friend of his who lived in Baton Rouge and we all crashed there. They had Jim and his wife Sarah, their two daughters and the oldest daughter’s boyfriend, their two dogs, four cats, and two birds. Then Chris and I, my mom, my two kids, my two cats and my mom’s cat joined in. All in a 3 bedroom ranch style house.

Chris helped as Jim prepared their house – Baton Rouge was sure to experience some really heavy winds and possibly a lot of rain as the storm passed to the east of where we were camped. We didn’t sleep much Sunday night as we sat glued to the television news reports through the night. The storm was strengthening, and still on course for my home town. Most of the night was spent in front of the tv.

The preparations....

Saturday morning, the forecast was becoming more clear, the storm would be a large one, possibly catastrophic, and it was headed straight for New Orleans. “The Big One” that I’d heard about my entire life may actually happen. Amazingly I was still calm (is THAT the calm before the storm?). Maybe it was the previous “big ones” that missed us (Georges, Ivan, and others). I called again to confirm the reservations at the hotel – yes, they had our reservation, and yes, the accept pets during an evacuation.

Chris was teaching Saturday so I calmly packed our evacuation kit: 3 changes of clothes for everyone in the house, my scrapbooks and kids pictures, and the “important papers” box including home ownership/mortgage papers, homeowners and flood insurance policies, birth certificates, marriage certificate, etc. I packed up the canned food we had (ravioli’s, sardines, crackers, peanut butter, cheese crackers … ‘good no cook/evacuation food’). At least I keep a very well stocked pantry and did not have to make the mad rush to the store, fighting people for the last can of tuna or last loaf of bread. I had everything we needed to live out of the hotel room for the 2-3 days we would need to wait out the threat of the storm before we headed home. This is how it always works … right? Evacuate, live out of town for a couple of days and return home while listening to complaints called in on radio talk shows about the traffic of yet another false alarm evacuation.

Chris came home from work and we watched the reports in disbelief. In the last few years, reports from the state and city have indicated that we needed 72 hours in order to evacuate the entire metropolitan area. New Orleans mayor started calling for the evacuations Saturday, the storm was due to hit Monday. How could this be? Seventy two hours before the storm, Katrina had a clear cut forecast – it would hit Florida and we would not even have a drop of rain or wave in the lake as a result of that weather. Now the city and surrounding areas were in a mad rush to get people out.

We decided that I would leave early Sunday with my mom and the kids, and Chris would follow behind me in the Honda after he’d boarded up the windows.

The HURRICANE....

This very long post will be broken down into several sections, and will catch you up on the last 5 weeks of my life. I'll change the dates of the post to kind of keep it in line with my journal, trying to post the date as close to the actual occurance as possible.

FRIDAY AUGUST 26TH ..... just another normal day, or so we thought ..... it all starts to change from here.

Friday morning, we left for work after hearing the latest hurricane update. After having passed over Florida, Hurricane Katrina was forecasted to turn north and head into the Florida panhandle. That is 3 states away from us. We had plans for dinner Saturday night with my Dad, to celebrate my birthday as well as his fiancé’s. The reservations were confirmed and we were at work, clueless about what the weekend would truly hold.

Friday afternoon on my way home from work, I heard a news report that the storm would not make the north turn toward Florida as expected, but was now being forecasted to head towards the southern tip of Louisiana. But it was still a little up in the air. In an effort to jump the rush, I started making phone calls to hotels in Baton Rouge. Though that is not very far from New Orleans, and not exactly considered a safe haven in the event a hurricane hits New Orleans, it is as far as Chris wants to go in an evacuation. The near 20 hour car rides up to Arkansas for previous (false alarm) evacuations had had an effect. After calling about 25 hotels, I found an opening at Micro-tel, a little budget chain hotel/motel. We made our reservations. My mom would have to stay in our room one night, and then would have her own room through the middle of the week.

Ok, that wasn't so hard. While it took a while, I was still able to find something close - much closer than most people were finding. I could sleep soundly.

So much has happened.

I haven't had time to update lately. In the last few months lots has happened.

My mom had her left leg amputated just below her knee. She spent some time in a rehab hospital before going home where she has physical therapy and a nurse aid helping with stuff around the house. She is using a temporary leg and will be fitted for a permanent prosthetic once the amputation site has fully healed.

Chris got his permanent position teaching anatomy/physiology, and the kids are preparing to start back to school. Zachary will be in 1st grade, and Philip - my baby - is starting Kindergarten. I'm really busy at work with an new product release. It keeps me busy, but is fun and challenging at the same time.

We have decided to refinance our house and take a bit out of equity to do some much needed home repairs. We'll paint everything, get new flooring, update the kitchen, replace the deck and fence in the backyard, replace some windows. and do a few other much needed updates. In order to do everything we want to do with the amount of money we have to spend, some of the work we will do ourselves. The things we are capable of doing we will do, even though some of it will be really hard work. In the end it will be worth it and we will be much happier coming home every night.

Well, that's a VERY short update on what's been keeping me busy the last couple of months. I hope to keep this updated a bit more often.