Friday

Today isn’t Friday, the 13th, is it? Heck, I am not even sure it’s Friday. I think it is so let’s go with that.

I’ve long since learned to never say “What else can go wrong?” But it’s 7:15 p.m. and I think it’s safe to say it for today.

Family:

I don’t take my cell phone to bed with me. My feeling is this: If someone needs me, I don’t drive after dark so I might as well get a good night’s sleep and then deal with whatever it is in the morning.

We got up this morning . . Oh, yes . . we got up very early! Vince woke me up at 4:30 a.m. He was looking at his tablet, saw a picture of some of the folks in Louisiana to work on getting power restored, thought one of them was Chad and wanted to show me. “Judy! Is this Chad?” I probably wasn’t very nice. I didn’t even care if it was Chad or not. If it was Chad, the picture would still be online at 6 a.m. . . probably! It really looked enough like Chad that I sent it to him (later) and said “Is this you?” It wasn’t. But, at 4:30, I was awake. So was Rita so Vince got up with her. I tried to go back to sleep but that wasn’t happening either. I got up about 5 and washed a load of clothes, sat outside for a little while, cleaned all the crumbs out of the kitchen, got dressed and about 7:30 a.m. I looked at my phone and had a message from my uncle’s stepdaughter at 4:45 a.m. saying “Are you awake?” That’s never good! I called her and she was crying. She and a friend had gone back to Lake Charles to see her house and my uncle’s house. It’s bad and she was very distraught, as most people would be. We talked about it, talked about what I could do to help them, came up with somewhat of a plan. I think she felt better . . though I’m surely not much help.

I called my parents today. Dad has seen pictures of their house and they’ve lost some shingles but it doesn’t look terrible – especially considering how so many places look there. They’re going back tomorrow to clean out their freezers, then they’ve rented a place a couple of hours away, along with my niece and her family, and they’ll all go there and stay til water and power are restored in their area.

The Keys:

We took both sets of car keys to MO. We put them both where we keep keys. This morning as we were getting ready to leave, Vince backed the car out of the garage, locked up everything but the front door and we were ready to go. I went out, we locked the front door and left. About halfway home, I said “Did you get both sets of car keys?” Nope! Just one. No big deal til about an hour later Vince happened to think that we only have a house key on one set of car keys. We rarely lock the deadbolts on the house, unless we’re going out of town. We should have house keys on all sets of car keys but we don’t. When we stopped, he looked at the keys. There was a key to Chad’s house, a key to the MO house and one more key that Vince didn’t think was the key to the Texas house. My suggestion: Sleep in the sewing room. It’s air conditioned. Load the car up with fabric and yarn, which is in the sewing room, drive back to MO tomorrow, drop off all the stuff, get the other set of car keys and go back to Texas. Vince decided he’d call a locksmith if he had to but he was not going back to MO tomorrow. The rest of the way home, that was weighing on me . . could we get into the house when we got home? Could you imagine driving 10 hours, getting home with it being 108 degrees and not being able to get in the house? Lucky for us, the key on that key ring did open the house and I promptly found another house key and put it where we won’t have to worry again!

A Text:

I knew Chad was on his way from around New Orleans to Lake Charles. Then I get a text from him . . “We’ve been rear-ended by an 18 wheeler!” My response, of course, was “Is anyone hurt?” No. Apparently the 18 wheeler almost stopped before hitting them. Chad was in a pretty big truck and it wasn’t even damaged but the 18 wheeler was damaged, according to Chad. Everyone was fine. They were on their way after a while.

Texas:

We got back to Texas. It was 108 degrees and the heat index must have been at least 115. It was so miserable. The grass is so dead. Vince said “That brown isn’t dead grass . . it’s dirt . . the grass is gone.” It’s miserable. We sat down to eat dinner. Vince said “Why are we still here?” We’ve given up our dreams of making a life here and it’s time to put the pedal to the metal and get things packed and finish up here.

It didn’t help that we left things in a huge mess here .. trying to go through things and get stuff packed that we wanted to take this last trip, we had stuff everywhere. It’s a whole lot easier to throw things out when you come in to that mess.

We have a lot to do and we need to work hard to get it done! Wish us luck.