PS Hurricane Ike: I will stop whining now

Fortunately, we (here in Baton Rouge) did not get hit with Hurricane Ike, although they dismissed LSU and the LSU Laboratory School at noon last Friday because of weather prognostications that never really materialized. However, look at the ruination at Galveston. Here is an aerial view of Crystal Beach, Texas where a friend's family's beach house once stood (you have got to wonder why that one house with the blue roof was spared). Compared to this, our mass of tree tangled, power line wrangled houses don't look so devastated.

Before and After Pictures of Grammy's Garden

By the UK's Nina Clough of "artquirk"

I wanted to post the dazzling original work of art that we commissioned from the talented "artquirk" (aka nina clough) of the courtyard between our house and my mother's addition.

We call it Grammy's Garden.

It has been a place of refuge, solace and beauty, that unfortunately needs a bit of rehabilitating after the hurricane (see the after picture in said garden of the loss of our crepe myrtle-- humble little trees that softly fall over, without damaging your fence even).

The Trees that got Caught in the Power Lines that got Caught in the House that Jacque Built

The tape makes it look like a crime scene... We did have 25 deaths in Louisiana from this storm

On Thursday the power magically came on and we got internet and cable last night. As a result thereof, I am feeling a bit giddy. Like I'm living in the 1st World again.

(Okay. I know that the power did not come back on by magic. I truly appreciate the linemen and women that worked around the clock from a myriad of states to make this happen. Now I can understand the romanticism behind the popularity of the Glen Campbell hit the Wichita Lineman.)

Due to the switch from air conditioned environments (work, my mother's addition) to those without (our house and everywhere else) I have a gross cold. My lungs feel like they're growing the same mold that's creeping along the floorboards of my house and nestled in my bedsheets, which I have to launder today (note to self) so that I don't get full-fledged pneumonia.

I'm posting some pictures of our neighborhood so that I can preserve, for all posterity (mostly my family, let's be realistic) the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav (the under recorded hurricane of the century for Baton Rouge).

First, here are some typical pictures of the roads in many of our subdivisions, the day after Gustav (photo credits in this post go to Daniel Vlosky).

The intelligentsia will notice the power lines tangled in the trees and ask, "Why do they have above-ground power lines in South Louisiana?"

Okay. I'm not the only genius that is asking this question. So is our governor, mayor and my next door neighbor (still without power-- there's no comfort for him in the explanation that he's on another electrical grid...)


Here are the houses that got in the way of the trees that are entangled in the power lines.

You can see what 90 mile an hour winds can do. Just imagine the wrath of Category 2 or more

Seven days after the Storm: Our House Stinks

Daniel and I at the window... waiting

We are now one week and counting after Hurricane Gustav, and still without power in 40% of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.

Specifically, we are without power in our house, which of course is the most important place power should be revived. To me at least. Not to say that I don't think hospitals, nursing homes and nurseries (the young-children-kind) shouldn't be brought on-line first. I do. They were.

To elaborate just a little bit on my discomfort: this means that the house is 80+ degrees, even at night, even with the windows open, even though the weather has been mercifully mild for this time of year.

For those of you that don't live in the Deep South, it is the humidity that is the problem more than the heat. To be technical, it's the humidity PLUS the heat. Considering the conditions at my house, it might as well be raining (inside).

When I called Entergy (my electrical company) several days ago they said I would get power between "now and September 24th."

Not very encouraging.

Then, yesterday I got an Entergy bill for $490.

Rich's Photograph: Ode to the Power Lines

I'll call them and complain when I have presence of mind to do so. At least our trusty land-line works, even though it is too expensive, and we never use it (except after a hurricane).

I can't sleep (which I guess makes me cranky), but, I am concerned about mold invading our home. Concerned about the survivability of our electronic equipment. Concerned about our safety (our security system does not work and I'm sleeping naked with all of the windows and curtains wide open. The truth is that at 50 years old, this probably isn't very enticing to the would be robbers out there, which is probably a plus security-wise).


My security company tells me that their generators work for 18 hours without electricity, and after that we get "no protection." Nada. I told them that "we were counting on them to safeguard us, and that a security-black-out 18-hours post-power-outage wasn't very comforting." The person on the phone told me she'd, "pass that onto the brass."

Now I feel bad for being ugly (a South Louisianaism) as Rich tells me that we'd need a battery the size of a room to keep our house's security system running, which I guess isn't very feasible (as I look around for the room in which to place said gynormous battery).

Mostly, the house stinks, which, my friend Elizabeth says, "is depressing."

Rich cleaned out our moldy, gross, and smelly refrigerator yesterday. I keep up with the dish washing so that our sink doesn't turn into a science project. And our dirty clothes are in black plastic garbage bags, tied up, to reduce the smell. However, underwear is a problem. Um, mostly quantity-wise.

What I mean by that is: I need more of it: underwear that is.

I think this might be even more important than other necessities, like generators. I could probably make a good portion of our retirement money by selling underwear on a street corner. I have taken to wearing Rich's colored briefs.


They are cotton and very comfy (and absorbent) although they don't fit very nicely under my pants. So my mid section looks sort of bumpy, which is actually better than looking fat now that I think about it.

------------ No good segue to go here--------------

Actually, I'm pretty sure that The Smell in the house comes from the dampness.

Our bedclothes are damp. The carpet is damp. We are damp. Showers don't help much because minutes after an even cold shower you are right back to where you started from.

Funny thing is: we have hot water if we actually wanted to take a hot shower. Which we don't. Theoretically, the hot water would be good for instant coffee, except that I pulled some slimy thing out of my faucet two days ago, which has pretty much taken away my interest in hot stimulant type drinks, let alone any other type of food.

The good news is that I think I'm losing weight.

My hair is a wild mess (no blow dryer). I was liberated years ago from 'the blow dryer' (I was in my prime in the 70s and 80s) by my travels to Sri Lanka and India, where we stayed "off the grid" for quite a bit of time, which means that there was no electricity, at least in a form that we could tap into. But, before that trip I went to my stylist and he cut my hair so that it could just "go wild," but look sort of "in place" and "very hip." At this point, it is not only not attractive/hip/in-place, it is scary looking.

Actually, I think part of looking "very hip" may have been my age, which at that point was not quite 40. At 50 this isn't a good look.

My hair needs a myriad of things done to it. I think I'll call today and find a hairdresser that actually has power and my color of blond.

I'll post pictures of the post-Gustav destruction after Rich finishes posting them to flickr. It's hard to appreciate the devastation without seeing it.

Denese

The high strung Vloskys: The night before the storm

Well it's almost 9:00 pm and we're as ready as we can be for Hurricane Gustav. We have moved probably 100 of my mother's pots from our common courtyard, and all of her vegetable containers and bird feeders from the back yard of her house. We have enough food and several interior rooms padded with sleeping bags and pillows just in case there is tornadic activity.

We are not a family that does well under stress. Already today I've had a significant fight with my son Daniel. He is on edge as am I, and our dog, Georgie, ate his wallet, at which point he went ballistic, and he scared poor Georgie to death. To try to assuage his anger, I bought him another wallet from Amazon.com (I'm sure this is very poor parenting). There was a moment when he and Brandi and Kellan were going to leave for Arkansas, but Rich convinced them to stay.

It's one of those times when your child is freaking out and overreacting about everything, and you must look at yourself and say, "he got that from me.... and it's not pretty."

The mirror that is your children is humbling.

Then there was my 87 year old mother, who wanted us to dig out her bird feeders from our shed, plus the stands (spear-like wroght-iron stands that are shoved into the ground that hold her multitudes of feeders), so that her birds could be fed up until the last minute. I told her,

"put the feed on the ground."

To which she replied, "but they won't know where it is?!"

I keep saying, "but they're birds!" "You are doing them a disservice keeping them here. They should be flying inland."

She is mostly worried about her "hummers" that she says are flitting around in our courtyard looking for their food.

You know, I always say, "people are more important than things." That is related to my current saying which is, "your family is more important than hummers."

While Rich and I went to the local bar to get take-out dinner, she left the house in her car, clipping two other vehicles on her way out (okay so I exaggerate, everyone knows that) to get more bird feed. We ordered all sorts of heart attack prone foods from George's (our local bar/eatery) to bring home to family members.

Why are we eating stuff that we ordinarily wouldn't ever touch?

I'll have to go on some sort of major diet and exercise program when this is all over and I'm glad to be alive. (I can hear my kids laughing as they read this. Of course Rich is thinking this isn't so funny).

We've already had a tornado warning (not watch) and we deliberated on whether or not to dive into our little sheltered rooms. Thankfully, it dissipated quickly.

Brandi looks so worn out (probably because her family is from N.O.and she is having flashbacks from Katrina, or maybe because she's just exhausted from being around us).

Brandi: hiding from Rich's camera (or when a 3,700 sq. ft. house feels too small)

James, on the other hand is non plussed and playing X-Box or games on his computer. It's funny how different people react differently.

James: oblivious

The t.v. is flickering out.... So, I'll sign off. We're supposed to be getting the first bands from the storm shortly, with the full-on effects by early morning.

Denese

Hurricane Gustav: Deja vu all over again

The Pete Maravich Center being staged for triage and critical care for Gustav
Photo: Leah Courville

I live in Baton Rouge, LA and work at Louisiana State University, in the School of Social Work, in their Office of Social Service Research and Development, OSSRD. My parking lot is between the back of the Huey P. Long Fieldhouse, in which our school resides and the Pete Maravich Center, which is our famed basketball arena. The director of our school (poor guy arrived here from Colorado about a year ago) and the director of our research group (at least she's from Louisiana) put out a call today for volunteers to go to the PMAC, as it is called, and unload medical supplies.

So, we filed out our back door and into the main arena and I struggled opening and assembling cots and breaking boxes for awhile. We really weren't needed. There are more than enough volunteers, for now. However, we will be needed later when and if Hurricane Gustav or Hannah develop into major storms that track right at our part of the Gulf Coast.

We have all been through this before, volunteering numerous hours at that same facility in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. It was the staging area for the critically ill, and I worked as a geriatric social worker of sorts (my training is in gerontology). Our oldest son, then a high school student, helped triage patients and actually ran that center for awhile.

What struck me was how apprehensive and anxiety ridden I felt just being back in that building. I had...Nervous energy. I was...talking too fast. Talking too loud. Laughing inappropriately. I remember telling someone that so much was going on that I felt the top of my head was going to blow off (well, to be fair some of that was from the McCain VP pick). Suddenly, I was compelled, again, to tell everyone I met our experiences in 2005 (Extreme jerkishness alert. At the very least it was histrionic, which isn't a good trait to be exhibiting when you work with a bunch of clinical social workers).

The rest of the day has been spent fielding emails from family and friends, and friends of friends who need a place to stay as they evacuate from Florida and SE Louisiana. Mom and I shopped last night for hurricane food (non perishables, or canned and dry things). Rich bought the last of the water available at some Super K Mart in Northern Louisiana yesterday on his way back from a forestry association meeting. I might be getting some bug, so I called my doctor for meds, just in case I couldn't get a hold of a medical practitioner in the next 4 days. LSU is now closed until Wednesday. My son, his girlfriend and my grandson are evacuating from 40 miles to our east,

"bring the Wii," we said.

My 87 year old mother just ran out the door to get her hair done, as her beautician won't be into work tomorrow for her regularly scheduled wash and blow dry (why hasn't she learned how to do her own hair in all these years? What girl doesn't know how to do their own hair? And why does she need her hair done before a hurricane?)..

Rich is fixated on the lawn and vacuuming the house (vacuuming the house?)...

I need to go and buy some booze, and clear out our pantry under our stair well (we'll use it as a one of our tornado shelters).