Catching up...

So much to say, so little energy left.

The last three weeks have been a blur. There was a week of watch and see what's going to happen before the hurricane. Then the hurricane. What an experience I could have lived without! Then there's the week of life after the hurricane. No power, no stores open, no normal life. Then, there was this week. Thankfully our power was restored, even though we've had a few scares with it since then.

My folks got their power back too. I'm still amazed since they had a tree fall on the power line. The line didn't break until they started trimming the tree. We honestly figured, that would delay the fix even longer. I guess the dangling wires caused the power company to put them to the top of the list because they got power.

My in-laws, serious AC addicts, are still without. So are over 400K people. It is amazing to me that it has taken so long, that the energy company has had such a difficult time predicting how long the wait will be and that so many are still without. Some people are being told mid-October before their power is restored. The power company claims crews are working 24 hours. However, for two days now, at around 7 PM we see the trucks streaming out of town in route back to their command center. We have yet to see any crews working past dark.

I understand the hardest hit areas -- areas that were evacuated, but everyone I know on the coast had their power restored within days of the storm. Many, many people right around me waited for over a week.

Electricity is such a luxury in life, it's a shame we are all so dependent on it. Our homes simply are not built to be in the dark. My grandparents home in the country, it was built so that the windows catch breezes that can completely go through the house. Not so here in town.

Somewhere I have pictures from things we saw. Like the birds, including a beautiful little hawk, the morning after the storm. The wind would still gust and the birds knew they could not fly. I do not know where all of the little animals hid, but I was thankful to see squirrels and birds in our yard after the storm.

Then there's Galveston. The island. There's a few very realistic people, they knew the chance they took having homes out there. It's still very sad to me, to see that they have lost everything, they have no where to live and only the belongings they took with them. I am certain as days go by and they allow more residents to return, they will find more bodies. There were people who had stayed for other storms and they took a chance again. This one was just too much. Sad, sad, sad.

We have yet to finish our clean up. Our evenings had been filled with hunting fuel to keep the generators running. We had to have the generators to keep the business going.

Business. So many small business still do not have power, they still cannot operate. People in the retail and restaurant business who could not work for more than a week, they simply did not get paid. Unemployment has shot up, of course.

I am eager to watch the rebuilding process, here and in Galveston. Hopefully we'll be able to dodge another one for 25 years. (It had been 25 since Alicia, a big one that happened when we were little.)