After Rita's Landfall

Although we were without electrical power for a couple hours yesterday afternoon, things were normal by the time we went to bed. We had some cool winds but very little rain. This morning we see no damage from the windows of our apartment. Thankfully, we still have air conditioning, cable, etc. I would post photos, but the only cameras we have are our cell phones and the video camera (for which we cannot find the owner's manual. Gotta get a new one online.) Such photos would be rather unimpressive, anyway.

The dogs have handled Rita well. I think they were more disturbed by the reappearance of our suitcases than by any phenomena directly related to the storm. There was no thunder, and any other outside noise was masked by the loud air conditioners of the apartment complex. Elliot seems to be curious about the state of our tiny fenced yard, and asks to go outside frequently. I raised Jesse's phenobarbital dose slightly in an effort to reduce her anxiety and neediness, but the only measurable effect was to make her occasionally unsteady on her feet. Given that her only goal in life is to lean against her family, a little ataxia doesn't slow her down.

We definitely made the right decision by not evacuating further. Although we have not heard damage reports from Hot Springs where our reservations were, our apartment complex is probably in better shape than the area to which we would have gone. I said earlier that I did not want to settle in a city where a hurricane could occur, but at this point I am not entirely ready to rule out Houston. Of course, any home that we buy here would have to be well-elevated, made of bricks, and boast storm windows. I don't know that we will be able to find such a house inside the Loop with sufficient dog space, that we can afford. And if Houston's health care economy takes an inordinate amount of time to bounce back from this hurricane season, then all bets on Houston are off.

So now we wait for normalcy to return to Houston, and for the roads to Metairie to be cleared. The 'Net says that I-10 is closed at Winnie, TX so there's no way to get back east to Metairie, even to visit. We'll certainly be able to donate some food to the local food bank, from the odd mix of foods that Joel bought two days ago.

Still In Houston After All

We are sitting here in Houston waiting for the storm (Joel went shopping and decided NOT to evacute). I'm trying to talk Joel into letting ME be the one to drive to Metairie eventually, since a) he is at his wit's end, b) he gets along better with Katie, and c) it'll be easier for me to enlist assistance in collecting our irreplaceables into the van. He doesn't want to talk about it yet.

It's hard not to pray for the continuation of our electricity and other utilities over the next few days. I hope that all that stuff stays intact for y'all in Jefferson Parish as the rest of the Ninth Ward floats away.

We may break out our new video camera today and try to video the apartment complex before and after the hurricane. We might also visit the local park for the first time.

Someone on the Houston Freecycle email list suggested that for those of us in apartments, it will be possible to use the complex's swimming pool as a source of water for toilet flushing, rather than dipping into our bathtub supply. I hope that it does not come to that, but it's great to have access to useful advice.

And Now... Rita!

Thursday:

We are packing to leave our new Houston apartment. Joel says, "I just can't do this anymore" but we don't have any bottled water, or candles or canned food, and we DO have full gas tanks and reservations (now)in Hot Springs, AR. The TV news folks are showing that traffic heading north out of Houston is moving at no more than a crawl. There are stories of folks' running out of gas, their cars' overheating, or having been on the road fifteen hours or more already. The current temp is 93, (heat index 100) as of 11:30 a.m.

They have just begun the process of closing down the entry of south-going traffic onto the Houston freeways, so we hope the contraflow lanes will open soon. Remembering last year, I plan to pack a makeshift urinal. Katie and Joel will be taking the ice chest, so I hope I can find some appropriate water containers for water for the dogs.

I keep my sanity by reminding myself that I don't have to deal with it all at once. I'm not driving yet, I'm not stuck in traffic, I'm not lost--at this point, I am still in the air conditioning and I just have to straighten out the apartment, pack, and sign out online (we don't think we'll have in-room Internet access in Hot Springs.)

It's hard to believe that the wonderful people who gave so much of themselves in welcoming us to Angleton and West Columbia are now themselves evacuees just as we are. I wish we were back in Metairie, taking our chances on the levees' staying intact. But wishing won't make it so. We have no choice but to tough it out. I'll check in when I can.

Wednesday:

They say that, given where we are in town (inside the loop on the SW side), we are probably okay unless it's a Category 4 or above. Even a 4 would present more of a challenge to comfort by virtue of its lack of A/C than rather than a challenge to survival. We are banking a lot on the advice of our new best local friends, who have lived here for years. I'd been thinking I wanted to settle here, but if it reaches hurricane intensity here in Houston, I think I want to move to Albuquerque! (Joel refuses to consider it yet.)

As someone said a few weeks ago, if this were a made-for-TV movie, it'd be rejected for its lack of realism. At least we made enough contacts here to refill all our prescriptions. And if we need to move, it'll be easy to know what to pack. Ugh, if we have to leave Houston, the closest available pet-friendly motel room is in Midland--an eight-hour drive! Joel and Katie couldn't even find bottled water today. Tomorrow morning Joel has another appointment for his kidney stones, so it'll fall to me to continue the hunt for water and other supplies. I'm not panicking yet.

Post-Katrina Adjustment

We are in agreement that we want eventually to move out of the New Orleans-Metairie area in order to avoid further exposure to hurricane risk, but even if we were to move soon to a new city, obviously someone needs to go back to confirm the state of our house and/or to prepare the house for moving. As San Diego friends pointed out, "KTLA news... reported that New Orleans is going to be a 'sellers market' -- Apparently, real estate investors are going to want to buy just about anything before New Orleans is rebuilt -- They predict that the people who are going to help rebuild New Orleans as well as the business people who plan to return to New Orleans will need places to live." We could even put up a For Sale sign that reads "NEVER FLOODED".

In the meantime, Houston makes sense for a while. I've all but given up on moving to California, as we haven't found any jobs possibilities there. One of Katie's doctors has also relocated to Houston, and in the past he has been an excellent source of relatively lucrative testing referrals for Joel. He and Joel spoke yesterday about the possibility of establishing a practice here in Houston, and after some thought, it is my first choice. After all, we are familiar with the weather, have the requisite wardrobes, and it's a big city with lots of resources not that unlike big-city SoCal. It has a distinctive Hispanic accent in places (I studied Spanish as a kid growing up in San Diego and I LOVE to flex my foreign-language muscles), and truly first-rate health care. They say that housing is relatively affordable (not that one would know it in THIS neighborhood, which looks like Westwood) so presumably we could get a decent house with a nice, big, doggy yard.

The other day when we were at PetWorld (yes, a pseudonym) having new dog tags made, I saw a sign up soliciting applications for a part-time animal trainer. They train the trainers to do it THEIR way, but my related psych and animal experience would probably boost my salary up to a whopping $9/hour. It's crazy to choose this over a psychologist's position, but I think this would be excellent experience if I chose to get into pet behavioral consulting someday, which is something I've toyed with for a long time. I've also been given the name of someone who runs an assisted living conglomerate, but I like the idea of PetWorld better than psych! I think it says loads about my personal and professional insecurity that I would choose a part-time animal training position over the career for which I trained for so many years, but it's scary trying to present myself as a geropsychologist since I've been out of practice for 4 years. I can also justify it by pointing out that PetWorld is a big chain that would likely be present wherever we may relocate, and it would be great to get employee benefits, even part-time ones, while Joel is more dependent upon market forces in private practice.

Last week we received the most amazing news: our house appears to have been spared any flooding or any structural damage, at least as visible from outside the apparently-still-intact fence. A friend of mine had just moved home to his also-unscathed house, and he sent out an offer to friends to check out any places in the area at their request. He said that our house and property appeared to need a good sweeping, but that, from what he could see, we had only one tree damaged, and it did not appear to have hurt our house. Val was able to look into our TV room from the carport window, which was the room that we had thought most likely to sustain damage through its large glass sliding door and doggie door. Even the TV room looks normal from his vantage point. He could not see any roof damage from the ground in the front yard.

This news is so overwhelming that we don't know what we are going to do. To my surprise, Katie actually cried with sadness when she heard that the house was intact! Yesterday she said she did NOT want to return to Metairie, but this morning she wishes she could continue at both schools (and once the workload rises, of course, she'll wish she could attend neither!)

Oh, a wonderful source of comfort has been unearthed: we were recommended a good, funky grocery store and I went there two nights ago for the first time. I love the concept of organic food, but Joel and I just aren't a Whole Foods family. I went to Fiesta, and stocked up on my favorite tortillas brand and all the frozen entrees that we love. They didn't have my beloved Community Coffee iced tea, but they had Diet Lipton with lemon in 16-oz bottles which really soothed my soul, after my trying to drink Diet Coke nonstop for a week. The store was full of Hispanic men, which I liked, and I saw a guy dressed in denim and leather with a tiara. I took it as a positive omen.

Hurricane Katrina Evacuation

Dear Friends and Family:

We evacuated from Metairie two days before Katrina hit the New Orleans area, so we not only missed the storm, but we drove in the contraflow lanes, so the traffic wasn't bad. We spent the first night in Alexandria, and then moved on to a little town between Houston & Galveston called West Columbia. (Much better than Alexandria, as our motel room was a downstairs room, which helped a lot with the many potty walks.) The locals treated us like royalty, giving us gift bags, free meals 3 times a day, and info on food stamps, unemployment, etc. A retired physician came by the motel and saw any refugees for free, writing prescriptions and all. A vet checked one of the dogs for free and gave me 4 pigs' ears for them. Local churches combined with the Chamber of Commerce gave us $50 WalMart gift cards, and the Academy Sporting Goods at the mall in the next town offered each of us three full outfits of our choice from their house brand, plus socks and shoes (very much appreciated by the many refugees who packed only a few changes of clothing.) It is inspiring to witness--not to mention, be the target of--such sincere hospitality and generosity.

Actually, we are so far west of Orleans Parish that we expect little or no flooding. What WILL be an issue is wind damage: we have gone through so many false alarms that, in our disgust and fatigue, we left our Macintosh computers (all but one laptop) and all our irreplaceable photos and other things (like all my computer backups!) at home. What's more, we did NOT board up the windows because Joel’s recuperation from his October car wreck was interrupted this summer by his first-ever horrible siege of kidney stones. (Hmmm...if trouble comes in threes, maybe the hurricane fills our quota!) We are hopeful: three blocks away from our house, a friend reports that her "unboarded" neighbors had no broken windows.

Whether or not we stay in the Deep South hinges on the state of the Metairie house. There is very little likelihood of either of us getting any regular work for the next 9-12 months or so, given the crumbled infrastructure of the NOLA area, although there is still hope that Jefferson Parish might want Joel to help with the assessment of traumatized deputies. We tentatively decided to stay close to NOLA and take our time about dealing with the house. Houston makes sense for a while.

Joel and I have been sending out feelers for jobs in California and elsewhere, and exploring the housing markets in various places, via the online assistance of knowledgeable friends. We have full insurance coverage and were almost hoping that the house would be damaged enough that we would be forced to move. The website for the state of CA listed some lucrative psych jobs in state hospitals and corrections. We're lucky that Joel never let his CA psychology license lapse, so he'd be able to work right away. I wish the new state hospital in Coalinga were built already; we could both probably find work there, near Fresno. Not that I would want to stay in that part of the state indefinitely, but it'd be a start.

God, do I want to be back in a blue state! Joel’s parents, sister, and son are all in the Los Angeles, but I dream of some outlying, unknown part of San Diego. Joel also favors San Diego, because of the high cost and poor schools of L.A. He has strong professional contacts in L.A.. I asked San Diego and other CA friends what neighborhoods might be most affordable. Sadly, it seems like the only folks who can go to CA are those who were flown there from the Superdome. (No, I'm not resentful toward them, but I hate to think how they'll cope with the high cost of living.) Prices everywhere are astronomically high. Ventura County sounds nice as does Long Beach, but again, a real stretch.

Watching the news is quite surreal. Everyone I know from Louisiana that I've managed to reach has been okay—even a friend who had relocated to beachfront Biloxi! But still, most cell phone service was pretty iffy, so we've been depending on the TX land lines or this one Windows laptop computer to keep in touch with our friends. It's hard to believe that there is a possibility we'll never see a lot of those folks again. The violence and looting were, sadly, NOT surprising to us. As I said when General Honore arrived, “Laissez les caissons roulez!”

Meanwhile we've been monitoring reports of storm damage in our neighborhood as best as we can without having gone there in person yet. They say a woman shouldn't go alone to drive into Jefferson Parish, and that the roads are not necessarily clear close to our homes. Especially since Joel is still suffering from his kidney stones, it's hard to imagine sending him in there singlehandedly. We have a kids' red wagon for transporting small, heavy items, but we would have a LOT to pack. It sounds like upholstered furniture and any floor-lying appliances exposed to the flood waters require outright replacement.

We found a 2+2 apartment in central Houston near all the hospitals, and took a lease of at least 4 months. Rumor has it that there is a multi-week lag before any rental place can deliver furniture, so we are getting a lot of stuff from the Dollar Store, WalMart and Target. We were lucky to find a dog-friendly place with washer/dryer that was unusually lenient (usually they allow only two dogs) and had an available unit with a tiny fenced yard. It comes with utilities and two swimming pools plus a Jacuzzi.) I may look for work in some mindless job close to the apartment, or volunteer at the Astrodome, as I'm not licensed here. Joel is looking for REAL WORK, in part through the local Jewish Federation and in part through a website for Displaced Psychologists. He and Katie are driving around, aided by our GPS, while I babysit the dogs, who still can’t be trusted not to destroy the apartment or to attempt to escape.

We enrolled Katie in Beren Academy, one of the Jewish day schools in Houston. They're offering free tuition, since we already paid in New Orleans. She used to be in a class of six kids; now there are 25! Monday she starts school. Katie now has to wear a below-the-knee skirt every day, and no t-shirts are allowed if they have writing on them. Today we got a call from the mother of one of her new classmates, inviting her over for a playdate Sunday. Such kindness is touching.

We changed our cell phones a week out of Metairie, because New Orleans-exchange phones were not working. We'll keep these numbers indefinitely. We signed up for a land line at the apartment only because it was the only way we could get Internet access. I don’t know our new number yet.

Supposedly Cox Communications is continuing to supply on-line access as best they can, but not charging NOLA customers. I think that I should be able to continue using my previous cox.net email address, even if we use a different service for our connection.

Sorry I don't have time to write individual letters today: the three of us are still competing for this one laptop. Thanks for all your support, warm wishes, and prayers.

And please help those who didn't fare as well we did during this tragedy. The Charity Navigator site is a good one to help you compare the efficiency of various charitable organizations.

Love,
Gloria, Joel, Katie,
4 dogs: Elliot, Simcha, Jesse, Boogie
4 birds: Solomon, Elissa, Elana, and Tweety