Has It Been NINE YEARS???

In April of 2005 my darling BooBooKitty (below is his breeder's contact sheet on him)

was born and since we were going to Sturgis at the beginning of  August, I asked the breeder if I could pick him up after we returned.  And I did, and about two weeks later Katrina made landfall.  Little BooBooKitty got to spend two weeks of his young life in a house with no running water, no electricity, no air conditioning, a Chihuahua who wanted nothing to do with him, and a motley crew of my husband's friends, one of whom went climbing around the downed trees buck nekkid (don't ask me why because I have NO IDEA why) and then asked me to take pictures of her perched up on one of them wrapped in the Confederate flag.  Which of course meant that our African American neighbor, who was busy supplying the neighborhood with water from his well, got an eyeful of THAT.  Yuck. 

New Orleans will be ringing bells commemorating the deaths of so many citizens next Friday, August 29.  While so much has been rebuilt, there is so much that's GONE.  Nine years later, people still will be in conversation about something and then say, "But I lost that in the storm."  We don't really say Katrina any longer, it's just "the storm".  A storm that we pray to everything sacred never EVER happens again.

The little coastal towns of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, MS (to my south about 45 miles) literally got wiped off the face of the earth when the giant wall of water hit it.  There were many beautiful homes along the beach road, big expensive homes, and the photo below shows what Katrina left behind.  Note that the pic was taken nearly 4 years after the storm and unfortunately most of the homes still haven't been rebuilt, due to a variety of reasons: lack of flood insurance (still a sore point), no desire to return, etc.

We were lucky, everything considered, especially since our house was surrounded by giant trees and nearly half of them came down.  This is our front porch.  Note the flags--Rainbow, American and Confederate.  I hung the Rainbow flag up as a counterpoint to that damn  Confederate flag (which is NOT mine--the nekkid girl and her boyfriend brought it).  

The back porch was also just missed.  The gentleman on the left, my husband's best friend Painter Mike, passed away about three years ago.  That's the nekkid girl and her boyfriend, Nate.  Nate and his wife (not the nekkid girl) were nearly killed a year ago in a car wreck and both of them are still recovering.   

Whew.  A lot has happened since the storm.  As I write, there is something swirling around in the Atlantic and since we haven't had anything even remotely threatening so far this year all the weatherpeople are starting to try to stir things up.  Fortunately there are a few that don't get hysterical when they see the word "Invest" and they are saying that this thing is 99% certain to stay away from the Gulf.  I don't wish anything on the East Coast, but this is really the WRONG time of the year for a hurricane to come at us!

But if it comes, it comes.  At least we know how to handle that s**t down here.

Have a lovely Friday.  I think I'm going to do a bit of treasure hunting today, and hope that you find some treasures, too!

PS--finally found out what was on the gazillion portable drive thingies that I have so am now able to have a proper sized banner.