I've been able to track down and talk to more of my friends from the Gulf Coast this week. Ironically, one of them ended up in Dallas and was there at the same time I was in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, but neither of us knew it.
I finally started feeling like myself again this past Thursday, which coincidentally was the one-month anniversary of Katrina's landfall. It helped that the friend I'm staying with went out of town for several days this week, so I was able to be alone for the first time in a month. I've been reading and listening to music all week, and it has been wonderful. I found a good massage therapist here and also someone else who does "therapeutic touch", and that has helped, too. Still looking for an appropriate counselor.
Since it will start to get cooler here soon (I hope!! October is my favorite time of year here), I need to go clothes shopping this week ... to buy some jeans and sweaters. The only clothes I had time to take when I evacuated were a few T-shirts, 2 pairs of shorts - one of which I was wearing, and the tennis shoes I had on. Last weekend I bought some new shoes. The little things we take for granted! I'm having to replace them all: hair dryer (that was the very first thing I bought after I evacuated), nail files, safety pins, pens to write with ... .
Not to mention my passport, birth certificate, court documents evidencing my legal name change that I did several years ago, check registers, tax documents -- which are all back in my house in Bay St. Louis, which flooded when the storm surge "tsunami" came through.
I made my FEMA application a couple of weeks ago, and within 2 days, they deposited some money - the $2000 they were giving everyone affected - into my checking account. This week, I got another letter from them, saying they had deposited some more funds into my account, for rental assistance. I went online to check my bank account, and sure enough, there it was. After paying taxes all these years, it's nice to see a little bit of it coming back to me. A hard way to do it, though. It was an odd feeling, seeing my name on a letter discussing disaster assistance; for the record, Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is officially Disaster No. 1604. Even though the initial shock is passing, the incomprehensibility of the thing is still there.
I am planning on going back to check on my house soon, probably next weekend. I have a feeling that it is a going to be a mess. When rising water gets to a certain level, everything starts to float ... refrigerators, furniture, things inside cabinets ... stuff goes everywhere. Plus, my landlord says there is a layer of mud inside my house.
A friend of mine was able to salvage and clean up her CDs, so I am very hopeful that I will be able to save a lot of my music CD collection. In anticipation of that, I went to Office Depot today and bought a bunch of jewel cases to put the CDs in once I get them cleaned up. I expect that most of my books got wet and are ruined (sigh), but I hope that I can salvage some of my jewelry, since that can be cleaned. Beyond that, I don't know. Maybe my collection of coffee mugs, some of my crocheting supplies ... depends on how high the water got. People are telling me that the oddest things made it through OK - one friend whose house was totally destroyed found some Lladro pieces intact in the rubble.
In any event, I am ready to get closure on this. I need to know what I have and what I don't, and see the town for myself, in person. Kind of like seeing the body at a wake after someone dies, so you can grieve, accept, and move on.
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