What a Difference a Week Can Make

My husband Glen had a week’s vacation last week. For seven days we let the fur fly around here. (He’s much better at fur flying than I am, but don’t tell him I admitted that. Smile)

You wouldn’t think one week could make such a difference, but boy did it. The big oak tree that crushed our shed and just about every plant in our back yard, is all gone now. Well, there’s some huge hunks of it left back there, but it’s in hunks now….instead of one big tree. The crushed shed is gone, the limbs are gone, things are raked up and although a lot of the plants look worse for the wear, I know most of them will look better next year.

Inside, we finished moving things around and got a lot of the sheetrock tore out. We also got our new hot water heater in and it works great. We even have DirectTV now. We ordered it but they never showed up to install it. Fussing did nothing, so finally my husband, handsome jack-of-all-trades that he is, decided to give it a go and install it himself. He did it! So now we have channels again, lots of them. I can watch all kinds of things. (Smile) Our cable company says it is going to fix things here and come back, but I’m not so sure. I haven’t seen one of their trucks out fixing anything, and their office here is still shut down and boarded up.

We lost a number of businesses thanks to Katrina. Some were looted, some just threw in the towel, and some had already been on the edge, and such a long time of being shut down just gave them a final push. We lost a neat little corner Mexican place where we liked to grab a quick bite, our ACE Hardware, a gas station, and other places, including our theater, which was the only show we had here….it was also the only place for teens to even go out together at. It seems our local newspaper is hanging on, and is now delivering three times a week.

Sadly we have lost another person in town too. A man who worked with my husband died last week….doing the same thing my husband had to do….cleaning up a damaged tree from his yard. We have one huge oak left to saw up, but thankfully this one is flat on the ground instead of leaning against anything.

Hopefully the newest storm, Wilma, won’t have anything to help her get stronger and maybe she’ll fade away and then there won’t be any more to worry about this year.