Thursday, September 15, 2005

Katrina, and more

It seems that bad things are just going to keep happening to us....my family. Tonight my youngest son-in-law took a friend of his from work out for supper. He called my daughter and told her that his friend was upset and needed to talk. When he came in, he told us that his friend is being laid-off........or as the British say, he is being made redundant. Then, my son-in-law told us that he also might be losing his position. The New Orleans branch of the law firm he works for is of course closed. All the partners and senior associates from that office are now at the Baton Rouge office. This means that quite a few of the Baton Rouge associates will be losing their positions. This comes just after the owner of the townhouse they rent told them they have to be out by the 2nd of October. They were upset at first, but then a partner at my son-in-law's firm told them about a house for sale that they can afford. Now of course, everything is all up in the air. They do not want to buy here if Jamie has no job. Mike has been wanting to move home (Mississippi) and maybe now they will do that. I believe that Jamie can get a position there and work as a legal assistant until he takes the Mississippi Bar in February. Still, this is stressful.

I talked to one of my brothers this morning. He went to my niece's son's funeral yesterday. I was not able to get there, but I did talk with my niece. I am going to try to call tomorrow. My brother, Joe, told me that my oldest brother's (James) house got four feet of water and roof damage. His bakery also was damaged and he may not re-open it. Of course, stubborn James stayed at home instead of leaving for Katrina. His wife (Shirley) said that they sat on the stairs and watched the water rising. She and my brother took turns going downstairs to rescue things. I have no idea what they were able to salvage. They have been staying with my niece, but I do not think they were there when he son killed himself. I am waiting on State Farm to come look at my house. I have been told that it might be as long as three weeks before they get to me. I will be leaving the weekend after next to go to Michigan for the winter and I wanted this all to be resolved before I left. But, Phil is there and can talk to them for me. I have not applied to FEMA, but I am being told that I should. I may.

All this reaffirms my belief that God is in control. I am not sure if I could get through all this if I did not believe this with all my being.

May you all be blessed with God's peace and mercy.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Genetics and......

For some, genetics are a blessing. Inheriting your great-grandmother's beauty or your grandfather's intelligence, for instance. For others, genetics is a bitch.

In my family genetics has not always been kind. We have our mother's mental illness and predilection for suicide married to our father's addictions, plus his own mental illness. For most of us, we fought the addictions and created successful families of our own. Some have not been as blessed. My oldest nephew is an addict. My second oldest nephew is in Parchman, Mississippi's state prison, for assault and rape. His brother just finished a sentence there for assault. My youngest brother's son is an alcoholic. Others have fought mental illness. Thanks be to God, none of my children are addicts.

Last Saturday, both sides of the family tree met up in my oldest niece's youngest son. He called her and told her he loved her, told her that he could no longer live with the drugs and felt that he could not stop. He hung up the phone and shot himself in the head with a shotgun. His funeral is tomorrow.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Names and things etc

Jo wrote that she did not get the tickalock thing. I suppose I did not explain it well enough. See, 'tickalock', is the sound a key makes when it is locking a door. Well, it is when you use your voice to make sound effects. So, tickalock-all-way-round, is the sound the key is making while you lock all your doors.

I used tickalock for awhile when I first came into chats. I started getting unwanted odd emails and pms from screen names like MasterDude, etc. I changed to tica2 then until my son got an AOL admin mad at him one night and cancelled my account. I worked that one out but had to make a new name. So, since I am a cocacola freak, I came up with cocatica. Then, when I came to voice chats, I created ticatoo.

I hope that clears some things up.



My youngest grandson will soon be 18 months old and is so smart! He is learning colors now. He knows wed,buh and lello. He knows so many words that other kids his age don't know or say. He is learning and doing more and more everyday. And, no, I am not exaggerating because he is my grandson.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Names and things.......

Every so often someone will ask about the two screen names that I use.....cocatica and ticatoo. I use ticatoo for Paltalk. People are curious about why I chose these nicks, especially ticatoo. It is a long boring story, but since I am stuck in the room taking care of my sick son, I think I will tell it.

Years ago, when my brother and I were little, we played a form of tag where, if we were away from homebase, we could stop, say 'tickalock' and we would be safe, because our door would be locked. But, if we wanted to be truly safe we had to say 'tickalock-all-way-round', then our front and back doors would be locked.

Years passed and my brother had a falling out with the family and just disappeared. He got a job working at nuclear power plants around the country and traveled a lot, but he made no attempt to get in touch. I was devastated and tried to find him, but had no idea where to start. About twenty years ago, give or take, he called our oldest brother and came to visit. Things began to be sorted out and I was in heaven. Then, our mother did something that was so cruel, I am still stunned by it. My brother was trying to get custody of his youngest son from his ex-wife. And, he needed to. My sister-in-law was so enmeshed in her own mental illness, that she could not take care of the child. The conditions that child lived in was horrendous. My sister-in-law knew that as soon as the child left, she would no longer get the child support. She fought for full custody. Court time came, and my mother was a witness for her, instead of helping my brother help his son. My brother was so hurt and furious that our mother would do that, especially since she had never liked his ex-wife anyway. Plus, my mother knew the sort of living conditions my nephew was living in. My brother was so angry and hurt that our mother would do that, he disappeared again. He did not speak to my mother ever again.

During the second time my brother disappeared, I got my first computer. I signed up for AOL and tried to think of a good screen name. I thought too, that if anyone in our family would have a computer, Wayne (my brother) would. I wanted a screen name that he would recognize and check out. Yes, I know how silly that thinking was. Anyway, I decided to use tickalock, thinking that my brother would surely want to check it out if he ever came across it. Turned out that my brother had a computer, but did not like using it. His son did, but we never met up on AOL or any of the chat programs.

Time passed and tickalock was getting some unwanted attention, so I changed it up a little. But, I wanted to keep it similar so that people I had met would know it was me. So, we come to ticatoo. Aren't you glad I told you all this?

Nothing much

I finally got in touch with StateFarm this evening and started that process. Have no idea how long it will take. I know that my house is not as damaged as most of the others in Gulfport. It is at least livable.

My youngest son, Phil, still has the flu and seems to be getting worse instead of better. Tonight the nausea started. It might have been the toast and jelly he ate, but anyway, he now has anti-nausea medicine to go along with all the other. He is aching and having chills and fever still. I am praying that this passes soon. I am praying that no one else here gets it, especially the baby.

Speaking of the baby, I gave him his first popsicle today. He is such a funny little thing and so independent that he does not like for anyone to feed him. I kept handing him the popsicle and he kept turning his head until I held his head still and rubbed the popsicle across his lips. He was pulling away for a bit, then stopped and looked at me and then reached out for the popsicle. Later, he was sitting on the floor, sharing it with Gumbo. This last tidbit we will not tell his father, but I figure it is good for him.

Monday, September 05, 2005

Young, yet wise in the Lord

There is a young woman I have the priviledge to know. She is wise beyond her years. She has a deep love for the Lord and a hunger to share the gospel. She isn't perfect, but then who is? She makes mistakes, but, she acknowledges those mistakes and apologizes for them, especially if they affect others. She has a blog that I belive everyone should read http://josmessage.blogspot.com/ Go there to be blessed.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Friend's house after Katrina


Click on the picture to make it larger. This is my son's best friend's house after Katrina.

Mississippi???.....hello.........

It has been seven days since Katrina wiped out the Mississippi Coast. New Orleans has been getting the majority of the media coverage, so a lot of people do not know how bad it is on the Coast. Check out this link, look at the pictures:
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/

These people need as much help and sympathy and media coverage as the people in New Orleans. Why is it not there?

My son-in-law went to D'Iberville, Ms to help his mother and father recover as many pictures, etc from their house as they could. They are both past retirement age, but both have continued to work because they cannot afford to buy their medicines if they don't. Their house is beyond saving. The contents, furniture and appliances, are ruined. They spent the last two days recovering pictures and other mementos of forty years together. Today they went to church. Their faith has not been shaken. They cried and prayed with people they have worshipped with for most of their lives. They will recover. They will not re-build on that lot, but they will re-build.

Other people are suffering. A shelter was evacuated because of an outbreak of suspected dysentery. People are waiting for help. But, they are not sitting there moanin and groaning. They are doing as much as they can to help themselves. They are working on cleaning the limbs and debris from their yards and then helping their neighbors. They are watching out for each other.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html

Read the Washington Post link. I am sick of people blasting President Bush. Put the blame on the people who should be blames. Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans and Govenor Blanco of Louisiana. They knew before Katrina the status of the levees. They knew they had at least 100,000 citizens who would not be able to leave. If they had a car they most likely had no money for gas. Forget about a motel room for a week or so. Why were those people not given help to leave? The mayor could have stood up like Guilliani of New York and taken control. He could have ordered city buses and gotten private buses and school buses to get people out. What did he do? He said........ya'll leave. This is real. So find a place to go.........He waited till noon on Sunday to let people start entering the Superdome. Did he send help to people who maybe had no way of knowing that they could go there? HE went to Baton Rouge. Now he gets on tv crying and cussing and blaming everyone else because this turned out this way. I think all he is doing now is politicking for the next election.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Katrina come and gone

We got ready for the hurricane, called all the family to see where they would be and then hunkered down to wait it out. I was not worried till about 3am Monday morning. I woke up and started thinking about how bad it would be here if New Orleans got a direct hit. Baton Rouge is too close to New Orleans. Then, everyone else woke up and we watched news till we lost power. Then it started getting interesting. We had windows open because it was so hot here. My daughter lives in a small complex of about 18 townhouses that face each other across the parking lot. The wind was whistling and whining through here and it was LOUD. Reese, the baby, got scared from that and we took turns holding him and playing with him. It was mostly all over with by noon. There was still a lot of wind and rain, but the worst thing was no power, which meant no A/C.

That evening we read and ate by candle light hoping that the power would be on Tuesday at the latest. We had no way to get any news. Finally, my daughter in Michigan got through to us and told us how bad it was. I could tell it was worse that we expected for the coast because I could hear the fear in her voice.

We spent the next two days watching all the houses around us get lights and more important A/C. We sat outside and talked with the neighbors till late at night. We did drive around a little on Tuesday, mostly to get out of the heat.

Wednesday, I was getting worried about my grandson, he is 17 months old, and the heat was getting to him. He was just limp. We sprayed him with water and fanned him almost constantly for two days, but it was not enough. I took him outside and sprayed him down with the hose. We stayed out for over an hour. Then, I decided to go get some cold drinks. It felt so good to be in the A/C that when I got back, I sent my son in to get my daughter and we sat out in the car for about 3 hours. I know that gas is going to be a problem now, and I will promise not to drive for a week to make up for it, but my daughter and grandson needed to get out of the heat. My daughter is very small and when she gets too hot she cannot eat. I was afraid that she and my grandson was going to get dehydrated.

Power came on again after 9pm last night. We were outside eating burgers and everyone started dancing in the parking lot......not for long though, because we wanted to get the A/C on in the house. When we checked, the temp was 95 degrees inside.

My son-in-law went back to work Tuesday. His firm's New Orleans branch closed of course and they are having to accommodate the lawyers from there. People are so worried. His father is 67 and still works because some of his medicines are so expensive. He was worried that not only was he going to lose his house but that he was also losing his job. No word on the job, but his house got some major damage. The house is between Biloxi and Ocean Springs, in a small town called d'Iberville. He and Jamie's mother are doing good. They will be staying with one of their daughters while they decide what they are going to do.

So, right now things are slowly, very slowly, getting back to normal.