cowboyfan4life_mark said:
Good to see you back **. I hope that you and all of your family are safe. Are you still at home or have you moved?
My home is quite damaged, so no, I'm not at home. My family is staying at my mother's home where she got power as of today (A/C is the greatest invention known to man!).
My home isn't destroyed, but it'll be a while before we'll be able to go back. Several homes in my neighborhood are pretty much gone, so I feel lucky. We're still having to boil the water, but now we can buy bottled water almost anytime we want, which is great! We can buy ice too and getting gas doesn't take from 5:00 in the morning 'till 1:00 in the afternoon anymore. There are some doctor's starting to open now too, which is good because my daughter has been sick.
It took us a few days to cut our way out of the neighborhood but we were able to use chain saws and trucks to move the trees. In the 5/10ths of a mile from my driveway to the exit from the neighborhood, there were almost 200 large trees (mostly pines) across the road. You could literally walk tree to tree the whole way. Good thing we had chainsaws too, because if we were waiting on official help, we'd still be trapped.
We had a couple of people who passed away in the neighborhood so we were antsy to get the road cleared so they could be removed. They finally got taken away a few days ago.
My wife doesn't really want to go back. She kind of wants to move to a place where hurricanes cant reach. I understand too. You don't want to ever put yourself in a position to go through that again.
During the storm, trees started hitting the house. It sounded like... I don't know what... but it was very loud and you could feel the house coming apart around you.
My sister lives across the street and they didn't have nearly the amount of trees that we did... so we decided to try to make it over there. I had to take my kids, one at a time, and run through the hurricane to my sisters. They were terrified and you could hear the trees snapping and the metal tearing as we ran the hundred yards or so to her house. I got both kids over there and then got my wife and dog and headed out. We made it fine, but one tree came down fairly close as I was bringing my wife across the street. Not real close... but 50 feet or so seems close when it's a whole tree, you know.
I had the dubious privilege of watching trees pummel my house during the storm. Some hit my sisters too... only not as many. It was violence like I've never seen. Violence everywhere.
The sound was... bad. Rending, tearing, snapping. I still hear it.
I tore my back up moving pine trees off of the road, but there weren't any doctors you could go to. the hospital was running off of generators and they weren't taking anything except dire emergencies after the storm... so lot's of tylenol was the way until I ran out... then it was au natural, lol.
Anyway... now all is good. We've got A/C, dial-up, water and all our loved one's. I feel blessed. Especially when I see what happened in New Orleans and what happened to those within 5 miles of the gulf in Mississippi. We're so lucky to have what we have.
To everyone who've expressed concern... thank you so much. The one thing we've all had down here is the love and caring of our fellow man... and there has been a lot of that. I never knew people were so caring and giving.
I don't need anything. There are people who do and I love to see them getting help. I've given what I can to help them and most of America has too. I just hope and pray the people of New Orleans can recover and live normal lives again.
Again, thank you all so much for your concern... all I need now is some good old fashioned football talk to take my mind off of the catastrophy that hit everything I know.
I just want the Cowboys to take care of Washington this coming Monday!!!
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Back! Glad that you're okay as you can be with all things considered. You guys are in our prayers.
