What Hurricane Katrina Taught Me

I went through it from start to finish.

I have friends, neighbors and family members that went through it.

When you see your livelihood, your home and in some cases, your family members washed away in a 35ft wall of water, it changes you.

It isn't a political event to me. It is a tragedy that I survived and hope no one else endures.

If you went through something you feel was worse, well, it probably was.

It's not about comparing scars, it's about finding the best ways you can to heal them.

Praying in the shower with my cat in my lap that the roof would hold while it seemed to be breathing won't mean anything.

Not to the person praying for their loved one that got sucked out by tides.

It taught me something though. I thought that most of the clothes that get donated don't end up in the hands of the desperate, and maybe they don't. But I saw people hand over coats, shoes, pants, jeans and everything that could help another.

Gratitude is just another word for loving each other enough to be grateful for what we have, and grateful to ease the burden of someone else that is suffering.

That's what Katrina taught me.

Martin O'Malley's speech at DNC clipped

Great song - Within Temptation : Shot in the Dark

I went to the hardware store

and asked about flashing.

They told me to get my mind out of the gutter.

Question submitted by Aerows

I read an article that stated that beans don't need to be soaked.

And that is bullshit. Red kidney beans contain phytic acid which is rarely lethal, but certainly nothing you want entering your system. Pinto beans need to be soaked, too.

This is just a PSA to mention that YES you should SOAK your beans overnight, particularly if they are pinto and kidney.



/off soapbox

I need some help with gardening.

It's heading into fall, so I figure now is when I start thinking about strategies for the spring.

I can't grow anything. Sure, I grew a handful of mediocre sized tomatoes, NRaleighLiberals cherry tomatoes and some ornamental pepper plants he sent produced like gangbusters, but anything else FAILS.

I planted some onions, they got eaten up by some sort of weevil looking things. My eggplant produced a grand total of one medium sized one, and was covered by these red aphid looking things - and I mean a SWARM of them.

These evil bugs:





My strawberry plant gave up the ghost without doing anything.

I will say that my rosemary is hearty and is thriving, though.

I even tried crook-neck squash, but it didn't even make it out of the gate.

What am I doing wrong? I live on the coast of Mississippi, we get plenty of sun and rain.

Do I just have a black thumb?

Kate Bush fans - Experiment IV cover that is amazing

Caregiving to elderly people dear to you - and you can go crazy

Care giving to elderly parents, relatives and friends can make you crazy.

THIS is what happened to me on Saturday afternoon, but I remain a cheerful human being somehow:

My dad asked me (insisted) I get some office chair from the neighbor's house that they had moved off and left. I reluctantly did so, and dragged it home, hoping it would be some sort of project he would look into that was low impact and would occupy his time.

A day later, my mother is screaming "your father fell" and of course I go running. He is in the middle of the kitchen floor, because the chair I *thought* he was going to refurbish, he assumed was sound and it gave way and there he is on the kitchen floor.

He is griping, my mother is yelling, and this continues for 45 minutes. I sit on the floor with my back to my fathers back and inch him along - because he cannot get up. I try to get him up and he yells that I'm hurting his arm, shoulder, hand ... can't get him out of the floor. All I can do is sit there, listen to the yelling, screaming and be the back for him to be in the floor.

Finally my uncle comes over after the hour and a half ordeal of me getting him to the couch and gets him on it.

I have never felt so powerless in my life. Not because I couldn't get a 175 lbs man up off of the floor, but because he cried like a baby when I tried to do so. Man comes by, does the same thing, it's all good.

Mind you, I hover around 105-110, but I also lift weights. It doesn't matter I guess, though, because the ordeal ended. 2 hrs. because of a fucking chair he just HAD to "salvage", sat down in, and fell out of.

I did a sanity check on myself. I thought, Aerows? Are you a lunatic, or was this some major bullshit? I affirmed to myself this was some major bullshit.

He has the chair on the back porch. Tuesday is trash day. I will beat that damn thing down with a hammer and put it in the trash, and barring that, I will set the SOB on FIRE before he will get mixed up with that damn thing again.

Sometimes, you just have to say WTF.

"The chair incident" - when Dad falls on the floor

My dad asked me (insisted) I get some office chair from the neighbor's house that they had moved off and left. I reluctantly did so, and dragged it home, hoping it would be some sort of project he would look into that was low impact and would occupy his time.

A day later, my mother is screaming "your father fell" and of course I go running. He is in the middle of the kitchen floor, because the chair I *thought* he was going to refurbish, he assumed was sound and it gave way and there he is on the kitchen floor.

He is griping, my mother is yelling, and this continues for 45 minutes. I sit on the floor with my back to my fathers back and inch him along - because he cannot get up. I try to get him up and he yells that I'm hurting his arm, shoulder, hand ... can't get him out of the floor. All I can do is sit there, listen to the yelling, screaming and be the back for him to be in the floor.

Finally my uncle comes over after the hour and a half ordeal of me getting him to the couch and gets him on it.

I have never felt so powerless in my life. Not because I couldn't get a 175 lbs man up off of the floor, but because he cried like a baby when I tried to do so. Man comes by, does the same thing, it's all good.

Mind you, I hover around 105-110, but I also lift weights. It doesn't matter I guess, though, because the ordeal ended. 2 hrs. because of a fucking chair he just HAD to "salvage", sat down in, and fell out of.

I did a sanity check on myself. I thought, Aerows? Are you a lunatic, or was this some major bullshit? I affirmed to myself this was some major bullshit.

He has the chair on the back porch. Tuesday is trash day. I will beat that damn thing down with a hammer and put it in the trash, and barring that, I will set the SOB on FIRE before he will get mixed up with that damn thing again.

Sometimes, you just have to say WTF.