Ike is 300 miles or so from here,on his way to Houston.

The winds are blowing enough to make Sister, the best dog Nanny in the Entire World, jumpy.
Fish, the Backyard Meteorologist Cat, escaped out the back door a few minutes ago. After testing the air with his freckled nose, he returned indoors.

I am worrying about Texas.

Ike is a big, bad storm.


Lord, have mercy.


St.Casserole

Mr.C. passed me the head cold he got at his office. I feel tired and rotten. No fever, just general complaints. I'll recover. Life will go on.


I'm taking today off from chores, work, duties, to-do lists. If you need me, I'll be at home being a lump.

I will keep the Vicar of Hogsmeade in my prayers along with all of our Texas pals.
The Vicar is defending herself with Ph.D. people. Our Texas pals are waiting for that durn Hurricane Ike.

Love,

St.Casserole, Lump d'Jour

The trip to LD's school went smoothly. Long drive on two lane roads in the country. I love having her home. Sister, the best dog in the world, and the Cats went wild greeting her.

It's early morning. NOAA says Gustav will intensify as it moves over the warm waters of the Gulf. Projected path includes my area on the Eastern side. We'll spend today doing the rest of our preparations then decide if we will evacuate.

I'm concerned, as an offical worrier, about getting to Little Church, then home again. The route is about 50 miles each way but coming home, I may meet up with evacuation traffic if New Orleans people are coming up the interstate. Government officials turn the interstate into a one-way corridor to move the greatest number out of the metro area. I won't be on the interstate, but good travelers know the back roads and I may have more company than I need.

I'll be preaching the Exodus text. When the lectionary people put texts together, they have no idea how often the texts hit home. The burning bush moved Moses toward a new life.

Glad for your company. Let us pray for all those in Gustav's path, particularly those in the Southern Carribean today.


St.Casserole

Our area is under a tropical storm warning. This means we will get heavy rain, wind and flash flooding in the next 24 hours.

Fay drenched Florida with heavy rain. We are next.


I'll check our sandbag situation, trench in the front yard and pray that the new Methodist parking lot improvements won't force water into our home. I don't think the Methodists considered anyone when they paved a new parking lot several inches above the street. We are across the street from the parking lot.

The damaged storm drain beside our property caved in during Katrina. The City hasn't repaired it. The orange warning cones and orange netting warning of the giant hole have grown over with weeds (and a four foot tall Pine tree sapling)in the past three years.

It's not easy for a City to prioritize repairs. When the majority of the infrastructure is damaged, where do repairs begin? Our small disaster area hasn't received attention yet. I say "yet" because we've contacted the City, seen the City Engineer and are waiting for help.

When I write about hurricanes, I can't help but wonder if my readers on higher ground think we are nuts for living here. The answer is we live here because we live here. We aren't in a federally mandated move area. We survived Camille and Katrina (we were teens when Camille came and not in this house). Mr.C. grew up here, his business is here and our lives are here.

I would like to move to higher ground in retirement. I can't imagine kicking my walker along as I board up windows in my 80's.

Watching the Weather Channel,

St.Casserole

P.S. Someone stole our Obama sign. Mr.C. put the sign up, close to our home, far from the street in February. We thought no one would walk so far onto our property.

UPDATE: 11pm. CDT Looks like Fay, downgraded to a tropical depression, will bring rain tonight and tomorrow. We made our preparations, including stocking up on my Cokes and Mr.C's favorite beer. Not a drop of rain here yet. Blessings and safety to all those in Fay's path.

What We Want to See This Summer

"NO Activity" looks great to us!


St. Casserole, hoping for a quiet Season

Your response to my last post about Little Church repairs makes me cry.

Thank you for wanting to help!

If you want to contribute or find out about Little Church's repair needs so you can help, please contact Martha-Lee Bohn (she is auntieflea at American On Line abbreviated dot com) She is the Community Outreach Co-ordinator for the presbytery handling disaster relief.

I feel the Spirit moving. Thank you, God.

St. Casserole

Guest Blogger: Whistle Interviews Andy

Whistle: Andy, I'm interviewing you for the blog.
Andy: Blog Smog! Shut-up!!!
W: Andy, Mom said you had to be nice to me.
A: Be Quiet!
W: You are in the confinement pen in Mom's Study. Can you tell us why?
A: Big hole in my gut. Had surgery, emergency surgery, on Monday.
W: How's it going?
A: Hate it! I'm an outdoor cat. Can't stand being confined.
W: You have a litter box in there.
A: Don't talk about that! Litter boxes are for prissy little indoor cats! I haven't used one before.
W: Is that why you didn't use it for almost two days? We saw you with your back legs crossed...
A: Do Not Write About This!
W: OK.
A: And don't put a sappy picture up either!
W: OK, I won't. How long do you have to stay in the confinement pen?
A: Doc says two weeks. I say until I break out of here.
W: You have stitches and an e-collar. Just like Fish did.
A: Stitches come out today. I pulled off the e-collar. Do not tell!
W: I won't tell. Andy, you are a Katrina Survivor, aren't you?
A: Yeah, I came back with the Casserole Men three days after the Storm. They needed me. I rode in the rental truck with water, ice, food, chain saws and generators. I kept watch over the home while they helped people. Trees were down everywhere! I walked on trees instead of climbing. I had to eat what they put down for me except for a few squirrels and some birds I caught. I felt badly about eating the yard animals, no sport in it. The animals were dazed and sick. That Storm about killed us all. You were less than a week old then. You don't know anything about hurricanes!
W: OK. Mom says you picked out us as a family...
A: Not you or your brother! I found this house several years ago. I became the apprentice to Rusty the Great Cat. He taught me everything I know.
W: He's the cat Mama talks about and then gets all wet eyed about?
A: Yeah, She loved him and he loved her. He was Great.
W: She loves all of us. We love Sister our Nanny and you.
A: Stop it! My pain meds are wearing off! I'm not talking anymore to you!
W: OK.

For those in the path of the hurricane and other storms, Lord have mercy.

Remembering Katrina 2007

Two years ago today, we were in Destin waiting for word about the Gulf Coast. News of the Coast was scarce because the news people couldn't get to Mississippi. We saw where Katrina's eye came ashore later in the morning. Cell phone and land line calls did not work as we tried to call our friends who stayed in their homes.

We didn't know that our hurricane preparations made no difference. Boarding up Mr. C's law firm building (an old Coast home restored and used for less than ten months) was destroyed. So many trees fell around our home that it could not be seen from the street. P. and C.'s home flooded. Our pediatrician's home flooded. Many of our neighbor's homes were flooded, broken by trees or blown away. Our sailboat ended up miles away. People died because they refused to evacuate or would not leave their pets.

Who knew anything? We didn't. Scenes of New Orleans on the news showed misery. Little did we know that the levees would break and ruin the City Care Forgot.

Little did we know that churches were demolished, roads torn up and our lives changed forever.

Regular people suffered extreme misery.

We kept close to the tv in the Destin condo.

Andy, Assumpta and Dibley ran around meowing. LD and LS tried to text message their friends. Mr. C. and I held on.

Remembering,

St. Casserole

Hey! I'd blog more but I'm busy driving three hours to 2 hour meetings!
Cleaning up after messy people! Writing a sermon! Watching the Weather Channel (this is high season for hurricanes)!

Praying for friends
Getting LS settled at the University
Driving LD to various activities but not school because she is in a car pool
Writing letters asking for rebuilding funds for my congregation
Doing laundry
Reading


Yours,

St. Casserole

Hurricane Dean

Ewwwwww, not again!



Where are the double dipped in Chocolate Oreos at a time like this?,

St. Casserole

How I Feel About Dillard's

A tiny blurb in the Construction Permit section of the local paper says that http://www.dillards.com/index.html is doing 15M in repairs on the hurricane damaged store here. Great.

Dillard's is an o.k. department store. It carries a few nicer brands that we are unable to get down here, pre- or post-hurricane. To find Cole-Haan, Eileen Fisher or a big cosmetics counter, I went to Dillards.

I'm angry with Dillard's. It's been almost two years since Katrina. The big store was damaged. Do you think that Dillard's had the marketing sense to contact it's Gulf Coast customers? Nope. Nada. Why haven't they attempted to keep our loyalty or interest? Did they send updates on their rebuilding progress? No way.

We Gulf Coast customers are nothing to Dillard's. Otherwise, the store would have reached out to us with coupons to use in Mobile, Jackson, etc. or contacted us about SOMETHING.

On the way to Atlanta, I stopped at the Oxford, Al. Quintard Mall Dillard's. This was early in the day on Monday. A good saleswoman helped me in the Eileen Fisher section. Later, I stopped at another Dillard's, right off 1-20 or 1-85 (can't recall), and wandered through the shoe department. No one spoke to me the entire time I shopped.

When the 15M Dillard's opens, I'll think long and hard about shopping there.

St. Casserole

P.S. Perhaps this dept. store rant has no place on a wildly serious blog like mine, but SOMEBODY should tell Dillard's that they are careless with customer loyalty. So, I just did.

We went to a church dinner party with Mr.C's church people. The guests are my people, too, since I've known them all for years. The food was great, the guests pleasant but what did we all end up talking about?

Katrina. The Big One.

Everyone at the party is back in their homes (seldom the case with any large group) but homeowner's insurance is slowing down re-building. Home prices are way up which sounds good but it means you can't sell your slab property to build a new home because buyers aren't available. Many people haven't gotten their insurance settlements yet (almost two years now!) or didn't get enough money to re-build. Finding a reliable contractor is tough.

It's time for Michael Moore to do a "Sicko" expose on the Insurance Industry (known around here as the incarnation of evil in our lifetime.

Just saying,

St. Casserole