I am tired. That’s all I have to say. I pre-packed on Friday, packed up the last of my stuff before leaving town very early Saturday and got my niece (who attends school at Tulane) and the cats and we all headed out for our evacuation destination. A couple people I know stayed behind waiting for the mandatory call to leave.

On Sunday my neighbor called, he was on the road and needed a room and he had his two labs in tow, which I was happy to hear. He had to move his fleet of limos to safety before he could get out since he is a chauffeur for the rich and glamourous in New Orleans. Luckily, we had rooms at the pet-friendly Drury Lodge. So I saved him one and we got them unloaded.

We met a lot of nice people in our hotel and I must thank Mike Zickmund from WWLtv and his charming wife, Lisa. Their son drove by our properties while we were stuck far away. Their son works for Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office so we were so happy to hear that things were fine and we knew in advance that we were one of the first people with power.

Cassie and I got back Thursday afternoon and worked on cleaning up a whole lot of tree branches and raking our yard and in front of Nick and Josh’s house too. At first they were like, “let the landlord do it.” But I put my foot down because their landlord is in his 60’s and I made them get on the job of cleaning up their yard.

It’s been a lot of work with a whole lot of lethargy in between. Just like Richard said, it’s a roller coaster and the sitting around waiting to come back and eating and watching television is a part of it I did my best to avoid. I found a park and ran most days did some schoolwork but was still deadly bored by 5pm everyday.

I am not in the mood to do this all over again next week but Cassie and I laughed when I dropped her off at Tulane today . . . see you Thursday. I know we’d both just rather stay if Ike makes a visit near here but I mostly worry about not having A/C for my little cat Ted, he’s kinda fragile. However, if we have to do it, I can say, we have the drill down. We didn’t get stuck in traffic and we had a nice place to stay and no real damage. It was nice to have our neighbor with us too.

Whew. Today I am enjoying a day to myself and anxious to get back in the groove. I can’t believe that small event sucked a whole week of productivity out of us! I have been wanting to post but I have had kinda slow internet and loading photos just didn’t sound like any fun. Nick and Josh went to Atlanta for their evacucation. They spent the first days of Katrina in the Superdome but now they have a car but I know money is an issue for them but I was just happy they were able to leave and we were all really happy to see each other again once we got back! They were a big help in cleaning up.