Greetings to All Busy Mom Lovers!

(hmmmm, that might not sound quite right!... but anyway)

New Orleans Friend here just popping in to give a quick update on life
PK! Oh, and that would be “post-Katrina”.

First though, I want to thank all of you who so generously contributed
to New Orleans Boy’s quest to have the record number of Box-Tops for
his school. I am not sure if it was a record, but I can say that it was
a landslide of a win! He had 539 total and the second place winner had
a mere 277. I would have to think it might very well be a record. He
was SO excited to win and his Target gift card is burning a hole in his
little uniform pants pocket! I can’t even guess what he will buy…
uummm, maybe a gamecube game??? DUH!!! Boys will be boys and he has 100
footballs already!

Now, onto the scoop… !

Living La Vida PK is a thrill a minute! Oh my goodness! One never
knows if an establishment will be open or closed at any given time of day
or day of the week! Just because it’s open today does not mean it will
be open tomorrow. The fast food joints close at 3pm or 5pm and MAYBE
sometimes the drive thru might be open on a whim! WOW! The “officials”
can’t make any decisions about where to put the trailers that the
THOUSANDS of evacuees need to live in, in order to come home to repair their
homes. NIMBY is the word du jour here. (that would be “Not In My Back
Yard”) so, as the fight goes round, the trailers sit unused on lots
costing the gov’t something like $2500 per trailer per month or
something ridiculous like that. They did have an article in the Time to
PickYourNose (that would be the Times Picayune – aka the local newspaper if
that’s what you want to call it) about what people could rent for the
same price the gov’t is paying for the trailers. You should have seen
some of these houses. Not shabby – I tell ya, really nice and big homes
with yards and all. What is wrong with the US gov’t? Why is it so hard
for them to accomplish something with LOGIC??? Come down here for a
spell and you’ll see what I mean. Then there was the wonderful Prez
saying on national television that “it’s a lot like the city that I used to
visit”. Was he awake when he was here? On any of the times that he
was here? Anyway – politics is for another time… oh, but wait – how can
I not mention the mayor and his rantings of N.O. needing to be a
“chocolate city” because God wants it that way!!! And his belief that God
did this to us because we have troops in Iraq? I mean, come on. This
was once an intelligent man. See what Katrina did to him? Or was that
maybe just a few too many at the MLK parade-day luncheon??? We wonder.
What a fool nonetheless, and what we DON’T need is a fool right now.
What we DO need are some good levees for the 2006 hurricane season, which
begins in a mere 4 months.

BUT! On a brighter note, it’s not ALL 100% complete gloom and doom!
All of that HUGE mountain of debris (sent picture way back) is gone,
gone, gone! Amazing that someone actually had the ability to do something
right here in New Orleans! It was a hideous eyesore and it needed to
be gone, so they did a great job there! Many other things have been
cleaned. Wrecked, overturned, and flooded cars have finally been removed
from the neutral grounds (those are medians for the rest of the
country). People are trying to get their lives back in order. I can’t say
back to normal, because that will be the case here again. Our “normal” is
gone with Katrina. It will be good again, just never what normal once
was. All of the dead grass is starting to grow again – so that’s a
good thing. hhmmm, what else is good..??? OH! The 24 hour Sav-A-Center
is now open until 10 pm!!! WHOA! Big time I tell ya! And the French
Quarter seems to be fine. And some Massachusettes RTA company is
loaning us a giant transformer of some sort so that we can run our streetcars
again all the way down Canal St. - not just the 10 blocks it's running
now! And some organization that had planted 300 trees just before
Katrina is going to REPLANT 200 of them! So awesome - because if y'all had
any idea of the number of trees lost here - you'd freak. In City Park,
you can't even count the stumps as fast as you pass them in the car.

It’s not all coming along so quickly though. There are still areas
without power. There are still many stoplights lying on the ground. This
means MANY 4-way stops, which are OK if the fools know how to go through
one. The waterlines that adorn all of the houses and businesses that
flooded are a grim reminder. Many other areas have not even been touched
yet though. Yes, believe it or not, 6 months later, there are still
areas of complete and total devastation untouched by garbage trucks of
any sort. Stunning.
Many establishments have yet to re-open and we wonder if they ever
will. There are entire areas, residential and commercial, that are just
dead, null and void, no one living there, no one working there. It’s
hard to have to drive through those areas to get to the other areas. This
place is very sad but I can’t seem to be able to pull myself away. We
have contemplated moving a hundred times, but this damn magnet has a
strong hold on us. Once a New Orleanian, always a New Orleanian. I
guess I just have to figure out how to deal with it all, because it’s a
mess that needs to be reckoned with. For me, one of the worst parts of
all though is that my 2 youngest children are 9 and 10 and THIS is the
New Orleans that will be burned into their precious little memories. So
very sad because we ALL know that THIS is not New Orleans – not the real
New Orleans.

This is New Orleans PK.