The Ingys and Ike- Aftermath Day 4

I had an awesome set of before and after pictures I had taken around our house so you could see how bad it is here. But in my stressed-outness I accidentally deleted them when trying to get them off my memory stick. It's awful here. 70 person gas lines, no gas, lines just to get inside the grocery store, and still no electricity. I feel bad being upset about the 4 big trees we lost in our yard since those trees could have so easily landed on our house. Our neighbors across the street, like thousands here in Houston, have a tree right through their house. Or, we could be like the thousands of people whose homes were blown or washed completely away. We're still refugees over at Jason's mom's house, which again, I'm not complaining. I could be a refugee in a shelter. Most schools are closed through the end of the week, and some are closed indefinitely. My parents still don't have power, and have no idea when they'll get it. They have to go through the FEMA line everyday just to get ice and water. JR's school is supposed to start up again on Thursday and it will take me close to an hour to drive him to school from out here in Katy. Luckily, my friend, Shelley, has power at her place (which is close to JR's school) and she's letting me go sit at her house with the babies until JR gets out. We're going to have to go to the store tonight to get baby food. I haven't left the house since we got here (except to walk JR to the park), and I'm not looking forward to it. I lived in a third world country for 3 years, and I've never experienced anything like this. Everybody is under a curfew, we have to worry about looters, we finally got water back at our house and we can now stop boiling it here at Sherry's, and I now know what a POD site is (It means "Point of Distribution" and that's where you go line up to get food, water, and ice.) Our definition of "normal" has been completely altered, and everything about Houston -the people, the landscape-has been changed forever.