We are fated, it seems, to mourn in this space.

A week ago my dear old best friend Beckett died. He was 12, going to be 13 sometime this summer, around early July.

It was sudden and strange and I miss him so much I can hardly bear it. He was the first friend I made here in the bad old days when I moved to Baton Rouge. He had health problems but nothing that we knew of that would have been fatal.

What happened was: Gary got up early last Thursday, took the dogs out, got ready to go to a job on the other side of the river, left me a note saying he hadn't fed the dogs or cats, started out the door and was mobbed by the cats so fed them, went back inside and changed the note to say he had fed the cats, and added at the bottom for me to keep an eye on Beckett since he seemed "mopey." I slept on, having taken Benadryl the night before. Usually I just take a half but since I haven't been sleeping well since I got back from Italy, I took a whole one, so I was more or less comatose. 90 minutes later I woke up, stumbled out to the bathroom then made coffee, saw the note, got the dog food out. Usually when that happens Beckett is right there. I called him, and Hattie and Scout kind of slunk out of the bedroom. No Beckett. I went around the corner and into the bedroom and saw him lying there, and I knew. I sat there next to him for 5 minutes willing him to move or breathe. No.

Then I got up and called Gary. I couldn't go back in the room. Just couldn't. When Gary got home 10 minutes later I had to go in there and face reality. It was clear he had been dead for over an hour--he was already not warm. We do not know what happened.

Why, why did I take that stupid Benadryl? If I hadn't I would have gotten up with Gary and I would have at least been there when he passed, been holding him maybe even. I am so angry about that Benadryl, about not waking up, I can't deal with it. And he must have been lying there dead when I got up, but I didn't even notice. I can't say I thought he was asleep, because I gave it no thought. He's always been here, I probably half registered the positions of all 3 dogs but I just got up like it was any other day.

The vet said they could do a necropsy but I just couldn't do it, I couldn't let them have his body. So we buried him in the side yard, wrapped in his old white flannel blanky, and Gary is going to make a marker and a little fence to grow vines on, and I can visit with him there. Friends have been kind, and Gary has been very understanding. He loved Beckett too, but Beckett was mine before I knew Gary, and he knows this has been the hardest damn thing.

I keep thinking and even sometimes letting myself pretend he's just in the next room napping and I'll come around the corner and his tail will thump and I'll scratch behind his ears. It is hard to be at Grey Gardens because he is everywhere here. Here's the place where he would nap in the afternoon sun; I sit in my big chair to watch the news and he is supposed to climb into my lap; we take the other dogs out and there is one too few and I keep thinking I see him back in the shadows.

Losing Edie was hard, but we only knew her less than a year. Beckett has been my dear best friend for over a decade. And Scout's. He is sad, too.

When we were preparing his body Scout wouldn't come near, but Hattie came up and we let her sniff him. They were both subdued for a few days, and Scout seems less animated. Beckett was the instigator, the leader, and they just don't quite know what to do. The last few months Hattie had followed Beckett everywhere; she licked his muzzle and he allowed her to, patiently. Now she is trying to transfer that to Scout but he doesn't want it. We are giving them both extra affection but sometimes even doing that makes me miss Beckett even more. My little B. He was such a sweet sweet guy, such a peculiar dog, so many dear things about him. He always watched me. I wonder if I am quite here since nobody is watching like he did.

I should be grateful there was no suffering, so far as we could tell. But just the last week I had taken him to the vet and everything was fine. I had felt so relieved, and although I knew he was aging I thought he had a few years left, and I remember saying to him on the way home that he had been such a good boy, and school would be out soon and I would be home writing all summer, no more trips for awhile.

Here is my little B as a puppy, the day I brought him home, and then recently, with Hattie.

Little Edie is gone. She fought very hard but I believe her immune system had been compromised from her early life, when someone abandoned her and her brother Cinclare to the elements. We agreed to an autopsy in the hope that the vets and students will learn from her and it could help other cats--her legacy.

They would not let us stay in the room while she was put to sleep. The vet and assistant were gowned, gloved, masked. All of these precautions. It was very hard not to be there. I wanted to hold her while she went. But I understood. They are still afraid of the TB. I think that is very very unlikely, but I understood. Even if it was hard. They gave her a sedative injection and left us alone with her to say goodbye.

I keep thinking of a line Lillian Gish's character has in "Night of the Hunter": "It's a hard world for little things."

Somehow the other animals here know. They are subdued. Hattie has been licking at tears, the dear girl. There must be a lower frequency where they all share information, and where they converse in their own way about all the goings-on at Grey Gardens LA. Somehow this reassures.

Brave Little Edie, we miss you to pieces sweet girl.

Little Edie has become seriously ill. A week or so ago she began acting listless, not at all her mischievous self. Two weeks before we had been standing near the pier window by the door and seen Edie's little head popping--she was jumping up and down looking in the window at us. That was the kind of goofy little cat she was.

On the phone the vet ventured that it might be depression over Visiting Cat, who had indeed seemed to form an immediate bond with Cinclare upon her arrival here. That sounded reasonable, but now it is clear Edie was keeping to herself for other reasons. She stopped sleeping with Cinclare in their box, and Visiting Cat moved right in. I made another box, but Edie seemed to prefer disappearing at night. Then Gary saw her heaving her tummy on the porch. So we guessed she had hairball--she had that before--and conferred with the vet and got some remedy. I put it on her paws twice. Both times she licked it off, but she still seemed listless. Then I saw her heaving again, but this time she seemed also to be shuddering. Gary picked her up and it was clear she was struggling to breathe. This was Thursday morning. We took her inside and I took some Benadryl and held her, really for the first time, since I am very allergic to cats. I could feel her little body trembling, but she was also purring. The kitty vet on this side of the river is closed on Thursdays, so I took her to the vet our dogs go to over in Baton Rouge. On the way I was terrified she would stop breathing.

In the waiting room I held her in my lap and stroked her. She seemed a little better, her breathing not as labored. We waited a long time. This sounds funny, but for about 20 minutes there I felt like--oh Trish, you overreacted, she will be fine, and how dumb you are not to have taken Benadryl every day so you could hold Edie like this. I'm not a cat person only because I am allergic. I have adored Edie, her spirit, her daring. She's always been the instigator, the first one to come to us while Cinclare (who is now twice her size) stood behind her, the one practicing pouncing on the porch, crawling up my leg when I came out with food, leading the hunt and leaving me mice to discover in the morning. She's also the clown, popping up to look in windows, climbing into the recycling bin and clattering the cans, hopping into my lawn cart when I pull it around the yard picking up weeds and debris. A month or so ago we had a long tape measure out in the yard measuring where the new fence for the dogs will go and when Gary retracted the tape she pounced on it and made a game of following it up and pouncing that had us laughing and laughing.

We were at the vet it seemed forever. Tests, tests. They took her in the back to x-ray her lungs. Everything was negative except the x-ray, which the vet showed me. Flecks and spots of white in the lungs, mysterious. She showed me a normal cat xray for comparison. She'd never seen this pattern on an x-ray and wanted to send it to the vet school at LSU for the radiologist there to read. Meanwhile we were given antibiotics in case it was a bacterial infection and another drug in case it was a strange sort of fluke (aptly named) carried by crawfish that might have invaded her lungs--those 2 things being the most likely candidates. She got a big shot of fluids since she seemed dehydrated.

I brought her home and we made a nest for her in the little bathroom. She perked up enough to eat a few kitty treats. I held her awhile longer. In the night she worsened. In the morning she was very listless and breathing hard again and would not eat or drink. We gave her medication. The vet's office called to check up on her. We reported her condition, then I had to go to work all day. When I got home there had been no change although she had used the litter box. About 6:00 our vet finally got the news from the LSU clinic and called us.

The news was very, very bad. Whatever she has is fairly rare, and the only was of diagnosing it definitively is a procedure where they inject saline into the lung and withdraw it to obtain a specimen. The procedure is dangerous to the pet, and it has to be done under a general, from which in her condition the vet feared she might not live to emerge. There were two suspected pathogens: Blastomycosis and Tuberculosis. Because the latter especially can infect humans from cats, the procedure would have to be done under special conditions, and as well the vet was very concerned for us. We were to wear gloves and wash thoroughly after handling her (I had been anyway because of the allergy). If it was TB prognosis was poor and with the risk to us and the other animals here the vet would recommend putting her down. If it was Blastomycosis the prognosis was not good either but there was a treatment. 2-3 months of an expensive drug, and even after that odds are the condition would recur. And with her fragile state, the vet thought she might suffer quite a bit during the treatment.

It seemed clear when we hung up that we were losing her. We agreed to get an Rx for a stronger antibiotic in the morning on the off chance the diagnosis was wrong, and decide on Monday what to do. I think that antibiotic was the vet giving us time, and a straw to clutch.

Last night she had a dreadful time. She is struggling to breathe and scarcely moves.
I don't think we can wait. I can't watch her suffer like that. She mewed at me a little early this morning and I think she was saying, help.

I think it's Blastomycosis. I've been reading and reading, trying to understand this. I'm no vet but we live in conditions and in an area where that fungus thrives, the rich delta soil near the Mississippi river, and Edie always has explored every inch of our land. You can't eradicate this fungus--it's everywhere. Evidently some immune systems won't tolerate it. People who have AIDS are susceptible. The deep tissue kind she has is not particularly contagious. She does not have the skin lesions which are. Edie was dumped here as a small kitty and probably her early life compromised her immune system. She has always been small.

Poor Little Edie. Someone dumped her here with Cinclare like so much garbage. I've never actually punched anyone, but I'd like to blacken both the eyes of that person. Edie never asked for the hand she was dealt, and she gave back nothing but sweetness and courage and her inimitable personality. She is beautiful with her wood-grain markings and her big white sock back feet and her dainty white-tipped front paws.

The vet opens in half an hour, and we have to call and take her. It is time. We've both been crying and trying to go about the business of the morning, feeding the other animals, making coffee. I decided to try to write this all down to get some distance on it, but it appears to be having the inverse effect.

Here is Edie, our brave sweet funny little girl, to whom we must say goodbye.

----Later:
While I was typing this, Edie ate a bit of food! She has perked up the tiniest bit. So we decided to go get the clutch-at-straw antibiotic after all and see how she does today. She's so weak, and her breathing is still very labored, but we discussed this and decided she's such a fighter, if she has a chance we need to let her try. Taking it an hour at a time, vet on standby.

Since last blog we are up to 3 cats. Edie and Cinclare have become Great Hunters of Rodents, parts of which they leave on the porch for me, thanks. A new cat showed up one night; we are calling her Visiting Cat but I think she may be here to stay so we might need a new name soon. She's a gorgeous tortoiseshell and very friendly, also very vocal. She appeared with a collar so she did belong to someone, but nobody's answered all my ads and notices.

The third dog, Hattie, has been here a year. On Feb 1 we will celebrate that with a tea party, since we found an old recipe for tea cakes and she loves them to distraction. Guests are requested to wear hats, in her honor.

Since last blog the bathroom is still NOT FINISHED but in January it has gotten most of a floor and the walls now exist, ready to be painted, which we started this weekend. Progress!

Since last blog Addison turned a year old, and her parents relocated to Baton Rouge so we get to spoil her from much closer range. and now another grandchild is on the way: Gary's son and his wife are expecting their first.

Since last blog there are still piles of Gustav debris on our land, waiting to be burned. The yard in fact kind of looks like hell, but it's winter, and we'll get it back, in time.

Since last blog it snowed here, several inches, one night, and we woke up to find everything transformed so breathtakingly. That's the third time since I've been here that it has snowed, but the only time it has ever really accumulated so the world turned white.

And since last blog the economy went into a death spiral, old wars keep going, we elected a new president, and I've gotten back into politics and volunteered.

A lot, in a few months, has happened. Out of these I will choose one image, of the snow.

December 11, 2008: Snow in southern Louisiana!

In the afterburned heartwake of the storms this morning it finally stopped raining enough for me to drag some branches to the side of the road. I spent the windy rainy weekend doing work--losing that week+ has really made it a scramble. So it felt good to get outside and work up a sweat. I got mixed up with some poison ivy but I had on all my protective clothing which I threw away when I got in, then scrubbed myself hard with PI soap. So far no itch. I worked for about 4 hours and made a huge pile, but if you look at the yard it's still teeming with debris. Had we dumpsters, we'd certainly be at the 20 or 30 mark. Gary wants to burn the majority, but it's just too much, and besides that it's way too wet.

The cedar trees that came down however we are going to save and have milled for fenceposts. I like the idea of having the trees live on that way. On the local news they ran a story about Leo Frilot, an artist who carves beautiful bowls and other objects out of fallen trees he "harvests" after hurricanes. I can imagine what a lovely gift and what a comfort that would be, having a bowl or object made from a toppled tree that you loved.

The hummingbirds continue to swarm around here, along with the mosquitos. I'm enjoying feeding the former but not the latter. EdieorShackleton climbed into the azalea bush by the feeders this morning to be closer to the hums. I don't think s/he could catch them--they seemed to know s/he was there and sometimes even to fly straight at her/him, buzzing the kitty. It was a sweet surprise to look up from my coffee this morning out the window and see a little kitty face peering at me from the azalea.

Porch Salad

In the background is what is left of the the hackberry tree that exploded

The forge yard, a giant mess

Another shot of the driveway when we couldn't get out. It's hard to tell but the azalea bushes on either side are weighed down with more oak branches & debris

Saturday before the power went on I went to Wallyworld in Brusly for supplies. It was strange in there: empty row after row of black blank shelves on the food side, while on the other side there seemed to be way too much in the way of things nobody needed: clothing, dishes, housewares, etc., punctuated by empty displays where things people needed like flashlights and gas cans had been. People seemed to be staggering around feeling a bit overwhelmed by what seemed to be a lot of choices but in actuality the needed things were in short supply. There was a tiny bit of produce that looked or felt or smelled not at all fresh, but plenty of junk food. I got a bunch of that for the movie showing, managed to come up with 2 bags of ice, fire ant killer, mosquito repellant, kitty chow, ibuprofen, not much else. While I was in there the power went out and I panicked that we would be locked in, but they got it back on in 10 minutes or so, sparing me having to use the end of my cash. As I exited there was a line of folks waiting to get in from several buses that had pulled in while I was in the store. No idea where the buses were from.

We had a potluck supper in the building where I teach, using the small kitchen there. A colleague is staying in his office and living in the building, since his power won't be back until he gets the tree off his wires and they get around to fixing his service after that. He sent his children and wife back to Pennsylvania. There are so many people like him, making do. Anyway he had invited anyone around to come to a potluck--he made spaghetti, and the several students who came talked about the last week, It was good to just sit and talk, get to know how they were feeling. After that a few more students and a faculty member showed up, and we played a horrible movie in the Studio--From Dusk To Dawn, in honor of what our curfew had been. A weird horror movie, but it was also wonderfully distracting. Just beat the 10 PM curfew getting home. Gary had left the porch light on for me--how lovely not to have to fumble around in the dark any more, and not to have a heat wave hit one as one walked in the door. I slept like a rock.

Yesterday was clean up and catch up, getting ready for work. Today Gary got a couple of day laborers to help with the yard clean-up, roof patching, etc. since although we've been attacking the mess as much as possible it feels like we haven't gotten a tenth of it done. I spent a lot of time shooting email back and forth with colleagues; we're all trying to come up with plans and determining how best to help our students, especially our grad students, many of whom had only been here a few weeks before Gustav hit. As GAs they also teach, so they've got a lot on their minds, and not much in their pocketbooks since we don't get paid until the end of the month. To me the grads are the heart and soul of the university, and we're making plans to help them as much as we can. Several lost a lot in this storm; many do not yet have power.

But slowly the power is coming back. I believe EBR is up to or above 50% now.

Of course everything is being done under the looming possibility of Ike. Since we won't have TV for awhile I keep checking all the weather sites and models. They seem to yo-yo a bit between putting LA in the middle of the forecast and then wobbling over to Texas. No offense to Texans, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but we are hoping the steering fronts steer it away from us. I just don't know what will happen if we have to do all this again. It's Katrina and Rita II--a lot of differences, but why are major storms coming in clumps lately?

Last night I was reading in William Fox's extraordinary book Terra Antarctica that Adelie penguins' DNA mutates 2 to 7 times faster than others, in the context of a discussion of speculations as to why penguin tracks and corpses are found in the Dry Valleys, a region in the Trans-Antarctic Range that cannot support the penguins. Fox speculates that something is amiss with the homing instincts of these few penguins, so they go off track and wander off into an inhospitable region. He goes on to say that even so, this may be nature's way of sending out test balloons, trial and error, species finding ways to survive by expanding territory, and this process has to involve failed attempts that kill individuals. He concludes, "Nature, in a sense, loves a mistake because it creates information--you find out something you weren't expecting. And nature doesn't care much about the fate of individuals, only species" (167).

Could a set of answers to the question posed by The Hill List be lurking there? I am looking at our newly thinned-out trees, seeing how the live oaks endure while water and red oaks topple. But the live oaks have also had their tops thinned, dead branches sheared away, lots of vegetation stripped--if Ike comes, they won't be as damaged, because Gustav has given them a haircut and taken away the wind blockers. Wind can now circulate through them more easily. The trees as a whole may be better off even though so many individuals suffered or died.

But I can't think that way about people. It's too abstract, too close to social Darwinism which is too often a dreadful rationale for letting terrible things happen to people, or even for causing them to happen.

If I stand very near to the hummingbird feeders and stay very still, the hums seem to take me in stride after several minutes and buzz quite near me to get to the feeders. It's hard not to flinch, but every now and again one is buzzed right in the ear or even softly brushed. They seem so fragile and yet so insistently alive. I think of them en route on their migration path from Mexico over the gulf, hurried over it by the storms, making it to land here only to find the nectar-bearing flowers stripped away by the wind. We put out a few artificial substitutes for these with the feeders, for me hoping they are place-holders for the next migration, when the real flowers should be blooming again. Should I intervene this way? Or have I thwarted a trial balloon error and thus gotten in nature's way? What role do I , should I, play in that nature?

It's nice to have the luxury to think of things like this, rather than where one's next can of gas is coming from. We are getting ready for Ike, and this is the interval.

Fresh food still seems in short supply, but that may be this side of the river and the fact that we waited until 5 PM yesterday to make groceries. No milk, no sugar (needed for the hums), not much in the way of meat.

Looking down the driveway at dawn, the morning after Gustav

Starting cleanup

There were some big lights over on the other side of the river on last night--still on actually. This must be for the port. Or heck, as crazy as things are here for all I know it's a riverboat casino. Through the treeline I can also see Placid Refinery up and running, our neighbors. Tempted to go ask to borrow some petrol there. Thjey are making a lot of noise this morning too.

Found this map on Entergy's website that you can zoom in on and look at outages, where, how many, roughly how long--and because you can do this you feel better, you feel in control. But poking on any one of all the little triangles produces basically the same info, so some of this map is theatre. When I zoom way in where we live there are no triangles. Does this mean they think we are on, or that they don't know we exist, or what?

Gary's mother's neighborhood is clocking in on this map as 14-21 days. Our parish does not exist on that map, nor do parts all surrounding EBR, many of them pretty populated. The ones north would be orange, and I don't know about the rest, I got weary of figuring.

Joules, amps, volts, watts, AC/DC
This morning sitting in the dark with Hattie on the bench in the front room, the oldest part of the house circa 1870 I tried willing the power on, reciting all the words having to do with electricity I could think of, wondering at how the folks who occupied the room in which I was sitting 130-some years ago dealt with the heat, the bugs, without any of those magic words. I want to know how many hurricanes Grey Gardens has lived through. Resolved to research any bad ones that might have been in the early history, look back and see what poor old BR and its poorer cousin across the river has been through, what people did, how they got along.

Plan for day: go back to bed and try to get a little more sleep. Then out for gas, and if successful and if bridge is open I will go out into the world across the river by myself for the first time since Gustav and get to campus. Find an open store first and buy a few needed items for movie screening--popcorn, soft drinks, ice. Try to figure out movie showing. Sit in my office for an hour or two if it is cool and start preparing for classes to restart. Time permitting walk over to the medical evac center to see about volunteering for an hour or two. Back to studio to show movie, assuming I get it arranged. Home by 8 PM to beat the curfew.

There are a lot of classes at LSU that go until 9 PM. Will curfew be extended?

9:15 AM Yes, curfew extended until 10 PM. No power; Gary out for gas. On a major bummer here over the power and the fact that Ike is headed for the gulf. The spaghetti models on LSU Hurricane Center site stop at Thursday afternoon where it is almost central gulf. Gary's son called; they are coming back from Jackson MI today, asked if they could bring us anything. Yes, a room AC, and I tapped around and found an OK one from sears. Later son called back and they won't have enough room in the car for it since others are with them. So I ordered a Frigidaire from Amazon and took them up on trial period of 3.99 for one day shipping. Of course this is a weekend so shipping estimate is 9/9. Estimate. But that's pre-Ike so I'll take it. Gary being very fussy about some reviews saying it was noisy until I pointed out that it's highly rated every other way, it has superior dehumidification, it is Energy Star rated, and every other dadblasted room AC unit I could find is reviewed as noisy, or if it isn't noisy, it doesn't work well.

Room AC or not I can't go through another big one. Feel like smashing things at the moment. Instead I will go out and rake. When/if gas comes, I'm getting out of here for the rest of the day, as planned.

No idea most of Louisiana is a disaster area; no idea. No idea because nobody is covering this. It's all, "New Orleans is okay, hunky dory, let's talk about Palin and the fall TV line-up." Hello, biggest disaster in the history of BR, which has been through, oh, the Civil War? And is the state capital, the largest city in LA, a major port, industrial, petrochemical center with a major research university? I guess if we played football this weekend someone would come down here and report that. I love and honor my NO neighbors, but why is Gustav a story there when it hit HERE?

I need to rein this in but the idea that LSU is back on Monday is just preposterous to contemplate right now. I'll be there if the frigging interstate which has the bridge for me to get to campus is open (today they closed it several times) and if I can get enough gas and have not been bitten to death by god knows what, but I can't see more than a tenth of the students making it in. Are our administrators not watching the local news? They should read the student paper.

Nuff said. Still no power.

Addendum: This is what I mean.

I can’t seem to focus today long enough to complete a task. We have used obscene amounts of generator time and gas trying to get the tractor started to no avail. Since we were on generator power I did a bunch of web surfing looking for info on various things, getting insurance claim filed (the roof is a bit worse than we thought) so we can get an adjustor out here next week. I started picking up branches and stuff with my yellow cart but filled it in 5 minutes and have no idea where to take it until we get the way to the back cleared with the tractor. Then the kitties climbed in the cart & acted all cute so I just parked it by the house for them. Next I started raking debris from the small hill the house sits on, reasoning that since the porch was clean I’d just work my way outward in concentric circles. In the first circles I discovered several large new fire ant hills—they must have relocated after the storm. So I went to look for fire ant killer but found none, and got distracted doing that when the neighbor came by for something, and just never got back to it, because the phone rang—and so on.

Entergy came by a couple of hours ago and deemed us “able to accept”—yay! They are working down the road. They said no promises, but they think they will have us back up tonight. I’m happier than I can say, esp that they were here in person because since we are at the end of the line I often think various utilities & services forget we are here. Trash and recycling has been a problem ever since we’ve moved here; we have had epic battles with the phone company, and cable won’t run service out here unless we pay for ½ mile of cable, poles, and labor. JP Getty we are not.

TRACTOR JUST STARTED. I am going out to witness firsthand the first huge branches getting cleared.

Of course we have hardly any gas & have squandered a lot today, and I think we are both so invested in Entergy making good on its word and sick unto death of gas hunting and lines that we don’t care especially.

6 PM No power yet. I realize more & more by the minute how much I am counting on getting it tonight. If we go to bed without it I will be pretty darn disappointed.
Gary is still tractoring. I went out to help tie branches off & cart smaller stuff away but had to stop due to yet another plague visiting us: some kind of horse or deer fly that just grabs on and bites hard. It does not seem deterred by Off nor the hippie dog flea patchouli stuff. There is also a bright red wasp I have not seen before. Don’t know if it stings or not but not willing at present to find out. I beat a retreat to shower the layers of sweat, off, hippie flea stuff, leaf bits, etc off me & then assessed all my bite damage. Upwards of 40 combined, mostly mosquito from sitting on the porch the other night plus I think last night since I kicked the sheet off in my sleep. Am trying not to scratch. Benadryl, calamine lotion, antibiotic cream. The horse flies or whatever they are hurt when they latch onto you but don’t seem to leave anything behind that itches, thank goodness. No more outside work for me today, and no matter how hot from now on long sleeves & pants while outside. I hate that.
I have a great many things to add to The Hill List (name of neighbor’s grandchild who lies awake at night wondering what certain things exist for): deer or horse flies, mosquitoes, fire ants, fleas, hurricanes.

I am going to organize a movie tomorrow or Sunday in our Studio on campus with the big screen & surround sound. I have heard the power is back on and there are a lot of our students & faculty around who could use 2 hours’ diversion in a cool room. Some of our faculty are going to be living in their offices since no power at home, and LSU is standing tough: classes begin again Monday. On the whole I think most of us feel that is premature (the traffic lights aren’t even working as of now, for goodness sake, and many of our students are needed at home or still evacuated elsewhere, and how will the ones who commute get there with no gas? The shelters at LSU are still full of evac patients. I mean, just because the power is back on in the classrooms doesn’t mean this will work out!). I will shut up and try to be a good citizen and employee. But at least I can try to organize one thing to make people (self included) feel better.

7 PM almost--back on generator--not my call, but we run out of gas pretty soon.
Gary insisting on cooking the iffy sausage from the freezer. We argue. He says well it is frozen almost solid. I say, yeah, but it wasn't yesterday, that's only because we've been on a generator splurge. I show him info in the medical guide that says food frozen, thawed, refrozen, is not safe. He won't listen. no matter what I say. Well fine, I suppose I will have to take him to an ER later. Me, I am sticking with Campbell's soup. Besides we had a call from the insurance company and among other things they asked what the value of the food in our frig that was lost was. So I've already claimed it.

The bright red wasp turns out to be something horrendous called a "cow killer." Mutillidae, sometimes known as velvet ant, since female has no wings.

Add to Hill list: cow killers; stubborn husbands.

Up around 4:30 this morning in a pool of sweat. Around 5:30 generator on as frig was reaching danger point. Nevertheless when I took the dogs out around 6 it felt very cool. I wish we could sleep outside somehow, but I got about 6 bites in the few minutes it took to take dogs out. Skeeters are getting bad with all the standing water around. It needs to dry up, let what we have around soak back in the ground. I hate Off but nothing else works so On it goes.

Sun just came up over the levee, always my favorite part of the day when it just starts to peek over. Looks like a pretty day if you don't look at the yard carnage. One nice thing about the levee is there are no trees on it so on downed branches so it gives the eye a rest.

We scored yet more gas last night. I persuaded Gary to go out to dinner at surreal Lucky Louie's around 5 or so last night. We put the empties in the car just in case the line was down & we felt up to it. Lucky Louie's is a place I never would have ventured but am kind of glad we know it now. No casino action for us--I don't get that & have no interest whatsoever--but the cafe was nice enough, dark and coolish, and they were serving 2 things: burger & fries or red beans & rice. I had the former and ate with appetite for the first time in many days. Also am feeling better due to salt. Began craving it yesterday & ate some salted nuts, felt better, so I put what would normally be way too much salt on my fries and gobbled them. I must have had a salt deficiency--I think that attends a kind of overheating somehow, I forget. After supper we waited about an hour in line at the adjacent gas station & filled up 7 gallons worth in cans. So returned home feeling flush, ran generator a couple of hours & watched some Errol Morris episodes of First Person on my laptop.

Our waitress last night saw me doing my blood glucose and we had one of those sympathetic connections-PWD to PWD (person with diabetes). She said her BG was over 1200 when she was diagnosed. Good lord, I said, and you lived? She went on to tell the tale--a tiny little woman, she said at that point she weighed over 350 pounds. She acted out how her clothes fell off her, etc. I recognized the bartender as the woman I saw vacuuming in the AM; she came over & we commiserated on stuff. I like the staff at LLs cafe a lot and will add it to this list of haunts when everything goes back to normal. Who would have known I'd like a place that lures truck drivers in to gamble? Gary had the red beans and left not a crumb.

Hot meal someone else cooked, gas, salt, good people--a good night.

And to top it all off we heard on the radio that Port Allen, Brusly, and Addis may be back on power tonight. Be still my heart. Estimates for many places are up to 3 weeks, so that is a huge stroke of luck. We will continue to forage for gas today because this seems too good to be true. One concern is that we have some vines on the power line from the road to the house, and the last bit of line going to the house across the side yard hangs a bit low. All of this has been this way for at least 2 years and we have had Entergy out to look at it, asked that the line be raised since riding the tractor under it is a bit scary, and we also need frequently to move a ladder or do stuff to trees over there. But they said it was still within acceptable height and not to worry, and wouldn't fix it. Now since they have made clear that if the problem is your trees or your house they will deem you not ready to receive power and won't turn it on to you. we want to make sure this doesn't create a problem. A couple of days ago an Entergy pick-up cruised by here and a guy hopped out, motioned something to the driver, then hopped back in and they took off. I hope that wasn't a "that line is too low" assessment that will come back to bite us in the ass. We plan to do sentry shifts on Entergy trucks today, hopefully getting this straight with them if necessary.

Have been looking at websites this AM: the LSU Reveille, the student paper, has some detailed info about the state of the campus. WAFB list of electricity restoration estimates; from that page there is also a video showing the electrical issues & breaking it down sanely. Entergy website with damages photos and animation of restoration process. the only bigger disaster for Entergy was Katrina. Looking also at MSNBC for what Hanna has done to Haiti, where the bitch is headed, and what Ike is doing--enough, enough, enough, and I hope everyone gets out of harm's way.

Time to plan the rest of the day.

8:45 AM: plan
Gary to get some stuff he needs at Port Allen Hardware which is open despite no electricity--love those guys. Then he will try with fiberglass pole to knock vines off power wire, very carefully. It actually looks like Gustav loosened them a lot.
After this a gas run to Louie's. Oe of us to stay here as Entergy sentry.

If power comes back on try to get tractor started and start clearing the huge branches from blocking the way to get trees removed by garage. That will be a part chainsaw job. From there we can get into garage to tarp part of roof that is gone and move stuff around. If no power postponing this. It will be hot work on what will be a hot day and no point unless there will be refuge. If no power I will take it easy and just take my yellow cart around and start clearing the small garden patch and nice part of the yard (relatively) of smaller debris. The air feels much drier which is why it feels cooler this AM but we will be in the 90s today.

Power or no I am going to bag up all the stuff in the freezer and put it out with the trash then clorox the freezer. We tried but there was just not enough gas to run the frig enough to keep the freezer below freezing for enough of the time. There is no point whatsoever in gambling on any of that food. Putting trash out may be wishful thinking but tomorrow AM is supposed to be pick-up. Will seal it as best I am able in the can & cross fingers.

Also need to poke around with a stick in the drainage ditch out front to see if we can't get it moving & stop breeding mosquitos. It is probably very clogged with debris. There's still a lot of water in places in the yard but that will just have to soak in and/or dry up.

Just filled all the hum feeders I have and there are swarms of them feeding. Cats fed, dogs fed, next the regular birds--there are far fewer about than normal, and this is a concern. I bought a big bag of seed on my Wallyworld trip last Saturday, good thing.

Hattie and Beckett are playing a game where they roll around on the parlor carpet and pick up a stuffed bunny & run through the house with it, then one of them steals it, etc. It is good to see them acting goofy and like normal dogs again. I don't think Scout slept much last night as he is napping and ignoring Steal the Bunny.

Since the sun is out I am going to drape the porch with all the musty nasty damp towels we've accumulated plugging up window leaks and showering and wiping up various messes all week. Got to fight the mold.

Plant and animal day, apparently.

We got to Lucky Louie’s (the gas station attached is called TMI) around 7:30 AM and exited with car tank topped off, one 5 gallon can and one 1-gallon, around 10:20 AM. So almost 3 hours, during which I went in and out of dizzy from fumes and had to keep getting out of the car. At one point I had to pee badly so I asked & the same green-hat guy from yesterday, now in a neon green shirt maintaining orderly gas line, told me just to go into the casino. Um, that is open? The most surreal pee I ever took (okay, TMI is for Too Much Info as well). Inside it was coolish—not full Ac, but coolish and very dim except for a bar all lit up and around the corner—whoa, a Disneyland, a Christmas tree light explosion, a carnival midway—I am reaching for what this looked like—lights, jingling, flashing. What the? And then a woman across the room pushes toward me with a vacuum cleaner, cleaning the casino carpet. People were in the bar eating hot food. The bar was all lit up. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t see the ladies room for a full 2 minutes. And the ladies was downright cool, clean, smelled fresh. A woman came in behind me and said “Dag.” I stuck my head under the cool tap before I left, back into dizzy fumes under the old bridge, people taking their old time filling up 8 gas cans and ambling into the station to pay.

Now we would have had more cans except that last night a neighbor came by saying he & friend were going to Jennings near Lafayette to get gas and stay overnight. So Gary gave him half our cans, plus we returned to him the other neighbors’ cans we were trying to fill up if we found anything. So all that and we bought 6 hours of generator time, and another 1/3 tank to get out of dodge or siphon. Forty bucks.

I feel sick today—didn’t sleep much and am too hot, but other than that I am afraid the kidney thing is not over. I seem to have to pee (TMI I know) frequently, back hurts again. I hope I am wrong. I hope it is just drinking a ton of water to keep hydrated and back hurt from working. I have another day to go on antibiotics. Will call doctor this afternoon if I don’t improve after a cold shower and some rest. It is 86 and the sun has just come out full, so it will be a hot one. Last night we had thunderstorms and a lot of rain, terrifying Hattie who kept getting up and bellow barking then when I got her and calmed her jumping on top of me on the bed, with her hot body and breath. I love that dog but she was a trial last night.

During wait at Lucky Ls I had a good cell signal so I called Gary’s sister. His mom is fine but her 2 friends will not leave and she feels obliged to stay and host them—although she would like to go stay with Gary’s sister’s family. There people have a nephew with a big house oand a good generator so this is absurd. I apologized that we are not helping with Mom since I feel awful about that but honestly getting across the river doesn’t seem smart and she’s a long way on the other side. They seemed concerned about some damage to her house but it is only to a garden structure—got that sussed anyway. In sum she is in better shape than us by far, and I’m glad, and some guilt & worry allayed. Complicated family politics.

Got call from G’s son & he & wife got out, they are at a motel in Jackson Mississippi. Good for them. Yesterday during DSL time I got email from a couple of folks but I think the LSU server isn’t working well. There were a few posts to the dept list-serv, mainly from out of town asking how we were, but one from grad students saying they had heard from most of our GA gang and they were all okay so far and looking out for one another. That is a huge relief, I love those young people so much.

Elsewise frustrating, because I go on the NY Times site for instance and it’s all about the republican convention with a little coverage of Gustav that is all focused on New Orleans. They are asking people to come back so everything is rosy. But many of those folks are here and they are sucking up the gas to get home—they don’t say that. And almost nothing about BATON ROUGE THE CAPITAL CITY AND MOST POPULATED and power lines are still draped on roads here.

I want to say something about what I sense will happen if it isn’t already happening—I saw a tiny evidence of this on a quick website tour. People blaming us for not evacuating. Okay, fine, but BR has never ever ever been this hard hit—we have been a place people evacuate TO not FROM, and in fact that’s what we were for this storm too. Look at a map. We are inland so no surge; some of our rivers and canals and bayous flood, but it is nothing like the bowl of NO and that flood. The Mississippi does not flood here because the levees are good and we are not below sea level. When the lower parishes and NO evacuate, as they did this time to unprecendented amounts, we are told to stay off the roads and we do. The roads can’t handle BR mass evacuating too. We are also a staging place for rescue operations south, east, and west of us. If I had it to do over I would stay again because that’s how it is here—it is generally considered far more dangerous to leave. I would be better prepared—but again, we were as prepared as we were for Katrina and Rita, but this time it wasn’t enough, plus we have more property, trees, animals, etc. to deal with and are much more cut off. Make no mistake we will fix that as soon as we can. Last night sitting on the porch getting chewed alive we made a plan, and if we need a second mortgage to put it in place we’ll do that. But if people start saying You Chose This so Shut Up to us I may need to get my English Longbow out.

I worked some of that sermon out while cleaning inside a bit—sweeping up billows of dog hair, bits of leaf and dirt tracked in, re-sprayed for fleas (please, please no), packaged up the wet recycling as garbage (sorry, but it stank, and as the recycling truck routinely skips us in the best of circumstances, no hope there), tidied and trimmed the electrical cords running from our generator hook-up, did dishes, cleaned kitchen. Thought about Virginia Woolf passage about “imposing some order on my raked, my disheveled soul.”

Gary just went to neighbors to see about the Jennings gas mission. The grandchild staying there had a nasty spill on bicycle this AM and they are assessing, but it looks like he & his mama will go back to NO as they heard they have power, and get the kid cooled down and bandaged better, stitches if he needs them. He’s a great kid, at dinner the other night told us he sometimes lies awake at night wondering various things like why God made mosquitoes. A 12-year-old child excited about a potential Scrabble game and hanging on the every word of all the adults, acting very adult himself—well, if they decide they don’t want him I’ll take him.

We saw electrical workers out on route 1 but that was where lines were down on the road so I have no idea if that will bdo anything toward getting us back on. Listening to WJBO—there should be a press conference re electricity at 3 PM. Crossing fingers.

Gary back with 7 more gallons gas and a chest of ICE!!!!!! Generator on again. Tomorrow I suppose we will do the gas mess all over again but we have around 14 hours of fuel now and we can make that last 2 days easy.

Gary restless wants to go over the river to refill his propane tank for the forge to do some work. WHAT???!! Is he in his right mind? I think he is worried about money. I may use the Enlgish Longbow yet today.

It is about 90 in my upstairs garret where I have to hook into DSL since the wireless won’t work—I think I fried it, who knows. Add it to the list of hurricane preparation---another DSL downstairs. Posting this bit, then cold shower and lie in the fan for me.