The Simple Scents of Life

There is an erie feeling through the streets in Katy. The south side of Katy is almost deserted, there is no laughter from the children playing in the parking lot next door, no cars or school buses driving by, no air soft wars from the boys in the neighborhood..it is almost complete silence...and it is so strange.

The dear family, who evacuated New Orleans during Katrina, have been staying with us, and were going to head out to San Antonio to stay with some relatives to get out of the path of Rita. But in a few hours, they had only made it 15 miles from our home and had been on Hwy 90 for an hour and had only gone one mile! The traffic is backed up going either east or west. It is over 120 degrees on the freeways and the cars are getting nowhere. A few families in our neighborhood came back after being in their cars for several hours and not making any progress.

We have buckets and pitchers of water filled up. We also have a huge garbage can (the Brute) filled to the top with water for utility purposes. We are still filling buckets for our supply. We are going to keep an overnight bag packed for the "just in case." We are gathering all of our shoes and putting them into a crate by the door for any glass breakage. We emptied all of the things in our attic and put them into the school room, baked lots of bread, cookies, etc. We have nothing on our back porch, and will be starting to tape our windows.

I don't think that I've experienced anything like this before. It is so unusual to just be sitting here, not being able to do anything because all the stores are closed, and there is nobody around. As I write this, I can hear ticking sound of the clock sitting on my desk beside me, listening to the time pass away...just waiting. It is such a queer feeling. I can't describe it. We all know it is coming and about when it will come, but what it will do and what it will be like are the thoughts filling our heads. And we still have a the rest of today and all of tomorrow to think about it. I suppose that is what hurricane parties are for...distraction.