One Week Later

It has been one week since Ike took his hike through Texas, and all the way up to Pennsyvania. One week that seems short and long. Here on the west side, life is mostly normal, for example we only had to work 3 and a half days this week at my office. We have water, and power, cable TV, internet. All the tree limbs are cleared up, fences are being repaired. Mostly it seems to be back to normal. Then there are the reminders. I made a peach cobbler and the family wanted ice cream to go on it. My son and I went to the store, which seemed normal until we got to the frozen foods section. It was emtpy. I mean there was milk, bread, meat, produce...but hardly any frozen goods. Waffles were about it. I picked up some beer, some sodas, some Excedrine, but no ice cream. It seemed to really hit me again, how big this thing was. And how lucky and blessed we are. We lost no food becuase power came back. We had to boil the drinking water for about a day (but we had plenty of bottled in the mean time). Galveston is hurt, badly. But she will recover. Downtown Houston is reopening. Probably by the end of next week most of Houston and the surrounding areas will have power. Our lives will go back to mostly normal.

And that is what is most comforts and confuses me both. I mean people are back to worrying about the little stuff, when a week ago, we were excited to hear someone else we knew was okay, and had hot water. My home hosted a few guests, and friends, and some were too proud or something to come over. I actually understand that, you want to be in your home. But I have seen people back to their petty ways, griping about everything, and the ones that gripe the most, seem to be those that lost the least amount. I just don't get some people.

In the meanwhile, we are coping, going to work, seeing whom we can help, and I think all of us here are tired of the news and want just to forget it all for a little while.

But we shouldn't.