Note to Self...

I need to change the password to my blog to keep these others off. I had just created a literary mood where I had you right where I wanted you, then Little Miss Sunshine and Jimmy Olsen come in and turn right to the last page of the book!

"One thing, sleep, unstable, blah blah blah, they all lived happily ever after. The end." Pitiful!

Monday was indeed a much more normal day. I shave in my pitch dark bathroom with a flashlight in my left hand and a razor in my right. Time to get back to normal, even if I don't yet feel normal - fake it until you make it!

I may not be much use during an emergency evacuation, but on Monday when the subject turns to the "Employee Assistance Reaction" portion of the disaster, everyone better just stand back. I create a list of five priorities for providing support to our employees who have suffered loss in the storm, list out details, and then start making assignments. Things start happening.

By 9:00am, I'm briefing the CEO and COO in the Command Center on the initiatives that are under way, and their reaction is overwhelmingly positive.

My full HR staff is back on duty, and this cheers me. They are all eager to help, and begin acting and reacting in ways that encourages me about their being a part of the team.

At about 9:45am, an announcement is made overhead: "Code Yellow all clear". The formal disaster is over.

Monday is as busy a day as the last two have been. But today I am planning, coordinating, leading and it goes by fast and feels meaningful. Useful. Still, there are so many who have suffered so much loss, it is not an easy day.

I get home at 11 o'clock, make a peanut butter and honey sandwich on bread that is a day or two away from being too stale to eat. Grab some Pringles. I'm standing in my dark kitchen, eating my sandwich and chips when it hits me. The neighbor has been running the generator to our refrigerator to keep the food from really spoiling. I had beer in the fridge last week. I open the door and check the temperature of the closest beer. It is ice cold. I open the bottle and drink the best tasting beer I have ever had in my life. I used to think that beer never tasted better than on a golf course or at a baseball game. Wrong. Post-hurricane beer is a pseudo-religious experience. Now I am light.

God and I still have a pretty serious conversation to have about weather, but the cool front the rain brought with it on Sunday has been a blessing. I open the windows to my bedroom and go to sleep under the cover. Eight hours. I dream for the first time in four nights.

Tuesday begins with a call from Shelley at 6:45. She wants to come home but her family wants her to stay until the electricity is back on. I tell her I think it is safe to come home, and she is off the phone in a flash.

Safe. That's the reason I told her and the boys to leave. I could not have made it through the last 96 hours worrying about them being unsafe. There was no way to be home with them to protect them myself, and the environment at the hospital I had witnessed three years earlier during Rita was not one to which I wanted the boys exposed. By ensuring their safety, Shelley boarded up the important part of my heart. The storms howled and the challenges came in great, swollen waves - but those who were most precious were safe. It was a great thing Shelley did for me - and a great sacrifice. Leaving meant she could not be here to know how our house was, and could not be here to take care of me, (which is her nature). That was tearing her up, but - and this was hardest of all - she could not let the boys know the fear and anxiety that had us both in their grip.

They all got home safe and sound, and the trespassers have gotten you up-to-date from that point of the story!