The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is this weekend and Mother Nature seems to think that the best way to celebrate this is to throw another hurricane at New Orleans. I’ve been watching this storm probably just as much as the actual residents of New Orleans, and other than the fact that I haven’t run to WalMart in a frenzy to stock up on candles and tuna, I feel exactly the same as I did when I lived there and had to make the big decision of to evacuate or not to evacuate.

When I meet people and they find out that I left NOLA because of Katrina, many ask why so many people didn’t evacuate. “If they knew it could be bad, why didn’t they leave?” “Isn’t it just irresponsible to stay?” “How could they just not go?” These are all valid questions and, honestly, I would rather people ask and get answers rather than just assuming that folks in NOLA are stupid and that’s why they didn’t leave. And trust me, some people do believe that NOLA residents are just dumb and have no problem telling me that. They usually follow this sentiment up with “People shouldn’t be allowed to live in New Orleans in the first place.” I usually follow this up with a polite “Fuck you, you arrogant asshat. I hope your hometown falls into a sinkhole soon.” Bonus points to me for saying it with a big shit-eating grin on my face.

But honestly, deciding to evacuate is a huge decision. One I’ve wrestled with many times as an adult and I can say that coming to a decision never is easy. Yes, evacuating for every hurricane that is even a mild threat to NOLA would be the correct move, but in reality that will never happen. Evacuating is a huge expense. It’s a hassle. It’s time consuming. And a lot of the times it’s totally pointless. Katrina has been the one time in my life that evacuating was the correct decision. Every other hurricane I experienced in my 25 years in NOLA either missed the city at the last minute or didn’t bring with it more than a heavy rain and some wind. You can imagine how this would make you think twice about evacuating for every hurricane gunning towards the city.

The other problem with evacuating is the expense. Hurricanes can happen multiple times a summer, seriously there is no limit. If you evacuated for every one you’re looking at huge amounts of money spent on all kinds of things: hotels, gas, food, and many other various expenses along the way. And let’s not overlook the fact that if the hurricane misses the city, you could be out a day or more of work. That’s money lost for many residents, especially ones that work on hourly pay scales. And for many of those people, that’s money they can’t afford to not make.

But losing a couple of days of work is really a small concern, considering that you could lose your job for evacuating. Many retail stores and restaurants are not sympathetic to people’s needs to flee. If the business does not shut down for evacuations, you could be faulted as a “no show” for any shift that you’re scheduled for. Same thing after evacuating; if the business opens and you’re on your way back from Houston and can’t make your Tuesday morning shift then you could be out a job. It’s not fair, but it happens. I worked at a business that said we would be fired for not showing up if we chose to evacuate and didn’t make our shifts. And when you need that income desperately, sometimes the easy decision is not to head out of town. Or to send your family and stay behind, hoping for the best.

Has this become an unfun blog post about a depressing topic? ding ding ding, we have a winner! Yes it has! Sorry. Go get a cookie if you’ve read this far. And go get me a drink because, dude, I neeeed one. And I swear I only have like one more point to make.

Right now Hurricane Gustav is just entering the Gulf of Mexico but if you started to call hotels in the typical cities people evacuate towards (Houston, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, etc) I bet you couldn’t get a room anywhere. And if you could get a room, I bet they would only hold it for you for a couple of hours. One time, before Katrina, a hurricane was heading our way. I called Houston and booked a room, but the hotel told me they would only hold my room until 6pm on the day of the reservation. Problem was, I was not going to make it to Houston in that time frame. I offered to pay for the whole reservation up front, but they wouldn’t allow it. The hotel staff told me that they can’t hold reservations during times of evacuation because of such high demand. If I couldn’t be there by 6pm, my room would go to someone standing in the lobby. I called a few other hotels, but no one else had rooms open. I decided not to evacuate because where would I go? I would have had to sleep in my car in Houston and that wasn’t an option. And going past Houston wasn’t an option because I needed to be able to get back to the city quickly to get back to work if the hurricane didn’t do much damage. For many people that don’t have family willing to take them in, leaving is hard. You don’t know where you’ll end up, you don’t know if there will be room for you. You just don’t know and sometimes that stops people dead in their tracks.

For Katrina jparks and I went back and forth about evacuating. We had friends in Houston to stay with if needed (and we ended up doing just that), and we had the money to evacuate, but still we thought long and hard about it. At first we weren’t going to leave our house. Then we were going to stay with my mom in the suburbs. Finally we decided to get the hell out. Had we stayed in our house, bad things would have happened to us. Had we stayed at my mom’s, we would have physically been fine, but without power or water and we would have been forced to leave anyway. Getting out for Katrina was the right decision and one that many people just couldn’t make.

I hope that people continue to watch Gustav and take the hard lessons from Katrina into account when making their plans. It’s not an easy decision to leave, but if Gustav stays on it’s path (which it might not. there’s plenty of time for it to turn. turn, you bastard TURN), it will be the correct one.

But what do I know? I’m just a New Orleans girl stuck in California.

It currently looks like this outside:

I think this will be our 472nd day of rain in a row, not that I mind. It makes the fact that I’ll be in sunny, 80 degree Florida in 2 short days even sweeter. And until then, I’ve got my headphones on and iTunes rocking the Jack Johnson because he is the musical equivalent of sitting on a sunny beach with a mai tai in my hand.

Suck it rain! You can’t depress me!

Today California forced me to do something I didn’t want to do. Something I didn’t think I would ever do. Something that makes me hang my head in shame. Today, I bought a pair of Uggs because it is ungodly cold here. And rainy! And running around in peep toes heels in the cold rain sucks. S-U-C-K-S!

I know, I know, they are ugly. [insert Uggly joke here] But I’m cold and they’re WARM. And being warm makes my toes happy. And having happy toes makes me a tiny bit less cranky and me being less cranky is always good for jparks.

In my defense I didn’t buy the traditional Ugg boots, I bought what I like to call Ass Kickin’ Ugg Boots. I also got them on sale because I couldn’t stand to spend that much money on Uggs, even the Ass Kickin’ kind.

And now that I own Uggs, I want to make a few promises to you, just so you can rest assured that I haven’t lost my freaking mind.

It’s August and that means summer is ending here in the Bay Area, but I know in other parts of the country it’s still hot and humid. And hot and humid weather usually forces people to find relief in any form possible: air conditioned houses, swimming pools, popsicles, etc. With this in mind, I want to offer a Public Service Announcement to everyone in warmer environments.

This:

will freeze itself to your tongue and when you go to remove it, well, ouch. The removal of this tasty treat of pain can cause a loss of tongue skin and can result in pain for a couple of days afterwards.

Not that I know anything about this. I mean I’m way to smart to get my tongue stuck to a popsicle. Nope, it would never happen to me.

I have a secret and I might lose my Democrat street cred when I admit this, but well, here goes.

deep breath

I didn’t see An Inconvenient Truth.

I had really good reasons for not seeing it, the main one being that after the hurricane I saw a trailer for it and that trailer made me cry. The trailer. The 30 second long trailer. Made. Me. Cry. In a movie theatre. While I was alone. Surrounded by people that just wanted watch Friends With Money and not have to uncomfortably ignore the insane person sitting a row behind them.

I’m well aware the planet is going down the crapper and we’re not doing much to stop it. I know this and it scares the hell out of me. Scares me enough that I wonder if I should even have kids. Why should I bring more people into a world this fucked up? Or why should I add more people to the problem?

Another reason why I didn’t see An Inconvenient Truth is because I like to go to the movies and forget about how much life sucks and how we are all going to drown in the near future. I like to pretend that while I’m in the dark theatre there is someone actually doing something amazing to stop global warming and save us from our destructive ways. And when I leave the theatre I’ll walk out into a world that is a bit cooler and frozen on its tips.

Anyway, I’m not trying to be preachy. People that don’t believe in global warming aren’t going to be swayed by me. It’s just that lately this kind of crap has been on my mind. I guess I’m growing up. Although I still think the word poop is funny, so maybe not.

I just called the hotel (don’t call a Disney Resort a hotel while on the phone with a Disney employee, they’ll correct you. Every single time you say hotel they. will. correct. you. You can’t win this test of wills Ms. Disney Employee, I’m going to call it a hotel and you can’t stop me) to find out if the hotel(!) has internet access. The chipper answer was “Yes, and it’s even high speed!” But when I asked if it was free, the tone in her voice changed. It turned a lot less chipper, as she explained that it’s $9.95 for 24 hours.

$10 a day for internet! That is such a rip off. Disney is mega stupid rich and they can’t provide free wi-fi to their hotel guests? Maybe I’m making wrong assumptions and it’s not 24 hours as in noon to noon, but 24 hours that ticks down for every hour you are logged in.

Anyway, I guess this is just my way of saying I might not be able to post as much as I planned. I’m still going to try to post daily, but unless someone wants to send me $50 for internet access, it might not happen. The weather better be beautiful to make up for this crap.

Can I just tell you that the Bay Area deosn’t fuck around when it comes to the changing of seasons. A few days ago it was warm. Not full out hot like New Orleans, but warm. Then it cooled down to what I would call fall, for maybe three days. Fall was nice, I was enjoying it, but then this morning I woke up and it’s winter.

Now I know some locals might call me crazy, but temperatures in the upper 50’s say winter to me. If I can wear a sweater, it’s winter. If I get the itch to knit, it’s winter. If I automatically order a latte instead of an iced latte, it’s winter.

Thanks to this onslaught of winter weather Lily has to wear some of her wide array of sweaters and t-shirts. And she is thriller. T-H-R-I-L-L-E-D. She hates nothing more than wearing clothes, but she actually isn’t being as stubborn about it as usual. I think even Lily agrees that it’s cold and is ready to properly dress for the season.

Here she is representing the 504:

And even when Lily’s got clothing on, she still feels the need to burrow herself into a blanket to nap.

It also rained today. It hasn’t rained since the first two days we got out here in April. That’s almost six months without seeing water falling from the sky. I forgot how much I love rain and cloudy days. I forgot how nice it is to have a grey sky filled with clouds above you. How nice rain feels on your face when it’s been dry for so long. How rain makes me feel like I’m in New Orleans. How rain washes your car for you. Oh, rain stay for a while please.