Hurricane Gustav

Four major hurricanes in just 3 years has me thinking about continuing to live in Louisiana. Baton Rouge was hit harder than by any hurricane in memory, including Betsy in 1965.

I'm still cleaning up debris in my yard. Three debris pickups were already made on my street and I've built another pile just as big as the others. I won't be finished clearing limbs and leaves for many more days.

We were extremely blessed that nothing went through our roof. Some of my neighbors lost their entire houses to hundred year old oak trees falling on them and demolishing them. Those trees have withstood many storms, but Gustav brought them down.

We're all still in a surreal state of mind. Life goes on but we aren't altogether there with it sometimes. We were without power for 9 days and we didn't have internet access at our house until Sept. 27.

It's hard to get back to normal when normal hasn't arrived and our beautiful trees will be gone for another hundred years.

Mentally and emotionally we are doing much better than we did after Katrina and Rita. We were better prepared and so was the entire relief system that kicked in at day 3 after the storm like clockwork.

It's been 3 weeks since I wrote the last entry and I still have about 400 square feet of back yard to finish cleaning up.

There are a lot of twigs and leaves still on the ground and I'll have to rake them and bag them. There are also some medium sized limbs back there that I couldn't get to before. I don't believe any will require cutting before I can drag them to the front, but if they do, I'll cut them up.

We are on pile #6 in front of the house now. They have made 3 more debris pickups over the last 3 weeks or so. I have a huge back yard and the entire yard was covered with debris about 6 feet deep.

The hardest thing about cleaning it all up is my back gets tired and starts hurting so I can only spend a few hours working the days I can work outside. The bending and squatting to pick up what's on the ground make my back sore. All the bending has also gotten my stomach acting up. I've had a lot of heartburn since I've been working a few or more days a week in the yard, even if only for an hour or so at a time. The bending seems to push the acid up my esophagus and I can feel where the erosion is. I had to start taking Prilosec again every day and chewing Tums. But I'm almost done. Another 7-8 days of a few hours each and I should be completely finished.

I found a piece of siding on the garage is damaged and I keep finding roof shingles in the yard as I clean up, so the roof will need some repair. I can't afford to replace it right now, and my hurricane deductible is too high to come anywhere near covering any of the cost. My hurricane deductible is about $7600.

I put in a request for assistance through the SBA, but they won't give me a loan because of my current financial position. I hope there are still grants available through FEMA. If they kick back your loan application FEMA is supposed to take your application back up and determine if you will receive a grant.

My income is still adversely affected by Gustav. In October, I only made $255 tutoring. Last year in October I made $845.50. November is shaping up to be a little better. I can only hope I will make as much as I did last year for the month.

I am making more money with my online endeavors now, so tutoring income isn't as critical, but it would be nice if I could get back to last year's income levels while I take a few more months to build my online business further. I made $295 in October between commissions, advertising revenue on my blogs and consulting work on other people's blogs. It's the most I've made so far. I hope to double or triple that for the month of November. I would love to make 10 times that much, and I will, I hope sooner than later.