Refugee Update:

I hardly know where to begin. First of all, go here for pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sassyartz/sets/72157607602254393/ . Mom is faster than I and has put hers up on flickr...I will probably dump mine there too when I pull them from the camera.

1. We arrived Wed. at Mark's apt. Thank goodness he had just moved to League City. I don't know what I would have done without him. Thank you Mark for opening up your home to us so we would have a place to live while we cleaned out our house! Unfortunately he did not have an internet connection (He'd JUST moved in!) so no blog updates while we were there.

2. It took us 5 days to clean out the house. Wed. thru Sun. all day everyday.

3. Anything salvagable was moved to a storage 1 mile from Mark's apt. Thank you Natalie for finding the storage!! & a free month's rent on it too! Yay! Thanks!

4. Salvagable items are things that are wooden (like kitchen table, bed frame, etc.) and things that were higher than knee deep (like pictures on the walls, some books, hanging clothes, dishes, etc.).

5. I threw away ALL bedding on the beds including matresses. (Still kinda pissed about that, had just bought a nice, new queen matress in our bedroom in July).

6. We duct taped the fridge and thank God a truckload of Mexicans drove by on that first day when we were so overwhelmed and I hired them out for $150 to move out all the large ruined items, like fridge, matresses, entertainment center, couch, chair, washer, dryer, etc. and other things too that we loaded to storage like TV's (dunno about those, they were above water line, but the cords were submerged) bookcases, bedframes, etc. Those guys were a blessing and a HUGE help!

7. Mosquitoes were the largest I've seen since Alaska. Hummingbird size! Lol

8. FEMA lady came and did a walkthrough and the paper work for us to get assistance. Asking what did we lose in each room, etc. She said we would get monetary assistance but she just did the ground work and submitted the paperwork; she was not in charge of approving money. We should get a deposit within 7 to 10 days from Friday (I think that's when she came, it is all a blur now).

9. Warren was able to come down on Thursday to help clean. His butt is draggin from working 13+ hour days on the stupid surgery rotation that A&M has it's student do.

10. I've done laundry for the past two days from 10 am to like 3pm. So far I've done about 48 loads. Yesterday I did about 30ish but it was alot of re-washing things, like first cycle in ammonia, next in detergent+borax, then I inspected each piece and if it needed to go again I'd make a new pile/load and if it didn't then I'd go ahead and dry it. So far, I've only thrown away a little less than a large trashcan full of clothes. I've taken a little bit to the cleaners too. So far I've gone through about $65 in quarters! I have a little bit more to wash tomorrow and that should wrap it up. Then I need to hose out the car! Stinky!

11. I'm sure our hotel housekeeper is wondering what the hell we are doing in here! Lol, each day has added new things this week. First a fish, then a plant and large black trashbags (full of washed clothes), then our entire wine fridge collection is sitting in a chair, now two more plants, and many many more trashbags full of washed clothes. HA!

I'll stop for now, but I do have more stories to tell about our week there...like the looting Mexicans, so stay tuned!