CONSTRUCTION PROJECT

Since Grandmommy (Janell's mother), has lived with us, we have stored her kidney dialysis supplies in the our living room. Although this room is not used frequently, the boxes took up a lot of room and were in the way if we wanted to do anything in this part of the house. So, just before Thanksgiving, I began construction of a climate controlled closet inside our garage. I completed this a week ago, and we now have a little room in which to store all the paraphernalia. If you are interested in more, you can take the attached video tour. Also, if you are interested in dialysis basics, read on.

Real Basic Dialysis
The method Grandmommy uses is called peritoneal dialysis (PD) which can be done at home. The most common type, hemodialysis, requires actual filtration of the blood three times a week at a dialysis center. PD is more convenient because it can be done automatically at night while the patient is sleeping. Basically, a dextrose (a sugar) solution is pumped into the abdominal cavity through an implanted port. The material remains for an hour or so and then is pumped out. This cycle is repeated several times during the night. The last input remains in the abdomen until the next night. The cleansing of the blood uses a process called osmosis, where the impurities in the bloodstream transfer across the peritoneal membrane due to a concentration difference between the blood and the fluid in the abdominal cavity.

While PD is more convenient to do, it does require keeping a supply of solutions on hand. The process requires about 10 liters (about 2.5 gallons) of solution every night. We keep a little more than one months supply on had, so this translates to more than 30 boxes of solution at 10 liters per box. The process also requires other supplies, such as tubing, which we must also keep. What you see in the video clip shows what we have on hand midway between deliveries.

AN UPDATE - BELIEVE IT!

Time has passed by in a hurry. It occurred to me that we haven't posted anything in a while. It's hard to believe that we could be so busy since we're retired.

After things settled down in October, we finished the Habitat for Humanity house the local affiliate had started in September. Subsequently, another one was started in early November to be completed it in January. Normally, we build three houses in the spring and two in the fall.

FEMA has featured our Habitat house that was under construction when Ike struck. It seems they were impressed by the building techniques to build a house that will withstand hurricane winds.

There have been numerous opportunities to help with rebuilding after hurricane Ike. I've been doing a bit of that in Surfside and Freeport. There's a lot of folks who don't have many resources, so relying on volunteers is the only way they will get their homes repaired. The effort has been rewarding.

This update is pretty short. I'll try to do better in the future. Of course, this is coming from folks who don't view a Netflix DVD for weeks at a time.

Visitors From The East

From September 18th to October 12th, Stacy, Hutch, and Elsa visited us. We had such a wonderful time, even with being displaced until our power was restored. Alex came to pick them up on October 9th and was here for much too short a time.

It will come as no surprise that we enjoyed the grandchildren. Hutch is a real joy and is fun to have around. Elsa is growing like a weed, and toward the end of the visit, she began making more eye contact with subsequent smiles. We are already looking forward to Christmas.

Hutch decided that our Lab, Ollie, was great entertainment. Ollie, in turn, enjoyed the goodies that dropped from the high chair during mealtimes. Hutch learned that Ollie liked to chase tennis balls, so he would toss them with great glee and watch Ollie bring them back.

The video clips below are mainly for Hutch to enjoy. If you feel lead to watch a Labrador Retriever walk around and listen to a tune from a toy fire engine, well you just go ahead.

The Recovery

We have been back for a couple of weeks now. Superficially, everything seems normal. There's just this awareness that not all is right with the world. One begins to realize there are subtle differences post storm. There is more sunlight in some places than there was a month ago. Store signs are missing letters or are dangling at some angle. News coverage is on to other things, but the effects of the cyclone are still being felt by many.

Damage locally is being repaired. However, we can go to Surfside ten miles away and see some pretty amazing sights. Streets and roads are washed out, and, regrettably, there is severe damage to some homes. All in all, they escaped the harsher fate of Galveston 50 miles to the north. However, if it's your home that's beat up, it doesn't matter.

There are lots of volunteer opportunities, and I plan to do my bit when possible. One of the big problems is that many houses, all of which are elevated on pilings, need exterior staircases. The homes survived with little or no damage, but the storm surge took out the stairs and folks can't get back in.

Here's a few pictures of Surfside that were sent to me.

View of Surfside on Saturday morning
after Ike made landfall.

Stacy, Alex, Hutch, and I drove around last Saturday. There are several homes that were subjected to lots of sand erosion. Their foundations were simply undermined and they have settled at odd angles. You can see some of that in the building directly above. It's a public pavilion. You can see the broken roof due to the part of the structure that as settled in the water. There's the bits of people's lives still scattered about: a boat sitting on dry land next to the Intercoastal Canal, golf carts washed from underneath a house are sitting in a vacant lot, refrigeration equipment from a restaurant sitting outside under a tarp.

There is a road that parallels the beach, running from Surfside to Galveston and crossing the San Luis pass where Galveston Bay connects to the Gulf of Mexico This is where the eye made landfall. It has been so damaged that it is impassable. Several lengthy stretches are simply gone. Residents of a small community at the extreme northeast end are basically cut off from us. Estimates are that it will take about $100 million to rebuild it to today's standards.

In the end, we dodged a bullet. Only a relative few are having major problems while our neighbors up the coast are facing monumental challenges. This will take years to build everything anew.

I suppose to those who live elsewhere it may seem strange that we would stay here in the first place with the knowledge that all our material possessions could be blown away in any given hurricane season. I don't relish the potential much myself. Put the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast and the tabletop flat land in the mix, and it really seems outlandish to live here. But it's just home.

Power At Last, Power At Last, Lord Almighty, Power At Last

The title to this post probably let's you figure out where we are now. Last Saturday, we finally got word that electrical service had been restored to our house. So, on Sunday with children, grandchildren, great-grandmother, and Ollie (our Lab) in tow, we headed back to Lake Jackson after 2-1/2 weeks of living out of suitcases. Because of all the stuff we had and concerns about Janell's mom, Tara, our daughter-in-law volunteered to drive down with us. We had three vehicles in our little convoy. Anyway, we arrived safely and were very happy to be back in our house. Tara turned around and drove back to College Station, bless her heart. She and Sean just don't know how grateful we are for their hospitality.

For us, our Ike trek is over, and it's on to other things (after just a bit more cleanup, though).

On The Mend

The area as a whole continues to go through various stages of recovery. Galveston is in terrible shape. There are lots of issues there, and it's going to be a while for their renewal. As for our city, Lake Jackson is getting cleaned up and powered up. We have limbs and debris piled on a lot of the curbs. It's sort of like having tree-lined streets, only different.

Most of the city residents still do not have power. The main reason that we are lagging behind is that the felling of so many trees took out a lot of lines. The power company triages the damage to work in areas where electricity can be restored to the most people with the least effort. Our understanding is that they are starting to descend on LJ. It is said that Monday or Tuesday will see big changes for all of us. Given all the damage in other areas of the coast, we're okay with the progress. These guys have a big job.

This past Wednesday, I drove back home to clean out the refrigerators and freezer so I could take advantage of our regular trash pickup day. I had quite a load of stuff, but at least we no longer have to decide how long something has been in the fridge. It was all bad after five days. I also got the back yard raked up and it looks much better.

In all of this, we had longed planned to get Stacy, Hutch, and Elsa to Lake Jackson during the time Alex had to be out of town. So, I flew to Richmond, VA yesterday morning, met up with all of them, and, with Hutch on my lap, flew back home with Stacy and Elsa. Alex departed for Minnesota at nearly the same time we left. It's the first time I've ever made a round trip flight and never left an airport. Anyway, we eventually made it to College Station last night. So now we have added more people to Sean's and Tara's house.

It is hardly possible to describe how much we appreciate Sean and Tara. There hospitality and attitude has been a godsend. I'm not sure we could have done all this without them. Even in the face of adding more people to their house, they've been real troopers. God bless them.

Post Hurricane Ike

It has been almost a week since I last posted anything because all we could do was watch and wait. The eye of the storm made landfall on Galveston Island just north of us. We were on the clean side and suffered very little damage. Beachfront houses had the most damage, but even then many were spared. The winds were relatively low, less than 100 MPH, we didn't have much storm surge (i.e., water pushed onshore by the wind), and very little rainfall. Galveston didn't fare as well, as did areas up the coast from us into Louisiana. Lots of coastal flooding. Houston was hit with some flooding and high winds in the area. Electrical service is out for around two million customers, including us. It's possible we won't have power for a week or two. In Lake Jackson, the water is safe to drink, but the sewer lift stations are not all working yet, so we are urged not to return. Our family is still in College Station, TX with Sean and Tara.

Sean and I went back yesterday to get my pickup and do some work. We had a bizarre break in our incoming water line due to storm debris. While I fixed this, Sean picked up the big chunks of tree limbs in our yard. Here's some pictures from our house.

This is the front yard, complete with boarded up windows, the only ones I did.

Our neighbors across the street had three large trees knocked down with no damage to their home.

This is a panorama of our back yard. If you look at our neighbor's house across the fence, you can see the tree laying on their roof. It pierced the roof, and an hour or so later, during their attempt to remove it, it made another hole when it shifted.

Finally, this is the pile of debris that Sean generated when he picked up the limbs in our yard. I'm in the picture to infer that I actually helped. I'm very grateful for his help. There's still a lot to pick up, but it's small stuff.

Our house really had no damage at all, which was pretty much the norm for the area. Lots of trees and tree limbs are down, making it look worse than it is. It will take a while to get everything cleaned up. We are very thankful.

One thing about hurricanes that seems so surreal to me is that they come ashore with the all the fury one can image, taking hours to pass through and wreaking havoc everywhere. Then, soon after, the weather can be pleasant, a glorious day, with the sun shining down on absolute devastation of a massive scale.

The Storm

After giving some thought to starting a blog, I finally decided to do so on the eve of the landfall of Hurricane Ike. Why now? Well, we did what we could around our house and left Lake Jackson to get out of the path of the coming cyclone. We moved everyone inland to Sean and Tara's house. Now there is nothing we can do but wait to see what happens. As of now, Ike will move onshore in the early morning hours of Saturday just slightly north of where we live.

I've always marveled at the timing of landfalls. These storms will begin on the coast of Africa, move ponderously across the Atlantic for days on end, chart some course through the Caribbean for several days, move across the Gulf of Mexico for two or three days, and then , seemingly invariably, hit some time during the night. It must be to add to the drama, as if screaming winds, torrential rains, and massive waves just aren't enough to terrorize we simple humans.

Anyway, we will see what happens.