Day 184: Homecoming

If you make a comment on my blog it will take a little while for it to appear. I added comment moderation because of all the spam comments I have been getting lately. Therefore, I have to get an email and click a link before your comment will show up. Hopefully the spammers will then move on. I know who cares right, I should let it go but it feel like clutter in my house.

Speaking of my house. The oil is here, it washes ashore here at my house. To answer your questions, if I feel sick I will leave immediately. I wont be staying if we feel at all sick at any time. I am only willing to wait and see because I am hoping that we are safe. So far the smell is not here and there is only clumps of chocolate mousse looking globs washing up on the shore. The Governor of Mississippi says that the stuff along the coast of Mississippi is not toxic. He actually said that. He thinks he is going to run for president too. He also said don't touch it let the professionals clean it up.

I don't think that I would be able to rent my house for the amount of my mortgage or even close to that amount. A few of my military friends in my neighborhood are renters and the current rates are much lower than my mortgage for a much bigger house with a pool. I was also a property manager for a friend of mine who couldn't sell his home here and that was not a lot of fun. Renting is hard, sometimes people suck. As soon as Jeff gets home we are going to go and get some training and start volunteering. That will probably help us to feel a lot better. On the news it is showing thousands of workers here from BP to help with the clean up (not local people) and hundreds of boats. I will go down to the beach and let you know if I see anyone. Reporting live from the gulf. ha ha. I told Jeff I should make some sandwiches and set up a stand. Maybe fill if full of that "safe" shrimp. Speaking of which I am all talk, when push comes to shove I ate the shrimp and it was good.

Yesterday morning I got an email from Jeff saying when he is arriving home. I don't think I am allowed to give out that information on the internet but the date is sooner than I thought and I just started to cry and cry. I couldn't help it. So funny. Lily was asking me, why are you crying mommy? I told her when Jeff is coming home. She gave me an odd look and said that it looked like I got coffee all over my face. You see I was still wearing makeup, lots of makeup and the tears mixed with it and it was a mess. Too funny. I haven't been wearing makeup a whole lot lately. I am still trying to figure out how to incorporate going to the gym into my life along with looking pretty. So far it isn't working. I go to the gym and then run a bunch of errands in no makeup and sweaty. Then I come home and take a nice hot shower and since I am not planning on going out of the house again I put on some comfortable clothes and no makeup and hang out with Lily. So if you see me and I look rough, sorry.

The reason for all the makeup was that a friend of mine invited me out for a girl's night. I spent all day dolling myself up. My friends are the high maintenance, 10 years younger, pretty as a super model types. I have been noticing all my friends lately are of this variety, what is up with that? We have a lot in common and have a lot of fun together. Perhaps I am just 10 years less mature than my physical age. ha ha. At the end of the school year we all went to lunch. The last week of school, because our free time was about to be up for the summer. I told them that I really wanted us to all go out dancing. One of my friends took me seriously. It was her birthday and she said let's go and we went. The last time I went out dancing was over 20 years ago. Even then I only went a few times, less than 10 in my entire life.

I was a little nervous. It was my idea and then I was thinking what was I thinking. So I spent the entire say getting ready. That was fun. We ended up going out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in one of the casinos and then dancing in another casino. It was a lot different than the dives I went to as a kid. Very fancy. We had a bast and I didn't get home until nearly 3 am. I sent Jeff a long email telling him all about my night and we was telling people, my wife just got home at 3 am. It is funny because I am almost always asleep by 9pm and not known for being the wild and crazy type. I have to say it was a lot of fun though. I am glad I went. I recommend you go out dancing one in awhile. I am hoping to convince Jeff to start doing this as well. He hates going dancing or clubbing or whatever your generation calls it. It is different when you aren't there to try and make a hookup. When you have no interest in the boys other than for their entertainment value. We were a bunch of happily married ladies out for fun. But, not that kind of fun. The place was packed too. The folks here on the Mississippi sure know how to have a good time.

I am actually going to try to talk my family into changing our vacation from Georgia to here. Have a stay cation. Spend our money on the Coast where it is needed. We shall see how that flies I am sure they will out vote me.

Speaking of that kind of fun. Yeah!!! I better go clean the house. Because Daddy is coming home. I can't believe it.

Deep Water Horizon: BP Oil Spill

I live about 2 blocks from the Gulf of Mexico in Mississippi. From my front yard I can see the water. According to NOAA the outer edge of the oil is going to hit the beach by my house on Wednesday and the major thick concentrated center of the spill will hit the beaches of Alabama/Florida about that time as well. The oil is still gushing out.

On some days when it is hot or when the wind is coming in off the Gulf we can smell the oil here. The first time I smelled it was back in late April or early May. The government set up air quality check points along the coast. While I was smelling oil my news was telling me that my air quality is green. Going outside on those days I get an immediate headache and feel nauseous but I am told that my air quality is green/good. More than anything else this is what bothers me the most. I don't know if the air quality people are not testing for the things in the air that an oil spill will leave like methane gas and whatever it is that smells like tar or like driving behind a big old truck spewing black smoke. Or are they just plain lying?

I realize that the economy of this area is very important to the country. Imagine if you will that the millions of people who live on the coast and make their living on the coast are not going to be able to make their house payments, car payments, credit card payments this month or for the foreseeable future. How will this effect the already hurting economy, the banks, you. So commercials have been made saying Mississippi is open for business. Come on down, the seafood is fine, the air is fine, the water is fine.

They go along the beaches and scoop up tar balls with things that look like giant cat litter scoops and then tell us that the beaches are clean and open for business. The shrimp boats are still out catching shrimp. As long as the shrimp doesn't smell like oil and as long as the shrimp is not taken out of an area that has actual oil it is fine, they say. 100s of millions of gallons of oil is a couple miles away but no oil has been spotted in this patch of water so let's grab all the shrimp while we can. The endangered sea turtles have been washing up on the shores since April. However, the local tv station tells us that they have been examined and no oil was found on the turtles therefore something else must have killed them, more than 600 now. If the oil isn't actually touching something it is thought to be clean. They act like there is oil and clean water and nothing else. That the toxins from the oil are not also in the water. Like you could put some oil in your water bottle shake it up, remove the oil and the water is now safe to drink.

I worry that our ground water, our tap water is not safe. I don't know is that over reacting? Am I crazy? The government, the media, no one talks about the air and the ground water. They talk about the business, they talk about the economy. What about the environment as it effects people. I love the animals and I am devastated about all the birds and sea creatures that are going to die, but what about the people. Are we expendable too? For the precious economy.

Did you know that all summer long that rain comes in off the Gulf and travels up the country and out to the Atlantic, usually via New York or Virginia or somewhere in between. Is our country, our farm land going to be polluted with toxins from the oil this summer as the storms sweep through? It is raining here today, a storm off the Gulf, what is in this rain. How do I know?

When this first happened I was so upset I had trouble leaving the house for a couple of weeks. I had trouble sleeping. I had no idea what to do. Every time I talked to Jeff it was all I talked about, what are we going to do? I want out. Get me out of here. Jeff said that he could put in for an overseas assignment. There were a lot of cool places open and we seriously considered this option. We are not currently eligible to be reassigned to another states side location. The down side is we could never sell our house for what we owe or anywhere near what we owe. The economy in my neighborhood has taken a serious nose dive in the last year or two. There are a ton of houses for sale and none of them seem to be moving. We would also not be able to take our new cars with us, well we could take one but we would lose one. Everything we have worked and saved for over the last 10 years we would lose if we moved right now. We would have to start over money wise. We only had a few days to make the decision to put in for a move or not and we chose to stay.

I love it here. The other day at the gym we saw Lily's first grade teacher, she is doing a 6 day boot camp type work out and the reason I know this is she is one of my facebook friends. She said good morning to Lily as she was jogging through the parking lot. Another of my facebook friends is Lily's kindergarten teacher who just had a baby and we were able to see the pictures of her baby right on our computer. These women sweep us up and make us a part of their family. Everywhere I go I am surrounded by caring loving people. I don't think that exists in other places. Perhaps I am wrong but I really want Lily to be able to grow up here. We have never really belonged anywhere else the way we belong here. The people here just scoop you up and make you one of them. But, I don't want to poison my girls or myself.

Can we stay here and not get cancer? Can they clean it up and keep us safe? Will anyone tell me if I am not safe? I need to learn some chemistry and start testing the water and air quality myself, is that even possible?

Saturday marks the 6 month anniversary of Jeff's leaving for this deployment which means that he should be home soon.