2006 was a relatively uneventful year — a welcome relief from 2005.
The recovery from Katrina has gone slowly, both for us and for New Orleans as a whole. We are lucky to live in the small portion of the city that didn't flood — the area closest to the Mississippi River, where centuries of alluvium put us on relatively high ground, a few feet above sea level. The area is sometimes referred to as "the sliver by the river" or "the isle of denial." The difference between this area and most of the rest of the city is stark. Here, things look relatively normal. Many other places remain desolate. In between, many people live in FEMA-supplied camping trailers parked in their front yards, while they work on making their houses livable.
Our house has been livable since a year ago October, when the roof was covered with a blue tarp and we got the inside mess cleaned up. We've been living here full time since a year ago November. Late last year, we had a new roof installed. This year, we managed to complete our exterior repairs — no more blue tarp! We also had the exterior of our house repainted, changing the color from margarita green to what Sherwin Williams calls "youthful coral,"a shade of pink not too far from strawberry ice cream. So from the outside, the house looks great.
The inside of our house still needs some work. There's a big hole in the bedroom ceiling, which collapsed sometime after Katrina blew off a chunk of the roof, letting the rain in. Plastic sheeting separates the bedroom from the attic. We have a few other areas here and there with cosmetic water damage. Getting everything fixed is going to take a long time, because all the good contractors are booked solid for what seems like forever. The good news is that all that damage is cosmetic. The house itself is solid and comfortable.
Otherwise, our lives have gone normally this year. Ray still practices law with Adams and Reese LLP, where he is a member of the firm's appellate team. In his spare time, he maintains two blogs: The (New) Legal Writer and Minor Wisdom, both of which attract lots of visitors.
Suzanne continues to work for the Louisiana Department of Social Services as an assistant supervisor in Social Security Disability determination — and continues to count the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until retirement. At work, she taught a weekly yoga class for office personnel, until the unenlightened building management called a halt. ("No insurance," they said.) Nevertheless, she still takes classes at Wild Lotus Yoga and practices yoga at home.
The household feline population remains at four: Rocky (in photo above), Jelly Roll, Wednesday, and Alexis (nicknamed Petunia). Alexis/Petunia, whom we inherited from Ray's mom in 2005, still hasn't assimilated into the herd, so she lives in her own gated community in the back room, where she has her own separate bathroom and her own window ledge. Meanwhile, one of our other cats, Wednesday, officially became another post-Katrina mental-health casualty: in October, the veterinarian put her on Elavil, a tricyclic antidepressant.
Both of us continue to be actively involved with our parish church, Holy Name of Jesus. Suzanne, who was already an extraordinary eucharistic minister, added lectoring and sacristan duties to her agenda. Ray is an every-Sunday one-man choir for the 6 p.m. mass, with occasional lectoring added. In April, we attended all three Easter Triduum services at Holy Name, the first time either of us has done that in decades.
Best wishes for a happy Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, New Year (Japanese or western), Eid al-Ahda, Al Hijra, and Tet Nguyen Dan. (I think that covers everyone.)
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p.s. Tip of the Santa Claus cap to Lynn at Business Writing, for tips on how to write a holiday newsletter and for the multi-cultural litany of holidays.
