What ice cream can and can't do

We've been packing, of course it has to wait until after the boys are in bed. I'm exhausted from the late nights. We went and bought blinds for the house today. I've lived here two years with just cheap paper blinds...and now, we've bought real, very nice blinds for the entire house. I'm fixing up my home so that someone else can move in. I feel a bit like I'm handing my own life over to someone else. Someone else will be cooking in my kitchen -- even using my refrigerator. I just loved that fridge. I thought it was so nice to move here and get one of the new refrigerators with the freezer drawer on the bottom.

My Mom is still without power. I finally got in touch with my Dad and he's without power as well...although the car dealership he works at has power. My Mom gets food and water from FEMA every day. What a joke that is. If FEMA would just send the generators for the water treatment center in town (like they promised to do days ago), maybe they wouldn't have to send so many National Guard to help hand out bottled water. Ya, that's right. My Mom is even without running water. Thank God she's been through enough of these storms before to know to fill all the available bathtubs up with water before it gets bad. I have a friend who lives by my Mom and she's an insurance agent. She's been working every day with no electricity or phone line just to get people's claims. I think that times are getting desperate there...my Mom says my step dad hasn't been sober a day since the storm. Hopefully this will get cleared up soon and the bastard can go back out and work on his stupid oil rig. I loathe drunkards.

And in other exciting news about what the storm dragged in, there's been a new colony of ants pop up in the back yard. Sunday was such a beautiful day that I let Adrien go out and play in the back yard. While the folks were here signing all the lease papers, Andi was showing the man our yard. Adrien had been picking me "flowers" which were really just tall pieces of grass going to seed...you know the ones with the black seeds attached. At some point Adrien ran in the house screaming, holding his hands out. I could see black dots on his hands, but I thought it was the grass seeds. I really thought he'd been stung by a wasp. No, he was being eaten by ants. They covered his hands. The rush to get them off of his tiny little fingers wasn't fast enough. He has about 75 bites between both hands. They swelled up like the marshmallow man's. I took him to the doctor Monday and she gave him a regime of steroids and Benadryl. He looks like he's got leprosy or some other crazy Biblical plague. I felt so bad for him on Monday that I let him have ice cream for lunch. Because if I'd just gotten eaten alive by ants, I'd want ice cream for lunch too. He was grateful.

Too bad ice cream can't keep me in my life as I know it. But for now, it does at least offer some comfort.

I'm spending the last few days here in this house, trying to soak everything in. I'm trying to absorb my life in every moment so that I don't forget...because I know I'll never have anything like this. Ever again.