Life Lately

From Upstate, NY to New Orleans, LA to Jasper, AL. We’ve moved! Again. This time to Jasper, wait no. I’m trying to keep up, we just moved again. In July we moved to Gardendale, a small town outside of Birmingham, Alabama shortening both of our commutes by over half. The Man started flight school in January. About a year and a half from now he will be a fully licensed commercial pilot.

Things have been pretty crazy lately, I think the Man has been home for a total of a month or so since his Annual Training in June. Between that, getting called up for the numerous Police shootings, as well as the disastrous flooding in Louisiana, his time at home has been scarce. On top of all that, he’s been in school full time and organized a large drive for donations to help the flood victims. We took a pickup truck full of supplies down a few weekends ago and are working to fill a tractor trailer to deliver to Baton Rouge Community College. I took a weekend while he was still activated to go organize a quick donation drive at work, to then take down supplies, volunteer at a donation center, and help flood victims begin to clean out their homes.  You can check out those efforts here:

If you would like to help out, you can also do that here:  Donations for Louisiana Flood Victims (All donations will be spent to provide supplies that are most needed at this time.)

To put all of this in perspective here are some photos, some of which I took and others that friends who were affected took. Unfortunately, the majority of the news and circumstances surrounding this flood did not make national news. Also, to clarify, the opinions of some that believe these flood victims chose to lose everything by choosing to live here. This area has never flooded and is in fact, a no flood zone. These images can be hard to look at and are not only worse in person, but it is difficult to wrap your head around exactly what happened and how much water was in these homes.

 Hundreds of National Guardsmen, First Responders, and even civilians, rushed to the aid of the people that didn’t have time to evacuate their homes before they were entirely engulfed by water.

Captured from the Weather Channel News. (The man on the right is actually my Man conducting rescue and recovery missions.)

Ponderosa Drive, Baton Rouge, LA

This is a much more serious post than I generally share, but I feel as so many we impacted including our family and friends it was necessary to take the opportunity to share how our story intertwines with theirs. It really puts life in perspective. The things I called ‘problems’ that I was facing at home or at work, pale in comparison to what these people and families have to face. They have a long road back to ‘normal’.

There are many victims who simply want to rebuild their lives and move on from this disaster, and there are many aids who want no glory for their efforts. However, it is worth mentioning that the aftermath of this devastation and those who truly have made momentous efforts to help those who lost everything restore my faith in humanity in the state of our current world.

Until next time,

Tori