We’ve been working on several major projects since Thanksgiving, and things always seem to take longer than expected, so we’d asked if we could stay at the house in Gueydan until the middle of March. We’ve been working on launching two new websites, I’m well underway with our first book, and we’ve been restructuring our site, as well as working on the blogs and photos. It’s been a huge amount of work.
We hadn’t heard anything, though we knew that several groups of church volunteers were planning on arriving in the area to work on homes damaged by Gustav and Ike. The group scheduled to arrive in February was canceled at the last minute, and as far as we knew, we had until mid March.
Then we logged on to our email late one Wednesday, just before bedtime, the last week of February, only to find an email from Max telling us we had to be out of the house in less than 72 hours, that a church volunteer group was due to arrive on Saturday. It was a serious shock, as we had our schedule set up for leaving in another two weeks. To make matters more challenging, we’d already committed to spending the entire next day out sailing with Paul.
We are nothing if not flexible, however, so we got our lists together and tackled the challenge. It helped that we had a wonderful day sailing with Paul – everything feels better when we are relaxed!
In less than two days we sorted and organized every single bit of our equipment and gear, washing and packing as needed; arranged with Hansford to stay at the Lake Arthur cottage for a week or so; did our laundry and the laundry for the old parsonage (towels and blankets); sent off a number of last minute emails; and cleaned the old parsonage top to bottom – a three-bedroom, two bath house (though I confess we didn’t do windows – we’d done many of them when we arrived).
We even managed to go down to D &Ds on Friday night for a few minutes to give our thanks and say our goodbyes.
Saturday was a zoo. We both wanted to take last minute showers, so Chelsea took hers early before she went to the laundromat. I had agreed to stay home and do the heavy cleaning, and I wanted to wait till I was finished before taking my shower, so I just stayed in my nightshirt. Bad idea. By 11 am the house had a revolving door, with people coming and going every few minutes.
We had a few minutes to talk to Mona Beth and get goodbye hugs; Hansford came by to drop off the cots Dick Sirmon had borrowed a few weeks earlier; and Jaimie Snoddy came by with a relative to say goodbye, then came by again to give us her photos from the Gueydan Mardi Gras Run/Parade. I was in my nightshirt throughout all of this, as I never got the time for a shower.
Things finally calmed down around 3 pm, so I got my much-wanted shower, and we finished up the final packing. We headed off on our bikes to say goodbye to Renee Breaux and Jane Hair at the Gueydan Museum, and who should be there but Max. It was very emotional saying goodbye to them. Jane said, “I don’t say good-bye. I say, ‘See you later’.” So we said a heartfelt and teary “See you later!”
We rode on down to say goodbye to Jamie and Sean at Patti’s Book Nook – another emotional goodbye…and we took a few minutes for a short conversation and a few goodbye hugs.
Back at the house Dick Sirmon and Max were awaiting us, and Kenneth and Heuetta arrived to take us to Lake Arthur. We showed off the very clean house, and had more emotional goodbyes – especially with Max. Pastor Doug spotted us and came out to give us a huge bear hug, too. By the time we had everything loaded into Kenneth’s truck, we were dangerously close to all out tears.
Kenneth and Heuetta dropped us off at the cottage, but not until they took us took to Sonic in Lake Arthur for food, and came back with us to the cottage for a picnic dinner.
When they left we really felt adrift. We didn’t know the cottage very well, and we didn’t know Lake Arthur very well. There was no heat in the house (Hansford had left us a small space heater and Kenneth and Heuetta loaned us another); there was no hot water; and the temperatures were dropping into the low 30s for several nights running. We knew we were in for a few rough days.