See that's funny because it's a taunt usually reserved for Ole Miss. I'll even say it now. Geaux to hell Ole Miss, Geaux to hell!

 

Last night I did one of the scariest things of my life. Nick and I packed up ourselves, our pets, and some important papers, and left, hoping for the best. Baton Rouge was not under a mandatory evacuation, but our house is like eighty years old and I feel like it's built out of sticks. Every single room has a window, even the bathrooms, so there's nowhere to hide, and a heavy rain earlier this summer had water pouring through our living room ceiling, so we weren't taking any chances on Gustav.

 

We parked Nick's car somewhere we thought would be safe and took my car, the one with only liability insurance, up to Jackson, MS. On the way up we kept hearing over and over again on the radio how this is worse than Katrina.

 

What's making me nervous about this is that the east side of the storm is roughest, and the center of Katrina passed right around the LA-MS state line, so my parents, myself, and New Orleans were all on the west side. Gustave is expected to make landfall just southeast of New Orleans, meaning that we are all on track to get the brunt of the storm.

 

This is new and scary to me. Neither my parents nore I have ever evacuated before. My parents didn't even leave for Katrina, and they regretted it. They're headed to Georgia today, and I'm sure they're scared too. Packing up the car made me realize how few of the items in my home are actually important to me. I took my computer, my iPod, and a little knick knack of a lady with flowers in her hat that was my Grandma's. I didn't even take my favorite clothes. I grabbed a bunch of t-shirts. I've got my birth certificate, my car title, and my AmeriCorps education award voucher. A couple of recent utility bills with my name on it because after Katrina I saw people in my parents' town having to prove residency to get in. What's most important is that we have ourselves and our pets.