Musings of a scribbler froglette

loucheroo said gale gand's butter cream to frost toad's cake...

last year cameron and i used a bunch of powdered sugar and creme cheese. the net connection was down so we couldn't look up the instructions! ;)

The lady who made our wedding cake made a cake for my brother the Florida police officer who has been away from his family since Sunday in Mississippi with his squad. He's been baking in the sun, sleeping on an airplane hanger floor, and eating MRE's. She refused to let me pay her. The cops loved her cake. :)

Today he was fed by a baptist church from Northern Mississippi or Alabama for lunch. He was given permission to come here, and his leuitenant got them hotel rooms. I told him to skip the hotel tomorrow to save the state money and just come here. He said okay, and we'll see him tomorrow.

I went to our local wal* because we don't have a sam's on this side of the bay and i didn't have enough gas to get to sam's in my car and get home. There's not a drop of gas to be found in Fairhope, or at least there wasn't any left at the stations on my way back home. The police were dispersing the long lines. I heard from my brother and toad that the roads up to I ten in daphne had no stations with fuel either.

Our local wal* has a serious lack of food and "stuff". We are one of the few, and apparently one of the closest wal* with electricity to all of coastal Mississippi and the parts of Louisiana that can get here. With the bridges out and many roads out there is a transport problem.

ANyway i was shocked by a few things in wal*.
ON the diaper isle there was ONE bag of pampers left. There were some pull up kinds further down and a lady was putting them into her cart. There were the cheaper brands. This means that the people who bought these to give away bought the most expensive kinds! Horray for the generosity of Baldwin County people.

There wasn't a single jar of the expensive peanut butters left. We don't eat partially hydrogenated anything so we only buy smuckers or the health food arrowhead mills etc. But there wasn't a single jar of any major brand available. There were six jars of low carb and two jars with missing labels and cheap lids.
The jams were mostly gone. There wasn't a bag, packet, fancy cannister for pouring in coffee- any type of sugar anywhere in the store.

True to the report i'd heard before the storm, there were no strawberry poptarts in the cereal isle, but there were some available in the action isle.

The entire front action isle was pallet after pallet of gallons of water. The water isle was being replaced as i shopped.

The cheese isle was nearly empty. The dairy isle must have just been restocked because everything was full, i thought, until i realized that people aren't buying and risking dairy with no electricty.

There were pallets of tuna and people were buying it. Coffee was nearly gone, but that's because it comes in the louisiana port, like sugar and everybody here seems to know that, so it's all been purchased. Lucklily i'm not fussy and i like the relatively inexpensive N'awlins blend with chickory community coffee. There were actually lots of containers of that left.

I was surprised there were so many gallon bottles of water and that the smaller sizes were being replaced.

The juice box isle was decimated. Most of the v-8 was gone. The pasta isle was there, nearly completely full. The bread isle was going, but being restocked almost as fast.

there was not one container of ice cream.

i forgot to get milk. I could have walked back to get it. I stood in line forty five minutes to check out I think. It took three hours to do what i normally do in thirty minutes because the isles were so full.

I have never seen so many people in the store, it was worse than the run up to christmas. I've also never been in there and not recognized a single person. Usually i see at least three from school and some from the library or church or my neighborhood. The license plates seem to explain it all, louisiana and mississipi and alabama with numbers not from around here.


We've had lots of people here from way up north as far as montana coming for roofing and construction jobs after Ivan all during the winter. Many of them left when it started getting hot.

Sadly Mobile County schools were seriously damaged. They said they aren't even going to discuss opening before Sept 12 due to cleanup and rebuild and the fact that the food distribution for the schools was wiped off the map in Mississippi. I went to schools that offered no food, but i'm in the minority there i guess. We had milk daily, but that's all, no lunch program. When i taught only one of the schools had a lunch program and that was because it was one particular principal's project which thankfully remained after he left.

So, the kids can't go to the schools even if they are repaired because there will be no food for them. This bothers me. Not only are they going to be behind and this state's ed system isn't the best in the nation, but now their parents are going to have to find something to do with them or not work. At least Mississippi public tv is playing the good, safe, children's programming all day long, things like the episode where big bird looses his nest and other valueable programs.

Baldwin County schools should restart next week with a number of children in Robertsdale from the katrina shelters. They said to send them, they'll figure it out.

I feel for the kids who went to small church schools, as i did, who are now displaced out of the gulf coast and New Orleans. They will probably have to attend public schools since the parents have no cars. I guess there are people who evacuated with their cars but church schools often do not take new students during the year because classes are full.

Somebody in my neighborhood put up a sign and said to drop off water or food for mississippi just down the street from me. I think i'll walk over tomorrow with the granola bars and some of the soup I got and drop them off.

That reminds me, there was not a can of spagettios in the store isle. I saw ten at the check out counter of this elderly couple. I smiled. They said, that's not for us. I said, i thought not. :) When they saw the bottled water i had they smiled back. I said, did you get peanut butter and the lady said, "No, it was all gone" and her husband said, "So we know they've got that!".