Sunday, May 4, 2014

Cajun Corner – Vol. 6, No. 12 – May 4, 2014


Cajun Corner – Vol. 6, No. 12 – May 4, 2014

 

Bon Jour!  Welcome to Cajun Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.

 

ΘΘΘΘΘ

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I guess I’m supposed to write about what happened this week at Cajun Stitchery and the antics of our family.  To sum it all up, it rained.

This rain storm should have a name, like when they name a hurricane.  This was definitely a rain-a-cane.  It was like a hurricane that did not come in from the Gulf.  Winds were 60-70 mph.  We could call it rain storm Lena.  Like my mother, it looked docile on the surface, but once enraged, all hell broke lose.  The rain came and with it came an unbelievable thunder and lightning demonstration that lasted most, if not all, of the night.  We slept downstairs Tuesday night.  The reports that we heard said in one hour we received more rainfall than Hurricane Ivan delivered.  We ended up with almost 27” of rain and 75,000 lightning strikes.

Once or twice during the night our lights flickered on and off but we never lost electricity.  Many homes did lose electricity and had to endure the storm in the dark.

Wednesday morning our yard looked like a lake but the water subsided by the end of the day.  No water got into either house.  We were very blessed.  Sadly, that was not the case for others.  All around us homes were flooded and roads torn up.  A multitude of vehicles were abandoned in streets.  Many vehicles were seen in the giant holes in the road where the water washed away the ground under the pavement and the pavement then collapsed.  Downtown Pensacola was flooded.  The photographs and videos on Facebook and the local news are incredible.

Then came the damage assessment.  The government is still doing their damage assessment, which means that FEMA is not here yet.  Many people have lost their homes or have to move out of their homes while the damage is repaired.  Just like when Ivan hit, all of this causes a home and apartment shortage.  All of these displaced people are looking for a place to live.  Many small businesses were damaged, even at the end of our street.  It is a mess.

A friend of mine on the beach said that it was just so weird to have this kind of storm and Pensacola is the first to have damage, rather than Pensacola Beach.  In fact, George and I went to a wedding on the beach yesterday and saw no damage on Pensacola Beach.  Maybe it just says something for the tenacity of Pensacolians, but in order to get to the wedding on the beach, we had to detour to another road because the Crawfish Festival was blocking Main Street downtown. 

Our precious Manna Food Bank suffered 100% damage.  We are just waiting to find out what we can do to help them.

My friend, Pandora de Balthazar’s store, Pandora de Balthazar European Luxury Bedding, made it through the storm okay but her 7 warehouses were not so lucky.  She has been pulling out antiques, family pictures, and collectibles that she has collected over her lifetime, all damaged.  She has been having a fabulous “damage sale” though.

In an effort to help support small damaged businesses, I went shopping at Pandora’s sale.  I walked away with a beautiful Euro King pillow.  This isn’t your normal Wal-Mart pillow.  First of all, the pillow is about as big as I am.  It is a Hungarian Down pillow and softer than anything you can imagine.  She even took a photo of me hugging one of the pillows at her store.  I’m going to use that pillow at the studio for display purposes.  Once I got home, we were so in love with the pillow that I contacted the store and bought two Euro Standard pillows for our bed.  These pillows are also huge and soft. 

The pillows are so special to me that I’ve decided to make special pillow cases for them.  To be honest, I’m making pillow cases for them partly because I don’t own pillow cases that big.  I’m making the pillow cases from 100% cotton fabric.  You know they are going to have embroidery on them.  The pillow case fabric was cut today and the embroidery has been designed.  I’ve begun the embroidery process.  Fingers are crossed that it turns out as special as I want them to be.

All joking and embroidery aside, being a small business owner myself, I think it is imperative that those of us who were blessed by having little or no damage should help those small businesses in need.  For a retail business the best help is to buy.  I encourage everyone to follow suit, even if all you can afford is a small trinket.  Forego Wal-Mart this one time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the jail.  We have the great flood and the following day the jail explodes from faulty gas lines.  I don’t know if this was neglect or the flood.  Gas lines did burst in a few areas other than the jail.  However, the jail explosion ended in the death of 2 inmates.  I’d say, “when it rains it pours” but I guess I shouldn’t.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK
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Cajun Stitchery

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