The Texas Sky

This is ten minutes from my parents house in Texas. It's not fair. After 12 hours of driving this is the Texas sky from my car window 30 minutes before I fall asleep and hours before I learn the fate of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans.

Water Proofing

This is what water proofing means. Ever since I can remember from my childhood in coastal Mississippi, this is what I did.

Big sheets of plastic and lots of tape.

This is the way I left my life in New Orleans.

This is the last image I have to remember my life as I walked out of my apartment on August 27, 2006.

I was THAT Girl

Shoulder pads, perms to give limp hair a boost, braces,taller yet not very evened out, and a smattering of acnejust as a little frosting on the cake. I was her. The onestanding awkwardly in the back of class photos taller thanthe boys and larger than the girls. It was me.

I am standing in front of my closet at my parents housesorting through clothing. I am appalled. There was,apparently, a reason why none of these clothes made it tocollege four years ago with me. There is the brown tie-diet-shirt from my preschool Thanksgiving celebration. I was anIndian. The green corduroy stretch pants and matching longsleeve zip up top are on opposite sides of the closet (if there are pictures of me in this I think that I should haveburning rights). The velvet blue pants and the 1997 mathcompetition t-shirt are snuggled in the middle like they aretrying to hide from my terror stricken eyes. I hope that Idid not wear them together as the t-shirt is that brightyellow-orange color.

Finally, I get to the dressy section of the closet andhanging there is this outfit I was once so proud to wear.Green polyester pants and a very pretty top that matched itwith-- shoulder pads. I remember smiling at myself in themirror as I wore this outfit. The shoulder pads gave me amore square look and I thought that I looked defined andstately. I wore it in the picture where I was the eleventhgrade class president. I thought I looked amazing, butreally I was just making a nineties fashion mistake.

I think the bigger mistake is that all of these clothesstill fit me and they are still all residing in my closethoping one day I might have a mid-life crisis and try torejuvenate the early nineties.