The weekend of 8/27/2005 my boyfriend and I planned to paint our den. We were making the first improvements to our home that we purchased in September 2004. Friday evening I stayed up until the early morning hours applying another coat of paint to the trim molding. The room had been paneled and Thomas replaced it with sheetrock. Saturday morning our families began to call and ask about our plans. We were unaware that the storm now seemed to be heading our direction. We have no issue with evacuating, we had evacuated in 2004 for Hurricane Ivan. After discussing it, we tried to find a vacancy at hotel that would accept our cat. We had no luck. We decided to stay. I really wanted to finish the work in the den. There were constant calls from our families urging us to leave. Finally we decided to go stay with my aunt and uncle in Lafayette, LA. We would leave Sunday morning.\r\n We purchased our home from lovely 87 year old lady who had lived there for 40 years. We knew that we were in a flood zone, but she had experienced minor flooding only once. We purchased the house for several reasons, one of those being its proximity to UNO. The house was built in 1950 and had its original roof. Once we decided to leave we discussed moving some things upstairs. We couldn’t decide if we were in more danger of flooding or if the roof would be blown away. We left everything as it was.\r\n Sunday morning we departed. I grabbed some important papers on our way out the door. After a slow crawl to Lafayette, we arrived at Aunt Stella and Uncle Steve’s. They were gracious enough to accept us and our cat, Eddie. When I woke up the next morning, the storm seemed to have spared New Orleans. I can not recall how many days elapsed when the reports of the breach of the levees were confirmed. We live in Gentilly, not Lakeview, not the 9th ward. I tried to remain optimistic. I pulled out a street map of the city trying to figure out where was the 17th Street Canal. I tried to remain optimistic. The news reports were getting worse and worse. I had not thought of calling others to see if anyone else needed a ride out of town. Were our friends OK? We didn’t think that it was going to turn out like this. We thought that we were leaving to make our families feel better. We thought we would return to our home after few days. It was heartbreaking to see what was taking place in the city, my city. Finally I realized that we had lost everything. \r\n I had managed to grab our insurance papers and other important documents. I called our insurance providers. The flood insurance people told me that they did not know how they would handle the situation. After the city had flooded, projections said that it would be months before people could return to the city. I was told to start compiling a list of all the contents of my home. OK, that should be easy. I was also told that because I had called so early, I would at the top of the list when adjusters were sent out. This proved to be true; our adjuster came out shortly after our neighborhood was deemed safe to go into. I happened to see one of our neighbors in October; he said that his adjuster would be out on 12/31/2005, New Year’s Eve! \r\n We visited some other relatives and returned to Metairie on September 29, 2005. Thomas, my beau, teaches in Jefferson Parish and they were getting ready to resume school. We made very loose arrangements to stay with a friend. Phone service in the area was still very difficult to access. It was absolutely eerie driving in to Metairie, trees were down and lights were out. Our friend Marty had other displaced houseguests yet he warmly welcomed us. Marty is not a cat fancier but he agreed to provide Eddie with a temporary home also. We arrived just about a week before Hurricane Rita. Great! We ended up staying with Marty until mid November. We were unable to see our home until mid October. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away in October (completely unrelated to the hurricane). It was quite a difficult time for me, having lost so much already, to then lose someone that I cared so much about. \r\n Since the storm my life has drastically changed. It has been incredibly difficult. It is difficult to deal with FEMA, insurance companies and construction companies. We are going to rehabilitate our home, but many uncertainties remain. What will happen with the levees? How will our neighborhood rebound? How many of our neighbors will return? What will happen to those vacant homes? Nearly a year after the storms you can still see homes that seem to not have been entered since the storm. What will happen with the upcoming storm season? I try to remain optimistic.