Monday, September 19th (Part 2: Back at the House)

After leaving Molly's, we tried to head into the 9th Ward and towards the lakefront, but the military presence was heavy due to there still being too much floodwater in those areas. Figuring it useless to even try, since there wouldn't be far for us to go in the car or on foot anyway, we headed back to our house to grab my grandmother's plates.

Michelle didn't want to go back into the house, so I put on the last pair of rubber gloves we had an went in. I climbed over all my ruined comics, again, and gathered as many plates from the cabinets as I could. It took four trips, but I got most of them, along with some mugs and bowls. I opened our dishwasher to see if there were any in there, and there was one but the smell made me give it up.

The last thing was a big serving bowl, but it was next to the stove and full of floodwater. You can see it by the bottle of wine we'd forgotten.



I grabbed it and dumped out the water. What rose up was the foulest smelling odor ever to work its way up my nose. Even through the mask it was raucous. I grabbed it, ran out of the house and placed it in the plastic bucket we brought with us. I went back and shut the door.

We went back to the Westbank, showered, and found out people were practically shitting themselves over Rita.