Living through the hurricanes

When my family first moved to Louisiana, the scariest folk tales we heard were about seeing alligators crawling in the street and mosquitoes the size of a Volkswagen.

Hurricanes were way down the list, and neighbors had hurricane parties when weather forecasters said a storm was coming through.

My dad would put masking tape on the windows, we'd put our Eveready flashlights on the kitchen table and fill a bathtub up with water, but that was about it.

That was until Hurricane Katrina.

That was before forecasting the weather became a science, not a guessing game.

That was before we saw the devastation a hurricane, even a Category 1 storm, can unleash.

Thanks to biting my nails through some terrifying storms, I've now become a weather junkie. I watch The Weather Channel and weather station Websites are bookmarked as favorites.

I'm a frequent visitor to the Weather Underground Website, and I know the difference between a tropical depression and a tropical storm.

I have some fellow weather junkie friends, and the minute we read about a tropical storm brewing, we're emailing and texting each other.

"Gotta go," one will abruptly say. "Steve's on."

Steve Lyons with The Weather Channel is the granddaddy of weather reporting. If Dr. Steve says get out, then people, get out.

Same goes with TWC's Jim Cantore. Although he looks more like a body builder, meteorologist Cantore makes it look easy standing on a pier, pelted with wind and rain, while talking about 80-mile-per-hour winds.

Although Isaac isn't slated to affect southeast Texas, forecasters on the Houston weather stations are going into overdrive, covering everything about the storm from hotel occupancy rates to the rising price of gasoline to what weather gurus Neil Frank, Frank Billingsley and Gene Norman think every hour on the hour.

As the storm makes landfall, thousands of Gulf Coast residents who haven't lost power yet are glued to the television, watching Isaac bully his way up and over the Gulf Coast.

My family members in Louisiana were prepared – they've been stocking up on supplies and they made sure their generators were gassed up and running. One of my sisters lives in Alexandria, a good distance from the coast, but she and her family stocked up with everything they thought they'd need to wait out the storm.

They have good reason to be a bit skittish. After Katrina, my sister and hundreds of weary residents in northern Louisiana worked in the shelters as dazed evacuees from the New Orleans area poured into their cities. Volunteers rallied around those who'd lost everything, finding them food, clothing, toys, furniture and money to start over.

Neighbors in Houston and other parts of the country reached out, but people affected by the storm didn't travel very far. They yearned to stay close to home where creamy white magnolias dot the country side in the spring and where Spanish moss hangs lazily from the limbs of centuries old oak trees.

Those who live in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast know they take the good with the bad. Living close enough to the water so one can fish whenever one wants means those waters can occasionally turn ugly and mean.

We accept that contradiction, turn to our masterminds on The Weather Channel and weather-junkie Websites and wait for them to tell us when we can start cleaning up and get back to "laissez les bons temps rouler" – let those good times roll.

This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Summertime Blues

The sun's beating down on the concrete marching band pad, and it's only 9:30 in the morning. Scattered around the edges of the pad are red, blue and orange Igloo water coolers so the musicians can stay hydrated in the hot Texas heat.

Nearby, groups of young men wearing football pads, helmets and T-shirts are running drills, catching footballs and hitting the grass, making sure everybody understands what plays to run and how to protect each other during a game.

Rolling carts filled with water and Gatorade dot the sidelines, and trainers make sure the coolers stay full as well as watching for signs of heat exhaustion.

It's summer, but these teens are rising above the heat and humidity. At least a month before school starts, band members spend the morning practicing their marching routines.

After they finish on the practice pad, they spend the afternoon in a classroom, sections playing together so they'll have one unified sound.

The dance team and cheer squad are also practicing for hours every day, right alongside the flag twirlers who must match their movements with the band's music. It looks easy, watching them throw their flags up in the air, but to choreograph those movements between a dozen teens and a 200-member marching band takes an incredible amount of practice.

Adults are out there every step of the way. Wearing oversized hats and sunglasses, they're shouting directions into a bullhorn, redrawing patterns or looking for small mistakes so that when the time to perform arrives, they'll be flawless.

Once school starts, dozens of teens will be staying after school practicing for the upcoming school musical, and teachers will be right there with them, singing songs, practicing lines and choreographing dance moves.

Athletes will be in the weight room, preparing for the upcoming winter and spring sports, knowing that if they work hard now, their chances of making the team are greatly enhanced. Nobody's standing over them – they're working hard because their hearts tell them that's how champions behave.

I heard a speaker this week, Brad McCoy, father of legendary University of Texas and now Cleveland Browns' quarterback Colt McCoy, speak about the importance of having passion and determination in life. It's impossible to reach our dreams, he said, unless we have passion for what we're doing and a willingness to go the distance to achieve our goals.

That passion is evident in these students who spend hours making sure they're always giving their best. They've found a place to plug into the community, and the entire school is better because of these individuals.

So often in school, children become lost in the system. Either they feel as if they don't fit in, they have a difficult time with routines or they're overwhelmed with homework and the amount of class work required.

Schools are, after all, institutions where the primary directive is to learn – how to write a research paper, how to use the Pythagorean theory or how a chemical reaction works.

But schools are also places where young people learn that anything worth having means working extra hard for it and opportunities abound in our schools.

Passion is what separates people from those who sit back and let life pass them by and those who get up and actively engage in what life has to offer.

And for those who participate in the heat of the summer, after school or on Saturdays when they could be home playing video games or taking a nap, you're learning an important, life-long lesson – anything is possible when you have a passionate determination to join the game.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

That pesky ole cough

I enjoy having people over for dinner. I love spending time with friends, chatting about politics or what's going on in our lives . But I've had company for the past three weeks, and I'm ready for this visitor to move on.

This pesky guest butts into conversations, is loud and makes sleeping practically impossible. The culprit is a hacking cough, courtesy of a summer cold.

I seldom catch a cold, and when I do, it's usually gone in a couple of days. But this cough is stubborn and refused to leave when the cold fled the premises. After two weeks of almost non-stop coughing, I broke down and paid a visit to the drug store.

The cold and flu aisle designate an entire section to coughs. Is it a cough due to allergies? A cough due to colds? How about a cough due to the flu? I have a nagging cough that's due to an unwillingness to leave the building.

Not one bottle stated it was good for that kind of cough.

There's cough suppressants and expectorants, and I had no desire to start spitting in addition to the coughing. So I read the labels on the suppressants. These meds are primarily used at night, and I wasn't sure I wanted to sleep through the morning alarm, so I kept looking.

Finally, the tried-and-true methods won out, so I picked up a bottle of Robitussin as well as my mom's remedy for colds – Vicks Vapo Rub. Many a night we went bed with Vick's Vapo Rub all over our chests and a clean cloth diaper keeping the messy goop off our pajamas.

At 3 a.m., when the Robitussin wasn't doing its job and I was desperate, I fired up the computer and started searching for cough remedies on the Internet.

Home remedies came up first, and dozens of people have their own cough cure – steamy, hot showers, hot teas and adding turmeric to hot milk. I haven't a clue what turmeric is and no idea where to start looking for it in the store.

A little less confusing is the home remedy of boiling a stick of cinnamon in water and then drinking it. If that didn't work, one person suggested crushing a clove of fresh raw garlic in a small bowl and mixing that with honey followed by a chaser of butter pickles.

I think I'd rather have the cough.

The home remedy of sipping Jack Daniels every time the cough came around sounded like a sure-fire way to get stumbling drunk and then we'd probably not care if we were coughing.

One site claimed that if you cover the bottoms of your feet with Vicks Vaporub, put on thick socks and go to sleep, the cough will magically disappear. Somehow I'm just not sure how covering my feet with menthol will do something for a cough, but when that cough got me out of bed at 3 a.m., I was willing to try anything.

So I glopped on the Vicks, pulled on some thick socks, went back to bed and was up at 6 a.m., still coughing but with feet that smelled like a eucalyptus tree.

I think I'll go back to my sure-fire method for getting over a nasty cold or cough – wait it out – and see if I can find a cure for coughing that includes Blue Bell ice cream and Dove chocolates. Those might not cure the cough but that cure sounds a lot more appetizing than butter pickles and garlic.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

The Olympics

As someone who trips over her own feet, I've been watching the 2012 Summer Olympics games with amazement. From archery to wrestling, the Olympics allow the world's top athletes to compete on an international level, and there's been incredible highs and gut-wrenching lows.

Watching Serena Williams take the gold, individually and then with her sister Venus, was incredible. The "Fabulous Five" surpassed the media hype surrounding the gymnastics competition as did the women's soccer and volleyball teams that kept advancing.

Teenager Missy Franklin was all smiles as she won swimming medals as did the incomparable Michael Phelps who won eight Olympic gold medals and set a world record. But at the end of the competition, it didn't matter if the viewer knew the athletes or not – the dedication they showed to their sport was inspiring.

Of course, NBC news has turned the Olympics into an "event," complete with logos, theme music and short segments highlighting every athle

te they deemed "newsworthy." We probably know more about Jordyn Wieber, Ryan Lochte and Gabby Douglas than we do some of our own relatives.

Olympic commercials have especially played on our heartstrings as they showcase athletes preparing for the Olympics. With Morgan Freeman narrating and violins playing against images of children thanking their mothers for their sacrifices, it's impossible to stay dry eyed.

Televising the back story of how an athlete went from a 4-year-old doing somersaults in the living room to turning in almost perfect gymnastics routines makes for an interesting back story, but what the hype doesn't show is the day-in and day-out grueling training schedule, money and sweat that goes into an Olympian's performance.

Every athlete at the games has put in hours to fine tune their performance. Their parents have been getting up early, taking them to practice or working an extra job to pay for coaching lessons. They've allowed their children to live far from home, just so they could train with a better coach.

In preparation for the games, these Olympians were up at 5 a.m., swimming countless laps in the pool before school started or turning endless flips on a sweaty gym mat before they tackled their homework.

Although most athletes never make it to the Olympics, what they do share with those in the games is a dedication to practice and perfection. Serious athletes understand that commitment to physical fitness and pushing themselves beyond what they think they can accomplish.

Teenage boys are already on the football fields, sweating and practicing blocks and tackles. They're in the weight rooms, building muscle mass and fine tuning their coordination skills. Coaches are putting them through the drills, both physical and mental, to make them the best they can be.

Amateur runners are racking up miles running on subdivision roads early in the morning or late in the evening. Accountants and teachers are lacing up their sneakers after work and running up and down stairs to get in shape.

People are in the pool at the YMCA early in the morning, swimming lap after lap. There aren't any crowds to cheer them on nor are there coaches shouting support from the sidelines. The only encouragement they have is the voice inside their head.

No cheering crowds at the finish line. No product endorsement. No television interview with Bob Costas. Just the inner satisfaction of knowing they accomplished their goal. And, after all, that's what every athlete dreams about.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Just wait...

Just wait.

That's what my mother said when I wanted to play in her make-up bag.

"You'll be old soon enough," she said, putting away her tubes of red lipstick and containers of pressed powder.

I didn't understand why I had to wait. The grown-up world was mysterious and exciting, much more so than being a little kid who had to leave the room when adults were talking in low voices.

Just wait.

"Your face will freeze like that," my mother said to me on more than one occasion. My face didn't freeze with my tongue sticking out, but those crow's feet and wrinkles did eventually show up, just like my mother told me they would.

Just wait.

That's what my high school teachers told me when I questioned why we had to follow the outdated dress-code rules. How did the length of a boy's hair or a girl's dress keep them from learning?

When we got into the real world, our teachers said, we'd understand the reasons for these grown-up commands, and we could change the rules when we got to be adults.

Just wait.

That's what I told my children whenever they'd misbehave. You'll be a parent one day, and you'll understand what it means to be at the end of your rope with 10,000 things to do and not enough time to do them. One day, I told them, you'll understand.

Just wait.

That's what we do when we go in for a checkup and the doctor tells us she needs to run a few more tests because something doesn't look right. We wait for the phone call with words that will either put us on Cloud 9 or send us to the depths of despair.

The moments waiting are spent in either denial, agony or deal making – "Lord, just get me through this and I'll be good forever."

Waiting.

That's where we spend most of our lives. We wait in long, slow moving grocery lines while playing mindless games on our cell phones to pass the time. We wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic, our anger growing with every annoying red light and every slow poke in the left-hand lane.

Waiting.

For that first kiss, our first job, our first child and especially the day we'll retire. When that day comes, we tell ourselves, we'll be on Easy Street, able to kick back, put our feet up and enjoy life. No worries, no work and no bills, we think, just rest and relaxation.

But not now because we've got kids in school, the car needs new tires and the water heater isn't going to make it another six months. We believe our golden days are ahead of us or out of our reach, but if we can just wait out the next six months or the next few years, we'll eventually end up free from aggravation.

Except during all those impatient moments, a quiet symphony plays out around us – an afternoon watching children dancing in the sprinkler, the give-and-take rhythm of family dinners or relaxing on the back porch, waiting for the sun to set.

So no more griping about waiting for the traffic to clear or thinking everything will be okay when that raise comes our way. No more gritting our teeth while waiting for the kids to grow up and move out. No more waiting for the good times or the right time.

Because while we're complaining about having to wait, we're missing out on what's happening all around us.

And that's life.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.