My love-hate relationship with FaceBook...

Yes, Ernie...I DO hate FaceBook...for MANY reasons (for whatever reason, I can't respond to you directly via email).

But right now?  FaceBook is my friend.

As you all know, thanks to Hurricane Harvey, Houston has been on mind a LOT lately...(and when I went to grab that link I noticed that all my page views have been reduced to zero - no matter how many/few comments were made - WTH Blogger?)

And thank you, by the way, Suburban Correspondent, DJan (and here and here), and Ernie for publicly responding to my plea for help - in whatever way you felt compelled - that means more to me than you will ever know.  The same goes for anyone else who felt compelled to help - you have no idea what your assistance will do for those in dire straits.

Now about FaceBook.  Yes, I despise it but...during this stressful time FaceBook has given me an insight into what is going on without having to inundate family and friends with texts while they are busy dealing with flooded streets, homes, etc.

FaceBook has also shown me how extremely HUMAN and HUMANE people can be when it comes to disaster.

I have witnessed people offering up their homes (I have room for x amount of people - DM me!), people offering up their land/resources (I have room for x amount of horses/cattle/pets - DM me!), and the "Cajun Navy" (and THIS is why I love Texas and Louisiana - both of which are so intertwined it's sometimes hard to tell them apart).  On FaceBook I have witnessed SO much love and support...which lately, we can all agree is lacking.

I have also witnessed the looting and the ugliness.  And the inane - because we ARE talking about FaceBook.  You have a major disaster happening right in front of you and yet some people are SO clueless that they continue to post about their personal problems, political issues or cat videos - yes, I get it...if it's not personal to them it's not as important.  So here I am scrolling through inane posts to get to the whole reason I bothered to log on to the site in the first place.

Inane posts aside, the love and caring stories have FAR outweighed the ugliness and inanity.  So, maybe there is hope for civilization after all.  We can only hope.

Texas - my heart.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that long before I became a Carolina girl, I was a Texas child - born and raised in Houston, Texas.  And those same people know that I still consider Texas "home" twenty years later (here is where I would normally post a link but I'm too tired and emotionally exhausted to look for the one I'm thinking of - just type the word Texas in the search button and you'll see ALL the posts that mention the great state of Texas on this blog).

So as you might imagine, this past weekend has been pure hell for me as I frantically scrolled the despised FaceBook to find information on family and friends, while simultaneously sending a multitude of texts.

Luckily, all are safe...for now.  The weather forecast is not promising.

I've lived through a few hurricanes and it's never pretty.  But this?  This is freaking unbelievable.  It's practically biblical proportions of rain and devastation.

So here's where I need to ask...if you are a person who prays, pray.  And donate.

Donate money, blood, time, clothes, food.  Whatever you have the ability to give; give.  The people in Houston and surrounding areas are good people for the most part.  Every single person I know in Texas would help anyone in a heartbeat; stranger or friend.  Know that if this were happening to you, these people would respond in droves.

You can donate to the Red Cross, Samaritan's Purse or many other fine organizations.  Just Google How to Help Houston and you will find a plethora of ways you may be able to help.

Now excuse me as I go off to cry and scroll through FaceBook and send some more texts.

After all this time he still manages to surprise me occasionally

The Husband and I have been spending A LOT of time together for the past two weekends.  This is the result of having one of the cars in the shop. Man-Child's car (my old one - what can I say, it has been a summer of car issues) had a defective paint job and when we took it in for a different issue earlier this year, we mentioned the paint and it turned out that Honda would re-paint it for free. But had we not brought it up, I suspect that they wouldn't have said a word.  So last weekend, we dropped the car off with the expectation that we'd have it back by Friday.  As you can surmise from the first sentence, we are still one car short.

All of that to say, The Husband and I have generally been in the same car as Man-Child is up to his ears in coaching (volunteer, basically) as high school football season is quickly approaching.  So last weekend, as we were out and about we decided to stop for a treat - something we rarely do.  As we were headed to the frozen yogurt shop, we lamented the closing of the local Carvel.  We loved that place when Man-Child was young.  Although, ice cream isn't my weakness, I loved their vanilla soft serve with hot caramel.  The Husband would usually get a chocolate vanilla swirl.  Which is what made this trip to the frozen yogurt shop so mind blowing.

Upon arriving, I went with (no surprise) vanilla and hot caramel and waited while The Husband got his chocolate vanilla swirl and I turned to head for the cash register; and The Husband headed to the toppings bar.  I stood there in shock as he piled a plethora of various toppings onto his yogurt - toppings that I would have never considered as complementing each other up to and including a crushed candy of some sort,blueberries and on and on.

When I made the comment that I would have never guessed that he was a multi-toppings kind of guy, he just shrugged and said it sounded good.  And then proceeded to eat this wild concoction with gusto.

So yes, although I sometimes hear the same stories over and over, he still has the ability to surprise me every once in a while.