I suspect it goes without saying here in this journal that our prayers are with those who live in Louisiana and her neighboring states.

Though I am tempted to smack the reporters from elsewhere who either insist that New Orleans is the only city at risk or mispronounce Houma and Baton Rouge and ... I suppose I should be grateful they recognize the damage that a hurricane will do to the area. I went through our photos of our last trip and could see in my mind's eye the stones of the cathedral scattered over Jackson Square, the statue down and pulled by the receding flood waters into the river.

I grew up in Galveston. Bishop Palace has an entire section devoted to the 1900 storm. As schoolchildren, we watched the grainy film of the damage done, the building of the seawall, then later of the jetties, of our futile attempts to tame the waves. And today's photos of the people sitting, waiting, in the Superdome make us look so terribly fragile.

There are links all over, luna_k is posting a bunch of updates, and Google.com has a Katrina page that you can find from their front page, but really, all we can do is wait it out. I'm all for posting fiction, as fabu has done this morning. Or silly stories - here, I'll start. My dad's birthday is today. I called him and Bear sang "Happy Birthday to You" over the phone. Daddy laughed so much he snorted coffee down the wrong pipe.

There are horror stories all over lj of hurricanes past or tornadoes survived; so many of use have first-hand knowledge of the damage a flooded sewer system can do and we all can look at our offices or homes and mark the 23 foot point.

So my vote is, here's a quiet shelter to turn our minds to other things. Have a seat, have a cup of tea, let's turn off the news until there's actual news. Or let's share stories, I was thinking of sharing New Orleans or Louisiana coast stories, but I don't think I can do that. Not yet, not while the wind still screams. Let's wait and see how many of the shrimp boats survive, first, what landmarks we lose.

Let's tell funny stories, instead. So what did you do this weekend?

We steam-cleaned the carpets which isn't as much fun as it sounds, and since it doesn't sound like much fun at all, that's saying something. Nothing funny there, hmm. Right, okay, I got two of the Witching Hour bags done, and hung in the closet away from M-i-L's prying .... aha! I do have a funny story!

Okay, so I'm in the fabric store and a young woman is balancing princess costume patterns and being tugged in four directions by two little girls and I volunteer to help, because it's a fabric store and everybody's friendly and nosy in a fabric store.

So she shows me the patterns and the "no sew" pattern and I tell her that if she's going to resort to Stitch Witch, she might as well use a hot glue gun, but that the other pattern in her hand is Simplicity's "Very Easy/ Tres Facile" and that'll stand her just as well and we chat for a moment longer and one little girl comes up and tugs on my skirt and says:
"Are you a Christian?"

And I look at her, obviously non-plussed, and ask why on earth that makes a difference. Her mother explains that there's a Jewish girl in class and they were discussing religious holidays (Yom Kippur is coming up, isn't it?) and I decide that discretion is the better part of valor so I explain:
"We go to the Methodist church, and that's consiered Christian by everyone but my Mother-in-law, who is Baptist."

And the kid smiled and nodded, and her mother looked puzzled, and the woman an aisle over laughed so hard she nearly dropped her zippers and thread. Someone else has a Southern Baptist Mother-in-law, I see.

So what funny thing happened to you recently? We can comfort one another with laughter while obsessively refreshing the NOAA.com and CNN pages, eh?