I just saw on Animal Planet that a snail can sleep for three years. Clearly, those are guys not in a hurry.

Like my husband. He likes his naps. Which means he’s not much of a home improvement kind of guy. We needed to have our front porch repaired last year and it didn’t look like old Rumplestiltkskin was going to do it.

So I called a carpenter and got his estimate.  $2200. That was big cash given other circumstances in our life. I called my cousins and friends from all over – in Warrior, Mountain Brook, Homewood, Hoover, Pleasant Grove, Argo – and they pretty much decided my best bet was in my Corolla. Not to sell it, but to get a car title loan at Car Title Loans in Tarrant.

It was easy, fast and I managed to get my sleeping husband to cover the payback on the loan. Most important, the porch looks great and no one’s going to get hurt stepping into a rotten step. It’s amazing what a woman can do while her husband sleeps.

My friend Shonda told me that in 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined.

I lived through Katrina so I have an idea about that. We drove out of it, but not before the winds started blowing. First we drove to Texas, then went back after the storm, then just left it all behind.  There wasn’t much left when we got back to the Lower Ninth Ward, so we drove to Fairfield. And that’s where we’ve been ever since.

It’s been a whole new start for me, my sister and my mother. My brother stayed in Texas. And when we needed money just to rent an apartment, we had almost nothing except my car. Actually, we lived in the car for a few weeks. Then I went to the internet at the public library in Birmingham, and found a car title loan company. I had my car title. I knew to take it with us when we left. And it came in handy, because I got us a loan from Car Title Loans in Fairfield. They are a car title loans company that doesn’t care where you’re from or what you need the money for.  It’s cash, plain, simple and fast. And that’s what we needed to get an apartment. Once we had a place to live, we could get set up for work and bring in money for everything else. I still have that car, it’s been what got us through it all.