Day three here in Houma, Louisiana, and today I decided to try my first attempt at blogging. Since this is our last week with Shelli as our pastor I thought I'd try to write something "a la Shelli". So here it goes.

Here in Houma the mornings start too early for me. The sunlight starts pouring through my plastic ten by ten Pod (that I am calling home these days) and I yank the sheet over my head not yet ready to open my weary eyelids that feel like Lilliputians have staked them down to my cheeks. Slowly I realize that it's not only my eyelids that feel heavy but my whole body is sending frantic impulses to my brain. "Oh my back; my feet feel like melons; I can't even move my shoulder, how am I going to brush my teeth?"

Soon I realize that the more I resist the light the brighter it gets. Then comes this incessant buzzing sound as tiny kamikaze bugs take aim at my right ear. AAARRRGGGH! Okay, I'll get up! Where's the coffee!

I slip on my tevas and notice my feet look like they've either grown fur overnight or they are covered in some kind of dark bayou swamp film. As I open the door and step outside into the soupy, sunny day I feel as I've entered into some kind of Alice in Wonderland world where the houses are all this faded light blue color and the boardwalks in between them have names like "Mosquito Alley" and "Armadillo Alley".

I wander over towards the outdoors sinks to brush my teeth and as I struggle to pull out my tooth brush a bright green lizard with half it's tail missing stares at me from above the mirror. As I reach down to turn on the water the sink has no less that fourteen different varieties of bugs crawling all over it and before I can finish a green tree frog ten inches from my left eye quickly devours one of the tiny bugs.

Now, more determined than ever, I head off toward that first cup of coffee. As I round the corner down Mosquito Alley a small black kitten (that the kids have named "Sausage" because a part if it's tail has no fur and actually looks like a piece of raw sausage) jumps out in front of me in hot pursuit of this huge black and red grasshopper that's the size of a jumbo Baby Ruth candy bar. Undeterred, I press on.

As I finally sit down with my first cup of nescafe coffee I look down at my watch - 6:30. My day in Houma is just getting started.