give, link, spread the word.

My six-year-old son is on the sofa shoutsinging the lyrics to the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song. There are strange moments of heartbreak in daily living. I've been trying to detach myself emotionally from details of Katrina, so that I might be effective in doing something proactive to alleviate the suffering of its victims.

But every now and again, there is this moment when my kids make me laugh or one of them approaches me with a hug and I'm sharply reminded of all those babies (I am a Southern Momma, so everyone under the age of eighteen are 'babies', natch) who are not just hugging their parents, but clinging to them for dear life. I can't escape the thought that there is no laughter six hours to the south of me; in some cases, they are closer than even that.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you that have taken the time to contact me, to hit the donation button, that have pimped this cause. There are links showing up in places I never would have dreamed of two days ago. Right on!

Today is a very busy day here; standing plans have all five children going in different directions and Maxim and me playing at/attending a wedding. I say this so that you will all know I'm not asleep at the wheel. I'm working on getting the other PayPal account set up...those of you waiting on that, thank you for your patience, and please keep checking in! I'm also still looking for a designer to crank out a couple of buttons and maybe a .pdf flyer or something. All you pixel-pushers out there: You hear that? I plan to move this effort over to another site really, really soon.

Twenty-four hours into this thing and we are already around half way to the initial goal of 3K. Man, it would be the most awesome thing if this project were to gather steam and become something I'd never imagined! We can help displaced children that are ending up in small communities ALL OVER the U.S.; that would be FABULOUS.

So pony up some change, and if you can't bring yourself to do that, throw out a link, e-mail your friends and family, whatever you can do to lend a hand. Thanks so very much.

Katrina Kids Relief