In New Orleans right now, there's a collective fatigue/sadness/resignation that's palpable when you walk through the grocery, or ride the elevator to your office like I just did.

"I can't believe this is happening," I said to the worried-looking black woman who rode with me from the parking lot. I'd been admiring her bright blue sandals, didn't want to waste a chance to commiserate about Gustav.

"I know, baby. My mind can't even wrap around it. We'll be okay, though, we'll be okay, it's going away," she said, pushing her hands into a prayer.

She got to her floor sooner than I wanted her to. I wanted to know her plan, tell her mine.

There was a time before Katrina when the possibility of a hurricane sent a funky buzz through the city, and citizens hit the streets to gas up the car, shop for Vienna sausages and canned tuna and Bunny Bread, Doritos, onion dip, jugs of water, cases of beer, bags of ice, and chatted it up in check out lines, then returned home to wait it out, the Southern equivalent of a snow day.

I was court watching this morning on Tulane and Broad, and the judge had to continue a drug trial because one of the twelve jurors didn't show up. "She must be evacuating," the judge said, after leaving a voice message for the missing woman. Tomorrow, the courthouse will close, along with some schools and services.

There's a 311 number for the 30,000 + people to call who need a ride out of town and a place to stay. Yesterday people couldn't get through because the line was busy. Here we go again? (They've supposedly added operators.) The new homeland security czar was on the news this morning, reiterating: "There will be no shelters of last resort."

Malcolm and I will go across the lake to my sister's house in Mandeville because she and her husband are taking their young sons to Vicksburg. The boys are scared of storms. I'd rather stay put in our 100-year-old house that came through Katrina okay except for roof damage, but we're renovating and we've been living in the attic. Heat rises and when the power goes out it'll be hellishly hot up there.

This year we have no big, sweet dog to tend to, no helpful teenage son sprung free from high school to pull in closer. (He's off to college, landlocked.) It's just the two of us and Malcolm wants to be near his clients so he can get back into the city as soon as the coast is clear. What a terrible phrase. Our coast is already clear, since 2005.

Gustav won't enter the Gulf of Mexico until Sunday and landfall wouldn't happen until Tuesday morning, but New Orleanians are worried about wind and water, broken levees, looting, about suffering again when they're still suffering. A scar's reopening even if the storm turns for somewhere else, and then there's the wicked coincidence that this is all happening on the anniversary of Katina.