electric mist

autism speaks

My friend, Tamar, has an absolutely wonderful essay up on the prestigious website, Autism Speaks. If you or anyone you know is affected by autism, I think you'll really appreciate her essay and the helpful information available via her efforts in her blog, Hidden Laughter, which chronicles their very successful trip in helping their son after his diagnosis (all the way through mainstreaming him in school); there's a great deal of information on the Autism Speaks site itself. Please pass along these links to anyone you know who'd benefit!

killer year blog -- grand opening

Forgot to publish the "moving day" post below until just now... so please change your bookmarks to my new digs.

And...

Please do go over and see the grand opening of our brand-spanking new blog -- Killer Year. We are the Class of 2007 of crime/thriller/mystery writers, and with the enthusiasm and talent in this group, I think it really is going to be a Killer Year. We'll be blogging on all sorts of topics, so come on over and bookmark us!

moving day...

Hey everyone, check out my new digs over here. I needed a fresh look, a place to put all of the writing related entries (writing, business, PR, etc.). I'll still do odd stuff (essays, humor, observations) over there. Please change your bookmarks to:

http://tonimcgeecausey.wordpress.com/

still busy

Still have lots going on, not the least of which is prepping to shoot this weekend. Have the location, the actors, the props, all of the equipment lined up. Need a sunny weekend. More on what all of this is about later, when I'm sane. (Hey. I heard that. I may be sane one day. You never know.)

Having a ball with book 2.

More soon. Well... eventually.

Wow! Look what I won!

The only thing I ever won was a cowboy hat when I was 17, and it didn't really fit all that well (hey, hush up, cowboy hats were "in")... but there'd been a contest over at the fantastic Murder She Writes last month. Now, I would have participated in commenting anyway because these writers rock -- they always have excellent posts about the writing business or the craft and they're a fun bunch to hang around. Besides, I never win anything, so I didn't even think about the contest. When I clicked on the site this morning, this is what I saw! What a haul! I have to admit I was very very confused when I saw my name at the top as the winner. I had to double-check and read through twice!

This totally rocks! Thank you to all the terrific writers over at Murder She Writes.

memorial day...

I think this is one of the sanest, calmest, most level-headed, well-reasoned posts on supporting the troops that I've seen. If you support this current administration, if you believe that you're supporting the troops by doing so, then please read all of the way to the end. This is not one of those posts aimed at trying to vilify conservatives, or vilify liberals. This is one of those smart, rational posts that looks at what really matters and defines our actions around our responsibilities as patriots.

(Original link via Diane.)

loads and loads of fun...*

Okay, so last year, I went to the dentist, who sent me to the endodontist, who sent me to the periodontist. I even had an orthodontist in on the act. It was team tooth time. And it was imperative that I get something done, they all said. I totally agreed.

But.

I had to finish the book, then there was Christmas and loads of projects which had to be done which had not been done while I wrote the book, then going to NY to meet everyone, and then a few other things thrown in the mix, like starting book two, editing book one and there's a family around here somewhere who kinda wanted some attention, and before you know it, it was May and I still hadn't done anything about the tooth. It could wait, right? It wasn't infected, wasn't hurting. Nada.

Until last Wednesday, I started feeling something scratchy inside my cheek and looked at that molar and saw what looked like bone protruding a little from above my tooth. My beloved, expensive, tooth. (sigh)

A couple of hours of oral surgery later, and the tooth / crown is now removed. There were nasty things like fractured roots and a fractured jaw line and bone grafts (yes, really... I was kinda floored), and eventually, you'll never know it had to be operated on, but right now, I have a bunch of stitches and I look like I'm trying to store a squirrel in there. They are making me a temporary, which will go there until my jaw heals enough to put the permanent tooth back, and I feel like I ought to be on some hillbilly show, although I realize that you cannot actually see the location of the tooth unless I stood in front of you with my mouth wide open while simultaneously pulling my cheek back. So not going to happen, so don't worry.

The real bummer? The pain pills weren't even any fun. Oh, they got rid of the pain well enough, but they didn't make me loopy or happy or even sleepy (damnit). In fact, my thoughts ran amok while on them and I had a hard time sleeping, so I'm off them.

* I may have exaggerated the fun part a bit.

the thing about guns...

I wanted to shoot a Glock, since a couple of characters in my book shoot one, and shoot really well. I've shot a 22 before at the range and was a pretty good shot, but I knew handling a Glock would be different.

What I am aware of is how dangerous handguns are, and yet, even knowing this intellectually, I didn't expect to feel so squeamish handling a more powerful handgun than what I've held before. We met our oldest son at the indoor shooting range, and had to don the safety equipment, and by the time we got into the actual range, I was feeling nervous. My son taught me how to hold the Glock (watching out for the slide) and when I took it, my first shot was dead center in the bullseye. No kidding, dead center.

But.

The recoil surprised me. It was a 40 caliber Glock, and while the kick was nothing compared to some bigger handguns (I'm told), I just hadn't expected it to be as much since, when my son shot it, he didn't seem to have as much recoil. And then I started thinking a lot about aiming and that these were real bullets going out there and through the target and them zooming to the back wall, and the more I thought, the worse I got. I finally went and rented a compact Glock (much smaller), which was also a 9mm (slight smaller bullet than the 40 caliber), and it was a little easier to hold and aim, and I started doing better.

Still, I was nervous the entire time.

Later, we ate lunch and Luke told us a bunch of facts he'd learned in his gun classes (he's applying to be in the FBI, he's taking gun classes)... and one of the things he talked about was how a 40 caliber bullet could go through something like 17 layers of sheetrock. 17. So all of those times in a movie or TV show that we see someone dodge behind a wall or a corner in a house and bullets riddle the wall? That person would have been dead on the other side.

I'm going to go back for more lessons, just so I know more about what I'm writing about when I have Bobbie Faye shoot at something. But I don't think I'll ever actually get used to it; I think that fear will stay with me. At least, I hope so.

sludge, part deux

So remember my old friend, the sludge? Well, it's baaaaaaaaaaaaaack. I thought on Monday that I was getting pink eye because Carl had it all last week and when I woke, my eyes were all red and scratchy. But no, didn't have pink eye. That was just the sludge's opening volley for round two, otherwise known as "tortue for fun and profit." By today, I was battling a fever, which hadn't gone too high until this afternoon, when it decided that it had toyed with me enough, and it jumped up. In spite of the Tylenol I had taken, it was over a 100.

So, off to the doctor we go (since Carl has it, too), and we see him and hear how awful this stuff is. He'd taken several rounds of medicine himself trying to kick it about a month ago, and he didn't want to prescribe the Z-pack antibiotics, because they weren't strong enough. So he precribes this new antibiotic (new-ish, I dunno) that he said would really kick butt. Carl went to fill it and called me from the pharmacy. The antibiotics alone cost more than $400. That's with our insurance Rx card, which gives us steep discounts. (It's not a co-pay card, but then again, the rates can never be raised.)

$400? For antibiotics? What the hell is in that pill? A miniature Ahnold? mixed with an Uzi carrying Taz? For $400 for 20 pills, that thing better not only kill the damned bacteria causing this sludge, it should make me taller and younger.

I called the doctor, who was already home, who answered my page somewhat warily (he thinks I'm fiesty. I don't know why he thinks I'm fiesty. Can't imagine where the hell he got that idea.) I asked, "Just how sure are you that the Z-pack wouldn't work?"

"Um, well. It might work. Why?"

I told him about the cost of the meds. He said he'd call in the Z-pack, though I might have to take two rounds of them instead of one. Even with that, I'd still be way ahead of the cost of the other one.

"Damn straight," I said. And I heard him chuckling.

"What?"

"Well," he said, "I only see you when you're sick and exhausted. I'd hate to see how fiesty you can be if you're feeling really well."

Ha.

Pulitzer winners, and well deserved

I knew the reporting coming from the Times Picayune during and after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was spectacular. They reported even when they didn't know where they were going to live, even when they each had major personal losses, both family and homes. I am so incredibly proud that they have won two Pulitzers. This is so greatly deserved!

Beautifully done.

anomalies

I just wanted to let you know that if the world ended abruptly today, I DIDN'T MEAN TO DO IT. Okay? Good, just so you know. Because I not only went to sleep before 4 a.m., which is the usual time (except it's been moving back toward 5a.m. then 5:30 a.m. for the last two weeks)... I actually went to sleep.... by 11 p.m. I know. Scary. And! I woke up this morning at 7a.m.! Awake. Actually opened my eyes, couldn't fall back asleep, the whole "get up, it's morning" sort of thing." Wow. The sun comes up in the morning. Did you know that? Kinda cool. What is it you normal people do in the mornings? Besides go to work, I know that part, but this whole wide awake thing is kinda weird. And! I have energy. I know. In the morning. Very scary. I'm expecting meteorites to hit the earth at any minute now. Really sorry about that.

In other random news, I have squirrels in my attic again. No, that is not a euphemism, thank you. Real squirrels. Or, at least, I think think they are squirrels, unless it's like last time, and a mama raccoon got up in there (I have no idea how) and we ended up rescuing her four baby raccoons and feeding them for a couple of weeks until a rescue place could take them in. (They were adorable... until they were able to climb out of the box. Then, they were cute, but the whole pooping everywhere diminished that a bit.) So... I think it's squirrels again, because this time, there are a lot of running sounds during the day time (squirrels) rather than at night time (raccoons). Last time, we caught the mama raccoon in a wire cage trap (very safe and humane) and moved her (didn't know she had babies at that point, hence the rescue operation later). I suspect we'll have to do the trap thing again. I wish we could find where the little buggers are getting in. We checked the spot we thought they were originally getting in and it's closed up.

Anyway. Squirrels. Are noisy. Very busy, with the running, to and fro, right over my head. I kinda expect to hear cheers and the scream of "home run!" any minute now. See, when I was asleep in the morning, I didn't know they were up there. They may have been there for a year, hell if I'd know. But now, it's me against the squirrels. Because I cannot write while they are going to and fro, with the thumping and bumping and rearranging up there, building a stadium or whatever they are doing. Driving me nuts.

I know, not far to go.

I believe...

I believe in long lazy naps on rainy afternoons, the healing power of a hug, the comfort of a warm bubble bath, and the sensuality of skin on skin. I believe in turning off the TV and talking until midnight, sharing what I have, even if it's only a little, and I believe in the incredible power of listening to the heart as well as to the words. I believe that it's easier to be cynical than it is to be positive, that honor is something worth striving for, even at cost to oneself, and that sometimes letting someone know you need them is the greatest gift you can give them. I believe in friends who tell the truth when you need it and are quick to distract you when it hurts too much, and I believe in laughter as the magic elixir for long term relationships. I believe that we already contribute to the culture, each of us just as we are, just who we are, and that the greatest gift of contribution is to be honest with that, to give what we love back, whether that is laughter or serious prose, limericks or Elvis on velvet, because the point is not to try to live to some standard of others, but to find our own and to enjoy living to the one we feel in our souls.

What do you believe?

do they have a union for that?

random observations for a Thursday...

Every afternoon, now that it's warming up (it was over 80 today), there is the typical rite-of-passage, the one moment when I know spring is upon us and winter is over: I am bombarded with the tinny clanging of music from the ice cream man. In a world where we have amber alerts, where kids are snatched, where we don't let them talk to strangers or go to a friend's house without double-checking the background of all adult units who may be present, we still let our kids chase down a painted and decaled van where they can buy a bar of ice cream for $2.50 instead of getting it at the grocery store for a fourth of that price. I have often seen kids zooming by on bicycles, trying to catch him, because they weren't quite ready with their money as he sped by (this guy drives way too fast), and they practically race their bikes in front of his truck to get his attention. This is a disaster waiting to happen, and I feel like one of those crochety old 80-year-olds we used to make fun of as kids... the ones who said, "Well in my day, sonny...." yikes.

Even so, it makes me wonder, who checks out the ice cream man? I mean, there's not exactly a union for that, is there? Are there background checks? Someone making sure this guy isn't wanted in a few states? What? I'm always amazed at how schizophrenic our trust is... if we had it as a kid, it must still be safe.

My dog, Dee Oh Gee, has long been housebroken, but we now don't have a fence up in part of our back yard and she can easily wander to the front. To encourage her to not wander off, I started giving her treats every time she came back to the door to be let in. It took her a couple of months to catch on, but man, she loves those treats. Well, I'm out. And I'm not going to the store in the middle of the night. But if there's anything that would make me do so, it's the sight of that very confused face, big brown eyes just not understanding.... "What? I went! I peed! I came back! No treat? Don't you still LOVE me? My heart is breaking!"

She doesn't have many tricks, this dog, but she is an expert at the broken hearted expression. I can almost see her holding back the tears. oy.

And in other pet news, apparently the "sick" cat has finally decided to forgive me my transgressions of daring to rearrange my own office. She spent a week sulking in another room, and when that failed to gain her sympathy any longer, she moved into a room closer to me. I would only pet her when she came out of the room and joined the family, and she's finally given up the pouting and has resumed being her normal, loveable self. Only now, she's trying to make up for lost time by being more aggressive about sitting in my lap or somewhere on my body 24/7; preferably in any position which most hinders me writing.

She has also decided this meowing thing is pretty cool. She used to never make a sound. Ever. Oh, she was capable, but she just didn't. I can't get used to her meowing for every little thing, now. Who knew cats could do the terrible twos?

conned (wherein I learn just how not-smart I really am)

Last week, my cat started acting a little weird. Nothing too off, but she usually gets allergies this time of the year and I thought she was starting up with allergies again. Except... she didn't have any of the allergy symptoms, just a spate of odd behavior. By Friday, she was crying when I walked into the room. This cat almost never meows (except when we get in the car, then she tunes up like a diva soprano). However, now, I'd walk in the room where she was lying and there were these horrible, plaintive little meows that sounded like she was in pain. Real, terrible, horrible pain.

When she wasn't lying there crying, she was hiding and starting to freak me out. I can't tell you how weird it is to know the cat is most definitely in the house and to turn the house upside down for more than two hours and not be able to figure out where she's hidden herself. And man, was she creative. Worse, in addition to the hiding, she didn't seem to be eating much (unless I was sitting there with her and then eating only if I had spooned up the very bestest soft catfood to be purchased). She wasn't drinking much, either. I tried to take her in to her vet, but he's remodeling (and thus, closed) and I didn't think it was an emergency, per se, so I didn't want to take her into the animal hospital. She freaks out at the animal hospital but seems to tolerate the vet's really well, and I hated to traumatize her needlessly. Still, I resolved that if she wasn't better by this morning, I'd take her in to the vet's substitute.

I saw the cat at midnight. When I tried to find her this morning, she was nowhere to be found. I mean nowhere. I looked for three hours. Carl then looked for an hour. We sat and listened to see if we could hear something. Nada. Finally, Carl went back into the exercise room and decided to look underneath the treadmill. There is maybe, at most, two inches of clearance space, and somehow, the cat had gotten under there. I cannot fathom how, or what would have happened if I had started to walk this morning like I had planned.

She went into the cat carrier without fussing or seeming to care, until it closed, and then she just cried.

Everyone who saw her this weekend asked me if she was dying. I started to feel like I was the worst pet person in the world, because I didn't think she could be that sick that suddenly, and then I knew if it turned out that she was really sick and I hadn't taken her in earlier, I was going to feel horrible for her suffering.

We got to the new vet's office and she was still very docile. This cat has always been extraordinarily laid back. She's a calico and tolerates even hordes of kids vying for her affection really well. As I was signing her in, she perked up a bit, looking around. Then the vet's assistant walked in and at the moment she took her from me, my cat turned into the Evil that Satan's really really really bad seed aspires to.

I could not believe that was my cat. I've never seen her do that, never. She growled and meowed so loud, I would have thought she was a little mountain lion; she flipped and hissed and tried to bite the assistant multiple times. I've handed her over in the vet's before and there was nothing like this. I knew, then, she had to be dying to be reacting so badly. I told the woman to put her down and I'd catch her and calm her (because of course she loves me and was going to be calm) and the woman let her go. I cornered her under a bench and she reacted to me with the same fury she'd used on the assistant.

Finally, the assistant brought me a towel, which I tossed over my cat and she settled down on the spot. I wrapped her up, handed her over , went home and awaited the phone call.

A couple of hours later, the vet called me and said she'd gone over the cat pretty thoroughly and frankly, she hadn't seen a healthier cat in a long time. She wondered why I thought she was sick, and when I described what had been happening, the vet asked me if anyone had moved into or out of the house in the last couple of weeks. I said, "No."

"Any major changes in your household?"

"No, nothing."

"Did you move any furniture?"

"Furniture? Well, yeah. We just painted my office and moved out a big credenza and moved in my favorite reading chair. Why?"

"Does your cat like sitting with you in that chair?"

"Well, yes. Every evening. Why?"

"I think she's upset that you've made changes in the house and she's acting out. And since it's working and you're giving her more attention, she's keeping up the act."

"So you're telling me that I have been completely conned by a nine pound animal with a brain the size of a large walnut?"

"Yep. Pretty much."

Yeah, that university degree has done me a world of good.

sludge

There is this moment when you start to appreciate the simple things in life. Like breathing. Breathing is pretty cool, and kinda necessary, and you know, we just don't appreciate breathing enough. There should be Oscars for good breathing, best breathing in a flu-like situation, deep breathing when angry, and so on. Because beathing? Kinda nice.

I really missed it this last couple of weeks.

I had the sludge. I don't know if it was officially the flu or just a really bad cold gone over-achiever or what, but I had the sludge. It moved into my lungs last weekend and I couldn't talk until last Monday or so, and I thought I had gotten over it, I was getting all better, see, and then Sludge said, "Oh, hell if you think so, Bitch, we're just getting started," and it proceeded to kick my ass all over the map. By Tuesday, breathing was really a lot of hard work as the goopy stuff wheezed in and out of my lungs and by Wednesday, I was pretty much prone on the sofa, moaning to anyone who'd listen, and by Thursday, I had a high fever and I sort of wanted to die, because I also had that horrible cough -- you know the one -- the one where your body cavities turn themselves inside out with every lung-rattling barking rhythm. Yeah, I was fun to be around, let me tell you.

Wednesay and Thursay nights, my husband ended up building a tent over me and turning the vaporizer on so I could breathe. He used a big golf umbrella (no idea where the hell that thing came from at two a.m.) and then draped sheets over it and had me sitting up against a pile of pillows, with more under my knees. Only the coughing? Made me have to go pee on a regular basis, so I'd climb out of the precariously balanced "tent" and then had to try to climb back in (because it took so long to set the damned thing up, but it really did help) and then of course, the umbrella closed on me and the sheets all fell and I leaned over trying to open the umbrella back up and get the sheet to drape just right over the chair that held the vaporizer so the steam could go inside the tent instead of outside (which was the whole point of the tent) and then I leaned too far and fell off the bed, knocking over the glass of water my husband had lovingly placed beside the bed and knocking over the vaporizer and crunching the umbrelling and bruising myself on the chair and it would have been fucking hysterical if I wasn't stuck on the floor upside down in a golf umbrella, my legs waving in the air and STILL NOT ABLE TO BREATHE. I'm not sure if I saw a camera flash just then or not, but if my husband ever needed to blackmail me, that was the photo to do it.

By Friday, I called my doctor and begged for mercy, and she prescribed the antibiotics I needed without making me go in to see her, and I think it was maybe the, "Please don't make me get dressed and come in, I'd rather kill myself at this point," that did it. I highly recommend that for a doctor-avoiding strategy, by the way. I spent all of Friday and Saturday extremely busy... I had to move from the bed to the sofa and then back to the bed again, and I'm here to tell you, that was a helluva lot of work. But today? I woke up feeling about a thousand percent better. So much so, I repainted my office and ended up cleaning and doing some other things that had been ignored for too long. But mostly, I just took these really long, deep breaths. I highly recommend them. Because you just never know -- that could be you stuck upside down in the umbrella next.

"that wasn't you in here"

Over on The Lipstick Chronicles, guest blogger Nancie described how she was teaching women to shoot safely with guns. I loved her entry, and it reminded me of the first time I learned to shoot, which was after this particular event: (this blog entry was once posted on an old site, so a tiny few of you will have seen it before)...

... "that wasn't you in here"...

Something had awakened me. I pulled myself out of a deep, heavy sleep, the kind you have with feeling ill at seven months pregnant; a thick, smothering feeling of ache. I was lying on my back, buried in a comforter, hidden to the world and I turned my head slightly to see the time.

The clock glowed red: 10:04. I will always remember that. 10:04.

I had gone to sleep early, something I almost never did. Carl had wanted me to go with him while he helped a friend move, but I felt like a slow, meandering whale, enormous at seven months, more-so than anyone would have expected. And tired. I remember that -- so very tired, like I'd traveled across the universe and had to still make the trip back, somehow. I'd begged off and put Luke to bed, happy that, at four, he was finally willing to go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

And something had awakened me, at 10:04. I half-rose, knowing Luke was going to be standing by the side of the bed, touching my elbow, “Mama, can I have some water?” He wasn't there; I blinked the sleep away, still half-rising, realizing that what had actually awakened me was the ceiling fan ceasing to turn and the heat of the July room already pressing down on me with just the first stillness of air.

That, and the hall-lights were on. I had turned them off, turned everything off, before going to bed.

A soft yellow light streamed across the foot of the bed and the man standing there, hand still in the air, reaching for the chain-pull to try and turn the over-head light (on the fan) on; only there was no over-head light on those old antique fans.

I swam up through sleep, groggy incoherence, shifting lights and darks and swelling-stomached illness and saw the man there and reflex won first and I said, “Carl, is that you?” just as logic and reason kicked in, a slow lagging second to say to myself, that's not Carl.

It was plain to see, if only my senses trusted themselves to see what was out of place here, in that sort of desperate, half-step two-step logic does when it tries to reconcile what it's seeing with what it should see. Though roughly the same build, this was, plainly, a black man, and not my husband. I had given away that I was in the bed ; he couldn't have seen me there in the dark with the light shining only at the foot of the bed where he stood. Carl, is that you? hung in the air and he waited a beat and said, “Just a minute, I have to go to the bathroom.”

And he turned and walked out the bedroom and shut the door.

I blinked, adrenaline rushed, and stared. He had shut the door and I could hear him walking around the house, mumbling something, to whom, I knew not; he was somewhere between me and my four-year-old, between me and the life of my child and I sat, still half-risen, in disbelief.

Thoughts ran and slammed against me, none of them coherent, none of them near the basket, personal foul, walking, jump shot, out-of-bounds. Had I imagined it? Was I dreaming? Was I still dreaming, only thinking I saw someone, only thinking I heard someone, only conjuring up the voice in the other room, the soft padding of his tennis shoes on my hardwood floors, straining to hear if he had gone to my child's room, straining to hear if my child was breathing, feeling the baby at seven months kicking in gear in my stomach, mom's awake, oh good, let's play. I had to get in there, to my four-year-old. I had to move, but I had no clothes in my room, with all of them piled in the dining room while we remodeling my closet. No robe, and the gown I had was so short, nothing was left to the imagination, esepecially at seven months, but that didn't matter, I needed to get to Luke... and the baby kicked again, another child to protect.

I stood. I'm not sure how I got out of the bed, because I know it took two eons and a crane to move me, but somehow I had pulled myself up to almost-standing; almost; not quite able to stand all the way up, not sure what else to do, semi-hunched over as if I was somehow hidden like that, not knowing where to go, how can I be such a coward and just stand here while my child is in the other room? and how can I risk this one?

I knew, finally, the term “frozen in fear.” Everything locked up, everything ceased to function, and then as if my brain knew that I had ceased in reality, I heard a voice, a distinctive voice in my ear saying, “Move.” Move where? I asked the voice. “To the office.”

I eased over to the door which stood exactly opposite the one which entered the hall; it looked like an exterior door and once, long ago, had been, until someone had tacked on a porch spanning the back of the house, the bedroom and the kitchen, a narrow room which we had converted into an office. I silently cursed the remodeling project and my near-nakedness.

The office was little comfort. Pitch black, but there was a phone.

I remembered the gun.

I had never held it. Only seen it, knew it was there.

Carl had a 22 pistol he'd kept to shoot snakes when they coiled under the house (it was built up on piers, old construction) and when Luke was still a baby, Carl had hidden it up on a top shelf, taller than he was, and nearly impossible to reach.

Fear said to get it. Get it now. Right now, don't wait, you don't have time to think about this.

In the pitch black, I climbed on top of my desk, sliding on paperwork I couldn't see, shifting my awkward weight, pressing my pregnant belly against the shelves, straining to hear what was going on in the other room, as I felt along the dark of the top shelf to rake my fingers across the smooth leather of the holster and the cold butt of the gun. I thought it would be reassuring. I thought having a weapon in my hand, something to even the odds would make me feel like I could handle this intruder into my world.

My mind screamed with what ifs.

what if it's really Carl and you're dreaming and you shoot him just like the next-door neighbor's son died? what if it's really Luke? what if you don't know how to shoot the gun? what if he takes the gun away from you and uses it against you or Luke? what if what if; what if what if it's the only thing that stops him? what if you put it back and it's the only way you could have saved your child? what if what if

I climbed down, still holding the gun, shuddering, shaking, desperate.

The sound of the man moved away somewhere and I went for the phone, tried to dial 911. I kept getting a busy signal (busy signal? how can that be? how can emergency be busy over and over and what's wrong here? why won't this work? why can't I get through?). I cannot remember when I realized what the problem was and furiously cursed Sony up and down for making a phone with numbers flush to the housing because you cannot feel the difference between the “8” and the “9” in the pitch black. I managed to get 911 dialed and just as they asked what I needed…

The light snapped on in the bedroom. I could hear his mumbling, and knew he was all the way in the room, not content to just stand at the foot of the bed.

I hung up, afraid he'd hear me, afraid he'd head in my direction. I heard him open the closet door, saying, “I know she was in here, man, she was in here. Where'd she go?” The door I was hiding behind would be plainly lit now, not fifteen feet from where he was standing, looking in my empty closet, wondering how I had gotten out of the room. It was the only other door. There was no lock. He would be heading my way.

I had one option.

There was another door in the office, which led to the back of the kitchen. It was a new door, not even a knob on it yet; I decided to scurry through there and go to the kitchen while he was in my bedroom. At least, once he entered the office, I'd be gone. I eased open the door, about to tiptoe the three feet to the back kitchen door when the kitchen light blinked on.

How many people were in here? What did they or he want?

There was nothing worth robbing. New babies and bad economies and young marrieds do not make for a combination of yuppie-dom and there were only the bare essentials, and most of it a tad worn already, at that.

I was beyond calm. I hit a plane of where's Luke where's Luke where's Luke what if what if what if what if ohmygod what if ohmygod my baby, oh please let Luke be asleep, please don't let anything have happened to him, I have to get to him, I have to, I don't know how to, and then what? what if what if what if ohmygod…

It was harmonic motion in thought, pinging at light speed, screaming for attention, screaming for me to do something, anything, while other parts screamed that “anything” wasn't an option, be smart about this and still other parts fiercely battling for getting in there to Luke.

The light that had snapped on in the kitchen cut me off from that escape, and I hung there in that new door frame, not sure whether to go forward or back.

Someone was at the back kitchen door. So far, no one had come through the bedroom door into the office; I backed up, eased the new door-knobless door closed, listened with the intensity to hear breathing on the next street and tried not to let my thoughts be sooo very loud that he could hear them.

He pushed open that kitchen door, and I stooped to watch him through the hole where the door knob should have been. I felt the weight of the gun in my hand, the cold heaviness of it, the firm steel, the trigger, don't touch the trigger! you don't know how this works, it might be a hair-trigger, just hold it, holding it isn't going to do any good, it'd be a lot scarier to him if you took it out of the holster, how do you take it out of the holster? can't see it, it's pitch black in here, is that a snap? I don't know, what do I do, I don't know what to do with this, take it out, hold it, point it, don't point it, what if it's Carl? what if it's Luke? ohmygod, Luke, what do I do?

It didn't matter that I could see him, see it was a black man, see his mustard yellow shorts and converse tennis shoes with no laces, see the bulge in his pocket, like a knife or something, see the red bandana tied over his head, the white muscle shirt, all illuminated from the streetlight shining in the back door... my brain had ceased to any reason and thoughts criss-crossed in a hysterical race to send me over the precipice. I kept trying to convince myself that what I was seeing was really real, that he was really there, walking toward my office door, which had no knob, much less a lock, and that I really ought to move, ought to shoot, but didn't know how, but still ought to, and another part of my brain kept flogging the story of how the next door neighbor's son had come home early one night and so startled his wife, she'd shot him and had slowly driven herself insane with the guilt afterward and what if what if what if.

As I hunched over to watch through the open knobless hole, I could smell him, acrid sweat; he was about a foot away, looking at my door, saying, “Where the hell does that go?” and reaching for it, dirty fingernails, when he stopped.

Frozen. A moment. Backed up, looked through the kitchen door and turned to the back door. A deadbolt lock, requiring a key to get out and the key was nearby. He walked out and I watched him, through the window, memorizing everything about him, seeing him in the light, seeing him walk past my car and turn up the alley, moving toward the front of the house.

I wanted to move. Go find Luke, make sure he was okay. I was so afraid of what I would find, I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, trying to convince myself it was over.

Another light snapped on in the bedroom.

I turned toward the bedroom door, heard a voice approaching fast, heard someone saying something, demanding something and nothing was coherent for me then. I just lifted the gun and pointed it at the door, an inch away from whoever's chest who opened it, maybe that would teach them something, maybe I would pull the trigger and it would all be over, and the door swung open and there was a man's chest and there was the mouth of the gun touching it and there was the trigger and something waited, paused a moment and his hand pushed the gun down toward the floor as his other one pulled my chin up to look into his eyes.

Carl was home.

I tried saying something, tried explaining that as we spoke, or rather, as he was asking questions, there was a man walking up the alley who'd been in the house, a man who'd turned on every light, who'd tried to find me, ohmygod, Luke, and the only coherent thing I could manage to say was

that wasn't you in here

I broke and ran for Luke, who had, miraculously, slept through the entire thing, even though it was his window the man had broken into and his floor that had the trail of muddy footprints strolling across it, heading into the rest of the house, apparently alone, staying for more than forty minutes before hearing Carl come in the front door and so choosing to go out the back.

I ran back to the bedroom, stood in the corner of the room, tried to press my entire pregnant self into the wall-paper and screamed into my hands, afraid of waking Luke up, afraid of everything, that wasn't you in here that wasn't you in here that wasn't you in here.

I'm not sure when or how Carl finally made sense of what had just happened. I'm not sure when I got dressed, or how, but with every light on and with me armed with a CB base radio (and him with the other in his truck), he decided to cruise around the neighborhood, trolling through just in case he found the guy. He must have radioed back every three seconds to make sure I was okay.

He found someone lurking which matched my description and had me call the police. They got there immediately, stopped the guy. Had me look at him; wrong guy. He also happened to be wanted for being a peeping Tom, but still, the wrong guy.

A week or so later, they would call me and tell me they caught the guy; he had raped and beaten an 80 year-old lady in another house in our neighborhood with a large stick -- like a limb from a tree. Someone had caught him, however, and they wanted me to ID him.

I would later remember a limb that had been just outside that window and wonder why I had gotten so lucky.

He would later get off with a short sentence, two years, I think.

working

Apologies for the lack of content here. I'm in the process of working with a designer for a new site, plus regular work, plus some travel, plus a couple of family things. More updates soon, and then when we go live with the other site, there will be regular content. No, really. I promise. Quit looking at me like that, I'm serious.

New Year's resolutions I know I will keep.

I never really bother with New Year's resolutions. For one thing, I tend to forget whatever it was that I resolved by the second or third week of January, which makes adhering to them a little difficult. And honestly, I don't believe in making a bunch of resolutions of difficult things to do all at once, because if they're difficult enough so that I'm having to make a big fat honking resolution for it at the first of the year, then odds are, I'm not likely to do it anyway -- especially if there's more than one. But there's all this pressure at the beginning of the year to make resolutions, like you're not a good person if you don't have them (or you're shallow, because you think you don't need improvement) and why the hell do we do that to ourselves anyway? Do we really want to start off a new year with a buttload of guilt and a side-order of dread? No. No we do not.

So, keeping that in mind, I decided to make a New Year's resolution list I know I will keep so I don't have to worry about them, don't have to feel guilty because I'm not all that likely to break them, and I will have bragging rights even by July when the everyone else will be hiding their list. Feel free to use and adapt to your needs.

I hereby resolve to:

1) breathe. This is a handy little resolution I'm pretty sure I can keep, except when my head is spinning around in fury. (Given that this is when my husband usually reminds me to breathe, apparently there are some moments where it is remotely possible I might break this rule.) I especially like this one and feel it is my greatest candidate for "Most Likely To Keep."

2) eat. Whatever the hell I want. This is probably my second favorite category, although the third one competes heavily.

3) sleep. Especially naps. Long naps. Long naps where the phone is turned off. I'm liking this one better and better.

4) love my family except when they're being really stupid and I'd rather smack them. This may possibly be self-explanatory. (See note on #1.)

5) chocolate. If it enters my house, it is mine. If the kids don't get it out of their stockings and inadvertently leave their stockings here overnight, the chocolate will migrate to my room. All by itself. Magically. I don't know how this happens or why, but I accept that it does and that this means it is mine to eat whenever I damned well want to.

6) have convenient lapses of memory. (See #5.)

7) procrastinate. I feel this particular resolution gets short shrift at the first of every year because so many people make resolutions about being all industrious and shit when WHO ARE THEY KIDDING? My particular method of procrastinating is farting around on the computer. So far this year, I'm doing extremely well.

8) I think napping needs a second entry. Just because.

9) buy more shoes. (Feel free to substitute "tools" or "computers" or "gadgets" or "clothes" or "toothpicks" or whatever you like. This is an equal opportunity vice.)

10) write, read, talk to friends, e-mail, watch movies, HAVE FUN, do whatever it is I feel like doing to fill in the time between all of the above resolutions. Which may only be five or so minutes a day, between the napping and the procrastinating and the chocolate. In fact, I think the have fun part of this entry is going to be the most important of all. Because what the hell is the point of living if we aren't having some fun?

Well, I think I can keep that list. It might be a bit rough fitting in the napping and the procrastinating all in the same day every day, but it's worth a shot, and I will give it my best effort.

tap tap tap...

Is this thing on?

Sorry to have disappeared. Thank you to everyone who's written and clicked through and wondered if I was going AWOL again.

I'm not. Just was absolutely beyond exhausted, and I hadn't really even realized how much. I had signed up for Holidailies, thinking it would get me back into the groove, and instead, I just stalled completely. Apparently, finishing up a novel completely robbed me of words. I owe e-mail! I owe phone calls! I owe cards!

On the very good news / family front, both my sons graduated this month: Jake, (youngest), went through Firefigher training school and made Firefighter II. And we didn't know until they mentioned it at graduation, but it turns out that the school he went to was one of the top three in the nation. Wooo! Luke (oldest), graduated from college with a Criminal Justice degree, and his college is rated one of the top six in the nation for that degree. He's worked his behind off, and we're very proud of him. Of both of them.

There were a few times when they were younger that I wondered if they'd survive (each other as well as peer group stuff). Only a few times. (3,462,198 times.) It's amazing to see these... these men of mine. They're men. How in the hell did that happen? I can't be old enough to have men as my children. This is too bizarre.

At the same time, to sit around together at family events and everyone is laughing and cutting up and going off on riffs that has the rest of the family rolling, to see the grandparents sitting there with the kids, to know that this won't last forever, but we've got it, we've had those moments, they're ours... we got there, the magical "there" you hope and pray for as parents and as a child yourself. To know we had this, especially this year, is the greatest gift I could have received.

Hope you all have a wonderful New Year, where you have those magical moments for yourself, where your dreams come true, and where disasters do not strike. We're gearing up for the annual 'tater launch party. See you next year!

dance-y wigglebutt thing

A conversation with Carl:

"She had that dance-y wigglebutt thing going on."

"Dance-y wigglebutt thing?"

"Yeah. You know."

"Is that the technical term?"

"Yeah. But only if you're at the graduate level of dance-y speak."

"Somewhere a long time ago, this conversation was making sense."

"See, that's what happens when you inadvertently spring graduate level dance-y speak onto an unsuspecting person."

I am almost done with the editing, and will be wrapping up the book and turning it into the agent and the editor in about two weeks. No time for meatier entries, but they will return.

Meanwhile, two funny links:

The thing to buy that person who's just gone through a bad break-up.

And, the thing to have back at your place when you're bringing that party from the restaurant and everyone's had a little too much to drink. Tell 'em it's perfectly normal and you don't see why they think something's wrong.

no fast moves

Someone in my family, whom I adore, is a bit of a neat freak. (cough) The first time I ever visited her home, she kept warning me that it was messy, and when I went inside, I could not find a single piece of lint, not a single solitary item out of place. It was as perfectly designed as if it were going to be a magazine layout. Every. Single. Room. (I didn't look into cabinets at the time, but knowing her better five years later, I'm pretty sure they would have been perfectly organized as well.)

When we were out tonight for a friend's birthday, this otherwise brilliant woman confessed to what she'd done yesterday: a particular favorite blanket which had been used on a sofa had caused the sofa to pill... and she spent two hours shaving the sofa.

She. Shaved.... the sofa.

I am so going to mock her from now on. I may buy her a shaving kit for Christmas.

(I have warned her that this one's going in the next book. And it's not going to be flattering.) (heh)

halloween costumes

Lots of people have been googling costumes for Halloween, of course, but it sort of worries me that a large number of people have landed on this entry about the girl who was going to shave (completely) and go as a roll of duct tape. The employee in question lost track of the date that night (I suggested that she'd had to go to the bathroom and couldn't reassemble her costume from the sheer pain removing it had caused). Weeks later, he ran into her and she'd been out of school due to, ahem, severe rash. I'm not sure if I blogged about that at the time, but geez, you'd think somone in college would have been able to predict the consequences.

For laughs, here's the Halloween costume entry I wrote about a briliant idea I'd had when Luke was a kid. And if you didn't read my ghost story, that's there for your perusal.

(For my regular readers, sorry for the repeats. Fresh insanity tomorrow.)

the definition of 'frustrating'

A comment which may or may not have been uttered by someone I know:

"You know what's really crappy and annoying? Exercising and dieting and being all excited because the blue jeans you're currently wearing are finally loose and you've lost about ten pounds, and then you have to get dressed for something fancy and you go to your closet and look around for what baggy thing you own that will look the least craptastic on you, and you put it on and the sucker fits... because you have now lost down into your fattest dress clothes. After all that work."

"How much do I want to bet there's not a single drop of anything chocolate left in the house after that discovery."

"Damn straight."

dancing drunk video (redux)

I didn't realize so many people were coming into my site looking for the Dancing Drunk video. (I learned it when I switched to statcounter.com, a much better tracker of web stats). Anyway, the video is actually a group of actors from the show Reno 911 Kids (according to one of the comments on that old entry) and it can be found:

here

team tooth

So, I went to the endodontist yesterday. Where it turns out that I have a molar which is completely split in half. The only thing holding it in, apparently, is the crown. My tooth does not hurt. Functions fine. Looks completely normal. But for reasons I have no fucking clue about, has decided to vacate the premises.

The endodontist starts talking about how she's going to call my regular dentist for me, and then they'll conference call with the woman who's going to be my periodontist and the person who'll be doing the actual surgery, and while they're at it, they're going to consult with an orthodontist just to make sure that when we do all of this fun work, we don't mess up my smile. She (the endodontist) explained (with great enthusiasm) that they didn't want me to have to try to explain to each of the other dentist types because that was too complex, so they were all going to consult with one another and for me not to worry, because they were going to coordinate like a team.

People. My tooth has a team.

Next thing I know, it's going to want royalties.

Chertoff's firm grasp of the obvious

No, duh.

So, FEMA needs to be retooled. I have a couple of suggestions.

1) remove head from ass

2) no no, not just Bush's ass. Your own, Chertoff.

3) Remember America was founded on people who have a helluva lot of initiative. Pay attention to what the volunteers can do. Make a plan which has an organized system to coordinate volunteer efforts -- on the fly -- in large disasters which will work as a stop-gap effort before the "official" response can determine what's needed

4) move FEMA out from under your paper-pushing, ass kissing thumb and let it be the independent agency it's supposed to be. Clearly the extra layer of bureaucracy did not work.

5) pretend like that was your family out there in the Ninth Ward sitting on a roof. Yeah, I don't think it would take you six or seven days to coordinate efforts.

marc broussard

If you're not listening to Marc Broussard, you're missing the boat. A south-Louisiana boy from Carencro, LA, he's got a soul/R & B funk style that sort of defies description, and the smoky voice of a pro twice his age that will blow you away. My favorite is Home -- that link is to a snippet using Window's Media Player. Google his name for other links to his music via other players.

(That snippet doesn't even do that song justice. Seriously. An addictive song.)

oops

Accidentally deleted two comments from the "my louisisana" entry below, and have no clue how I managed to do that, as I was not even editing that particular entry. To Kitty and G. -- my apologies. The comments were much appreciated.

I'm going to be taking down this entry in the next day or so because I'm editing it for another purpose. It may be back up later, so there will be a placeholder here.

my louisiana

I always knew we were close when we got to the silos on highway 190. Tall, white, built to house the predominate crop of rice, their domes gleaming in the sun, they were a sign that we were almost to my paternal grandparents' home. I thought of the silos as the three soldiers, guarding a gateway to a different place in time. We would have been driving west two or so hours by that point to get to Kinder, Louisiana, -- just northeast of Lake Charles -- all the way from Baton Rouge, where my parents had moved so my dad could find a job.

My very first memory is of me sitting in the middle of my grandparents' living room on the hardwood floor in their small house, the attic fan rattling, dragging in muggy air from the hot spring day outside the screen door. Aunts, uncles, cousins were standing, leaning or seated in stiff ladderback chairs around the perimeter of the room. Most of the ladies wore cotten print dresses and flat shoes; the men had on slacks and short sleeve shirts, and cowboy boots, of course. A few of the men had their dress straw hats propped on their knees. My Paw Paw (for that's the common term there, Maw Maw and Paw Paw) usually had the nicer chair next to the door. It would be years before I would realize that worn, green, stained-armed, sagging seat, broken-back chair wasn't a throne.

Hazy cigarette smoke swirled above our heads, sucked into the attic fan and the evening light dappled through the open windows (always with screens to keep out the mosquitoes). Something played in the background, a crackly radio sawing out Cajun music, and the quiet room would ebb and flow with stories. Always the stories. Sometimes, the story tellers would be quiet, somber, sometimes picking up to a lively jaunt. Cajuns thrived on the telling, passing along reminiscences, which in turn, passed along heritage. Tales which gained in fame and embelishments with every incarnation. Cajuns loved good practical jokes, crazy lore, and it was more about the event of telling and hearing the story than the facts, anyway. It was, as my friend Kitty says, the 'supped up version. And sometimes, in the telling, they would switch over to Cajun if they didn't want the kids to understand, saddened, though, that they knew the kids wouldn't understand. Most of us grandkids were far flung from our heritage already.

Like my dad, I was born there, in pure Cajun country. Unlike my dad, I would never know the language, not in its full, rich glory, neither French, nor a corruption of it, but an altered language, spoken still in old caf�s with threadbare linoleum and formica countertops in small towns, dim and dusty and far from the interstate. My dad spoke only Cajun until he was in the first grade, when the teachers had been instructed to force all of the kids to speak only English, and stabbed a heritage in its soul without a single blade falling.

I remember spending time in Kinder, sometimes a week in the summer, and exploring the creek in the back, watching the crawfish build their mud huts, "fishing" for them with a piece of bacon tied to a string, running barefoot through grass and always getting stickers embedded in my toes, never wanting to put on shoes in spite of that because the loss of the feel of fresh, cool grass between my toes was a greater loss than the annoyance of the stickers. I remember watching the ceiling fans, listening to the rhythm of the attic fan, and always smelling the dark, loamy aroma of coffee brewed so strong, it practically sat up and had a conversation. I remember my Maw Maw hanging the white sheets on the clothesline that was strung from a post near her back door out toward the edge of the lawn near the creek, and the game we'd make of dodging around them, and the sweet, sunny smell we'd breathe in from them at night, as if they'd absorbed our happiness. I remember the spicy food, the rice with every meal, the constant ribbing and teasing and arguing. I remember the nights so quiet, I'd get up and walk around just to make sure I was sill alive, and I'd sit on the front porch, listening to the crickets and the croaking bullfrogs and the grunts of other animals not far away, sometimes still seeing fireflies dancing in the dark. I remember the biggest treat was hand-cranked ice-cream, which usually signalled our last night there, and I remember the voices in my dreams.

I haven't kept the accent, though I fall back into it as soon as I'm around my cousins or friends back there. I haven't kept as many of the customs, though we do have our own version of a fais do do (party) here every year, with everyone knowing what date and time and if they ever cross my threshold during the year, they have a permanent invitation to return for the party. I haven't kept as many memories as I wish I had, though I can still see my Paw Paw, strong as ever, approaching the porch and taking off his hat before he entered. My dad told me that since I was the oldest granddaughter and we lived with them at the time, my Paw Paw loved to come in from work and chat with me, only I'd cry as soon as he'd approach. It broke his heart, because apparently, I hung the moon, quite a feat for a two-year-old, but I was always an ovearchiever. And then one day, he took off his hat first (a straw cowboy hat), and I laughed and went straight to him. My dad said that he never had a memory of his father without a hat on prior to that, not once. I have no memories of him wearing one.

I'm usually amused by what people think of when they think of Cajuns, or horrified (may Adam Sandler die of a thousand paper cuts from the atrocity that was Water Boy, and no, I'm not even giving it the courtesy of linking to it... in fact, if you substituted any other ethnic background for that main character in that film, there would have a full-on battle cry of discrimination.)

I digress.

Cajuns are not just about the food and the accent, the fais do do, the playing hard. Yes, the food is important, because it was the social gathering. Yes, it's spicey, and full of flavors, as befitting a people who had to flee a country and hide out in a land and learn to live off it, best they could, and use what they had to hand. No, we won't eat everything, though many eat a few things I think are weird. Believe me, we're pretty freaked out over you eating (drinking?) wheat grass and tofu (which I have yet to understand) or go purely vegan.

Cajuns are stuborn, ornery, argumentative, ornery, muleheaded, ornery, determined, bossy, ornery, and in case I didn't mention it, ornery. They each are one hundred percent certain they are right, except when they're not, and it's your fault they weren't anyway, so what are you arguing about? At the same time, we'll work hard to go the extra mile, give whatever needs to be given. I grew up with people who thought it was normal to give whatever they could give and not count it as favors which needed to be repaid. It was just a matter of course that if they needed something in return, it would be done. Part of that came from being a people desperate for survival, clinging to their own cultures and traditions, knowing that to survive, they needed each other as well as their neighbors.

When we'd drive back home to Baton Rouge, the time travel reversed itself as fields fanning out to the side of the car gave way to small towns and industries and then the scary red Old Mississippi River bridge and finally into the suburbs of a city. There was a campaign here not so long ago, and the pithy slogan someone came up with to encourage city pride was, "We are B.R." Each time I'd see that slogan, I'd feel a disconnect, and then I realized, one day, that no, I'm not. I live here, and it's been my home most of my adult life and the few years I spent in Cajun country shouldn't have had such a profound lasting imprint.

But it did.

My Louisiana is a place of swamps and rivers and lakes and eating crawfish out at the fishing camp and drifting in a bateau with my dad, fishing early in the morning for the big bream. My Louisiana is a place of flavors and seasonings, a place of coffee and heat, of mosquitoes at sunset and screen doors. It's a place of hard work, intense play and loyalty beyond life. It's a place of belly laughs and counting on your neighbor.

And I'm glad it's mine.

Hurricane Rita, 1 p.m.

Things here are still gusty, some rain, but for the most part, not bad. At least, in our neighborhood. We just heard from a few family members around the area and they're still without electricity. I haven't been able to reach my oldest son, but I suspect that's more a function of the cell service being down in his area, which wasn't hard hit.

Hurricane Rita, 4 a.m.

For a while now, the wind has howled, then died down, then thrummed again. Several times, I thought there was some sort of engine running outside our window, only to realize again that it was the wind.

The electricity just came back on, though. Pretty amazing, given all that those workers must be having to do.

I'm worried about Lake Charles. I've got family there, and lots of friends. I'm pretty sure they all got out, but still.

I really wish my prediction (below) would have been wrong.

Hurricane Rita, 11 p.m.

We lost power about eight o'clock, and the generator developed problems immediately afterward. I'm operating the laptop and DSL off a converter which we've run to Carl's truck -- mostly so I can go online occassionally and look at the visual reports. We have a radio, plenty of supplies, so we're fine. Carl will fix the generator in the morning, if they don't have power back up by then.

The wind is gusting impressively, but so far, nothing severe, except a few limbs down.

More, later.

Hurricane Rita, outer bands

We're getting the outer bands of wind and rain now. There've been sightings of tornadoes south and east of Baton Rouge.

Carl got extra gas today, and they were changing the prices of the gas as he was filling up. (You know they didn't just get an extra shipment, so they're raising prices in anticipation. Which seems wrong, to me.)

Of course, the national news is covering the new water going over the levees in New Orleans. No big surprise there (sadly).

Hurrican Rita, shifting eastward

I've been up all night, writing, and occasionally checking the weather. By four a.m. this morning, a couple of the stations were reporting that the new projected landfall would be closer to Port Arthur, TX, which is just on the Texas / Louisiana border. I'm looking at the jet stream, and I think it's still going to shift more during the day.

Look:

There's a small pressure system off the coast of Texas where the jest stream is pushing toward the east, and it may be just enough to funnel the hurricane into the northernly flowing jet stream. If so, probably sometime late this evening, we're going to see it shifting more north/northeast than it has been so far, which means that places like Lake Charles are going to take a phenomenal direct hit, and places like Lafayette and Baton Rouge, which will be on the east side of those winds, will get a pretty strong impact, gusts-wise.

Baton Rouge has areas which tend to flood pretty badly, but the majority drains decently well, even in heavy downpours. It's going to be the wind that's going to create problems with downed trees, etc.

Of course, I am so clearly not a weather person, I will be delighted if I'm completely wrong. I certainly don't wish this storm on anyone, but I'm not sure how much more Louisiana can take.

Hurricane Rita

I wrote this last night, then pulled it back down when the weather link I had looked at for the jet stream mentioned below was replaced with a different jet stream pattern. I just watched the weather and they are anticipating changing the track to a more north-easterly direction, which is what I had feared. I suspect we're going to see a continued notheasterly shift toward Louisiana. We're already going to get those east-side winds.

Here's what I wrote last night:

Right now, it looks like Rita is going to hit the Texas coast with a hellish slam, and I dread seeing what it's going to do to Galveston and Houston. I'm also worried about the west Louisiana coastline and places like Lake Charles, which will get the east side of the hurricane. As we've seen, re: Biloxi and Gulfport / Waveland area, being on that east side is deadly.

Not helping matters any is the shift I'm seeing in the jet stream. The front that was pushing the hurricane away from Louisiana and sort of forcing its movement toward Texas looks (to me, a total lay person) to be shifting and sucking air from the Gulf straight north. The hurricane should enter into that northernly flow by tomorrow, and I'm wary of that changing the direction to a more direct hit to the Louisiana coast. (Not that there's going to a single place that's good for it to land.) The national weather media aren't calling it like that, so maybe there's nothing to worry about. Then again, we're in construction, and I've spent 23 years looking at things like the jet stream and how fast the storms move so that I can predict when it's going to rain somewhere. I can usually watch the maps, call Carl and tell him just exactly how long he has before it rains on him. But I haven't ever really tried predicting a hurricane's path, other than to watch the newscasters. Let's hope they know a helluva lot more than I do.

the new normal

I'm having a really hard time even trying to contemplate people talking about another hurricane right now. I want to put my fingers in my ears, squeeze my eyes shut, la la la la la, I can't HEAR you. Because, you know, that always worked when I was a kid.

If Rita strikes toward west Louisiana, it's going to mean the entire southern part of our state will have been harmed within weeks of each other. We still have many many people here who are without homes (and will be so for probably a year or more).

It's a little weird to say things were getting back to "normal" here, because there is a new "normal." We spoke with a realtor the other day (not for ourselves, for a family member) about values / sales around here, and it's a little insane. Property values have jumped, sales have jumped, all sorts of businesses are buying up real estate downtown -- it's just crazy. It was already pretty fast-paced around here prior to the storm, and values have continued to go up every year, but they jumped, according to the realtor, by another 30% after Katrina. He said that while Baton Rouge did double in size after Katrina, the real news is that at least half of those people will stay here permanently. He also said that every rental out there was snapped up within 24 hours of Katrina and big companies, like Exxon, are offering big deals to people to buy out their leases because they have to relocate their executives to Baton Rouge.

This place is forever changed.

I've never lived through a life event where the actual landscape around me altered radically. I've moved, I've had traumatic things happen which will forever be a benchmark of change internally, but I've never had the world around me shift on such a large scale.

On the other hand, the people here seem to really be rallying and pulling together. There's a great determination to at least use the disaster to improve things in the state -- including the politics. I don't know how well that will be accomplished, but I hope it can improve. It certainly can't get much worse, though, right?

But, in the midst of all of this, I am writing, working on the book, keeping an eye on that deadline coming up. And wonderfully, in spite of being in shock and profoundly changed on some levels, this novel has brought me great joy. I'm writing a story about a kick-ass Cajun woman who battles incredible odds to try to save her brother. She's a little bit Terminator, a little bit Tazmanian Devil rolled into one, and mostly, she's a lot of fun. I love this character, and I love that it's set in south Louisiana (not, ironically, New Orleans, but in Lake Charles / Lafayette and Baton Rouge.) It's a crazy, funny, raucous world I can escape to, and it energizes me. It also helps (greatly) that I have an amazing agent and an equally amazing editor. They each called and wrote and were incredibly supportive. It's made me feel protected, which helped make writing the book exciting and fun. It's hard work, of course, but it's what I thrive on. I can't imagine how other people have coped without having this sort of outlet. I hope to blog more about this process and what I've learned in the near future. Meaning, I really hope there aren't any more hurricanes or bad news to keep reporting. I crave normal. Whatever that's going to be, I guess, I'd like to get there.

(I never was terribly patient. I was really tired of being pregnant by month four and ready to boot the kid out by month five. Wiser heads prevailed.)

As for the hurricane(s)... I'm still delivering lots of supplies and books to various shelters and families who need the items. I don't know what affect the new hurricane will have on this, but right now, the need has shifted away from needing supplies or clothes and into other more long-term needs (educational supplies for the schools, for example, which have taken on nearly 7000 new students in this parish alone). I'll be making a run tomorrow to lots of places and will update on what I learn from them. If you've asked me what you can send and I have your e-mail, I'll try to respond directly. Many of you sent things already, and I've tried to make sure you were thanked directly... but at one point, there were so many boxes and deliveries happening, I may have missed a few of you. For that, I apologize -- I really wanted to make sure everyone knew where their gifts went and that they were greatly needed and appreciated.

I'm off to write on the book. Bobbie Faye has some butts to kick, and that, I assure you, is going to be a blast.

where grace lives

I passed a man at a shelter the other day. He was tall and lanky and sunburned, dressed in cut-offs and a soaked blue t-shirt, with a grubby baseball cap shoved on top of muddy curls. There was something about his lean, sinewy body that made me think of the shrimpers I've seen down in Cocodrie -- it's a hard life and it makes for no-nonsense, self-sufficient men.

He was sitting in a metal folding chair, slumped forward, his elbows on his knees, and the exhaustion in his shoulders made me ache. Between his feet was a medium sized box, and he was staring down into it. The box held some basic necessities: toiletries, canned goods, a pair of socks, and a pair of underwear. I realized, then, that he was barefoot -- the grime around his ankles marked him as having abandoned his shoes somewhere along the way. His large feet were probably too big for any of the donated shoes stacked up at a one of the neaby tables.

When I looked back at that box, I wondered what he must be thinking. My first thought, without seeing his face, was that this wasn't much to give a man after he'd lost everything. This wasn't much to hold onto for a man like that, and maybe he was angry at having lost everything, or frustrated that this is what he'd been reduced to. I had no words that would be of use, no words which could do any good, and I began to turn away when he suddenly looked up and caught my eye.

He had tears on his cheeks. When I stood there, not sure what to do, he shrugged and said, "I can't believe how generous people are. I can't believe total strangers would go out of their way to help so much."

I mumbled something about it being the least we could do, as neighbors, and I moved off into the crowd, feeling wholly inadequate and humbled in the face of such grace.

A few days later, we located a guy and his family who'd had to evacuate New Orleans. Their home? Right near where that levee broke. It was under ten feet of water.

I wish you could meet Keith. We'd hired him before as a sub-contractor when we had work in New Orleans, and Carl had always been impressed with him as a very hard worker. He is one of those rare, wonderful stories, where the guy grows up in the ghetto, makes a choice to change his life and better himself, works hard, has a family, and is slowly climbing out of the pay-check to pay-check rut. We'd gotten a phone call when he was evacuating, but couldn't receive the call (it went to voice-mail) and then couldn't find him afterward. Finally, after a few days, his phone was working again and he got in touch.

When Keith and his extended family complied with the forced evacuation, they believed they'd be going back the next day. After all, they lived in the inner city, in an apartment. There might be wind damage and a little flooding in the street, but they'd be home by the next day. They took nothing but the clothes on their backs. It was an extended family evacuating -- cousins and their families all hitching rides together -- and there simply wasn't much room in the vehicles to carry anything extra with them. They never dreamed they'd see their street on the TV News, completely under water.

Keith told Carl where he was staying. They'd run out of money, there was no room in the shelters, and no place to go except for the home of one lovely, wonderful aunt, who took them all in. All of them -- cousins, spouses and kids. All 45 of them, in one house, which has maybe a thousand square feet of living area. They were living in tents in the back yard, completely unsure what to do next.

We brought a few supplies from our home, and a couple of boxes someone had generously sent me which had diapers, baby wipes, new underwear, toiletries and a few toys inside. Keith's wife was careful to count the toys and remove the extras for us to give to other kids. These two boxes probably could have made a family of four or five slightly more comfortable, but this big family of 45 carefully shared everything and made it seem as if we'd given them manna. One mom picked up a bag of diapers and underwear for her kids and clutched them. She turned and gave me the biggest hug, the warmest smile.

For the kids, the one new toy they had was like Christmas. They finally had something to do,, instead of wondering why they couldn't go home, why couldn't they have their bike or their doll. Not understanding that everything back home was still under ten feet of water that was growing ever more toxic by the minute.

We stayed a while, listening to their stories, listening to the kids play, taking photos (the cutest kids ever). Most of the adults didn't know what was going to happen to their jobs. Several had seen their place of business destroyed by winds or water; others couldn't reach their bosses and had heard they weren't going to move back and try again. In the midst of all of this pain, in the midst of the stories, there was a moment where they all stopped, looked at one another. Then the aunt said, "But all my family is here. We're all alive. We're the lucky ones." And they all nodded.

I was in awe.

By the next day, more boxes were showing up here with supplies. More and more people wrote to ask what we needed. More and more people were as outraged and frustrated as we were here, and they wanted to help. I know many donated to charities, but these boxes -- they keep showing up, filled to the brim with things people need, with supplies damned near impossible to find in some of these areas. I get to bring them to the shelters and to the people who need them, and the recipients treat me like a hero, but it's not me. It's you. It's every single one of you who sent a box or a prayer or letters of support.

I don't know how to explain it. There is the immediate help, of course. So many things needed by so many people. Baton Rouge has doubled in size from evacuees, and for those who can get to the stores, they're crowded and often stripped of goods. I've seen clerks stocking shelves only to have items plucked out of their hands before they could even set it down. I've had to go to four or five stores sometimes to find things that we need, though that's easing up a bit now. And while it's helpful and useful and much needed, it's more than that.

It's that we're not alone.

The rage I feel right now is palpable (and Miss Alli expressed it so freaking well). I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that we live in a country that can put men on the moon, which can help build an international space station, which can go to other countries with every sort of aid, but we could not get water to people trapped on an overpass for days. I cannot wrap my mind around why they were trapped in the first place, since there were trucks passing them by. FEMA trucks, who wouldn't stop. I don't understand that. It's just one scene of so many, and it makes no sense. People died on that overpass, when help just drove right by them.

I cannot understand how we can have media crews showing the devastating events down at the Convention Center and the Superdome, and FEMA not "know" they're there. How do we live in a country which can drop aid to everyone else in the world, and no one could drop water and food to the people trapped there? How can we handle going in to war-torn areas and get aid to people there, but a few thugs prevented us from helping Americans? How?

And how is it that now, more than two weeks later, I'm still getting reports from the outlying areas that FEMA still hasn't shown up?

Still. Hasn't. Shown. Up.

Even with all of the publicity, even with all of the realization of the screw ups, even with all of the common knowledge of the devastation, there are still shelters where there are elderly and families with newborns and they have only gotten help from people like you and me and, in some cases, the Red Cross. Four days after the hurricane, when I had discovered that neither FEMA nor the Red Cross had made it to Covington, I cornered the FEMA guy in charge over at the LSU / Triage area and told him about the need. He really didn't look interested. I badgered him. (I am good with the badgering.) He was a big guy, hulking over me, and I had the sense that he was barely refraining from swatting me like an incessant fly, but I kept up with the badgering and only when I mentioned that the people were in a depressed (read: somewhat poor) area did he actually start paying any attention. Well, "attention" is generous. The man had me write down the information in a notebook, promised me someone would get out there soon, especially to evacuate those with medical needs. Then he clapped the notebook closed, turned to another person standing there and started chatting.

When I went to the shelter Saturday, I asked the Red Cross Volunteer (who'd arrived on day seven, three days later) if FEMA had shown up. She said they had driven by once and dropped off some ice (which was gone in an hour) and they hadn't been back. At that point, it was day twelve.

The newspaper, the following day, showed another city entirely forgotten: Bogalusa. No one had been there, no one had called, no supplies, lots and lots of damage.

I don't understand these things. I know I live in America. Well, last time I checked, Louisiana was still in America. Maybe something happened somewhere that someone forgot to mention to us, but yeah, pretty sure we're still in America. And the magnitude of the inept response (including local) is staggering.

It was like watching someone I love get gutted and lie there bleeding and knowing that help was standing a few feet away, talking about golf scores.

So when I say to you that you've made a difference, I don't mean it lightly or in any sort of frivolous way. When it suddenly became clear that we were the ugly, unwanted step-child of the government, or worse, the beaten, neglected child of the local officals who were hastily trying to cover up their long-term abuse with loud excuses, you made us feel human again. So many of you -- giving, calling, writing, trying. Feeling the outrage on our behalf. Knowing it belonged to you, because you were us, we were a part of this country, and you cared. We needed you, and you were there, and the outpouring of that grace and hope helped to get us through the worst of the days when we were watching in horror as our own people died, as our friends and family were left, as people were treated worse than we'd ever ever treat an animal.

You made a difference. A big difference. And I thank you.

soon...

I haven't posted since I've been bringing things out to shelters and others who need help. And those things were so generously donated, I am blown away. Completely. Blown. Away. by the kindness and generosity of people who asked if they could send things. So many have... and it's been a real help.

There will be an entry on this and photos tomorrow.

Katrina / Slidell, Covington, Triage

Slidell area people -- if you haven't been reading the comments on the two or three Slidell entries below, various people have been reporting news as they've found it. (For example, the Slidell Memorial Hospital did not collapse as was reported in comments earlier, but is still standing.) Also, there are still requests for information on missing people. In at least one case, someone in the comments is trying to reach someone else who left comments about information requested -- so check, please, if you left a request.

Slidell / Covington shelter -- I was not able to get back to the Covington shelter as I had hoped. The first two days after posting that plan, I was completely thwarted by the fact that there was absolutely no gas to be found in my area. It was eerie how every single gas station was empty. Finally found some yesterday, but had a lot of other things I had to do. However, my son went and discovered two good pieces of news: the Red Cross finally showed up and there is at least a nurse there, and sometime yesterday the shelter got its electricity back, so they at least have the ability not to sit in 95+ degree heat. We did not get their names (no time to do so), and there are at least 30 to 40 people there from the Slidelll area. This shelter is the William Pitcher (spelling?) High School in Covington, if you're trying to track someone down there.

LSU Triage -- to my shock, LSU made an abrupt decision yesterday to close down the triage at the P-MAC. The ER / Trauma doctor who was staying with us was very concerned about this because they were still getting in busloads of patients, in spite of the fact that the FEMA people stamped this "Mission Complete." According to our wonderful volunteer doctor (who is so highly qualified, Louisiana was extremely lucky he showed up, paid his way here, wouldn't accept donations or anything for his help) -- anyway, according to the Doc, this is the worst time to shut down a triage after this sort of disaster. Especially with the news coming out of New Orleans about how dangerously bad the toxic levels of the water are. (Mere exposure to the water -- not just drinking it -- will cause a host of severe illnesses.) The Doc said that within the next few days, we were going to get many people getting sick from having been exposed (and it takes a few days for some of these things to incubate), plus many volunteers / rescuers were starting to come in will illnesses. In addition, many many of the elderly and nursing home people will have had enough time to become septic or have the more serious complications develop from being deprived of their medicines or in such severe conditions. In fact, after the LSU / FEMA people made this decision to "go dark," and declare this "mission: complete," there were two busloads of patients who arrived. On one bus, was a little boy, whose mother only knew that he was going to be at the P-Mac. The doctors were extremely frustrated that their hands were tied and they had to send the busses on to Lafayette (a full hour away from Baton Rouge). Our Doc assured the driver that the child wouldn't be lost -- he'd be in the system. It might take the mom a couple more days to find him, but she'd be able to find him. But still. There's no way to get back in touch with the mom from this end, and the thought that yet another family is separated, that another mom is going to have the extra and unnecessary stress of having to find her child in addition to the fact that the child was sick (hence sending him to the P-Mac... it's just ludicrous. I don't know what the hell the FEMA / LSU people are thinking.

(Well, I suspect what they're thinking is that they want to get things back to normal, which sadly, just can't be done in time for the home football schedule, so they're forcing the issue.)

I asked the Doc what would happen to all of the emergency patients who now aren't going to have a triage to go to, especially since there's a fairly large volume of people, still, and he said they'd be dumped on the local hospitals, who are already over-extended. It's a wrong-headed, crazy decision, and one that the local press isn't likely going to comment on. (Most people don't want to dis the home team, especially since they did put themselves out and spend so much money and effort establishing the triage in the first place.) I'm proud that they set it up, and proud that they did so much good, but this is a bad decision. Even I -- so not a medical person -- can see there's going to be a big need for a little while longer. Why not just move it to one of the other facilities they just set up? I dunno, but it's distressing.

Katrina / LSU Triage

When you drive up Nicholson onto the southern end of the LSU campus, rising to your right is the enormous stadium (under even more expansion), with its parking lot a construction lay-down yard. To the left, Alex Box Stadium, with all of the national championships proclaimed proudly on the exterior walls.

If you look a little past the stadium on the right, you'll see the Pete Maravich Center or P-MAC for short. (It's what many of us old LSU grads still refer to simply as the "Assembly" Center.) Its white dome and curved concrete ramps will always hold a special place in my heart -- it's where I officially became an LSU student, years ago. Back before there was computer registration, we all "walked through" registration, where we battled and jockeyed in lines on the floor of the Center to claim a "card" for the class we wanted -- a slender 3 x 7 card with "chads" punched out, indicating the class for which we'd just enrolled. We'd take the cards and climb to the second level and walk around the corridor, stopping at the various tables set up for each task required and then finally, on to pay our fee bill.

It was exciting to be a part of that crowd. It was fresh, it was hope, it was a beginning into all potential. It was a promise of something bigger to come.

Yesterday, Carl and I drove onto campus and parked in the Alex Box parking lot, took the crosswalk and headed back toward the P-Mac. There was the white dome gleaming in spite of being overshadowed by the behemoth stadium. There was the newly renovated Mike-the-Tiger cage, a luxiourious enclosure complete with rocks to climb, a waterfall, a very large pool and plenty of space to run and play. It was a far far cry from the sad little cage he used to have. Good for Mike. Next came the concrete ramps which had long ago made me feel like I had been racing up up up toward a future.

Then there was the fence. A fence. There had never been a hurricane fence preventing access to the ramps. Or military standing outside said fence. So around the P-MAC we went, getting to the LSU campus side, making a sharp left turn to walk up the street. There's a large white posterboard sign on the guard's gate in hasitily written print which says, "Ambulances" and has an arrow.

The P-MAC is still on my left, and now as I look across the fence and beneath the mezzanine, there are tables set up. There are many people who prove to be volunteers behind the tables and many evacuees in front, having just gotten in from New Orleans. There are tables of clothes and shoes (which run out just as soon as the volunteers can get some in), tables of water and food to eat right then, as well as canned goods and other supplies to take with them... for many of them will try to bunk with family for the night, and that family may not even know they're coming. There's a table set up with laptops so the people can send a message.

As we keep moving around the P-MAC, I can tell we're reaching the serious part of this operation, where there are nurses and techs taking medical information, where higher priority (read: in grave danger) patients are taken in immediately to the triage center and where those in dire need but less life-threatening are interviewed by nurses and their stats recorded on brand new files. Nurses and doctors and all sorts of techs ebb and flow through this space. Thre are Guards with guns (wholly over-kill, but they're there). There are volunteers of all shape and sizes -- from LSU students to firemen to police to little grey-haired church ladies.

We sign in at the non-medical volunteer station and go in to see what their needs are. We are there to volunteer our home to medical staff, now that extended family and friends don't need it. We've heard the staff is working twenty-hour shifts and some of them have no place nearby to just crash and relax.

When you walk inside the entrance, you walk down a slight slope until you reach the wide, round base of the P-MAC. Purple seating has been pushed up against the walls. The last time I stood at floor level like that, I was seventeen, and I remember I stood for a moment in awe of the swarm of people, the organized chaos, the feeling of a small city set to work on one task. It was, in many ways, the same. But this time, that small city was made of white temporary screens to give the patients some privacy, there were rows of I.V. bags.

There is a M*A*S*H unit in my campus. A field unit triage on the floor of our basketball arena. There were doctors and nurses and plenty of techs, and helicopters beating overhead and a row of ambulances, sirens blaring, on their way in.

There is a M*A*S*H unit. In Louisiana. In my university.

In the USA.

I am still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the necessity of that. That we had so many people wounded in a major catastrophe, that we've lost an entire city, that we're still finding and rescuing people, six days later. That there are so many families who can't find loved ones, so many families who were crying with gratitude because they were able to put on someone's cast-off shoes.

In the USA.

There in front of me was a little city of survivors, and they were being helped by some of the hardest working people I've ever seen.

To my immediate left was the staging area for the medical supplies, and there were many volunteers working and busy. They were, I learned, completely out of thermometers. I asked the supply person what she had left when I overheard this fact, and she held up a huge thermometer -- the kind they'd use on a cow or something. I think I flinched. I checked out what else they needed and then we went out and bought some thermometers (not an easy find). When I brought them back a dozen later, she practically hugged me and cried. You'd think I had brought her gold.

What concerned me was that all of the supplies were in brown cardboard boxes or black plastic containers, and they were all on the floor. Which, though it wasn't insanitary (they were all individually wrapped), it was an extreme difficulty for the staffers to find anything. I showed Carl.

Carl went to Lowe's, which was closed already. When he explained what he needed and why, they let him in and sold him the wood below cost. He went back today and a wonderful group of New Orleans people who were displaced and staying with family volunteered and helped him build the shelves. They built five large sets, so now most of the supplies are up and organized and easy-to-find.

They were, however, out of thermometers again. They had had five hundred people go through that very morning, and were expected more bus loads that evening, and no more thermometers in the surrounding area to be purchased.

Carl came home with a doctor from Tennessee who'd been working an ungodly amount of hours. He's sleeping now, and will go back on duty in a little while and we hope he makes this his home-away-from-home. I have a friend of Pooks' on her way in -- she's a nurse -- and she'll work from here, too, I hope.

I went back today, to check on the needs, got information, volunteered, saw the shelves Carl had built get put to good use.

There were more helicopters and ambulances when I left. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a helicopter landing on the side, on what I think is the tennis court area.

There is a M*A*S*H unit at my university.. The doctor staying with us said it was now the largest emergency room in the country. And the sad thing is, they think it'll be needed there for three or so more weeks.

I am very proud of all the people working so hard there who are trying to make that possible. Maybe, hopefully, to the people coming in there, the white dome will have been a sign of hope. Of possibility. That there will be a future. I don't know, and I don't know it's enough.

I took a few photos of the shelves and the triage area. To my knowledge, they weren't letting media in there at all, but they let me take these photos:

The supply situation prior to the shelves.

After the shelves.

Triage during a quiet moment. There are more than 300 beds in this arena, though it's difficult to tell from this angle.

Jake, then Carl, then our wonderful volunteers. I wish I had thought to get everyone's name! If they read this -- thank you!

Katrina / Slidell people...

I've learned this evening that there are about thirty or so Slidell evacuees in the Covingtong shelter. This includes the elderly and some families with kids as well as two people with newborns. I am going there tomorrow morning to get all of their names and to take photos of them so we can get their info out to their families. I will be blogging their names and photos (for those who allow me to) and I will also put all of their names into the Red Cross database. In addition, anyone from other areas, I'll also be getting all of their names, too. There's about 65 people at that shelter. I understand there's another shelter somewhere near this one; I'll try to find it and check on them, as well.

FWIW, I cornered a FEMA hancho and told him about the shelters and that no FEMA people had shown up there, yet. He didn't seem to care. I badgered him, because there are elderly there, they are sleeping on the floor on cardboard, they need to be taken out of there. When I emphasized the word "elderly," he finally seemed somewhat interested. It wasn't until I mentioned that the second shelter was in an impoverished area that he asked me to write down the information so he could check to see if anyone is going out there to them.

There was a Red Cross doctor there today, for the first time. I am extremely upset that the only volunteers they'd been having had been members of my family. My son and his girlfriend brought all sorts of supplies, paid for by funds from many friends, especially a big-hearted group of people over on Knife Forums.

More tomorrow.

KATRINA / SLIDELL HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES

My wonderful, amazing friend, Ed, sent me this site which has high resolution images of Slidell. You can zoom in on neighborhoods.

NOW BEFORE YOU CLICK -- read this:

You will first get a pink and blue graphic. You will need to click on the Slidell area box. You'll get another weird graphic which has areas of Slidell outlined in green -- and and first, I thought I was supposed to click one of those areas. Nope. You'll see a bunch of little black boxes... that's what you click on. It's not clearly organized yet (meaning, I can't tell where that black box corresponds to on the pink map), but those of you from there may well understand it much better.

Slidell High Resolution Photos

Here is the link to the Master Map for other areas of the state. MANDEVILLE PEOPLE -- YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING much -- seriously, it's mostly of the lake, so I don't want you to get your hopes up:

Louisiana High Resolution Map

PLEASE PASS THESE LINKS ALONG TO OTHER SITES SO MORE PEOPLE CAN SEE THEIR HOMES.

Katrina / News from Slidell

Dawn posted this in the comments, and I thought I'd move it here (with her permission) since it has a lot of Slidell news:

I live in Tanglewood, my house is fine, no water. I lost all trees but they did not fall on the house. My parents live off of Thompson Road on Le Fleur, they had water 2 feet and trees on house, through the roof. My in-laws live off Thompson Road on Ranch Circle, they had water and lots of tree damage. My husband and father have been in Slidell working on homes. It is very scary with armed guards with guns and people frantic for gas. If you go to Slidell, make sure you have enough gas to make it back to Baton Rouge, there is no gas around. Cars are being stolen by people who are stranded. Pharamcies have been robbed. It is not a place for women and children now. My mother and I are in North Louisiana with family until electric power is restored and it is safe to return to our homes. I was born and raised in Slidell, from what I understand it does not look like the same place. I have friends on North Blvd that were fine and did not sustain any damage.

Westchester and the south side of town was heavily damaged. Water was high to Fremeaux. Most properties on Hwy 11 were lost. Most property on Lakeview/Rat Nest Road was lost. Most of Eden Isles is covered with water and now mud. Boat Stuff on Front Street had 6 feet of water. Rescue workers drove boats over the fence to get additional boats to use in rescue efforts. Many lives have been lost, however many survivors have been located.

Katrina / Hammond & surrounding area

My son went through Hammond today (9/3) and there are some places (mostly commercial) which have power. Word is that it's still going to be days before they can get power up elsewhere. There was some cell phone service there.

Downed trees all over (Covington / Mandeville) getting cleaned up, but a terribly long way to go. No word yet on when power might go back on. Covington nursing homes in real need for some items, particularly personal hygiene, fans (very hot in there, and the floors sweat and are slippery).

Jefferson Parish people will be allowed back in their parish and into their homes starting at 6 a.m. Monday morning. The line to get into the parish starts at 6 p.m. the night before. (I don't know where this forms or what routes you'll be allowed to take. WBRZ will announce it. Let me know if there's a need for me to report here, but they'll probably put it up on their website.) The parish president warned that you needed to have enough gas to get you there and home again, because there was absolutely no gas to be had in the parish.

Plaquemine Parish got fed up because they just now got a FEMA representative to show up there today. That's just insane. (See the Plaquemine photos below.) They asked for permission to break through their levee two days ago -- the water in their city was much higher than the water in the river, and there was no way to drain it, and no one would call them back. They finally took it upon themselves to blow the levee so they could drain the water and start finding bodies... this is not supposed to impact the water in New Orleans.

Carl and I volunteered at the LSU Triage and I have much positive news from there, they are doing an amazing job. There are some needs. More about this in the morning.

Katrina / self-employed and unemployment relief

The Department of Labor just announced a new initiative: If you are self-employed or you are a recent hire and you wouldn't ordinarily qualify for unemployment benefits, you now do. They have set up a disaster-relief fund and they are aggressively looking to sign up anyone affected by Katrina who needs the income help.

Call: 1-866-4-USA-DOL (1-866-487-2365)

Katrina / helpful links

WJBO has been compiling all of the Missing Persons Links.

Josh Britton, who has been doing a great job getting information out from LSU, blogs that a lot of vounteers here are going around to the shelters and trying to record and then log onto the computer all of the evacuee's names. They think this may take them a week to do because there are so many.

Also, Josh is asking for brainstorming help to make this process better. There really needs to be one sort of database without having to re-enter all of the information already entered. A lot of well-meaning people started up websites, but the information is spread out. Any suggestions?

If you're looking for information on a location, this site is where you can go. If you HAVE INFORMATION about a location, please go fill it in. The site is extremely easy to use. If you have any confusion about how to post there, write to me and I'll walk you through it. I am happy to help.

If you want to donate to a local effort, I highly recommend The Healing Place. 100% of your donations will go to the relief effort and they will provide you with a tax receipt. They are highly ethical, hard-working, down-to-earth people, and they are helping numerous sheltes here.

Katrina / how it should have worked

There are two posts in the comments section to the last blog which are excellent. I want to emphasize that I was exhausted when I posted the Mayor's rant and neglected to mention that I still believed, in spite of his passionate outbursts, that his incompetence was a huge cause of all of these problems. I was about to list all of the ways, and then beloml posted this in the comments. I've linked to the blog beloml references, but if there is a more direct link and someone knows it, please e-mail me and I'll correct it. I think it's worth moving up to the top (as is the other comment, which I will do later):

Actually, this comment in Donald Sensing's blog makes a lot of sense to me:

Disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities � in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency).

There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state � that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality � that person is called the Mayor.

FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need.

Because they are the �go to� people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over.

Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That�s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale.

Disclosure: I�m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I�ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief � believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is lightyears ahead of what I�ve seen from them in the past.

Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed � of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA�s lap. That�s the way the system is designed.

Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas. So what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:

First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined.

Second, Mayor Nagin�s performance has been pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I�ve ever seen.

Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday � two days before Katrina hit.

That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas.

Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate � why weren�t school busses used to get them out of town?

Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and COnvention centers as refuge relocation points � why weren�t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren�t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office?

Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue � but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we�ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision � it�s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life.

There�s plenty of blame to go around � Blanco deserves her share too � but the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin.

Katrina / Mayor of New Orleans rant

For everyone who didn't get to hear the full version of the rant by the Mayor of New Orelans yesterday (and wow, isn't is just a little miraculous that all of this federal help finally started showing up?)... here's the link, thanks to my friend Pooks.

The Mayor's Rant

A commenter over on Diane's blog named Todd made an excellent point when he said:

"You know the part that creeps me out about this? The department responsible for much of the response to this is Homeland Security. Yes, the one that is supposed to protect everyone in the event of a tragedy bigger than 9/11 (you know - the one that the republicans wouldn't shut up about in the election). Here they had, in essence, a planned attack with days of warning to get their shit together and respond and this is the result. How are they possibly going to do everything they say they're going to do should a tragedy of similar scale happen without previous announcement in a major city?"

Katrina / aid

WAFB and Healing Place mentioned below are now swamped with goods (we thank you!) and can't physically handle more. All of our phones are so overwhelmed with the call load, I cannot call out, so I can't make the connections to find out where to send the things you all are wanting to send. I am very very frustrated. If there is anyone outside of the Baton Rouge area who wants to track down other refugee sites (in any state) who have needs, PLEASE do so and put it in the comments for me. I will update this site as soon as you do.

Katrina / damage photos

For everyone looking for info on their neighborhood, go to this very cool site. Use the zoom button on the left to find your area. Be sure to only post info, not questions. This is a phenomenal resource -- let's get everyone to fill in what they know, okay? Send this link everywhere. Huge huge thanks to Jette and friends in her office.

Link swiped from Brendan: Plaquemine Parish photos and more New Orleans satellite images.

Also, new entry below this -- my rant / furious response to Speaker Hastert's ugly comments.

Katrina / Legislators and one pissed off Cajun girl

You know, I wasn't going to blog about this, because I'm furious, and there probably should be some sort of blog lock key that couldn't be opened unless you're calm and relaxed. I heard about the following from Diane whose response and comments section were dead on... but then the anger escalated when I saw this over on Brendan Loy's homepage by a Guestblogger and the guestblogger seemed to agree that there was a point in raising this issue:

It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois.

(source: here)

To make it worse, I've seen agreement with this comment by people on my e-mail groups (when they know I'm on there, reading).

I know my readers aren't saying this. I know millions of generous people are donating. This is addressed to the ones debating the issue.

What the hell?

Let's break this down...

Where are you going to put 1.3 million people? Are you going to grant them land somewhere and rebuild their homes there, and make sure that they have their family around them, the way they did before? Can we have your home? Your lands? Are you going to spend the billions of dollars to move all of the industries near them so they can have jobs? Are you going to try to recreate their cultural history as well as their culture so that they have something resembling their heritage to pass on to their kids? Heritage wouldn't just be damaged -- it would be destroyed and ruined forever. There is no other city in this country like New Orleans, and no other heritage like that of south Louisiana. It's where the Cajuns fled to (I'm Cajun) from Nova Scotia. It's where the Creole people came to be. It's all the African American culture that can't be replaced and frankly isn't duplicated elsewhere. It's the Italian and Hungarian villages which were still here. And so much more.

But, okay, so let's say we do that. Let's say, just for argument's sake, that we declare that a city which has a likelihood of a repeat disaster shouldn't be rebuilt back in that location.

Then the next time the west has earthquakes, or wildfires, there'd be no sense in rebuilding there, because it's just gonna happen again. And be sure to not spend any money on rebuilding things like the Twin Towers because we'd better not put up something that's just going to be a target again for another terrorist attack. While we're at it, all those towns and cities in the plains states destroyed by a tornado? Not gonna get rebuilt. Or the hurricanes which struck places along the east coast? Oops, too bad, pack it up and move inward.

Where are we all gonna live? Arkansas? And by "all" let me clarify -- I don't just mean New Orleans -- I mean every city, every town ever hit -- when it needs to be rebuilt, are you going to move those people, too?

My angry response would be to say that I'm sorry our catastrophe, death and destruction is inconvenient and expensive. We'll be sure next time to only die when it's gonna work out for the rest of the country.

For the record, I understand it's going to be expensive. But geez Louise. I went to a house last night trying to help someone find her mom. The house was well north of New Orleans, in Mandeville. Her mom could have been dead inside that house, along with her invalid sister. This same woman cannot find her brother or her uncle or her son. I've never met or corresponded with this woman before, and I'm trying to help her find her family. And there are thousands like her. When I finally, finally got through to the State Police Missing Persons line today (which required dialing out over a hundred times due to heavy call volume overwhelming the city's phone system), the man helping me typed the mom's name onto a list. I asked him how many people were on his list, and he said, "Over 7,000." And that's just in the Mandeville / Covington area that he was handling.

The world is only beginning to have an idea of the scope of the personal tragedies here. Baton Rouge, which is barely equipped to handle its own citizenry (pop maybe around 300,000) has swelled overnight. I know at a minimum, we've gained another hundred thousand or so. Over. Night.

We never, ever, in a million years, would have said, "We don't think we should rebuild your city" if it had happened to you. Our people have shown up and helped in every single tragedy this country has had. We wanted the people in New York to know that we stood with them, shoulder to shoulder, to rebuild their city however they thought best. Same with the cities destroyed in the earthquakes years ago. We have always shown up for this country. I cannot believe that when we have dead bodies in the street, when we have real screw ups at FEMA and Homeland Security, when we have not gotten the help we were supposed to have gotten, and when this is clear from the reports, that some people are going to also debate just not rebuilding.

But even with all of that, even with all of the difficulty, even with all of the heart break and fury and frustration and anger and tears, let me tell you something about us: we don't quit. We may have a lot of strikes against us, we may be the lowest state on the poverty level, we may have a lot of things wrong with this place, but we don't quit, we don't throw away heritage, and we especially don't throw away homes and family connections.

We don't quit. Ever.

Katrina -- urgent needs list

I have talked to several churches, and here is their urgent needs list:

new underwear / socks (all sizes)
baby clothes, diapers, all baby items (wipes, etc.)
hygiene items (toothbrushes, toothpaste, personal hygiene items -- combs, shampoo, soap, etc.)
bottled water
non-perishable food

If you want to drop it off or send it, WAFB Channel 9 news is acting as a drop-off / distribution point for all of the churches and shelters. Their address is:

WAFB
844 Government St.
Baton Rouge, LA 70802

If you want to donate directly to a local charity which will be purchasing the above items, please donate to The Healing Place Church. I am not a member there, but I know a lot of those people and seriously, I have never met better people -- down-to-earth, incredibly ethical and hard-working. They jumped in immediately and all of your dollars will go directly to the relief effort. They are putting up a website today (so if you click and it doesn't work, please try back tomorrow).

The Healing Place

For those of you who want to send books / magazines and toys for the kids, I'm still trying to get through to the place which requested them to get their address. More when I have it.

Blogburst -- blogging for hurricane relief

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has organized a "blogburst" -- where bloggers all blog today with organizations where people can donate to the disaster relief. I'm supporting The American Red Cross, but PLEASE PUT HURRICANE KATRINA in the memo section, or the money you give goes into the general fund instead of being specifically earmarked for this area.

I'll have more up on local charities this evening. I'm also still asking about specific areas.

Another missing person site

The Red Cross is putting up this excellent site:

Missing Persons Site

Please please please check that out and participate there when looking for someone you love. My readership has certainly grown with this story, but I am but a tiny molecule in a bucket of water compared to the number of people who would be chcking the Red Cross site. You'll probably have much better luck there. Feel free to continue posting names in the comments because you just never know when you'll get lucky -- but also go post there.

Katrina, finding someone...

For those of you posting in the comments about looking for a specific person, here's a fantastic resource for you:

CNN Missing Person Help

There are three different methods of posting on their site -- sending in your story, sending video / photos or sending in an e-mail with questions / info.

I'm happy for you to keep posting in the comments, but as the entries scroll down, very few people will see them.

PLEASE NOTE: I don't live in Mandeville -- with the traffic as bad as it is, it's two hours away. I had to basically beg a Sherrif to let me in today. Mandeville is shut down -- they really aren't letting people in there. It's like a ghost town. Or maybe a war zone, appearance-wise. I'm not going to be able to get back into that area for the next few days. If I can go back, I will definitely take the addresses you're sending and try to find people, but honestly, there's almost no one there.

I did find out they set up two evacuation centers -- one in William Pitcher High School. No idea about the other one yet, but I'm going to ask tomorrow.

I'm trying to get more information about some of the places listed in the comments, so please don't think I've ignored them. I've got questions out to a bunch of people, plus I'll be at a couple of shelters tomorow and hope to ask some of the refugees. If I can learn anything of use, I'll post it here tomorrow evening.

Estimated Cost for this tragedy / donations

Melissa, Pooks and everyone who have made or want to make donations -- thank you.

When we were going to Mandeville, we heard Congressmen Baker tell of the meeting he'd just had with the head of the Red Cross. He said to be able to put the cost into perspective, you first had to know that the Twin Tower tragedy cost for clean up and humanitarian effort was a 50 billion dollar cost. The Red Cross estimates this cost to be 90 billion. It's mind boggling.

They are still rescuing people, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are in their attics or on roof tops or on streets, looking for a way out of the water. I heard several stories from one of the rescuers which was absolutely heartbreaking. Stories of having to pass up people on roof tops because the boat was already full or with specific types of things beneath the water, they couldn't get the boat near enough to people.

To Donate directly to us...

The Red Cross has started a fund that will be specifically for people in Louisiana / New Orleans area. If you haven't yet made a donation to the Red Cross and you want the money to go specifically to this area, please put HURRICANE KATRINA in the memo section. If you want the money to be specifically for Louisiana (Katrina funds will be split among the three states), then put NOLA in the memo section.

The American Red Cross

There are several churches here who are taking donations of clothing, toys for the kids, books, etc., and I will have those addresss in the morning. I've got tons of clothes and toys that I'm bringing to one of the churches tomorrow. I don't have their address / contact number tonight, but I will have something tomorrow during the day.

My understanding is that there is a real need for clothes, but also for toys or something for these kids to have. It's 90+ temps and there is little to no air conditioning in some of the temporary camps that are set up. There's nothing for these people to do except sit there and be very very depressed. Anything -- seriously, anything you could send would be appreciated. I will try to get a specific list of items needed tomorrow. (This info could change by then, so check back here.)

We all thank you.

Mandeville photos

Mandeville photos:

Typical of the tree damage to the homes (for those which sustained damage). I don't want to imply that they all were like this -- there could easily be four next to it with no direct damage to the house.

*New one* sent in by commenter Andre'

Mandeville storefront at the intersection of intersection of West Approach and Florida.

I'm standing on a road and that tree is across an intersection.

Another home with tree damage.

I thought this was a better shot, but that's a huge tree down across the subdivision road. Many, many roads were blocked by mutilple trees like this. I was going to go back and get photos of the transformers down in the streets, but then we ended up going to another city to try to help and I didn't realize until I'd gotten home that I hadn't gotten those.

Katrina, Mandeville / Covington

I just got back from the Covington / Mandeville area. The good news is that there doesn't look like there was a lot of water damage. The bad news is, there were a tremendous number of trees down. First of all, it was extremely difficult to get into the area. We went up Hwy 190 from Airport Road (if you're familiar with that area) and there were dozens of trees down, and quite a few across the road and across powerlines. There were powerlines down and across the road. The road was down to one lane in many places, and one place where downed lines were so low, we barely made it under the wires. I should have taken photos, but frankly, there was no place to pull over safely and I didn't want to stop since traffic was patiently waiting to allow each other to pass.

Covington has a lot of downed trees, but there seems to be water services to a lot of neighborhoods. We brought food and water to friends, and we took what we had left over to a Shell station and gave out the rest.

There was one Shell station working, and they were having to wait for generators so that the pumps could work. Lines were easily thirty cars in length and growing. We spoke to Sherrifs deputies and they said there was another Shell station which was going to be opened soon on the main highway through Covington. There were no stores open that we could see, no ice, no phone service, and none of these services looked like they would be open any time soon. There were, however, quite a few people holed up in their homes, etc., so there is a lot of movement around there.

Mandeville is a much more severe story. There are Sherrifs working checkpoints preventing all but emergency personnel from getting into the area -- according to official policy. We had to show a driver's license, and I explained that I was looking for a friend's mother (someone who wrote in to this site), and we were very concerned because she was elderly and we had been told she hadn't evacuated. The Sherrif let us in. When we got off 190 on Hwy 22 (where that checkpoint existed), we were a bit in shock. I thought Covington would have prepared us, but the volume of trees down in Mandeville was far far greater. There didn't seem to be water damage, but lines are down all over, trees are down all over -- especially all of those neighborhoods as you go down 190 and it becomes Florida St -- tons and tons of trees down. When we got to Corondelet, the street was blocked, as were all of the streets parallel. We parked and walked into the neighborhood, and saw many many houses with trees down on them. Many trees down across the road. Lines on the street and in yards. Transformers lying on the street. Light poles snapped in half.

There were a very small contingent of people still in their homes, but I don't know what they're going to do for services. They did have running water, but nothing else -- no phones, electricity, gas, stores, etc. I think it's going to take them a week or more to even get the trees up off the ground, there were just that many. The neighborhood we walked through was fairly close to the lakefront and a man who had stayed through the storm said they had not had water damage. (He'd lived there since '49, and said he'd never stay behind again.)

Hammond just got cell service back up and running (at least for Cingular), so if you're trying to reach someone's cell, you may have better luck now.

Photos up in a few minutes.

Katrina, Slidell blog -- info

For those of you looking for more specific information on Slidell -- I'll keep posting here as much as I find out, but you may also want to check out this terrific resource from Brian Oberkirch:

Slidell Blog

I'll report back on the Mandeville area this evening -- as much as we can see, which I'm not sure how much that will be.

ADDENDUM: I'm closing comments on this entry because someone keeps spamming the comments section. I wish I didn't have to do this, since some of you are still communicating through here. If you have information you want me to pass along, check the e-mail address described in the left hand column and I'll be happy to post it for you.

Katrina, Mandeville area

I'm going out this morning to the Mandeville area. We're buying groceries and supplies (whatever we can find -- the stores are almost picked clean, and I'm not exaggerating). We've got some family and friends still in their homes there and they're running out of everything.

Later on today or tomorrow, I'm going over to the Red Cross location to see what sorts of things they need besides monetary donations. For example, thousands and thousands of people who are now here in Baton Rouge have no extra clothes except the ones they arrived with. I've got several bags of very nice clothes that no longer fit us that I was about to donate anyway, so I'm going to carry them over there to see if anyone can use them. I'm going to try to find a store with personal hygiene items left (toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, etc.) and get as much as I can afford to and bring that, as well. It's not much that I can do. If any of you want to donate something other than money, let me know and I'll get addresses for you.

Katrina, Slidell area news

If you have any information about the conditions of the area that you haven't seen anywhere else, please leave in my comments and I'll do my best to post them here. I'm paying attention to all the requests for info from particular areas and as soon as I see anything on your area of request, I'll post that, as well. If you don't see an answer yet, it's because I can't find specific information.

Last night, Mark posted in the comments:

Unfortunately I have more horrific news from Slidell.....the hospital completely colapsed today. As of the last report to me there were not any survivors. This is truely a sad time for all of the South.

Again this is coming from friends involved with the search and rescue efforts currently going on.

Devastating.

Reported by shebert in the comments:

My husband went to Slidell today-in North Forest and Whisperwood today (8-30-05). We took NO water at all in the homes in the back of North Forest. There was a small amount of standing water in the front part in the street but it did not look as if any entered the homes. We have digital video footage.

God Bless.

Katrina, Slidell area

From this great site, comes this sad news:

Capitol news bureau
Much of Slidell is under water and likely sustained the worst damage from Hurricane Katrina, tate Sen. Tom Schedler, R-Mandeville, said Tuesday at 1 p.m.

Calling the devastation �total�, Schedler said, only slabs remain where dozens of houses were blown down and several feet of water remain in the Slidell Memorial Hospital on Gause Boulevard as well as throughout the old town area off U.S. 11.

Slidell is a suburban community of about 25,000 people northeast of New Orleans near where Interstates 10, 12 and 59 intersect in St. Tammany Parish.

Schedler was interviewed after being briefed at the state Office of Emergency Preparedness. He said he could not return to his district.

�Slidell is as bad as New Orleans east and some other areas in St. Bernard Parish,� Schedler said. �It�s a problem that will be with us for months and years.�

State Police Troop L evacuated its Slidell headquarters during the storm, set up a temporary command in a fire department, then had to flee that center, he said.

Katrina, more information

I'm back and thank you all for the good wishes for my dad. He's going to be okay.

Mark said this in the comments section, and it breaks my heart:

I just spoke to a good family friend who has a son doing search and rescue operations in Slidell as we speak. The reports of bodies floating around is sadly very true. He stated that there were dozens around his flat bottom boat. I will post more once I have more information.

The news is so devastating coming out of there. I watched one of the local radio DJ's on the news early this morning -- John McDougall (I believe is his name, I can't find info on him to confirm yet) -- and he ended up in tears telling of what he'd gone through the night before. If you've seen the photos of the Hyatt -- he was in the building directly in front of it, and they broadcast all night. There was no phone service in the entire city, but for some reason, the radio station had phone available. The people who were stranded on their roofs couldn't get through to the police station, so they would call the radio station and tell them about being trapped in their attics or on top of their roofs. Since John also couldn't get through to the police, he'd broadcast these people's phone calls and addresses and the police, who were monitoring the radio station, would then know where to go find the people. John said one of the most upsetting phone calls he had was a young(ish) woman who said she was in her attic with her two year old, her two month old, and her grandmother. The water was chest high and they had no way to break through the roof to climb out. When she was giving her address, the cell phone went dead, and John couldn't get her back online. He said this morning he still doesn't know if the police were able to find her from the beginning of the address she'd broadcast.

There are many many stories of voluntees and all of the first response team who are bringing their own boats and going out to rescue... and when another shift comes on duty, they stay. They won't go home, they're still hard at it, trying to save as many lives as they can.

Here in Baton Rouge, there are thousands and thousands of refugees, and we're putting them up in churches, schools, civic centers, and many many personal homes. There are homes where there are thirty people there because the friend told all of his New Orleans friends and acquaintances to come. If he had a sliver of floor space, they were welcome to it.

Most of these people have lost everything. Every. Single. Thing.

Many of them don't yet know where their loved ones are. And we have no way of finding that out because the phone service is completely down in those areas. Tens of thousands of people won't have jobs to go back to, because their jobs are gone -- the buildings are gone and even if they made it through the storm, there won't be any customers to buy any goods or services.

Luke drove out to Hammond today. Of the part he could see, including out by the airport, there are powerlines tossed all over the place and there is no phone service in a great portion (almost all) of that parish. There are a ton of trees down and some wind damage to buidings, but it doesn't look like they've had anywhere near the type of water / flooding that is evident in other parishes, like St. Tammany.

The conditions above are essentially the same for Covington from what Luke and Amanda could see; we have heard Mandeville is essentially the same. We have heard, but have no confirmation, that these three places haven't had the type of water damage feared.

There are at least two levee systems compromised, according to the local news, and the water continues to rise in New Orleans. I have just heard two different but similar plans to try to block the water. One plane was that the Army Corps of Engineers was going to lower three-thousand pound sand bags onto the broken levee and build it back up. Another was that they were bringing in thirty-thousand smaller bags, presumably to fill in the smaller breaks. I'll update this as I hear any specific confirmation.

Right now, they must stop the water from coming in and then get some of the water out before the rescue efforts can get in full swing. All of those big trucks and convoys with supplies only have one tiny way into the city. The city has to get at least one major thoroughfare in to be able to bring in the water and supplies and to get the rest of the evacuees out.

The biggest focus, however, is to save lives. I have heard on the radio that there are estimates of 70,000 lives lost, with projections that this number will go much much higher. The water these people are in is contaminated: some gas lines have broken, some oil lines, all of this is floating on the water.... also, there are snakes and hundreds of clusters of red ants, pretty vicious because they're floating and looking for something or someone to cling to, and they cluster in the hundreds when they float... so if someone tries to swim and swims through them, they'll be bitten multiple times.

Senator Mary Landrieu said all of St. Bernard Parish is under water, save roof tops. That's how bad it is -- they didn't see dry land. Homes, refineries, etc. Same with Placquemine Parish.

If you want to help, I urge yout to donate to The American Red Cross. Many people only brought a few things when they evacuated; the thousand who were rescued from their attics or roofs have only the clothes they had on. The need is huge. Your prayers are mose appreciated.

brief pause

This is Tamar, posting for Toni. She had to rush her father to the hospital after he started having chest pains. She'll probably be there all day.

If you've contacted her about missing relatives in Hammond and Mandeville, she wants to let you know that it's being researched and she'll be in touch later tonight.

Also, Brendan Loy's blog still has the best, most up to date links and info on the hurricane aftermath.

Katrina, comprehensive report from New Orleans Mayor

Mayor Nagin of New Orleans was briefed late this evening by FEMA and others as to the extent of the damage in and around New Orleans. There is only brief mention of a few of the outlying areas, and the news sounds very grim. Here's the video feed of his discussion of the state of the catastrophe with the anchors at WWL News out of New Orleans.

This absolutely breaks my heart to hear this.

Katrina, Hammond info

My son drove to Hammond this evening to check on his house, which is near Southeastern. All cell service was off as he neared the city, and the entire place was blacked out -- still no power. He drove across town, trying to find a pay phone to call us to let us know the status, and no pay phones were working. There are lots of trees and power lines down all over Hammond. He didn't see a lot of water, though it was late evening at the time. The same is true of Mandeville, from what I've heard. If you're trying to reach them, there just isn't any cellular or regular phone service in those areas. There are, however, a lot of power crews, rescue personnel, state police, sherrifs, etc., going through the neighborhoods.

Katrina, more photos

More photos... These are stills from some of the local footage I was describing a couple of hours ago. Brendan's been doing a fantastic job of gathering all of the bits and pieces of news and putting them into one spot.

Katrina, more damage info

News reporters who had made their way into Mandeville earlier today just now made their way back to the station in Baton Rouge. They actually tried to call in this report two hours ago, but there were no working phones in the area.

They're showing footage right now -- lots of trees down, power lines down on the road. (Some wires are live and it's not clear which are and which aren't.) The police have all entrances into Mandeville closed and are not going to be letting anyone go into Mandeville until the road crews / electric crews can get in there. There's water standing in some areas -- closer into to Covington and the Tchefuncta River. (I have no idea if I spelled that right -- that's the spelling I see on Google.) They're saying that most of the damage they saw is from wind, not water (at least in the areas they could get to).

Katrina, rescue efforts

Governor Blanco just came on the local news and said that people were being rescued in St. Tammany Parish, Jefferson Parish (an entire nursing home, more than 100 people, were just rescued), as well as rescues in St. Bernard Parish. Damage in St. Bernard is being described as "catastrophic."

People are being rescued three and four at a time. The rescuers are worried because people are on roof tops or on porches and when they see the boats, they dive in the water and swim to the boats -- which is extremely dangerous. (There's the possibility of downed powerlines and toxic waste in the water.) A lot of these people have cell phones and are talking to loved ones elsewhere, so the Governor is asking that if you're talking to a loved one and they're waiting, to please tell them to stay put and let the boat come to them. Remember, the boats are traveling on what used to be streets, and there's no way for them to know what's under the boats (especially if the water is eight feet deep in some areas -- there may be cars beneath them).

They are finding a lot of people alive. They believe there are hundreds more alive out there and they're putting a lot more boats into the water in the morning. As many boats as can safely navigate tonight will remain on duty trying to find people.

They just showed an aerial shot of New Orleans... and ohmygod, it's a huge lake. It's north Kenner... near Treasure Chest Casino. West Esplande Mall... it's a lake completely around. Three to five feet of water. Tens of thousands of homes flooded. The entire area of Kenner.

Katrina, damage photos

I forgot to mention last post that we saw footage from local newscasters from the New Orleans area. They were on I-10 and were showing sections of Veterans (near Clearview) and it looked like a lake. There was a point where the railroad trestle crossed the interstate (?) -- I'm not as familiar with that area, but the interstate at that point was completely underwater. A reporter from Hammond said that she spoke to a team down in New Orleans and she was talking about new posts which had been put in near the new pumps. (Again, I'm not as familiar with this area.) The posts were marked in one-foot intervals, and are 17 feet tall, and the post were under water at that point. The water may have drained by now, but that was the report two hours ago.

They just showed images from Plaquemine Parish -- lots of destruction of homes there. They showed a brick two-story building in what looked like a downtown area where all of the bricks were on the ground and there was extensive wind damage to the top floor. There were people on the ground floor (unable to open the door for the debris outside the door) and they were waving to rescurers who were approaching the door. They looked relieved and not panicked.

If I hear anything specific about St. Tammany Parish I'll post it here.

There is an abolute "no entry" to New Orleans announcement going all over. If you're not an emergency personnel, you won't be allowed in.

Also, if I hear any more about that Days Inn in Slidell or the bodies (God, I really hope that one was wrong), I'll post.

Here are a few photos:

Our neighborhood:

Port Allen (just over the Mississippi River bridge from me):

Other areas with trees down (north Baton Rouge area):

UPDATE -- Senator David Vitter is on WBRZ news right now and says that he doesn't have much news about Metairie or St. Tammany Parish -- that no one does right now. He'd been over at the central emergency office (I've lost track of the correct acronym) and they, nor FEMA, has any better information than what you've all heard so far. When the anchor asked him why he didn't know much, he said that it's partly because most of the people evacuated and partly because no one can really get into those areas yet to assess anything. There are still people on their rooftops in St. Bernard Parish waiting for a boat or a helicopter. Some deputy sherrifs have been taking their own personal bass boats and going out to find people.

They're trying to get helicopters up to get some aerial photos before it's completely dark.

Katrina, 4:42 p.m., latest news

I don't know what you all are getting by way of national news reporting. We're listening to the local news (courtesy of the generator) and have heard a lot of disturbing news for the New Orleans area.

The top floor to a Days Inn hotel in Slidell is missing. The entire floor. There's no word if anyone was in the hotel waiting out the storm.

One reporter said there were bodies floating in the flood waters in Slidell. (For those who aren't familiar with the area, Slidell is essentially a suburb to the east of New Orleans, so they would have had some pretty bad winds.) I am very very much hoping this is a gross exaggeration, but they sounded pretty firm about it.

The Mayor of Kenner (a suburb to the west of New Orleans) just stated that 100% of the homes in Kenner were either flooded or had structural damage and he didn't expect people to get back into the area for two or more weeks.

All of the New Orleans areas are now under a "boil water" alert -- the water is now contaminated and not safe to drink. One of the news anchors said you have to boil it for twelve minutes to be safe. Of course, without electricity, that gets complicated, unless people have propane.

Luke just got back from taking the second generator to my dad / mom / grandmother and I now have photos. It's going to take me a few minutes to upload.

Katrina, missing persons board...

The following announcement was just sent to me and I thought it a good thing to post. I'm copying it in its entirety here. I'll be having photos up of damage in our area and surrounding area in an hour or so.

NowPublic ANNOUNCEMENT:

____________________________________

NowPublic has set up a missing persons board to help victims of Hurricane Katrina find those who go missing during the storm.

If you want to publish the photograph of someone you are looking for you can upload it to the site by clicking here or by sending an email to:

news@nowpublic.com.

If you include 'NP 17228' in the body of the email then your email will be automatically posted with other photographs. If you have any information about any of the photographs posted here contact the owner of the footage by rolling over photograph or video and following the instructions that are provided.

You can also post a comment about individual photographs (or videos) by clicking on the image and posting a comment (adding a report) on the page that comes up.

If you have any questions please contact us at clorenz@nowpublic.com.

Katrina, 12:32 a.m.

We lost power about 10 a.m. this morning. Got the generator up and running and just realized the DSL is still good, so I'm able to post.

The damage around here looks minimal (thank God). There are limbs down and lots of debris around, but from what I can see from our home, most of the roofs and such are intact. There are a few small trees down, but nothing that looks devastating. It feels like the wind is still gusting hard, but hopefully, that will die down soon.

When the storm wobbled a little to the east, it spared Baton Rouge the worst of the brunt, but I've got lots of family in Hammond who stayed there -- and from what we hear, they were hit pretty hard. We're running the refrigerator, the TV and the computer on the generator. We have propane and a grill for cooksing, and we have water for a few days.

It sounds like the flooding in New Orleans is still going to be pretty bad. Not quite the catastrophic predictions we feared, but there are collapsed buildings the sheriffs can't get to and I've seen reports on the web of at least a hundred residents waiting on their roofs, hoping someone would come and pick them up.

When I have any other news, I'll post to the blog. Thanks, much, everyone, for checking in and for your good wishes.

Katrina, 8 a.m.

Mostly watching the wind blowing. Lots of leaves sheared off and on the lawn. Only a minimal amount of rain right now.

Managed to get some sleep. Am relieved Katrina turned slightly to the east.

Katrina, 2:30 a.m.

Light rain, now, pretty steady in Baton Rouge. The winds gust, then everything stills a moment, then more gusts.

It looks like the hurricane's back down to a Cat 4, though that's little comfort.

I really should try to sleep. There's a longing to go close my eyes and feel safe in my own bed, and then there's the awareness that the storm is heading in now, and will be here (essentially) by morning, and if I stay awake, it'll be better. You know, because if I stay awake, I'll somehow be able to keep it from hitting here as hard. (Well, one can dream.)

Katrina, 1 a.m.

I see on the news that they're saying there are gusts up to 25 mph here in Baton Rouge. The tops of the trees are moving, and there's a steady swishing-hum as the trees sway. After that first band of rain, it's been relatively calm.

Katrina, incoming evacuees

By 8:30, most -- if not all -- of the local stores were closed. There are a few random Circle K types convenience stores open with long lines at their gas pumps. Carl tried to run one last errand, but could not get out of the neighborhood. Hwy 30, (which intersects with I-10), had a zillion refugees from New Orleans. Hwy 30 runs parallel to 1-10 and becomes Nicholson -- which, for those familiar with the Death Dome of LSU (the stadium), Nicholson runs right by that stadium. I don't know where everyone is going. It's scary to see they're just now getting out and may still have hours to go before they get somewhere safe.

Most of the gas pumps are empty. I doubt if there will be a tank of gas available here by tomorrow.

Katrina... prepared...

There's an edge of expectancy, as if half of the state is holding its breath, watching with dread. When you've done all you can do, you just wait.

Over on Brendan Loy's site, he's got the urgent weather message from the National Weather Service from New Orleans. It's extremely bleak and sobering. Oil has already surged above $70 / barrel, and the market isn't even open yet. I imagine it'll hit near $100 by the end of the day tomorrow.

We just got the first rains -- already a hard rain. I have been obsessively watching the weather news. I should be writing, especially while we have electricity. It's hard to focus on anything else.

My neighbor has about twenty refugess family members up from New Orleans. We've got a couple, and I know many people have taken in friends and family who couldn't get a hotel room or who didn't have the money to get out. Our neighborhood resembles a parking lot from the vast number of cars. We're one of the few neighborhoods to have underground untilities. I'm sure we'll lose power at some point, but at least we won't have the large power poles knocked down like they were during Andrew, and live wires on the streets.

We're in Baton Rouge -- far enough inland to be a place of refuge for the people out on the coast of Louisiana, far enough to rationalize staying. However, we expect it to be pretty bad here. I'm praying the storm doesn't wobble a little to the west -- it would make it doubly bad for New Orleans as well as for here.

As far as being prepared, I think we've done all that we can think to do. We have extra gas for the generator (our neighbor borrowed the other one). (Our neighbor has been informed that if my mom and dad and grandmother end up needing it, he's out of luck.) We have candles galore, matches, propane, water, tons of food. I've done all of the laundry (on the assumption we'll be without power for a while.) We've braced the new fence in the back yard, stored everything we could in the garage and tied down what we couldn't.

The one thing that amuses me is the vast quantities of beer / alcohol sold prior to storms. Lots of people figure they're going to be stuck in one place for a while, might as well turn it into a party. When we were at the grocery store earlier, all of the beer aisle shelves were empty. Lots of people are going to be wet, but they're gonna be happy about it.

Katrina, 175 mile winds

Just got back from a slew of errands. Absolutely everything was packed. Fortunately, everyone had a good attitude about it and there was a lot of visiting in the lines, chatting and joking. Most of the gas pumps were either empty or had long lines. The "express" lane in the grocery store (for ten items or less) had more than twenty people in line, and the other lanes were worse. Shelves all through the store were picked over.

I'm relieved to see that New Orleans opened up shelters for the people who couldn't get out. It seems pretty dumb to wait until the last day like this -- they should have done it yesterday. I worry about people -- the elderly, the sick -- who live on their own who can't get to the shelters. Hopefully, someone is canvassing those neighborhoods and checking on those people.

Of course, if New Orleans floods, the massive pumps that keep the water out may not be able to pump the water fast enough.

My cousin made it back... took her four hours longer to get here than normal, but I'm glad to know she's safe. My dad has gone down to Pierre Part and tied and chained down the fishing camp. (The camp isn't very structurally sound.) Carl is currently boarding up his dad's store and everything here is as ready as it can be.

I'm going to try to blog through the storm -- as much to be able to remember the details later as for anything else. Going through Andrew was a strange experience, but I have forgotten so much.

Katrina, CAT 5

Woke up a little while ago to the news that she'd strengthened to a CAT 5. It's sunny and breezy here, and surreal to know that a storm of that catastrophic size is bearing down on us. I've been on hold with the phramacy for almost thirty minutes, trying to get some medicine refilled. We've got extra gas for the two generators we own, and we've got big water coolers we'll fill up tonight for drinking water. Bathtubs will get filled so we have water in case the power to the water goes out (for toilets, etc.).

When Andrew made it inland to us, it wasn't nearly a CAT 5. I can't remember what it finally hit land as here in Louisiana -- maybe a CAT 3? By the time it reached Baton Rouge, it had seriously decreased in strength, and it still disrupted everything for weeks and weeks. Some people were without electricity for about three weeks, and there were so many downed trees, that some neighborhoods couldn't be navigated for a while.

I cannot fathom what this storm is going to do. And yes, for the first time for a hurricane, I'm actually nervous.

Katrina, CAT 4

I just saw on the news that the hurricane's been upgraded to a category 4. Still headed straight for us.

Carl will have to go board up his dad's store -- lots of plate glass windows there begging for flying debris. Luckily, his dad kept all of the boards used last time, so there's none of that waiting in line at Home Depot for hours to get plywood (if they still have any).

Luke made it in from Hammond (finding a circuitous route) and Jake's settled in at his own place, so the kids are safe.

I'm not sure about the fishing camp down at Pierre Part. My dad (who is obsessive about these things, having gone through Camille and Betsy) has probably already gone down there and tied everything down. I hope.

It's slightly windy outside, but not loud or crazy. I can't imagine the surprise huge storms like this would have been many years ago before there was the ability to forecast. The nature of the hurricane is that it is often sunny and nice just prior to the storm, and conditions can change radically within a few hours.

It's annoying to watch the weather channel and all of the reporters they have out on the beaches going on and on. On one level, it's as if they pump up the panic for ratings. Then again, lots of people ignore the warnings completely and do really dumb things (like go swimming in the rip tides), so maybe there's a good reason to make it sound like the end of the world. I just wish that once the network knows that the storm isn't going to hit in, oh, say, Alabama, that they'd drop the reporting from those beaches... because how much, really, can that person say? I heard one reporter talk three times about how the beaches had just been refurbished after their last big hurricane. It's frustrating, sure, it's costly (if another one hits them), sure, but since Katrina's not heading that way, it's pretty much a content free reportage. It would have been far more fascinating if they'd shown what was really going on in New Orleans and the frantic pace for them to get out.

My cousin's dad is in the hospital here (very bad heart attack and stroke). (He's not my uncle, but my dad's first cousin.) (It gets confusing.) She had to go back to Mandeville today to get her house prepped for the hurricane (storing outside furniture, etc.), and then she was going to come back here. I'm not sure if she's going to make it in because I heard they were routing everyone on Interstate 12 north to Jackson, MS. If I'm not mistaken, that's how she would have come in, so I hope she makes it. Her dad's having surgery Monday (asuming the hurricane doesn't affect the doctors / nurses, etc.)

hurricane Katrina

The good news about hurricanes is that we can, at least, see them heading our way. That's pretty much it on the good news meter. For quite a few of the last hurricanes, it looked like we'd get a lot of rain, and it ended up being sunny and nice for us instead. Now, it looks like it's our turn to be slammed.

The traffic coming out of New Orleans is insane. No one can find a hotel between here and Houston, and I've been told that it's also pretty booked as far away as Dallas. There's a lot of advice being bandied about on TV about it being better to head north or east, but the path of the hurricane is going to be north-east when it hits land. At the best, if you can get far enough away, you're only going to have heavy rains, but if you're east, you'll have that a lot longer than those in the west. Hence, most people head west.

In Baton Rouge, we're far enough inland to where the storm dies down a little before it makes it to us. There are exceptions. Most memorable to me was Andrew, which spawned all sorts of baby tornadoes and lots of damage to homes and businesses. There were seven or eight very large trees down in our back yard that next morning (and one was very large and would have crushed our neighbor's house if it had fallen the opposite direction as expected). Right now, there are several large trees around this house, so we'll probably get a lot of downed limbs and some wind damage. I really hope we don't get any trees down, because the houses are closer together here than in the place we lived when Andrew stormed through. (ha.)

The storm prep going on is escalating. We just got back from the grocery store and it was a bit packed and more people flowing in to stock up. Luke picked up his girlfriend from Mandeville (just north of New Orleans) and they're stuck in the heavy traffic heading our direction. A trip from N.O. to our house would normally take a maximum of an hour-and-a-half. During these kinds of evacuations, that time generally triples. No exaggeration. State police announced that they were shutting down the exits off I-10 in Baton Rouge. Which means, for Luke to come here, he'll have to get off the interstate north or west of here and double back on surface streets, easily adding another hour to the travel. Imagine what it would be like for the people heading to Houston.

New Orleans has been really worried about having a major hurricane shoot up the mouth of the Mississippi. The flooding for something like that truly will be catastrophic, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of their things. The worst hit will, of course, be a huge number of people who can't get the insurance to cover something like this.

Another annoucement was made indicating that New Orleans was considering opening the Superdome to all of those who didn't have the money or the vehicle to get out of town. If that sounds like they're a little reluctant, they are -- one of the last times they used the Superdome, there was an astounding amount of vandalism and theft. If it wasn't nailed down, it walked out of there.

People often ask me how on earth I can live in a place that has hurricanes. Well, the truth is, we haven't been really impacted by one in our city since 1992 (Andrew). We had enough warning to be prepared. I compare that to the possibility of unpredictable earthquakes or blizzards every year in the north or tornadoes in the mid-west, and I figure every place has its problems. I think we get a fair bit more warning than the others, though, which makes it easier to live with.

That said, it makes me tense. I don't imagine I'll be sleeping much for listening to the wind and seeing how bad it is and if the trees are going to hold.

mastercard...

Sometimes, you really wish commercials were more like this one.

The audio is definitely not work approved, but is a must.

yadda

Me (turning off faucet, hearing him mumbling something): What was that?
Him: What was what?
Me: You. Just then.
Him: Just then what?
Me: Talking. You were saying something.
Him: I don't think so.
Me: Yes. Just now. Were you talking to me, or just mumbling?
Him: I'm not sure. I wasn't listening.
Me: !!!

I've been gone, mostly due to being in some pain. Cluster headaches. But I'm back. Really really grumpy, but back.

recycling

Luke glanced into the pantry and noticed that the recycling bin was nearly overflowing with diet coke cans.

"Mom! You could build a small airplane from those cans."

"And your point is?"

"You've really got to quit drinking so many diet cokes. They're not good for you."

"Kid, step away from my diet coke habit. It's my blankie, because right now I am eating low carbs, which deprives me of all the things I love: pasta, cheetos, fritos, brownies, cake, cookies, chocolate, m&ms, pizza, and pie. "

"Wait a minute. You don't like pie."

"I MIGHT have LOVED pie, and now I'll never know, because I can't eat it and I can't eat any of those other things and I'm living on that ragged edge of insanity and the diet coke is the only thing keeping me from crossing the line into the machete-killing-spree zone."

"Mom?"

"What?"

"Did you know that your head sort of spun around and your eyes got really bulgey there for a minute."

"You threatened the diet coke."

"Here's a glass of ice. Should I pop the top for you?"

"Survival instincts?"

"You betcha."

"Don't say I never taught you anything."

on cheesy food...

Me to oldest son, Luke: So I hear you called your grandmother, your aunt and your dad to find out how to cook the roast in your new crockpot.

Luke: Yeah. They were a big help.

Me: But you never called me!

Luke: So?

Me: So, I cook!

Luke: Yeah, and if I ever want to cook something with cheese on it, I'll call you.

(I would have smacked him, but he had a point.)

Carl took a pan of excellent baked potato casserole he'd made out of the refrigerator; he and Luke were going to eat the left-overs. I was sitting in my office, which has a door open to the kitchen so I can see what they're doing.

Luke pulled off the lid and they both looked at it with a little shock.

Carl: I see your mom has been eating the potatoes. She ate all the tops where the cheese was.

Luke sees me giving Carl the death-glare.

Luke, to me: What? Why are you annoyed he said that?

Me: Well it's not like I did it on purpose.

(Luke cracks up. I realized what I've said and I'm not sure if I can come up with a rational justification for why the cheesy tops are gone since I have been the only one home, so I opt for shutting up.)

Carl: That's okay. We'll just put more cheese on them.

Me: Um, we're out of cheese.

Luke: Imagine that.

apparently, English isn't spoken here

Every once-in-a-while, I'll get questions from my kids that makes me wonder if they ever actually heard anything while growing up here. They know I was an English major, and they'll call out-of-the-blue with the weirdest word questions. Now, I was always a bookworm and routinely, I'll know what a word means (sensing it out in a sentence), but not necessarily how to pronounce it, and since I don't talk to that many other bookworms on a regular basis, I'm perfectly capable of mangling the pronunciation of the less-than-prosaic words. So if my kids were asking me how to pronounce something, I wouldn't worry. But no, they call me to see what a word means. (Ah, the use of cell phones while driving and without access to a dictionary. Finally, I have a use in life.)

Luke called during finals last semester. Luke is 22 and has a very good GPA in political science. The kid is gifted. And yet, he called me and said, "Mom? What does 'exasperating' mean?" I'm wondering if he found his photo in the dictionary or something. So I ask "why?" first. "Because ____ (his major professor) told me today that I was exasperating. It didn't sound like a good thing." I'm nodding, thinking, yes, intuitive professor. Not a good thing to say, though, so I ask him, "Um, just how did the professor use the word?" "Oh," Luke said, "he said that the whole time he read my paper, he thought I was on the verge of something brilliant and instead, I just ended up exasperating."

Does a mother proud.

To give him credit (and I'm stretching for it here), I think he was so surprised by the comment and the way in which is was delivered, it sounded like a compliment, which was so at odds with the topic they were discussing, that Luke wondered if he was confused. Like Inigo Montoya... "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Then the youngest son (18) called tonight and said, "Mom? What does it mean when someone is 'implicated' in something?" And yes, I did get very quiet in that moment and listened intently to see if there were sirens or cops in the background of his phone call. I was almost afraid of answering that one, and more afraid to ask why he wanted to know. Turned out, someone had used it incorrectly and he was trying to settle a bet. (And no dictionary present, of course. That would just be wrong.)

You'll have to excuse me while I go write out things like my own obituary. I'm not leaving anything to chance or I might end up being "exasperating." However, I have decided that any important, top secret documents I might ever need to hide are going in the dictionary. The kids will never look there.

'tater launch

They kept forecasting for rain, and probably somewhere around fifty people after all was said and done. Because I was busy visiting with everyone, I nearly forgot to take photos, but managed to get a couple of the tater launching:

That's Luke (left) and Jake (right) prepping to shoot. Luke made that 'tater gun just a couple of hours prior to the party.

Here's a close-up of Luke spraying in the propellant:

And of course, our fancy schmancy target:

There were kids running around, hence the spacewalk:

Tons of food, lots of fun and great company. We only had one minor injury. My neice (16) saw her cousins about to launch taters and decided to go stand near the target. I don't know why. A 'tater part riccocheted off and smacked her on the thigh, but no bruising.

(Someone asked last post about the emergency trip. That would be for Luke, a couple of years ago. The first year, Luke singed his hair on one side when looking into the barrel (from the side, near the flint). Next year, he singed his eyebrows. The emergency room year, he got a piece of flint in his eye. All of this while trying to make it safe for the other people to handle it. I pointed out to him that perhaps "safe" didn't mean what he thought it meant, since he was the only one getting injured, and that if he got injured again, we would be cancelling the 'tater launch. He's managed to be injury-free for two years.)

'tater launch prep day

Tomorrow will be our 5th Annual 'Tater Launch party, where we gather everyone we can (whoever is sober enough after a big NY's night out) and they come to our house for lunch and sometime during the afternoon, they will all go outside to the backyard where they will put a potato into a PVC pipe "gun" and will -- through various mechanical means, some hair-spray as propellant, and a flint -- ignite said 'tater and shoot it out of the gun.

Yes, we are all about class 'round here, let me tell you.

The first year started innocently enough, I suppose. Friends were visiting from D.C., and they'd never been here. I wanted to minimize their perception of southerners as "hicks" and so had planned a couple of minor events to showcase Louisiana and our culture. The very first night, though, Carl and the wife of my friend started riffing at the restaurant on potatoes and ways to serve them. They hadn't even been drinking, and somehow, launching 'taters at people in a drive-through was suggested and before I knew what had happened, Carl was explaining shooting 'taters from a 'tater gun. The wife said she'd never heard or seen such a thing and Carl promised her that she'd get to shoot a 'tater before she left. So much for not being hicks. I don't know what I was expecting.

Anyway, the next day or so went well, and I thought everyone had forgotten about the 'tater gun, but then on the first, when our families and a few friends came over for lunch and to meet my visiting friends, the next thing I knew is that Carl and Luke and Jake had broken out the 'tater gun and were outside with my visiting friends and they were shooting 'taters. We live in a nice neighborhood, people. And my family was outside, shooting 'taters over the neighbor's yards at first, until they realized that maybe that wasn't such a bright idea. I was fairly mortified until I looked out there and realized the wife had ahold of the 'tater gun and was so excited about shooting one, she was jumping with glee.

So that's how it began. And everyone leaving there that day said, "See you next year for the next 'tater launch" and the tradition was born.

Now we have lots and lots of food, I get a spacewalk for the little kids (which just arrived as I write this) and there are TVs on everywhere with whatever big game is on. Meanwhile, everyone pigs out and shoots 'taters (now we build a big target so we don't littler the neighbors' yards) and general silliness prevails.

(There has been only one emergency room visit. I am strangely proud of that.)

Photos tomorrow...

friends, mayhem and madness

I had a wonderful visit with Jette today when she was able to stop in for a couple of hours on her way through Baton Rouge back to Austin. It was an absolute blast talking with her and the time flew (helped along probably by my asking her a zillion questions and subject hopping like mad). We traded food (a natural thing to do here) and I loved the Kinky Friedman's black-eyed pea dip sauce she left me. (I'm going to have to order more!) Hopefully, we'll get to visit a lot sooner next time. I think it's been six or so years (or maybe... eight?) since we last met when I was in Austin.

Daisy did a terrific thing -- she did a 24-entry Blogging for Aid, which I thought was just superb. I donated for every entry to the American Red Cross.

I cannot wrap my head around that devastation. I've since watched some amateur footage and stills which are so shocking, it's hard to believe it's not real and those aren't movie extras running on a beach and then in the next shot, lying under debris, lifeless. I am stunned at the losses. And amazed at so many people who have said, "I will go," and are on their way there, or are already there, in terrible conditions trying to make the disaster somehow manageable. I know I will keep looking for ways to give, even in the coming months; I hope you will, too.

conversations with the dead

Well, it felt like it was with the dead, for all the interaction I was getting.

Me: Hi. I called in yesterday for the refill on the prescription for my husband. They said your office had to call it in, and no one's called in yet.

Dr.'s Office Woman (DOW): Well, you should have left a message.

Me: I did. Three of them. I spoke to you, first. And then left two on the voice mail when you forwarded me when you told me you were going to get me a nurse.

DOW: Oh. Let me get the nurse for you now.

Me: Oh, no you don't. I know that trick. I want to talk to you. When is your office going to call in the refill?

DOW: I don't do that, Ma'am. So I don't know. You'll have to talk to the nurse.

Me: Is she there?

DOW: Certainly, if you'll leave her a message, she'll call you right--

Me: No, I mean, is she standing right there next to your elbow?

DOW: Um, no....

Me: Well, then nope, I don't want to talk to her, I want to talk to you. I want you to shout to her -- I've seen your office, I know her little desk is in a corner three feet away from you. So you just shout on over to her and find out when she's going to call in that refill, because I'm not buying this whole "gonna call ya back" scheme.

DOW: (haughtily) This is not a scheme, Ma'am. We have certain procedures we must follow and--

Me: Okay, see. I have a procedure, too. Here's how my procedure works. I start off nice and polite and I try to follow the rules, but then you people don't do what you're supposed to do. So then I get creative. Really very very creative. And you want to know how creative I can get? I figured out that instead of waiting here by the phone to find out when you've refilled the prescription so that I can go run my errands and pick it up, especially after you've toyed with me for the whole day yesterday and teased me that somebody over there was actually going to refill the damned thing, I realized I would have PLENTY of time to drive on over to your office and stand in front of your desk. That way, as soon as you saw the nurse, you could grab her and get her to sit her scrawny little ass down and make the phone call to the pharmacy. Or you could fax them from the fax machine that is two inches to your left. See, if I'm going to spend ALL THAT TIME WAITING, I'm going to do it where I can at least get some entertainment. And if you think I'm chatty right now, just IMAGINE me standing in your office, not two feet in front of you, striking up conversations with everyone all of those hours and you know what? I've got a WHOLE LOT OF ENERGY right now, seeing how I have all this built-up-- what's that? Oh, there's the nurse. Really. And she's what?

(she holds the phone so I can hear the nurse telling the pharmacy to refill the presecription... then she returns to the line)

DOW: Ma'am? Your refill's going to be ready in about five minutes.

Me: Thank you. And you might want to put a note down next to my name that says "Crazy stalker person" so that the next time I call, we don't have to do this, okay?

DOW: Um, yes ma'am.

Me: Good. Now you have a nice day.

hmph.

top cluck

Christmas morning, and gift carnage, and so much strewn wrapping paper, we may never find the cat again, and all is good. And you know how it is that the majority of the time, the kids like the boxes as much as the gifts, or they'll like the cheapest thing you get much much more than the big deal present? Well, to continue that tradition, both the boys loved, coveted, and drooled over their brand spanking new "super balls" -- the mega bouncy take-out-every-knick-knack ball for a dollar at the dollar store that I bought at the last minute to put in their stockings. Which Luke, 22, managed to bounce into the fire in the fireplace after I repeatedly told him NOT TO BOUNCE IT IN THE HOUSE, TO WAIT 'TIL HE GOT TO HIS OWN HOUSE. He snatched it out of the fire, and it's now got little flame-ish swoopy changes in the color. Or their favorite may have been the toy (plastic, 1 foot long) bow and arrows their dad gave them WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION, PEOPLE. The package in which Carl had placed: cotton balls, vaseline and a lighter. To make flaming arrows, you see. Which, of course, they did immediately but at least shot them out onto the patio area so they couldn't catch the house on fire. (The vaseline makes the cotton balls burn longer.)(Oh, the joy.)

And Carl's favorite? Well, it's probably a tie between the DVD of all of the Road Runner and other Looney Tunes or the:

Rubber chickens. Five, because he must have asked me a million times for the last two years if anyone was getting him one. (The little ones are key chains, because everyone really needs a rubber chicken key chain. Right?)

Carl had loaned his original rubber chicken to his sister (he's 45, she's 43, I do not make these things up, people), and she wouldn't give it back. She also has one of those invisible dog walking leash things that belongs to him, the kind you get from Disney? That she's strapped his chicken into so it looks like she's walking the rubber chicken. So I figured after hearing about that chicken for two years, I would get him FIVE, because really, that would be WAY MORE THAN NECESSARY to shut him up about the chicken. And did that work? Of course not. He immediately got a kick out of them and then decided, wow, he really wants FIFTY of them now because he wants to make a RUBBER CHICKEN CHANDELIER. And dress them all up in little aviator caps and goggles and parachutes. And maybe even wire them and hook up the mechanics so that they could dance to music. Or fly in some sort of synchronized pattern. He's going to have them all be "Top Cluck" fliers, the top 10% recruited to fly for their country. Or something.

I'd call the men with the funny little white coats, but he'd probably recruit them into making the damned thing.

puddy-the-red-nosed-cat

So, I wake up on Christmas Eve, groggy as all hell because I'd stayed up until three a.m. to wrap the rest of the presents. (And because my dad was having to hide my mom's presents at our house, I was wrapping those, too.) I stumble semi-blindly into the office and plop in front of the computer to check e-mail, and the cat rises up out of her basket to greet me and something seemed odd... and I squinted, and then I realized it wasn't bad enough that Carl had tried to wrap the cat, now he had given her a bright red nose:

That's red ink. (It's washing off.) Thank God I got there before he had figured out how to wire little antlers on her head.

(And she's so dumb, if given a choice, she'll go love on him first. She has no idea of the amount of times I have saved her so far.)

overheard at the mall

One of the crazy-but-fun things about a crowded mall is that people just stop thinking about the fact that other people are inches away (as in a very crowded food court) and can hear everything being said (particularly when it's not exactly being whispered.)

We went around the mall the rest of the evening saying "Vortex of impossibility" for everything we didn't like. And giggling like kids. To that older couple.... thank you.

hurdling the reindeer

Just so I'm not only abusing the oldest son...

When Jake was three (and Luke, seven), it was time for the Christmas shopping expedition. There really is nothing more pleasant than bundling up two little kids, doubling their size with the warm outfits (which takes two hours and several bathroom breaks and there will be parts of the outfits which they will shed in various places and you'll never ever ever see the match to that sock so don't even hope for it), buckling them into the car seats (which takes another two hours and they've already grown by that point, so you have to re-dress them again) and then finally making your way to the mall which is so crowded, you have to park in the next state and walk three billion miles with two little kids, (one in the stroller) and then fight a mass of people just to get inisde. Luckily on that outing, I was meeting my mom (or else everyone would have had IOU notes for Christmas at that point)(just call me Grinch).

The part that had me nervous was that Jake was sort of decently potty trained... as long as we were home. But he was the world's worst about waiting until the very last minute to tell us he had to go to the bathroom. Put him in front of a crowd, and he'd clam up and we wouldn't realize the problem until the problem had already happened. He insisted on wearing his new underwear (and was absolutely heart-broken and destroyed that I might not let him because he was a BIG BOY). So I emphasized for the entire ride to the mall that he MUST tell me when he needed to go to the bathroom and as soon as he knew. Not to wait. I'd say, "You're going to tell Mama, right?" to which he'd say, "Nope." "Oh, sure you are, you're going to tell Mama early enough, right?" "Nope." He'd laugh, but I wasn't entirely sure if he was joking (I mean, he was three. Did three year olds know blackmail that early? Or was he just joking?)

When we were in the mall, I must have asked him a trillion times if he needed to go, and he kept saying no. All I was praying for was at least a little tug on my sleeve or a pained expression -- any small clue, but he was laughing and happy and busy toppling displays whenever I'd so much as look for a micro-second in another direction....

[an aside... when he was the same age, about a month earlier, we were at the park watching Luke play t-ball. Jake ran up to me and said, "Mama, I go push tree down?" I looked over where he was pointing at these -- and I'm not exaggerating -- thirty-foot trees about ten feet behind me and I said, "Sure." Because hey, it would keep him busy and what could he hurt? Well, a little while later, one of the other kids tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Ms. Toni? I think you better look." And I turned around and the child had pushed one of those staked trees to a 45 degree angle. Blew my mind. I still don't know how he did it and the other kids swear they didn't help.]

So, anyway, Jake was mutilating Christmas displays, Mom and I were trying to watch both Jake and Luke (who probably was over somewhere conning some man out of his wristwatch). We had finally made all of our selections and had been waiting in a very long line at the check-out. Very long line. I had two birthdays while I was waiting and I filled out retirement forms. Long. Line.

Finally, I was up next to be checked out, when I suddenly realized Jake wasn't right by my side. I looked over and there he was in the aisle and he was squatting down with a big grin on his face. And he shouted, "Mommy, I HAVE TO POOO POOOOOOOOO." The kid I couldn't get to whisper the word "bathroom" was shouting "Poooo Poooooh." Over. And. Over. I swear, he was so loud, LSU called and he'd registered on the Richter scale in the geology department. And then he started turning red-faced with the effort.

I looked down at my three thousand selections that I was just about to purchase and the VERY long line that had taken me now six years to navigate just to get up to the cash register and then over at that kid turning bright red and I swear, for this brief moment, I wondered which level of hell I'd be sent to if I checked out first.

The entire store froze with horror and every single person there looked at me like they were personally going to write to God and have me thrown out of the human race because I hadn't planned better and my child was about to poo in the middle of the department store with his little Christmas gift. I caved and threw down my purchases and grabbed the diaper bag from my mom and scooped him up. People were parting like the Red Sea and clerks were guiding me through the masses in the store like I was a 747 landing with toxic wastes. I ran, people. Ran. Took out customers, knocked a display of Christmas ornaments all over the floor and slid through a display of gloves. At some point, I hurdled a reindeer display to get to the bathroom and the whole way there, I'm begging him to wait just one more second, we'll be there! We'll make it! And we rushed into the bathroom and just in the nick of time...

For him to giggle. And say, "I no have to poo pooo, Mama."

Somewhere between my wheezing for breath and my tears, I said, "Kid. You are going to poo or else we're never leaving this room. Ever."

Of course, he giggled again.

To be had, by a three-year-old. He was perfectly fine the entire rest of the trip. No poo, no potty, no nothing but giggles. I probably should have frisked him for wallets or watches or deeds to old people's houses.

(And one day, when he has a kid of his own? I am so teaching that kid all sorts of bad tricks.)

sneaky

When the boys were dropping in last night, I knew at least one of them would "wander" into our master bedroom and casually sneak a peek to see if there were any presents unwrapped. I hoped that since they were, you know, actually GROWN MEN now, they would refrain from such silliness, but on the off chance that either of them was tempted, I hid the presents and set a little trap.

Luke walked back into the kitchen, and looked at me with such disappointment.

"Way to lose your edge there, Mom."

"What do you mean?"

"What'd you do, think, 'Oh, I'll hide these presents. I'll throw a sheet over them, no one will suspect a thing!' Man, that's not even a challenge! You used to be so creative. Remember the duct taped closet door and the secret patterns so you'd know when we moved anything? Or the time you put the voice-activated tape recorder in your bedroom so you'd know if we went in there? Or the time you booby-trapped the whole attic?"

"But I set a trap! I would know if you went in if you tripped it."

"Kinda defeats the purpose if I've already found the presents."

"YOU'RE 22! Do you know this?"

Toni asked in the comments just how my throwing the sheet over them was a trap (well, that's paraphrased, she asked it better). I had put pennies on the tops of the closet doors because what the boys usually did was go try to look for something and then DENY DENY DENY that they ever even had an impure thought about finding their Christmas presents. So the only way I thought I'd know if they peeked was if the pennies fell from the exact location I'd placed them. (I learned long ago not to use tape or anything they could see because they'd put it back in the right spot. But they can't see exactly where the pennies are and once they've fallen, they have to guess where to put them back and it's rare that they're right. So then I know they've been in the closet.) They've gotten so good at denying and playing "innocent" that I figured the dropped pennies would rat them out. I didn't bargain for the fact that he would brazenly open the door and make fun of me for only putting sheets over the presents. I think he's right -- I'm definitely losing my edge.

(He says he didn't look -- that the challenge just wasn't there. Man, if that was the secret all along? Damn.)

smack me with the stupid stick

My oldest son was here a little while ago with his girlfriend. He'd been waiting until after finals to do his Christmas shopping and now that they're over and he's survived (sort of), he was going to go pick out her present tonight. He wanted to ask my advice, so he made an excuse to go to the back of the house and a few minutes later, I followed. (I have yet to actually see him "fold some clothes to bring back to [his] house" so I knew that was complete bollocks and an obvious ruse.) His plan was to drop her off at a friend's house and pick up her present, then meet them out.

In the process of talking about the gift, which type to purchase, what accessories he was going to need, he mentioned which store he was going to. A few minutes later, and right before we went back into the other room where his girldfriend was, he said, "Now, don't mention the store. Whatever you do, she's already suspicious."

I could not believe he had the nerve to warn me. ME. Who is such an old pro at hiding what people have for Christmas, I could give lessons. The person who was so convincing when not letting someone figure out what they'd had for a present, they went and bought another damned one of them for themselves, which meant me returning the original. The person who sat with someone for THREE HOURS and fixed some things on their old computer, even though I knew they had a new one about to show up in two days, but I knew that they knew I would know what they were getting and I didn't want them to figure it out, so I fixed a junk computer for THREE HOURS that I'll never get back because they ended up not ever using that old computer again. I am a PRO at this, baby. A pro. The CIA should hire me. I am that good.

So what did I do when I walked back out there where my son was now standing not far from his girlfriend? Did I strike up the witty, diverting banter? Did I talk about the weather, the holiday lights, the traffic, the way that my neighbor's 16-year-old son had shown up at my back door clad only in his boxers because he'd gotten his car stuck in the mud when he wasn't where he was supposed to be and he was trying to keep his clothes clean so his mom wouldn't find out and wanted my youngest son to help him get out of the mud? (Didn't work.) No, of all of the three quibillion things I could have said right then, what did I, the professional present-hiderer, supreme secret keeper do?

I looked at the shirt he had on, noticed a hole in the front and said, "You're not really going to wear that to Best Buy, are you?"

Yes, just smack me with the stupid stick. Man.

He turned (where she couldn't see him) and gave me that long, slow death glare he's perfected (I don't know where he could have possibly learned that one from). And I tried to cover.

"Well, I mean, seriously, it's a crap shirt and you've got to pick up that present for your dad for me and you'll have my check to pay them. I don't want them to think you're some sort of bum who mugged me in the parking lot."

"Gee, Mom. Thanks."

"Hey, I'm just here to help." (If looks could kill, I'd be sizzling right now.)

Something tells me the CIA isn't going to be calling anytime soon.

and then there's always the bow

Carl (husband) decided to wrap a few presents. Whenver Carl has possession of anything like scissors and tape, certain animals in our house should know to be afraid. Unfortunately, the cat is as dumb as a bag of sticks, and I think that's probably an insult to sticks everywhere. So a little while later, I find Carl, by himself, in the living room, chuckling. Not a good sign.

Me: What are you doing?
Carl (a little too innocently): Wrapping.
Me: Where are the presents you've wrapped?
Carl: Um, over there.

He points to a sort of oblong present which is wiggling and has a cat paw sticking out of it.

Me: You wrapped the cat?
Carl: She kept sitting in the middle of the paper. So I figured she wanted to participate.
Me: And exactly how did she seem to take it?
Carl: Well, she rolled off the table, and she's got two paws out, so I'm thinking she's not entirely in the Christmas spirit.

A half hour later, she was out of the paper and attacking it, running away and then sneaking up on it again. Now he wants to tape a bow to her head. I'm not sure we're going to survive Christmas. She already hides in the tree and leaps out and pounces on anyone walking past. Which makes the tree wobble. I just know one day I'm going to walk in there and the entire tree is going to be on the floor with one very happy cat sitting to the side. All she'll need are the little bubble words over her head, saying, "Wrap that, you sucker."

overheard at the party

A husband and wife were talking about their sons at the party last night.

Wife: Yeah, the oldest is kinda an old soul. I think he was born an old man and he'll always be an old man.

Guest: That must be nice. He probably doesn't do all of the impetuous things other kids his age do.

Husband: No, but just so you know, we have raised the perfect child because apparently, he knows everything.

Second guest: And the second son?

Wife: Oh, he's a brand spanking new soul. Still has the sticker on him.

Husband: And after his last wreck, we're in sticker shock.

Guest: Ow.

barbie's dream skirt

I loathe shopping. I know that one sentence bans me from all of the girly traditions and the cooing over beautiful clothes or designer nail polishes or whatever it is that some grown women coo over (and they do). I love beautiful clothes, I just hate to shop. When I was a teenager, I was worse. Much worse. I would walk to the entrance of a store, scan it, and know immediately that there was nothing in there I wanted. Drove my mother completely around the bend. And she would insist I couldn't possibly know everything in the store from the displays / close racks, so she'd drag me in there and force me to go through each and every possibility. Which never worked, and not just because I was being stubborn. She'd never find anything in those stores, either. Of course, what really burned her cookies was when I would stand in a doorway, scan a room, see exactly what I wanted, walk over to it, check the size and that was it, I was ready to go. There were no such a thing as bonding over shopping for us. It was combat warfare from the moment we entered the mall until I agreed to buy something, damnit, and I don't think we generally spoke to each other on the trip home.

So you can imagine my delight in online shopping. I would buy everything online, if I could. Unfortunately, there is a party I must attend, and I very literally had nothing appropriate to wear and was having no luck last week with the online gig, so I thought I'd brave the mall.

There are not enough numbers in the heavens to count the ways I hate the mall.

I expected complete disaster. I cannot remember, and I'm searching all of the way back to pre-giving-birth days, when I went into a store and found something on the first try and it fit and worked for the occasion and didn't require me selling my first born to purchase it. But it happened today, which fried my brain. Totally fried it, which is the only explanation I can find for my deciding that, "Hey, that was cool, I wonder what's in the next store?"

I plead insanity.

I wandered through the mall and came to the conclusion that most of the rest of the stores had stocked their shelves and hangers according to this general breakdown:

1) Cheap slut
2) Expensive slut
3) Matronly crone

Why is there nothing fun, sexy, that isn't all about being see-through (hello, it's going to be in the 30s, I don't believe I'll be wearing see-through to a group party where my mom and dad will be, thank you). I am all about wearing stuff that looks sexy, but I really don't want to look like I charge by the hour, especially not a cheap hour. (Hey, I have standards.)

I did, however, wander into a larger store that had gorgeous things. And I found a flirty leather skirt there with a ruffle, and when I touched the leather, it was buttery soft and flouncy in just the right way and I was already imagining the cute little top I could pair with it and then I looked at the price and it was $350.00. For a skirt. And even though we make decent money, my brain instantly parsed that into a car payment and I didn't even think about taking it back to the dressing room.

That is just more depressing than not finding anything. I think I liked shopping better back when I hated it and refused to go. Because now, I keep thinking about that Barbie dream skirt.

he got the memo

One of our clients has a pretty good sense of humor, and we're always razzing each other. Recently, I had to send him a bid, and I forgot to sign it. He called, yammering that it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on without my "official" signature. So I signed it and sent it back with my "official" signature:

Toni C_____, Supreme High Commander of the Universe

So now when I send him a bid with my "regular" signature, he calls and says he can't accept it because my official one isn't on there. Of course, now when he calls, he always asks for the Supreme High Commander. As if she has the time for piddly little phone calls.

(I can dream, at least.)(Hey, why does the Supreme High Commander still have to change the cat litter? I need to see the handbook.)

on the cooking...

You know, on the entry below, a couple of you were saying to enjoy him cooking, which I do, but I have to tell about the epiphany.

See, I loathe cooking. Hate it, hate it, hate it, and just in case there's any doubt, I really hate it. I get bored, wander off to the office to just jot a note about something and forty minutes later, there's billowing smoke from the kitchen and we're heading for take-out. (My oldest son had a standing rule that whenever I'd call him to bring home a loaf of bread or hamburger buns, he'd buy two of whatever I'd asked for. Because he knew I was going to get distracted and burn the first round. And I'd bristle and feel kinda like I should be offended, except that I would generally forget what was going on in the kitchen, wander off and damned if I didn't burn the first round.)

But. When Carl and I were first married and the boys were young, it seemed like it ought to be up to me to cook. You know, those pesky kids actually expected to eat. And while Carl and I owned the construction business right from the start, I was the one able to be home, (doing the bids / calls / bookkeeping), but he was the one out, keeping long hours, so shouldering the cooking burden seemed only fair.

Except.

Every single time he'd walk in and whatever was cooking, he'd start messing with it. He'd add a little this, stir a little that, reconfigure a little something else and he was quite good at it. Whatever he cooked was five star. The man could walk in and I was making plain old ham sandwiches, and the next thing I know, he's taken out the mushrooms, the green onions, the butter, and he's saut�ing them with god-knows-what-else, then adding two or three kinds of meats, then toasting the bread in the grill with a little butter, then layering it all into a sandwich with four kinds of cheese and tomatoes and an hour later (of course, after the kids had gnawed off their elbows, they were so hungry), we'd have mouth-watering sandwiches that tasted better than anything from a restaurant. I'm not kidding, if we had been able to figure out how to run a restaurant, it would have been his dream job, he loves it so much. Only, every time he'd pull that stunt, it was when I had been trying to cook, and not doing too badly at it, and he was moving me out of the way, or nudging the spoon out of my hands and generally taking over the kitchen, which really annoyed the hell out of me. I mean, how dare he! Take over the cooking! And be all annoyingly happy doing it! He's not even miserable like me! He's not suffering! He's enjoying it!

And then an epiphany struck me like a pot upside the head.

It was like, "Hey, stupid. He's having fun. You love to eat. Let him cook!"

I think it only took me five or six years to have that epiphany. (I never claimed to be smart.) At any rate, we made a deal early on... he would cook as much as he wanted and I would eat it.

I want you to know I even held a straight face when we made that deal. I didn't dance around with a victory lap or anything.

Oh, I generally do all of the cleaning, which can be a disaster sometimes (but apparently not quite as bad as whatever it was he'd done in the previous entry), and I don't mind. No, really, I don't. Because man, we're talking amazing food, always available, in the fridge or freezer for extras.

And believe me, he knows that he is greatly appreciated.

some things you just don't want to know

My husband came into the bedroom early this morning when my alarm went off. (As usual, he'd gotten up a couple of hours before me and let me sleep in.) I could instantly smell the wonderful, rich aroma of shrimp and corn soup, one of my favorites. But he looked a little... orange. I rubbed my eyes, squinting (I wear contacts), trying to focus on his blurry form and decide just why he looked so... yeah, orange... and he said, "Um. You're not going to be going into the kitchen any time soon, right?" Usually I'm already groggily stumbling towards the refrigerator to get that first diet Coke of the day to start trying to put consonants and vowels together. "Because it's a little messy, and I didn't want it to scare you."

Now those are words you want to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

"Are you... covered in carrots?"

"Um, maybe. How well can you see?"

"I see shredded carrots all over your shirt."

"Oh. Yeah. Well. I decided to make a double batch of the soup, you know, so we could freeze some, and wrap some up for Christmas presents (which I would have interrupted to find out just how in the hell did he think he was going to do that, but he's scary in that he probably would have had some sort of idea, but he kept talking)... and so I needed more shredded carrots for the soup. And the food processor and I had a little struggle. There was this mound of carrot parts that wouldn't come out and I didn't realize they weren't coming out because there were already a bunch of them in the bowl and the processor was sort of shooting them over the bowl and over the island and I was holding my hand over there to keep it from shooting them too far and the next thing I know, a bunch of the carrots I was shoving in with the other hand had gone in, but they hadn't come out and it turns out that if you put in way more than what's coming out, good things do not happen. It also turns out that if carrots stay in a processor too long while it's going that you get carrot juice. And I was sticking my fingers in the one end thinking I'd nudge the wad of shredded carrots stuck in there on out, and I realized that was sort of stupid, because hey, food processor, and the next thing I know, it sort of exploded. I've cleaned up a bunch of it, but I'm not really finished. So don't come in the kitchen for a little while, okay?"

And that, folks, is when you say, "Okay," and quit asking questions. Because I saw a lot of green on that shirt and really, I didn't want to know.

does workman's comp cover this?

So. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to fill out the workman's comp claim. You know, where it says, "Explain incident." (True story.)

1) Client, who we shall describe as "colorful" and "eccentric" had a pet squirrel.

2) Please notice the past tense above.

3) Said squirrel, named Lucy, is a very lively, rambunctious "rescue" pet.

4) Lucy lived in a large bird cage with lots of things to do, but Lucy is a very clever, smart squirrel.

5) Lucy could open the cage at will, when Client wasn't looking.

6) Client didn't know and therefore couldn't explain this to our employees.

7) Lucy, being a squirrel, likes to climb. And is rather playful.

8) Lucy luuuuuuuuuuvvvvvvvvvves our carpenter, Brian. Luuuuuuuuuuuuuves him because he gave her treats.

9) When Brian was on the other side of the house, Lucy decided to go visit Brian.

10) Lucy opened her cage, sped through the house, climbed up a wall behind Brian and landed on Brian's head.

11) We think she may have been trying to kiss him. Or dig in his cheeks for treats. We're not sure.

12) Brian was a little surprised.

13) We're replacing the broken mirror, the broken sink, and the large hole in the wall is being repaired.

14) Lucy can apparently jump quite far when whatever she's standing on moves abruptly.

15) She jumped more than six feet across the room and landed on the next best target.

16) Our other employee's face.

17) Who hadn't seen any of this unfold because he'd just walked into the room to see what the commotion was about.

18) The stitches to the employee's face, tetanus shot, and follow-up doctor's visit are responsible for this claim.

19) Does workman's comp cover therapy? Both employees are a little twitchy now.

20) (Lucy, however, is currently happily living in the trees in the back yard. She's the one wearing the blue bandana. No, I don't know how she ended up with it on either.)

my short list

Dear Santa:

I was relatively good this year, okay? I should get extra points for all of the times the very large males who live here let the dog eat grass outside even when they know it makes her sick and then they walk over or past the doggie puke, gagging and acting like they're going to pass out if they have to even look at it, much less clean it up and leave it for me to do. Extra points there, bud. When that purple stain showed up on the new sofa, I didn't kill or maim anyone. I didn't even yell. I get bonus points for not yelling, right? When the back bumper of my car mysteriously had new scratches in it, I was practically Zen. My head didn't spin around even once. Okay, I know I wanted to kick things, and I know those things were technically alive and maybe it was even one of the critters I gave birth to, but I didn't actually do it, you know, so that counts as good. (Um, I don't get points off for language, do I?)

So, Santa. Here's what I want for Christmas:

1) To be taller. Just a little taller would do, I'm not greedy, I'm not expecting a whole six inches taller which would make me willowy and lean instead of... well, not. Because I'm really tired of having to find the step stool just to reach the middle shelf. And that top shelf is mocking me. I can hear it. You could shave a few inches off Shaq. He's not using them and really, who would notice?

2) I want to understand the laws of physics and relativity that explain how one boy can enter a clean house and walk through for five minutes only and when he leaves, six rooms are completely cluttered.

3) I want to understand how he got the peanut butter on the ceiling fan. Seriously. He was here five minutes. Five.

4) If the above is too much trouble, think chocolate.

5) No, really. Chocolate.

on being a night owl

I'm a night owl. Born, hardcore, don't give me any of that glorious sunrise, birds singing, coffee on the porch crap. And especially don't do it before ten a.m., unless you're prepared to dodge hard objects flying at your head. When I have to get up for work (we're in construction... people are bitchy if you start after noon... the bastards), I spend the morning siphoning down diet Coke to try to be coherent. (I've tried to find a way just to do a caffeine I.V., but so far, no go.)

My college roommate was a freakish idiot who daily loved to put an incredibly loud clock which TICKED like thunder in a barrel right next to my bed and then the damned sucker worked and the alarm rang at an ungodly hour (i.e., before noon). I would warn her not to put it near me, since I wasn't terribly trustworthy when loud noises shrieked in my ears and every time she'd promise me that she wouldn't and then she'd wake up in the middle of the night (to go to the bathroom) and then move her clock over to my side of the room, set to the time she had to wake up. At which point, the clock would scream like the hounds of hell and I would spring up out of bed, my head spinning around, and in that same nanosecond, before I was truly even conscious, my good pitching arm would snag that alarm and heave it across the room onto the cinderblock dorm walls, and all its little pieces would slide down to the floor in a heap. She would snore through the whole thing and I'd threaten her life, which, she explained later, always helped jump her adrenaline in the mornings and prepare for her first class. I told her being dead was a really bad way to prepare, but she kept doing it until I found her secret alarm clock stash and started setting them to two a.m. When I was nice and awake. After a couple of weeks of sleep deprivation, she caved. It was a good thing, because I was fast about to move on to blackmail. She slept heavily and was exceptionally pose-able. Photography was my hobby.

Do not mess with a night owl.

A long time ago, I used to get a lot of people trying to reform me. There were all sorts of suggestions about how if I just got into the habit of going to sleep early and getting up early, I'd re-train my body's clock. Or they would offer ideas as to what to eat, how to sleep, what to drink or not to drink and when, as if by the very fact that I operated differently from them, I was somehow wrong. And when I was younger, I'd feel... chastised. Awkward, like I had something to apologize for to society as a whole because I wasn't little miss perky-ass alert first thing at dawn. (I've met people like that. When I'm Surpreme High Commander of the Universe, they are sooooooooo gonna be first in line for some serious smiting.)(Unless they bring chocolate.)

Some time ago, there were tons of studies on biological rhythms and how some people are just born to be night owls and others, morning people. There was a study (hell, there may have been thousands, but I only read one) which talked about a certain genetic marker in the iris of the eye. If you had it, you were a night person. If not, you weren't. Apparently the study's results were pretty much 100% correct down the line.

HAH!

My parents are dedicated morning people. (Sleeping "in" until five a.m. was slacking.) I was barely going to sleep by five a.m. When I was in high school, my Dad had to get up at 2:30 a.m. to go to work. I would read at night when it was quiet and I wasn't as likely to be interrupted by my little brother, and I'd hear Dad's alarm ring. I'd turn off my lamp, wait impatiently while he dressed, left, and then I'd listen carefully until I heard the sound of his truck turning from our street onto the main road out. I'd have to give it a couple more beats because he could see my window from that main road (as experience taught me) and if I turned on my light too soon, I'd hear about it later. Then I'd read until about four, get up at six to go to school, stay all day, do dance team after school (two to three hours of practice), drive home, do homework or talk on the phone and then, along about eleven in the evening, wake right-the-hell up. You'd think I'd have been exhausted, but even if I was feeling completely worn out at nine, by eleven, I was wide awake.

My mom said I was the same as an infant. She'd wake me up at five or so in the morning, keep me awake and busy all day, refuse to let me nap because she wanted me to sleep at night, which meant putting up with a supremely cranky infant during the late afternoon, and then at ten, bang, I was wired, happy, and playful. Raring to go. She finally gave up and just let me sleep in my own rhythms and voila, happy baby.

There aren't quite as many people trying to reform me, now. Probably that fear of me drop-kicking them across the room when they're asleep at midnight and I'm wired slows them down. Part of it may be that I've really embraced being a night owl. I love it, I love the quiet time after dark when so much of the world is asleep, I love how awake and alert I am, how the writing is always better then. I love the sense of possibility I feel, the creativity. And a thousand other things. I still have a tendancy to toss the alarm clock across the room, smashing it into pieces, but I'm getting better -- I'm down to two clocks a week now.

i am not sam

I remember wanting desperately to have been a twin when I was growing up, and I kept looking for secret evidence that maybe I was adopted and there was a sister out there somewhere, someone who was just as weird as I was and just as different from the rest of my family. It probably didn't help that I was born in June, a Gemini, and one of my aunts told me on my fourth birthday that Gemini meant "twins" and I misunderstood her to say that I actually was a twin. I was so very very disappointed when Mom showed me my birth certificate.

When I was a freshman at college, though, I started having a strange set of people coming up to me with, "Hi, Sam! Are you going to English?" or "Hey, Sam -- you going to the party at the Deke's tonight?" The first few times it happened, I thought it was some sort of freshman hazing joke and I generally looked at the speaker like they were a loon and went back to whatever I was doing. One guy followed me all the way across the Quad one time because he'd apparently asked Sam (Samantha) out and she'd said to check with her the next day. He wasn't buying that I wasn't Sam until I showed him my driver's license. He was more than a little shocked and proclaimed we had to be twins.

I figured he'd had waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much to drink at whatever party he'd met this poor girl and anyone with brunette hair would have looked familiar to him. Then my friends started getting annoyed with me, saying, "Hey, I shouted at you in the bookstore and you just kept walking!" or "Hey, what was wrong with you yesterday? I tried to wave you over to join us and you just kept on going." Etc. I explained to them that it wasn't me they'd seen and most of them probably thought I was just having a bitchy day and didn't want to own up to it.

About a week or so later, I was flipping through The Reveille (LSU's newspaper) and there was an ad for a hair salon and in it, was me. Moi. Same hair, same color, same cut, same face, same eyes, same body. Me. Mirror image. Except I hadn't taken the photo. I studied that photo for a couple of minutes, wondering if someone had taken a candid when I wasn't looking and just used it for the ad, but there were a couple of subtle differences. Then a guy standing near me saw the ad, saw me and said, "Hey, so you're a model?" He didn't believe me when I said that it wasn't me and called me a stuck-up bitch because obviously, being a model had gone to my head and if I didn't want to give him my number, I could have just said so.

Sam was starting to give me a headache.

It happened often enough through the rest of the semester that anytime someone strange approached me and just started talking as if we knew each other, I'd interrupt quickly with, "I am not Sam." I was very curious about her, and yet... she had to have known about me, too, because they surely went back and told her... and neither of us did anything to contact the other. It probably boiled down to not having anything to say, really, except, "Hey, give me back my face," but I wasn't overly fond of it anyway, so it didn't matter.

The next semester, a couple of people came up to me saying, "Sam! I thought you'd moved!" and I'd have to explain again that I wasn't Sam. I had started regretting not actively looking for her, just to satisfy my curiosity, but by then, I figured it was too late. I would tell people who greeted me as "Sam" to please tell Sam that Toni said hello.

Every once-in-a-while when I go into a local business, I'll get greeted like a long lost friend, with people exclaiming, "Sam! You moved back!" and I'd have to explain again. I have no idea where she went or why, or anything about her, and I now wish I'd found out. I know everyone is said to have a doppelganger, but it started to seem like I really was related to this girl. It happened again this weekend, some hmmmmmufflemufflehmmm years after college.

I just laughed and said, "I am not Sam. But if you see her, tell her Toni said hello."

What would you do if you heard someone looked just like you? Would you want to contact them? Get to know them? Or not care?

er, help?

Got it! Garrison was my hero -- saving me countless hours of frustration trying to learn this weird program. Garrison rocks.

Can someone tell me if there is a way to force two or three text boxes to work in tandem in Word? I have a basic logo like this (click link):

Toni's business logo

I made this in Word. It's got to go on documents for the other producer of the romantic comedy. I had a slightly different one before which I had created in Photoshop back when I had a partner, but I need to change it and now can't. (No photoshop on this computer.)

I want to be able to enlarge, reduce or turn the image and I don't want the white space around the ouside of the image (the margins) to automatically be included, but the boxes all work independently right now and I can't "cut out" just the logo and move it around. Is there a way to force them to work in tandem? Or is there a kind soul out there who could slap this into Photoshop for me?

Thanks much.

feeling good

There are some days, like today, that are such a gift. Nothing earth shattering, nothing movie-of-the-week. Just wonderful moments, time spent with Carl, curled up in bed or laughing at something together. There has been more and more of that lately, and I am in awe.

I never really thought I'd get here, in this place, at this time. And it was one of those rare moments when I wasn't thinking, "I'd be happy if _____" where that blank might be "my novel sells" or "the movie gets made" or "I lost another ten pounds" or "the kids were completely settled" or any of a thousand things that flow around us daily, rushing me toward some goal or other. There will always be one more goal, one more thing to do. But I never thought I'd be here. Capable of real happiness, contentment.

Are there things to stress over? Thousands. I still haven't finished that damned synopsis. (A sentence which I just told Diane will probably be on my tombstone.) There are always things to be done with the construction business. Always things the kids need.

I have no doubt the pod person which has taken over my body will leave abruptly and the grumpy curmudgeon will resurface, but I'm enjoying the pod life for today. It's been good and I wanted to remember that there really are days like this.

only at my house...

Sometimes, you answer the door, and there are people there. And sometimes, you go to the back door because you simply need to walk outside and get something, and everything is quite normal and fine. But if you live in my house, you will go to the back door, minding your own business, la la la, all is well with the world, and when you open the door, two... not one because that would be too easy, but two stray black dogs will come barrelling into your home with a frenzy that most evangelists would envy. And they will be so grateful to have finally found someone and so excited to have finally been allowed inside somewhere that they will run in circles, many many many circles, and you will curse the fact that it is a perfect circle going from your living room to your kitchen to your office and back to the living room, and they will suddenly discover your cat, who has never really seen any other dog than her own friendly housemate who has the energy of a snail, and said cat will climb down off her normal perch on your desk because she is a stupid, curious cat, and then you will stand there in complete and total shock at the lightning speed with which said cat will run in that same circle with two extremely excited stray dogs chasing after her and part of you knows you really have to catch them and the evil part of you notes it's the most exercise the cat has had all year, but you really absolutely must somehow tackle at least one of the dogs and try to read its collar. Which you will eventually do, although you have now taken out a couple of lamps, a sidetable, a few plants and various little niceties and when you finally tackle the dog (which smells a touch more like sweaty dog than you'd prefer) and call the owners, you will sound like you've been running a marathon and they will almost hang up on you because you're scaring them.

They will also think you're on crack because they just saw their dogs an hour or so ago and those dogs don't know how to get out of the fence. But they will start to believe you when they hear their pets barking at the poor (and now exhausted) cat in the background, who has taken to hiding behind an armoire.

When they finally get to your house and you open the door, they are so worried you're about to sue them for their dogs, they keep making you repeat that no, you won't sue, all you want is for them to take the little dynamos home.

And when they're gone (and you've febreezed the whole damned house) you make a mental note to turn on the outside light from now on, because at least it was two friendly puppies and not one of the neighborhood racoons living in the creek in the back of the house or one of the skunks we've smelled from time to time.

It's not your traditional way to get your exercise, but it'll do.

sooo

In my pursuit of breaking all things computery, my new computer froze up this morning and once I re-booted, it refused to recognize the mouse. They weren't speaking to each other. (I'm not sure , maybe they were arguing over who flirted with the keyboard last.) I pull out the troubleshooting guide....

(okay, my friend Cor, who usually gets these frantic computer-woes e-mails, knows that means I frantically freaked out, went through about three dozen places where I thought I might have left said troubleshooting guide, contemplated sacrificing small appliances if it would just appear, found it, [those small appliances have a real survival instinct, I'm telling ya], tried everything in it, improvised a bit, and then threw said trouble-shooting guide across the room for all the good it does me)...

So I break down and call the Dell help line. Wherein, after all the typical intro, what is your problem sort of stuff, the conversation went like this:

Dell Guy (DG): Is this a Dell mouse, or another brand?
Me: Another brand. Logitech.
DG: Did you purchase this one from Dell?
Me: Nope, I already had it.
DG: Okay. (he walks me through several trouble-shooting things... none work)
DG: I believe the problem is your mouse. Since you're under warranty, we can have one shipped out to you in 24 hours.
Me: But I didn't buy the mouse from you.
DG: Yes, in 24 hours, we will ship it.
Me: Even if I didn't buy it from you?
DG: It will be there in about two days.
Me: Wow, that's some warranty. My car isn't working so great. I didn't get that from Dell either. Can I have one of those, too?
DG: 24 hours ma'am... just a moment, let me check on your address.
...........
DG: Ah. Okay, I need a moment to put in all your information for the order.
Me: But you don't know what kind of car I want.
DG: What color would you like?
Me: Is it fast? Because if it's fast, I want a red one.
DG: Yes it's the normal mouse speed.
Me: That's not very fast. I'd have to go at least Jaguar speed. Something XL would do.
DG: Just a moment ma'am. Oh. I see here that you didn't buy your mouse from Dell.
Me: Damn. You're quick.
DG: I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can ship you another Dell mouse only.
Me: So does this mean I'm not getting the car?

I'll let you know if a Jag shows up in the driveway. Meanwhile, I got a new mouse from the local Office Depot and it works. (Well, until it flirts with the keyboard, I suspect.)

argggggggggghhhh

I was having DSL problems yesterday and today, and somewhere in the process of fixing it tonight, I had to reboot. It zapped all of the e-mail in the in-box from May 14th until now. I don't know why May 14th. Apparently that was a magical non-e-mail-zapping date. Everything that had come into the general mail-box is gone, so if you sent something direct to me that needed a response (not to the address on this site, but the other addresses I have that those of you who know me have)... it's gone. Please re-send. Luckily all of the e-mail generated from this site is still in its folder. Whew.

Back to your regularly scheduled internet.

pieces and parts

You know how when some people put things together, there are always a few parts left over? But the thing seems to work just fine? (Which would never happen for me. I could use all of the parts and follow the directions exactly, and it's still up in the air whether or not it would work.) Well Carl is one of those people. He does occasionally resort to reading the instructions (very rarely) and there are always an alarming number of parts left over, but whatever it is that he's building / assembling works.

It is very annoying.

He was telling me about having to assemble an elaborate exterior door handle / lock set yesterday and there were parts included which were needed, but which didn't fit right, so he had to go "unstupid" them. Which meant he went to his grinder and ground the part into the right shape.

You mean grinding parts straight out of a package isn't the first thing you would have thought to do? Yeah, me either. I would have fought with the damned thing for several hours, wallowed around with it until I looked like I'd just come from Insanity-R-Us, and then -- fighting the urge to take out a bat and smash it -- I would have gone to the store, exchanged the package because I would have assumed something was missing, gotten home and had the same exact parts to deal with all over again, at which point I would have probably kicked something and scared the neighbors and seriously considered dynamite. This is why Carl is the actual contractor part of our construction company and I do the office stuff.

The world is safer that way.

You are welcome.

two t-shirts...

I really must get. Or better, I'll put the first saying on the front and the second on the back:

"Crap. You're going to try to cheer me up, aren't you?"

"I like you. When I rule the world, your death will be quick and painless."

you know you're in trouble when

Your dentist (who has graciously worked you in because your toothache is making you seriously contemplate whether you really need the right side of your head)... takes one look at the side in question and says, "Yikes! How are you not screaming?"

Um, yeah. Not good.

I had no idea that I had anything wrong prior to last night, because I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. But apparently, something has been wrong for a very long time and it decided to get my attention. Turns out that the root canal / crown -- which, she says, are some of the best work she's seen -- mysteriously created a cavity that does not show up on x-rays or to normal examination. And this became extremely infected (no one knows how).

She kept offering me a script for pain killers when I was leaving, and I was like, "Oh, no, I'm fine. Ibuprofen will be enough." And about the time the deadening wore off and the right side of my face felt like a wrecking ball had been using it for practice, I realized why she was being so insistent. Of course, it was too late to call her for it then. I am so smart, sometimes. ugh.

Go eat something crunchy for me.

crazy thoughts...

Does anyone else think that maybe Liza and Burt are maybe meant for each other?

overheard

Her: I think I'm going to go take a nap now.
Him: A nap? But you slept late this morning.
Her: I hear it's easier to die when you're horizontal. A lot less of that pesky falling over.

D

So, we were in the mall last night. We're so rarely in the mall, I feel like I'm visiting some other planet, and I'm worried that they're secretly emitting some kind of "shop-til-you-drop" ray that will fry my brains and make me veer into the Bebe store and start buying frilly half-shirts and jeans so low, I'm not entirely sure I'd have to remove them to pee. Our original mission was to replace the treadmill which had given up the ghost about a month ago, and we'd kept saying every night, "You know, we'd really use that treadmill right now because it's just too hot to walk outside," and so of course we waited until the first cool snap of the year to go buy it. We're logical like that.

Selecting the treadmill was fairly simple... it has a built-in fan which probably won't last three days, but otherwise, it's pretty basic. There was minor discussion about how to get it home because in our brilliance, we went to the mall in our small car, not the truck. Carl suggested strapping it to the top of the car, which gave me the immediate mental image of a mouse crawling home with a piano on its head, which I flat refused to do. He opted to go get his truck (it's pathologically impossible for a man in the south to allow someone else to deliver something if they have their own truck), which meant I had to roam the mall. For 45 whole minutes. By myself.

Just five minutes in a mall can bring on images of wandering for years in the desert, and I did that thing that I had avoided for years... I wandered into Victoria's Secrets.

That is one scary place.

The woman came up to me and asked if she could help, and I told her I thought so, that I needed a new bra. She asked my size, and I said I couldn't really remember. I thought maybe a 36B or maybe it was a C cup. She appraised my boobage, and said, "No... no honey, I think you're probably a D cup."

I said, "No way. I have never ever had big breasts. And Ds are big. They're a B or a C, tops." (When I was 18, I was so flat-chested, if you'd have told me that sacrificing chickens would have made them grow? I'd have been raiding the local farms. I don't know what happened, but somewhere between 18 and 19, boobs showed up. Not big ones, but hey, beggars can't be choosey, you know? I was just grateful I wasn't going to keep being mistaken for a ten-year-old boy.)

The clerk said, "Nope, I'm pretty sure you're a D. Raise your arms." Which I did. (It's weird... how often have strangers walked up to you and proclaimed you had a bigger breasts / penis and asked you to raise your arms so they can see exactly how big, just like that, no first date or anything, and you just do it, right there. I felt so cheap and easy.) Anyway, she measured and said, "Yes, you're definitely a D. A 34 D."

Since I patently did not believe her, she gave me one of each size, and I went to the dressing room, trying on the C first, because of course it would fit. I know my last bras were never a D. And I've lost weight recently. So I put the C on and the damned thing was so tight, my boobs were resting on my chin. Then I tried the D on and looked in the mirror and said, "Holy FUCK, it FITS!"

So much for being couth in Victoria's Secrets.

(Yes, I bought several. I have lived for this day. There should be a national celebration or something.)

(I wonder if I go back to the mall to buy a home gym, will I find out I'm several inches taller, too?)

(pretty please?)

fever

Tonight I have a headache from hell and a fever. The only thing that tastes good on my throat is the cold chocoalte ice cream, which Carl served up. I didn't even have to get up to go get it.

:::::hmmmmmmm:::::

I may be sick for a really really long time.

new stress test

Carl, (husband, who has always been a half-bubble off center) talking to a young waiter at one of our local hangouts... They had been chatting a minute or so (yes, it's our fault your food's getting cold):

Carl looks at him a moment. (I think wanting to tell him the truth about what it's like owning your own business and essentially being in guerilla warfare every single day.) Looks at me. Looks back at the waiter.

The waiter double-takes, looks at me to see if he's serious. I have no clue.

(And people wonder where I get fodder for the stuff I write.)

WOOO!

And the Red Sox win!

ouch... it hurts to even think of doing this

So, one of our employees (college aged kid who works part-time) was talking very excitedly about the Halloween costume party he's going to this weekend. He's going as Fred, from Scooby Doo. He has a friend, a young woman, who's going to go as...

a roll of duct tape.

She's planning on shaving all the neceesary parts of her body and she's going to wrap duct tape around her entire nude body. Yep, even the soft parts.

(For everyone who just flinched? I'm right there with you.)

I'm not sure if she's waaaaaaaaaaay out of his league or equally immature, but can you imagine how not lucky he's going to get later that night? (Talk about your safe sex.)

I am never going to hear that sshiiicck sound of duct tape coming off the roll without a little mental flinch.

sweet talk overheard

him: You know, when we're really close like this?
her: Yes?
him: You kinda look like an alien. Your eyes are all fuzzy-mushed together.
her: Wow. What every woman wants to hear.
him: But a really sexy alien!
her: You're lucky we're already married.
him: Hot alien sex!
her: Of course, you may not live through the night.

commercials

Since I don't have TiVo yet (am I the last one on the planet?), I still catch commercials. Some of them make me hate the advertiser with a loathing beyond that I have for slime-covered cockroaches (I'm looking at you, deBeers for that stupid "I love this man" commercial, said only after she gets the diamond.) But the Miller Lite commercials with the "good call" angle crack me up. (If you follow that link, click on TV ads at the top navigation bar and you can view them in Quicktime.)

Yes, sometimes it takes very little to entertain me.

painting

I spent yesterday at my parents' house faux finishing one wall in their dining area and smaller sections in the kitchen to pull the effect through the kitchen and they seemed really thrilled. When I first started, I think my dad thought I was nuts, because it always looks pretty ugly until it starts coming together. I don't have photos of that, but I'll get some the next time I go out and post for contrast.

I used the same technique as in my living room, except their colors were light -- a murshroom color, a lighter shade of that and white. My colors were quite darker and in the red family, but I still love them. (Oh, and my dad thought I had completely lost my mind when I did the wall the base coat, which was an extremely bright pure red... but he loves it now.)

and later with the furniture

shout out

Good grief, I get sick and tired of hearing all the low carb hoopla, and I'm even doing the whole low-carb thing. (Which started off very begrudgingly, but I've lost ten pounds and only really have five(ish) more to go, so hey, it's working even when Weight Watchers didn't.) Still, can there be anything more boring than fixating on what has carbs and what doesn't?

Sure.

Unless you wanna talk CHOCOLATE.

I have to have it. You know how moms are typically all self-sacrificing, giving their children the last bite of whatever was delicious to eat because they're moms and moms are such good people? NOT AT MY HOUSE when it comes to chocolate. The kids know to BACK THE HELL AWAY if it's the last bit of chocolate because if they don't, there could be maimage. I'm still holding a grudge against my oldest son from when he was nine and there were warm brownies that his grandmother had made which filled the car on the way home with the most insanely delicious scent in the world, and both boys ate all but the last one, and the last one was MINE MINE ALL MINE until the oldest picked it up fast and licked the whole damned thing. I may forgive him when he's forty. (probably not) It's a good thing I don't know state secrets, because all anyone would have to do is wave chocolate in front of my face and I'd be all, "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?"

So when I found this chocolate ice cream I was skeptical. I've tasted diet chocolate before and can there be anything more wrong with the world than a product that says DIET and CHOCOLATE on the same package?

But this stuff?

Amazingly good. Really REALLY good. So those of you who've been beating yourself up on the low-carb thing or the Weight-watchers thing and not having really great chocolate ice cream? Go forth and indulge.

Hey, I do what I can for world peace.

overheard (this one's for Jette)

Out at dinner the other night, a conversation overheard at the next table:

WOMAN: It's fine. One day, he's going to get his comeuppance.
MAN: (startled, spitting his drink)... His... what?
WOMAN: Comeuppance.
MAN: (relieved) Oh. Okay. Good.
WOMAN: What did you think I said?
MAN: That he was going to get Cum Muppets. And I was thinking, damn, Sesame Street sure has changed a lot since I was a kid.

At which point, we spewed our drinks.

what happens when you're away from your computer

Icon Story

they needed a poll for this?

Apparently, money can help you be satisfied.

Well, duh.

more on the not-hurricane

Jette has a couple of very interesting posts on the hurricane Ivan and the potential impact on New Orleans, and Brian commented in my comments section below how he didn't see how we got used to all the hurricanes coming through here (or rather, dealing with all of the flooding and damage.) Truth is, we get so many terrible thunderstorms here, it's just plain normal. My mom and dad have a couple of friends who have re-done their house something like seven or eight times because they're in a flood zone and they have gotten nailed by some terrible flooding. They pay for flood insurance and go through a lot of hassle, but this area is home (to all of their kids and grandkids) and they wouldn't dream of moving. We've been lucky enough to have never lived in a house which flooded or had flood waters regularly blocking our street, but I know a lot of people who aren't so lucky. I'm not sure that I could live like that, to tell you the truth.

It's funny, because as bad as the hurricanes or big storms can get, with today's access to the media / news and technology's highly accurate forecasting, we typically know a huge storm is on its way long enough ahead of time to take precautions. Lots of families are old hands at sand-bagging (piling up bags of sand at all doorways or entrances to their homes to prevent flooding if their lawn gets flooded but it's only just high enough to get in a door's threshhold.) A lot of people feel like there's enough beauty here and culture and family tradition / ties that they couldn't picture themselves living anywhere else, and since they can at least prepare for the big storms / hurricanes, it's a small and decently rare occasion that they'll get harmed by the weather and since that liklihood is so low, they're willing to risk it. And I can see their point. I, on the other hand, cannot fathom living in an area where the earth could just up and decide to move somewhere else while I'm standing on it, or a tornado showing up without much notice and destroying random things in its path, or a blizzard burying everything and having to battle all that snow to get out... those things seem way more impossible to me. I guess it's all what you're used to.

As I said to Jette on her blog, though, I'm afraid that since we've dodged yet another bullet, more and more people are going to decide not to leave next time, (especially this time since so many tried to evacuate and it took an insane number of hours to go somewhere that's normally just an hour away. New Orleans keeps dodging the huge hurricanes and the potential to be 20 feet under water, but I don't know if its luck will hold. What I'm afraid of is that next time, people will remember all too well all of the aggravation and expense of trying to evacuate and decide "screw it, it's not worth the effort" and get caught in the really big one. (Of course, that's a movie right there. I'm sure someone who does end-of-the-world scenarios... probably even Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich already have someone writing it.)

breezy

Last night, we saw Ivan turning more due north in the Gulf, putting it moving up through Mobile, which is where it's gone. Additionally, it seems to be moving away from us. The most "weather" we had here last night were a few strong breezes! No limbs, no trees going down, no worries. (Well, the only worry is that you may not have gotten something you needed from the grocery store because if so? You're outta luck. Every store out there looks plucked over and bare.)

Ironically, they had already declared all of the schools closed yesterday, so it's gorgeous weather, sunny, not too hot, and all of the kids are sleeping late (well, all of the big college kids, who had "hurricane" parties last night... any excuse, eh?).

calm before the ... calm?

It looks like Ivan is taking that northernly path upward to Mobile, which totally sucks for anyone there in the way. It's always hard expressing these things because while you're relieved it's not heading directly at you, you realize someone's going to be hurt, badly, and you don't want to wish it on anyone else.. I know in years past, whenever there's been a big storm / hurricane / catastrophe, there are a few business people here who'll load up a big 18-wheeler full of food, supplies and whatever people will volunteer and truck it over to where they need help. Every little bit counts, particularly if you aim for rural areas which may not have gotten the Red Cross relief just yet. We'll participate again this year. But I hope it's not needed, ya know? (Though that is surely wishful thinking.)

Right now, though, it is incredibly calm here. I don't even think we've got much wind, though the storm is supposed to close in on land in the morning and we should be getting those outer band gusts.

waitin' for Ivan

With Ivan moving a little more to the west each time I turn on the news, we've gone into hurricane prep mode. It's a bit insane here with the traffic and the rushing to and fro to get groceries, water, money. We have two big generators we use for our business, so if we lose electricity, we can keep the refrigerator / freezer and other essentials running. Carl also had a very large propane tank filled -- it fuels the new propane bar-b-que I just got him (which is another story, but he loves it), so we'll have it decently easy to cook. We'll have lots of water stored, so that should be fine.

I am mostly worried about the wind and falling trees. Even if Ivan doesn't move any closer to us than the current path indicated, the winds will gust pretty high and we'll get a lot of downed limbs / trees, which can do a lot of damage. When we went through Andrew so many years ago, we had so many downed trees, it felt like there were more down than up. Lots of people have a hard time imagining the problem here until they travel in this area, but our landscape is so full of trees, that when you cross the Mississippi River bridge and look towards Baton Rouge, towards LSU, you see mostly green and only a few buildings piercing above the treeline.

Meanwhile, I don't think the business big-buy-out thing is going to happen or work. There are some legal wranglings going on, and frankly, we think the partner guy bit off more than he can actually chew. We've watched other friends do big business deals in unorthodox ways and sail through it and pull off rather shocking accomplishments, so as absolutely crazy as the original deal sounded here (and truly, I'm certain it did sound insane since I can't give details without the people who own the business being able to google themselves and finding my entries), it wasn't as impossible as it may have sounded. But some of the unorthodox cowboy ways of the business partner are coming back to bite him, so to speak, and we doubt very seriously there will be any sort of deal. Which, frankly, is actually a relief at this point. I haven't really been able to talk about it here because I can't explain with real details, but we have been very uncomfortable with how fast he moved without consulting us and without giving us the level of approval we should have had to do the very things he was wanting us to do. We started feeling very weird about the whole thing, and we've consulted quite a lot of friends (attorneys, other CEO friends of big companies that have moved fast like this -- one in particular we've done a lot of work for -- and other good advisors), and while they agreed that cowboy partner probably could pull it all off, they were bothered by the same things that bothered us. When we heard about the attorneys wrangling for the partner, we pushed for more information, and we feel that it's just not going to happen, and that's probably for the best.

Thing is, we've known this guy for three years. We've seen him do a lot of impressive things, and he's actually done quite a lot of things with us and has always lived up to expectations, until now. So maybe we were incredibly naive that he could pull off what he said? I dunno. Probably so. But the very nice thing about all of this is that we didn't invest a single penny, it's not going to cost us anything for him to have tried, and we've still got more work construction-wise anyway, so no harm, no foul.

(And me... I'm really relieved. Because I would have been glad to have a secondary income that made us not wholly dependent on our own business to make all the ends meet, but at the same time, our business is growing and doing better so taking attention away from it right now... probably not so smart a move. And like Daisy said in a comment... no writing time! That would have really gotten to me after a while.)

rain

We're starting to get a lot of rain, and as Frances moves through Florida tomorrow, we'll probably see a fair amount of it as the outer feeder bands spiral our way. I really feel for all of the people in Florida who are having to prep for this second one after already having to deal with the chaos Charley caused three weeks ago. We went through Andrew when the boys were little. It sliced across Florida, downgraded slightly and then slammed up through Baton Rouge. Our house had so many trees down around it, it was difficult to see, and people were without electricity and basic needs for weeks. Here's hoping Frances dies out fast and doesn't cross the state to do even more damage there... or anywhere else on this side of the Gulf.

migration

Every fall, the LSU students move in by the hordes and everything changes radically around here, particularly for the first couple of weeks. The light traffic we had in this area all summer becomes an insane gridlock, all of the restaurants in the area are filled to the brim and it's insane how quickly food sells out in the grocery store. I mean, I expected things like what happened last year (soup, cheap pasta goods, ramen noodles, etc.), but good grief, they've bought out all of the best cuts of meat and the best produce. It's a little weird. (Am I evil if I say I will be glad when a couple of weeks have gone by and they're all broke and back to eating ramen noodles?) (Yes, I know, evil.)

er...

Anytime you have a dream that includes both Zeus and Bob Newhart, you have probably gone round the bend.

(I'm not sure what's scarier... that I had that dream or that in dream logic, it made perfect sense for Bob Newhart to be one of the gods.)

okay, I am so not going to be eating fajitas for a while

I have been a little crazy busy this weekend with family and work stuff, but am popping up just to gross you out with a link to this story.

a lot of new

I ended up shopping today for work-related things (meaning, definitely the un-fun variety) and doing one thing that I never expected to do, which was to buy 100 yards of burlap. Strangely enough, it was for a concrete pour we're doing tomorrow. The client wanted something unique for a finish for the patio we were pouring a week ago, but he didn't want a "stamped" design, nothing that specific. Just some texture in the concrete to keep it from being too slick, since this was for a patio adjacent to a pool area. Carl had the idea to overlay burlap on it -- you put it on there when the concrete is floated out, but still wet. You "float" out the burlap (i.e., you run a bullfloat over it and essentially press the burlap slightly down into the concrete), then wait a little while, then pull the burlap off before the concrete hardens so much that it won't come off. It turned out quite pretty, and it's going to be gorgeous when it's stained later. The client was so happy, he decided he wanted all of the other concrete (the area around the pool, a big walkway, and another patio area) all done the same. The pour is scheduled for in the morning, so I was buying 100 yards of the stuff today. The people at the material store weren't exactly sure I wasn't going out and smoking the stuff, given the expressions they gave me as I put bolt after bolt of burlap up on the table to be measured.

Next, I got to visit with ever-wonderful Otto as he was traveling through Baton Rouge this afternoon on his way to New Orleans. It's so terrific to see him -- it's been something like three years, I think. (Otto doesn't update often on that blog I just linked to, but his writing is stellar -- you should bookmark it and check it out.) We talked a lot about kids and locations / living expenses, and photos, because Otto is a terrific photographer, and before he left, he showed me his new digital SLR Canon, which I totally lusted after and tried not to drool too much, but wow, that made me want one. I know Tamar just got the Rebel too, and man, I want one a digital SLR with a fierceness. Unfortunately, they are not giving them away and I have other things I have to do before I splurge, but maybe by Christmas. (sigh, yearn yearn yearn)

uncordinated

(um, leave it to me to misspell uncoordinated. yeesh. I'm leaving it, since it's so apt.)

This morning was a tense morning, as Carl had to get a huge list of things done in order to be some place later on in the afternoon, and he was practically vibrating with energy. He usually wakes up with the sun (not something that came naturally, but learned after years of being in construction), while I am firmly convinced that there really shouldn't be any acquaintence with the sun until noonish. At the earliest. So I wasn't the brightest bulb around early this morning as I stumbled after him in my attempt to help, or at least keep him company, while he did all of his errands. I am also not the world's most articulate person in the morning, unless you call grunting a discourse, and if so, I'm a scholar. So when he urged me to hurry up to get out of the car (he was trying to drop me off at the front door of a business and he sort of wanted me to hurry in there and beat the other customers who were lining up so we could get in and out quickly, and I say "sort of" because the man has been married to me for 22 years and hasn't completely gone mad in thinking I'm going to move fast in the morning for anything short of fire, and even that's iffy because I don't so much mind the heat)... well, anyway, when he got the car parked and got inside, he noticed I had a large brown stain developing just over my left breast where I had spilled diet Coke as I was trying to get out of the car. I was not exactly a happy camper about this, as the shirt was a very pale blue and the brown stain rather obvious and I looked like my breast had sprung a nasty leak. Which reminded him of the restaurant a couple of nights prior when I had tried to move a bowl of dipping sauce from one spot on the table to another, when it started to slip out of my hands and I don't exactly know what happened, I just sort of have this multiple-stepped-image in my head of that bowl doing acrobatics before it landed first on my breasts and then flipped onto the floor, neatly spattering patrons four tables away. He started to tease me that he couldn't take me anywhere and then, realizing it was quite a bit before noon and before I became actually human, he decided that hugging me would be a better option; hence, he lives still. About thirty minutes later, we were in a restaurant when I looked down and realized I had spilled part of my breakfast onto the other breast. Another nice brown stain, but somewhat smaller and for crying out loud, my boobs really aren't that big, I don't know what the problem is. I was hoping he hadn't noticed and I tried to act nonchalant and saw him trying to not notice, so we talked about other things. Wherein I promptly managed to drop a strawberry -- complete with juice and whipped cream -- in the center of my shirt. By this point, he was trying so hard not to laugh, that I just gave up and said, "Why don't I just grab it with both hands and mush it around on my chest just to get it over with." Which, of course, delighted him, and I got that wicked grin that I love. And I would have, too, but that would have been strawberry abuse, and even in the morning, I have a little sense.

hip hop

One of the funny things about kids is that they'll give you perspective. Before Jake was driving much, I'd hear the loud hip hop jamming base through my skin from a car two lanes over and I'd wonder what on earth that kid was thinking with all that base... so much base, he couldn't possibly hear the music. People around here would get all up in arms over the lyrics, and I'd think hmph, what difference does it make, they never hear the lyrics anyway. Then Jake worked through the summer and a little over Christmas and saved and saved and finally had enough money to buy some big speakers. Then he worked and worked and worked more and traded in those speakers for a really huge single speaker, the kind which will blow your veins clean out your body without even bothering to ask permission. You've got blockage? Sit in Jake's truck. It will shake it loose.

It was a complete mystery to me why on earth a child thought he had to have speakers like that, but then the more I saw of him take pride in how he had designed his set up, how he excelled at something (and design / arrangement of the speakers in the car have a lot to do with the quality and quantity of sound)... I started understanding. Here was a kid who was transferred from a not-so-racially mixed school into one where it was heavily mixed, and he had a way of fitting in, of excelling that gained a lot of respect from eveyone around. I always wanted the kids to grow up having a lot of friends of whatever color happened to be around, and we picked the neighborhood where we live in great part to the racial diversity, but his school (the one he attended when we first lived here) wasn't all that mixed. I worried about that, but at the same time, that school was (supposedly) one with higher academic scores. We hit a point with that school where the stick up their collective asses grew to be more than I could stand or subject Jake to, and the school we transferred him into was heavily racially mixed and I suddenly wondered, would my kid be scared? Be intimidated? Be left out all of his senior year? Not make friends?

I asked him one day after he'd been there a little while just how he was doing... did he have anyone at all to hang with. He laughed. Turns out, he was having a great time. The kids were "cool" he said, they were into hip hop and music and many of them competed (two groups from that school have actually cut records that are getting play here). They didn't let the junkies hang out with them, and they all had each others' backs. They also liked Jake a lot. He had this ability to dog down anyone as good as he got -- they'd sit around trading smart-ass insults and Jake always got laughs. He knew the dances they did (and was one of the only white kids who did).

Well, Thursday night there was a speaker contest at a local car detailing type of business (where even the owner, an old white guy, was competing against the kids). Jake hadn't planned on going, but one of his friends was there and called him up, insisting he get there fast. He did and he said a lot of the guys who saw him pull up just hung their heads. He ended up winning and several of them did the "I bow before your greatness" wave to him as he was leaving. In between, they all hung out (with the owner) and cut up and had fun. (There were enough adults there for supervision.) On another occasion, he was competing and someone got really angry because Jake was beating him, and apparently came up to Jake and threatened him. One of Jake's new black friends stepped up and the other guy said, "What? You gonna stop me from kicking his ass?" And the friend looked around the group, where there were about ten black guys and five white guys and he started counting them all. He got to fifteen, counting himself, turned to the guy and said, "Well, you touch Jake, you got to deal with the rest of us." The guy left. (Jake found out later, he'd had a gun.)

The majority of them are going to college in the fall, some at LSU, some at BRCC (the local community college, very nice) and others in states far away. I'm glad he's got his friends to hang with this summer (in his off hours from work), and has a chance to do those testosterone boy things they all have to do at that age. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that the "not drinking, no drugs" culture hangs tough as more and more people around them will succumb. I'm pretty vigilant about that, and so far, so good.

There's this moment when you realize that your kid has got that something that you'd always hoped for -- friends who are cool and who'll have his back, and a great diversity so that he fits in wherever he is. So now, whenever I hear that pressurized boom boom boom coming from another car, I think about that kid just trying to prove himself, just trying to find a way to fit into his culture and make a little mark on the world. Maybe he wasn't a straight-A student... maybe he had a hard time. But he's not necessarily trying to drive everyone around him buggy... he's just trying to be.

duh

Lucy and I emailed after her comments below on my new neighbors and she figured out that I was thinking of ancient Persia, not Prussia. Ahem. There's that South Louisiana edjekashun for you. (Seriously, people, we did not have to take geography. Ever. If it didn't have crawfish, it didn't count. Texas barely made our awareness.)

this-n-that

Where have I been? I am not entirely sure. The days seem to have blurred. Yesterday turned out to be a strange day of good things intermixed with bad things and my brain sort of collapsed in on itself, and strangely, not one person actually noticed a difference, and I am not taking that as a good sign.

I met my new neighbors yesterday, which was good (except that I didn't realize our old neighbor had finally sold his house and MOVED OUT, all with me sitting right here in an office in the front of the house and you'd think I'd notice a little thing like a MOVING VAN carting off an entire house's contents, but no, I did not. Yeah, theives could have taken the entire thing and I might as well have wandered over there with an offer of cookies, as much good as I was for the whole Neighborhood Watch thing.) So I introduced myself to my new neighbor, who said she was from Egypt, which was cool and I can honestly say I've never met anyone from Egypt. She was friendly and sweet and so happy that someone had introduced themselves... she said where they used to live, not a soul was ever friendly or introduced themselves. Her husband wasn't there, and about the time we were talking about her being from Egypt, she said he was from Prussia. I'm almost positive she said "Prussia" and not Russian (and where the hell is that? Does it exist now? I thought it was a word for an old area of Europe / Mediterranean / Iraq, Iran area). He teaches at LSU, and they sound very interesting and friendly and I am happy with that. We have a small block here on our section of the street and everyone looks out for everyone (well, you know, except if theives want to back a moving van up to the door, and then apparently, I am in a coma), and I love the ethnic diversity here - there are some really cool people in this neighborhood, despite it being both southern and suburban-ish.

not-yet-photos

Well, there are no photos yet. There are, but they are on the computer, and I cannot get my copy of Photoshop to install on the new computer. (I have lost the original disc, which I didn't realize until I needed to move it over. Extremely frustrating.) As soon as I resolve that snafu, I can edit the photos for size so that I can get them up here.

In other small news, four tiny baby birds (I think they're wrens) hatched a little over a week ago in Carl's workshop. I got photos of them as wee things with their beaks open and then later, much bigger and now they are big enough to sort of fly around. The mother bird keeps trying to coax them to get out of the workshop, and they do just long enough to go find food (we saw one bringing something back in), but they are determined to stay in the workshop. I can't say I blame them -- it's not as hot as outside, there's all that expansive protection from the rain. Two are flying pretty well. The third is just so-so, and he keeps smacking into things and falling. The last one we've dubbed as little "Hop-a-long" because he hasn't flown anywhere yet. Even his hopping is kinda spastic. I mean, the bird tripped over his own feet. There is not much hope for that one (though I put out birdseed for him.) The first day they were learning to fly, I didn't realize what was going on and I walked into the workshop, thoroughly frustrating the mother (who fled) and scattering all the baby birds. Two headed for the pottery shelves and one of those just kept scooting around on the floor, but one of them landed on the bottom shelf and kept trying to fly straight up... smacking its little head into the shelf above it, falling with a splat onto the lower shelf and then kept doing the same over and over again. All of the other birds were chirping hysterically at that point and I can't decide if they were laughing at him or trying to encourage him to turn around and fly away from the shelf. It's annoying not to speak bird. They are really very cute, though, and they look like they're very comfortable just hanging out in the shop... and they're already accustomed to us walking in there and getting near them. I think we now have pet birds.

still painting...

You know the story, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..." he's going to want a glass of milk. Well, if you give us a little project, it's just going to keep growing, because when we get one thing prepped, it just makes sense to go ahead and do the area next to it. Especially if it's raining and raining and raining and there's nothing for the workers to do and we hate for them not to make some hours for an entire week.

So. I have finished all of the painting for Carl's new office. He has finished the staining of the hand railing, which should go up today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, I am getting DOORS!!! in my office. My office used to be the formal dining room, which we immediately converted to office space prior to moving in by building in wall-to-wall bookshelves. There was a door from the office to the kitchen, which usually stayed open because it was a solid door and the first thing everyone did when they walked into the house was open it to see if I was in the office. Plus, I just hated not being able to see if someone was walking up to that door -- particularly if I was writing -- I would jump, startled, every time they yanked the door open. On the other side of the room is an open double-door-sized archway into the foyer. No doors, and all of the noise from the living room (TV, guests, etc.) barrelled into my office, almost as if the acoustics of the house intended to deafen anyone in the then-dining room. Carl was so happy about his office, and the first time he sat in there and was able to shut his door to close out the sound / traffic, he realized what I had been dealing with and said, "We're doing your doors next." I thought "next" meant way later, like next month, because we are both a little tired and we really ought to be getting back to the normal construction work, but Mother Nature has been dumping the entire Gulf on us for the whole week, so nothing else could be done anyway. As of last night, I have French doors in both places in the office. I am knocking off the fuzzies / burrs in the wood with steel wool and I'll be painting all day. (And while Carl was at it, that whole give a mouse a cookie thing... he is finishing out the molding in the foyer.) All of the trim is white in our house, which started not because I am a white-trim fiend, but because the original builder of this house used white-primed MDF wood for a lot of the molding. I love natural woods, and one day, if we ever do build, I would love to have all of the moldings and built-ins made from fabulous woods, like cherry or walnut.

I promise there will be photos soon. I do have before photos of the office, so there will be before / after. The only "before" photo I have of Carl's office is prior to us moving in, but you'd be able to see the boring color and lack of molding and then I think the change is very nice.

Crabby, USA

I woke up this morning from some sort of stupid evil dream in which I was a Muskateer, and I was the Chris O'Donnel version of D'Artagnan, some sort of frilly curly-headed frou frou version. And whatever fight was breaking out, they kept taking away my sword and telling me I couldn't fight. It was extremely annoying, seeing how I was a FAR BETTER swordsman than all three of them combined, and I finally just grabbed one and started fighting and was WINNING when I woke up. Then realized I woke up an hour late because in the effort to do something in the new office yesterday, we had to turn off the electricity in that part of the house and even though I re-set the clock, I inadvertently forgot to put it on the correct "a.m." mode. There were phone messages from annoying business people and things to do and no time to relax when everyone (Carl, workers) invaded here because it rained and three billion of them tramped in and out and in and out and in and out and I would KILL right now for the doors to my office to be up soon and today I requested LOCKS for the doors. With a guillotine prepped for the offenders. Top that off with me going to my SUPER SECRET STASH of frozen chocolate bars, the ones I haven't touched in FOREVER because it is for EMERGENCY USES ONLY and if wanting to maim, torture and kill one's own family before 10:00 a.m. isn't an emergency, I don't know what is, and so I go to this emergency stash, the one no one should have been able to find, the one where there were SIX of said chocolate bars all in one wrapped boxed sleeve and not only was the wrapper open... ALL SIX OF THE CANDY BARS WERE GONE. Gone. The empty wrapper left in the freezer like some skeletal remains thrown aside by the Tasmanian Devil on his breezy way through my freezer, and did my sons admit said offense and beg for forgiveness and lie prostrate because they knew their life was over as they knew it? No, no they did not. They laughed. They ran, of course, and dodged out of the house, but they laughed when I threatened them with bazooka fire. I sense they do not take me seriously. hmph.

I may be a tad crabby.

nearing the finish line

Most of the painting is done in the new office, including all of the wainscoating and the doors. I have a little more of the trim to finish up, a few touch-ups on the area around the entrance door frame and I'm done. We've moved in Carl's desk and the treadmill and I have a minor amount of purge work to do to finish organizing the closet with the files. We've stained the handrail that goes across the top of the wainscoating, and that'll take another day to dry, then two coats of varnish and it can be installed, probably around Thursday.

I just added back in a phone line... the same line Carl insisted we weren't using last month enough to justify having it, so why pay the extra expense. So I get to pay $41 to install the line that we already had. He is properly chagrined. I would like to say I resisted saying, "I told you so," because I am a very mature person who doesn't stoop to being snarky, but I would be lying. I did resist saying, "Nanny nanny boo boo," which was an accomplishment, I think.

For a minor project which turned major by Carl adding and adding, we've still gotten it done pretty quickly, I think. Although my muscles are protesting that assertion. The upside to this, aside from being able to move all of his files to his room and freeing up my office (and WOW, already it feels so much freer, less stressful, I had no idea)... is that he's so pleased with how his office looks, that he's motivated to do the rest of the back of the house. That will mean a lot of work over the next few months, but when it's finished, it's done and no more household remodeling to do unless we completely lose our minds and do a gutting of the kitchen and remodel from the ground up. Which we both sort of want to do, but the expense alone will probably keep that from happening.

I'm off to finish purging and painting. I'm sorry not to have more relevant topics to discuss here, like the state of the world or politics or critical issues... I think that's why I sort of like painting and doing household projects -- I am on mental vacation during the process. Maybe I'll post something really provacative tomorrow about my perspective on raising kids -- a controversial perspective, I suspect, which will probably alarm quite a few people. (Now, aren't you just curious about that?)

everything hurts

I painted until 11p.m. last night and this morning, my calves and feet and arms decided not to work. They formed a union, are protesting loudly and painfully, and I think they are recruiting my back and neck. I have one more full day of painting and the room will be done, though, so I'm headed off to do it now. Assuming I live.

R.I.P.

I have been humoring, mollifying and begging the old computer to work for way longer than anyone familiar with computers would have deemed feasible, and for the last few months, it had been freezing up on me, forcing me to completely re-boot (and watch the blue screen of death as it scanned the disk and admonished me to not turn it off without properly shutting it down... and boy, I would have liked to have properly shut down whoever came up with that helpful little bon mot, particularly when the computer had frozen up for the third time in one busy deadline hellish day). Anyway. It had been freezing and mocking me, laughing and then rebooting (and occasionally taking two or three attempts to re-boot, depending on it it was PMSing or not)... and finally, I decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle. I hate buying a new computer because as soon as you do, it's nearly obsolete, which just galls me. Then I realized I had had this one since 1997. Yes, in computer years, that meant it was 3,458,345 years old and even I realize computers aren't meant to be pushed that far. I had upgraded the innards various times, so it was a P4, but a slow, sluggish one. There was some sort of RAM, probably the pre-historic Brontosaurus version of RAM with it's spastic little legs that couldn't do much (and were apparently fictional anyway), and there was more than the old standard of 128, but I honestly can't remember if it was more than 256. I had also added a CD burner, also so old it was persnickety and slow.

I found a new one online, discovered that I could apply some American Express reward points toward it and greatly reduce the price and get most of the bells and whistles I wanted for a reasonable amount. The new computer came in yesterday and was so easy to assemble and connect and absolutely everything was already on there and ready to go, I was floored. I put my new cordless mouse (from the old computer) on there, fully expecting to have to load the drivers, and voila, they were already there. How cool is that?

(You Mac people? Hush.)

I had been spending the last couple of days burning all of the relevant and necessary data onto CDs for transfer and had gotten everything of any real importance (all work data, all writing, all accounting, all family stuff like photos, etc.) when the old computer froze up again. Not a big deal, it's been doing this for nearly two years. I turn it off, re-boot it (because we're still going to use it in the new / under-construction spare offcie)... and it won't reboot. It'll go into "Safe Mode" (and is there anything that makes you feel less safe about computers than a greyish fuzzy screen with half of your icons missing that warns you that something is indescribeably wrong with your computer, so wrong that it's sort of half dead and it's going to think about whether or not it's going to die while you try to magically discern if it can be saved? It's kinda like asking a neurologist to fix your brain tumor while not allowing him anywhere near your head.) So anyway, "Safe Mode." Which it usually just did at least once or twice to annoy me, but this time, apparently it was seriously comtemplating suicide (I think it's just pissy because I don't have to give in to its tantrums any longer) and now it really won't re-boot. The very day I have a new computer and have everything actually loaded? I am not usually this lucky. I should buy lottery tickets this week.

The cat, however, is very NOT PLEASED with this whole flat-screen monitor thing. She spends most of her exhausting, difficult, hard-working days holding down her basket or holding down the monitor, in case it should have a sudden urge to drift skyward. She had become quite expert at draping herself across the entire thing, strategically placing her tail down the center of the screen at critical moments just so I could appreciate her strenuous labor. When I set up the new monitor, she walked up to it, walked behind it and stood, her little paws on the top of it, her little eyes peering over at me like, "Who said you could put my lounge chair on a DIET?" She walked around to the side and looked at the front... then the back... then the front again, as if trying to measure and see if she'd still fit. And let me just say right now that this cat takes after me in the math department, because she decided that her size FAT ass would fit on the new ultra-thin top, and she jumped.... going over and then down the back, with nary a thing to clutch onto and whoosh, over the rest of the desk and Wile. E. Coyoteed herself clean onto the floor. She waited a couple of hours and sat in front of the monitor and stared at it, moving her head as if assessing all the corners (they were still there) and the width (definitely bigger) and decided apparently that the first attempt was merely a bad joke and jumping from the front would be so much better, only she pushed off her normal amount and went clean over it again and whoosh, landed on the floor. She promptly walked around the desk and glared at me with a venomous stare. I am pretty sure she is hatching a revenge plot even as I write this.

yikes

I wonder if it would have been easier just to put everything inside the house outside and start over? Carl decided that while we were at it, we might as well get the heavy stuff we no longer need out of the attic and get rid of it. The old files (old vendors, old canceled checks, etc.) were heavy and it's been bothering him. So let's see the scorecard so far:

1. Spare bedroom completely gutted...... check.

2. Living room and dining room filled with spare bedroom stuff....... check.

3. Three trillion files from the attic now sitting in the carport...... check.

4. Multiple levels of construction going on disturbing the neighbors...... check.

5. Hate mail and assassination plans being hatched by the trash people at this moment...... check.

And the day is only half-done. Imagine the world chaos we could cause in a week.

insanity?

If you had told me Friday that today I would be standing in the closet of the spare bedroom painting? I would have suggested you get a better grade of crack. Because we were not going to be doing anything of the kind. It was going to be a relaxing weekend. It was going to be all about sleeping late and checking (and rechecking and re-rechecking) the tracking # to see exactly where the computer was on its way here. (Obsessive? Moi?) This weekend was so very not going to be about organizing.

Except, we moved a couple of things out of my office to make it nicer. And we had this spare bedroom going to waste, becoming a junk catch-all, and Carl really needed a place to put bids together that didn't clog up my office, and the man really deserves his own office (after all, he's only been working 22 years). He never really wanted an office before (he's had 'em and ignored them too often to count, so when we moved to this house, we didn't even bother setting him up a place.) But now... he wants one. Mostly because he wants me to be able to write without having the construction clutter driving me to distraction. Some of it always has to be out and accessible; it never feels finished and put to bed. And it always being out makes me feel like I should be doing that instead of taking a couple of hours to write. So, his solution: move all the construction stuff to his office, keep mine just for writing. I can move back and forth as needed for the actual paperwork part; the phone I can still do from my office.

The summer looks to be calm for me, which is what brought all of this on. I could write, and still have the business stuff done. The second business (the national one with the partner) is still a very real possibility, but we're waiting on him to heal from the open-heart surgery before discussing it / setting up the meetings. And if that does go, I won't be doing that paperwork and the construction business will phase down. In the mean time, we have good work, but not the kind which makes my life a living hell (big Federal jobs, I'm looking at you).

So the innocent moving of a couple of things to the back office spot led to us thinking that gee, we could move all of the office supplies back there if that closet was just cleaned out of the old junk / toys / clothes that don't fit. And we don't need the spare bed anymore (Luke needs it at his apartment and each boy still has a bedroom here, so there's usually one empty if we did have an overnight guest). While we were cleaning out the closet and the bed, we thought, gee, while all of this is gone and before we move anything in here, we might as well paint. So off we went to Home Depot and Lowe's and picked out paint (Sienna) and bought trim (white) paint and then the light fixture really wasn't very good, so we got another one, and all of this moving stuff up to the attic meant we needed to get scads of old stored paperwork down and shred it, so we got a new industrial sized paper shredder and since Carl's going to be in the office more, we needed a better phone system in there, so we got a new phone system thingie and then we finished gutting the bedroom and I painted the inside of the closet (two coats!! who knew a tiny closet would take an entire gallon of paint!!) and Carl painted the ceiling and the crown molding... and while we were talking about it, Carl decided that we might as well go ahead and finish trimming out that room to match the molding we've been putting up throughout the house (there was none, we've been adding it to the rooms as we go -- a Craftsman styled framing for the doors and windows, deep baseboards and big crown molding)... and then, while he was at it, he might as well go ahead and put up a raised panel wainscoating because he has always wanted to do that and this is his office after all so he should go ahead while it is empty and...

See? If you had told me I would be painting today, I woudl have known you were on crack because what usually happens is that we start talking about doing something and the damned thing grows so big in our discussion, we know we can't tackle it in a weekend and we talk ourselves out of it. Except, every once in a while, neither of us has a lick of sense and we both nod and say, "Sure!" and go for it and then there is a huge huge huge project which is going to suck up every spare minute for the next week or so until it is done or I kill someone.

If we manage to finish it without maimage or murder happening, it will be very nice. And it will mean that all of the construction stuff is out of my space and into his, which will be wonderful.

But right now? Right now, everything that used to be in that room is all over the place. I had no idea that I had enough stuff in that one room to single-handedly furnish an entire third world country and clothe them all to boot. Damn, it's a lot of junk. So there is a give-away stack (for charity), a very small "keep in the room" stack, and a medium-sized "attic" stack (which still cannot go up there until I get the stuff up there culled through)(yikes).

So when you're finished with that crack, send me some. I'm going to need it.

a happy birthday

I think today turned out to be one of the best birthdays I've had in a long, long time. From as early as I can remember, I have been a big birthday freak, wanting to savor every minute. My Mom tells the story about how, when I was seven-and-a-half, I could not wait until my eighth birthday. I brought it up constantly, asking how much longer would it be. When it got to be about two months before the actual birthday, I increased the questioning to daily, and then two or three times a day and FINALLY I was eight years old. Mom said that the next day, I started saying I couldn't wait until I turned nine. (I think she wanted to smack me right about that moment.)

Every April, I would also start saying I was the next year up in age (a good two months before the actual date). My Dad used to tease me, saying that when I turned 30, he knew I would no longer be doing that... and he was wrong. I still do it, even this year.

You might think from the crazy birthday lust that it was caused by much spoilage and great parties and lavish presents, and you'd be wrong. I think there may have been one or two parties as a kid, and over the years, there have been a few nice presents, but mostly it's phone calls and cards. It's mostly just this... joy I have about another milestone. I stay up the night of my birthday until 12:00 a.m. rolls around to celebrate the start of my day and then I usually try to arrange to sleep late, laze about and do nothing much. Sometimes the day is all about curling up with a much anticipated novel (particularly if Carl is out of town for that day), sometimes it's spent watching a string of favorite movies and sometimes it's wonderfully simple, like hanging out with Carl all day, eating lunch, checking out various things we'd intended to check out and never really made time for, shopping for some needed item and, tonight, going to a play (quite good). Today had an added bonus of us hearing from a brand spanking new client in the middle of the day and learning we'd just landed that job -- a real plus because this is a new niche for us and potentially a lot of future work. We had a terrific lunch at an old favorite restaurant I hadn't been to in a while (the Chimes, still serving some of their best etouffee). There were flowers from the kids, e-mails and phone calls from family and friends, and lots of laughter as Carl and I had a wonderful day. (We picked out a new office chair which Carl will pick up Monday.)

Here I am, per tradition, at midnight again, watching the clock tick away my day. The world moves on, with big events (Regan's funeral and burial) and small, everything ebbs and flows, and I am glad to be here, glad to have the chance to see what I see, to meet the people I've met and be a part of the lives around me. Tomorrow has so much hope, and I feel like this summer is going to be one of the very best in a long, long time. It has been a good day.

the wonderful world of electricity

So I'm writing an entry, sweating blood, BLOOD I'm saying, because I love you all so much, and I'm working and sweating and I was brilliant. BRILLIANT. And I had saved a part of that brilliant entry half-way throught because see? Brilliant. And then the electricity goes out, but not just OUT, it goes out on the half of the house where the computer is. I can count on one hand with three fingers tied down just exactly how many times the electricity has gone out in this house due to a raging storm outside and is there a raging storm today? No. No there is not. And not only is there no electricity on this side of the house, there IS electricity on the other side, which is just confusing. So I check the breakers (which, translated, means I have my son check the breakers because I am all about delegating), and the front breakers where there is no electricity... are fine. Perfectly normal, except that they are "on" and the elctricity... not so much. We couldn't even figure out what might have thrown these not-thrown breakers because there wasn't much running on the front side of the house (my computer, my office light... and the refrigerator). Finally, out of desperation, my son goes to the back of the house and looks at the breakers there which are CLEARLY LABELED for the BACK OF THE HOUSE and finds that one which is MARKED FOR MY BEDROOM is off. And when he flips that back on, everything in the front of the house comes on. And the half of the entry left that I had saved? Not the brilliant half.

Clearly my house hates me and wants me to pay it attention instead of writing today. Which I may do because if it gets really serious and kills the freezer with the chocolate ice cream next? I may die.

I'll have a tree with those fries...

So late yesterday evening, when Carl got home from work, having been clued into Skippy-the-evil-twin's arrival, he offered to go get take-out for dinner. I opted to go with him instead to a local hamburger dive place we frequent. It's an extremely casual place. When we went out, we realized his work truck was blocking the car, and instead of moving things around, we just hopped in the truck and headed off to the restaurant.

Usually, the place isn't terribly crowded, but we'd forgotten it was Friday night. Nary a parking spot to be had at first. Carl was easing his truck through the lot and everyone, and I mean, everyone stared at us. It was like they had never seen a work truck before! And they all kept moving out of our way, like we were going to mow them down, and we were barely creeping along. We had to circle the building and try again, and by that point, a couple of people were leaving, and a couple of other cars were about to get the parking spots... only when they saw us, they sort of looked afraid and they stopped and waved us on into the spot. Which was just weird.

Which we were commenting on when I got out of the truck first and turned toward the rear of the truck and cracked up laughing. Here's why they were staring:

(That photo was taken at dusk when we were home, so it's not great quality.)

The limb was from a neighbor's tallow tree which overhangs the fence; he never prunes it... partly because every spring when the limbs get so low, they end up getting hung on Carl's work trucks and getting ripped off, and so hey, why bother spending money on pruning.

At any rate, now I know why everyone was a wee bit afraid. He was tempted to keep it hanging there all day, just to watch people's expressions as he drove to work.

squirrels and such

Otto made me laugh with his squirrel story (in the bottom half of that entry), and man, I needed a laugh today.

skippy, the evil twin

Skippy, my evil twin, showed up today. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I could not sleep last night. Thunderstorms rolling through, scaring the dog beyond sanity. At some point past two I fell asleep, only to dream of something URGENT! MUST DO NOW! And I'd wake up, all adrenaline-rushed, ready to go to battle, then realize it's 3:28 and I could sleep a little longer. Only to dream again of something URGENT! Then at five, the phone started ringing with various employees wondering if they were going to work today, what with the freaking continuous thunderstorms still raging. And there was JUST enough time between each call for me to doze back off, only to start the URGENT!! dream again and have the PHONE ring again and by 5:30, if you had handed me an Uzi, I'd have mowed down half of civilization. Or at least, the damned phone.

I have been edgy all day. (Imagine that.)

So, yeah, Skippy the evil twin. Here. For a while, it seems.

the new Louisiana Quarter

Pooks wondered below in the comments who had earned the Mardi Gras beads hanging on my shelves.... and that answer is deceptive, because I did. But they were given to me by someone who was on one of the major floats one year, and not in the traditional way of earning beads. For those who don't know the traditional way, I present to you a rendering of the "new" Louisiana quarter:

(I did not create this image... it's floating around via e-mail.)

their minds are so open, their brains have fallen out

One of the weird things about being a mom of older kids about the time a lot of other women my age are having kids or seeing theirs into grade school is to note the huge shifts in what the culture believes is "good" for the baby. In my mom's day, bottle feeding was the new big thing, and giving a kid solid food early was encouraged. When mine came along, breastfeeding was just starting to be back in "vogue" with the pediatricians (here) and my mom and dad were absolutely certain I was going to starve the boys to death if I didn't supplement their feedings with cereal or some baby food. (I was adamant and knew that I was obviously correct when the boys were healthy and fine. I found out years later that my mom and dad secretly began feeding the kids solid food as early as two months. Jake had jambalaya by three months. Spicey jambalaya. I would have freaked, but the kid had slept regularly, eaten regularly, and for the most part, was a healthy baby. Go figure.)

Every generation of babies comes with new books, new "musts," new things to heap upon brand new mom's heads to make them feel like they don't quite know what they're doing or may in some way damage their child beyond repair, and as a mom of older kids who not only survived, but thrived, in spite of the fact that I was utterly clueless, I'm here to say it's mostly bullshit. If something works for you, great. If it doesn't, then stop. There are a million different ways to raise a healthy child and as long as you're trying to learn about the important things like health risks / viruses or developmental issues if you suspect your child may have one, you're pretty much okay.

So, when I see something like this out there, it makes me roll my eyes so hard, my head hurts. This site believes that parents shouldn't diaper their babies (at all), and they believe their method of carting around something for the baby to pee "naturally" into (like a bowl cupped under their bottom) is, "a gentle, compassionate, and practical way to care for a baby's elimination needs from infancy."

I, personally, want to know what crack they're on, because man, they got a bad batch. They describe it as an ancient practice, but really... who wants to go backward? I like electricity, and grocery stores, and cars, and the internet. The notion that I really ought to be "in tune" with when my infant needs to pee in order to be a good / gentle / compassionate parent? Good grief. Their brains have fallen out and rolled into the abyss. Someone direct them to a cave so they can gently let their baby pee on anything it wants to and they can hose the place down when it's grown.

when you just haven't had enough cow

Because sometimes you do wake up thinking, "Blast, my fridge doesn't look like a cow."

used wedding gown / e-bay

Y'all have to go read the story this guy has put up to explain why he's selling a used wedding dress. Cracked me up. Get a good look at that price -- and the hits this thing has gotten. (Scroll down a bit to see the story.)

tilt-a-whirl

So, Sunday morning, feeling fine. Enjoying the beautiful day. Blah blah suddenly dizzy blah. I thought I was well and over it, and I tilted my head to look at something and the whole room spun out of control. The rest of the afternoon was more of the same. I got much worse on Monday.

Made a doctor's appointment for Tuesday afternoon. She did several tests (hearing test, neurological tests), and had me lie down in an exam chair, which made the room spin again. Sitting up did the same.

It's not an infection, like I assumed, or fluid in the inner ear; she thinks it may be that the nerve from the inner ear to the brain is inflamed, and she's given me prednisone to take. However, I had some "atypical" hearing loss, and that, coupled with the dizziness made her want to do an MRI to rule out the possibility of a brain tumor; apparently there's a type of tumor which wraps itself around that same nerve which can cause these symptoms.

I'm pretty sure it's not going to be anything more than just an inflamed nerve and probably by Tuesday (when the MRI is scheduled), I'll be fine. It did freak Carl out a bit when I got home to tell him; he's going to take off work to go with me Tuesday. To me, since it's not really a possibility that it's anything more than inflamation, it's kinda funny... and I started teasing him last night... (hey, can you bring me the chocolate ice cream? I have a brain tumor.) (yes, I am evil, but I made him laugh.)

alive (well, sort of)

Just in case you ever think you might possibly be coming down with something, but you're not sure, I've made a handy little checklist for you:

If it's 72 degrees outside, and you dig out the little space heater and prop it to where it's on full blast from one foot away, you might be a little sick.

If it feels like someone stuffed a piece of cotton the size of Texas into your brain with another Alaskan-sized section up your nose? It's possible you're coming down with something.

If someone asks you your name and you have to think about it a moment, you might really not be feeling so well.

If you can't remember how to pronounce it, maybe you should lie down.

If you're lying down and you get up to go to the bathroom and "up" starts spinning and you wonder who put the rollercoaser in your bedroom? Probably, you're not doing so great.

If you make it to the bathroom and then forget which room you're in and why, or how to get back to your bed? You're pretty much toast.

If you do all the above and still get up and sit at the computer to do your taxes? You're officially brain dead and should just be put out of your misery.

It's been an interesting week. What I remember of it. I still have some sort of inner ear infection. If I sit still and don't move too much, nothing spins or tilts out of control. The antibiotics are working, I think, because the spinning is less. I did manage to finish the tax return (and on time). Only, I discovered I entered one thing wrong (I reversed two numbers). I have always had a bit of dyslexia with numbers, and I typically double and triple check everything, and I still missed this. I'm trying not to freak out about it (I had already mailed the return), but I am secretly freaking out, because I should have paid a little more in taxes. It's not a huge difference, but I'm in the middle of finishing an audit with the IRS, and I definitely don't want to repeat the process for another year. I'm going to my CPA tomorrow and asking her if I need to amend this return (a sure-fire way to trigger and audit, though, is to amend the return.)

oh, the joy

Fever. Chills. Taxes. Can anyone have any more fun in one day? I think not.

I have photos from the crawfish boil we had this weekend out at my parent's fishing camp on the lake. Gorgeous day, much fun. Will put them up sometime later this evening.

strawberry festival

Oops, that "pictures will be up in a few minutes" turned into a day.

Every year in April, a tiny little town east of Baton Rouge hosts the Louisiana Strawberry Festival. Now, Louisiana will have a festival at the drop of a hat. In fact, I think there is a hat-dropping festival somewhere. Give us any excuse to party, to goof off, to drink? We are there. The little town of Ponchatoula revived itself a decade or so ago by creating an "antique" district -- where turn-of-the-century buildings on the main street have everything you may want. (An aside -- here's my collection of antique French drip enamel coffee pots... some are from family, but many were found in Ponchatoula. And that antique washing machine was also a find there.)

What Ponchatoula and nearby Hammond (a larger city) are well-known for are their gorgeous strawberries:

Biting into one of these is heaven, pure and juicy. Our grocery stores import California strawberries during the off season, but there just isn't anything like home-grown. My grandfather used to be one of the strawberry growers, and some of my happiest memories are going out to his farm, picking strawberries and eating them sliced (with a sprinkle of sugar) until my hands were stained red and I could barely move from the satisfaction. My mom would bring home several flats and spend an evening stemming, slicing and then freezing them so we would have them year 'round. Whenever I would get sick, I'd eat the frozen strawberries straight -- still frozen, like a popsicle and it would always make me feel better.

I had forgotten how incredibly crowded festivals can be -- everywhere you looked, people. Hundreds of thousands according to the official website, which I would have said was a complete exaggeration, had I not been there. (See the photos on that link above for some of the crowd scenes.) I think the thing which surprised me most were the hundreds of Harley motorcycles. I don't know if it was some huge club which traveled together or just a gorgeous day for a ride, but there was a veritable sea of motorcycles near downtown. I forgot to grab the camera for that sight, but this one cracked me up -- this guy had obviously already had enough, and we were only half-way through the day:

We mostly went to hear our oldest son, Luke, play (drums). He has a three-man band / group, which was short one man (the singer) who, for reasons no one is really clear on, never came home from a date the night before, even though he was the guy who set up the gig. The guitar player had dragged himself in at six that morning, and was still a little buzzed by noon when they were playing, but even with two strikes against them, they acquitted themselves nicely and the crowd seemed to enjoy them -- many people stopped to listen and cheer.

and

We had a lot of fun and on the way home, stopped by a couple of places to pick up more plants for the front yard... so I'll be planting soon.

random

Okay, I like to snack on cheese crackers. Am up with the Goldfish love. But just had the Cheese Nips four cheese cracker. This stuff is crack. I could eat the whole box.

heh

My inner 12 year old got a kick out of this headline. Swiped from Chaising Daisy.

getting your green on

St. Patrick's Day was always a fun day for me as a kid. With an Irish last name and green eyes, I staked a tiny claim to the day, enjoying the parades we have (a very green version of Mardi Gras) and the good will. When I was in high school, we were assigned a genealogy report and I dreaded it, since it meant having to talk to all the old people in my family. (You know, ancient people, over 30.) The report was going to be dull since I had grown up knowing that I was Cajun (Cajun... with an Irish last name... hmmmm?) and that was so normal around here -- almost mundane.

The Irish last name mystery was explained away by my grandmother: supposedly, when my grandfather's grandfather had arrived in Louisiana, there had been some war between siblings, and he had changed the spelling of his last name just to break with them. (But... but... he didn't spell it all that differently, I protested, and it's still very Irish in the first form...) I was told to hush.

There was another mystery which no one would address: my dad and all of his cousins are big men, with dark hair and blue or green eyes. At 6'2", my dad was the runt of the family; his cousins were in the 6'8" range. (But... most Cajun men are small and wiry and... small!... how is it we're Cajun again?) Again with the hush.

Turns out, there was a Scotch-Irish man of a Highland clan (and tracing that clan was a joy -- there was some incredibly cool history there)... anyway, a Highland man who immigrated to Nova Scotia, married into the Acadians there and when they were dispersed and fled, his family came to South Louisiana. So even though the decendents were raised Cajun (and my father only spoke Cajun until first grade, where they forced him to start speaking English only), there was a great bit of Scotch-Irish heritage being passed along -- including the big brawny look for the guys, lots of green eyed women and occasional red hair.

This delighted me. I enjoy the Cajun heritage, but I had always had an affinity for the Irish and the Scotch and I cannot explain the "calling" but whenever I see a photo of the Highland area, it feels like it is speaking to me of home.

(Of course, on my mom's side of the family, there were the great-grandparents who immigrated and met on the ship... he was from Italy and spoke nary a word of anything else, she was from France and same thing... they met and married before either of them could speak the other's language or English. So there's Cajun, Scotch, Irish, French and Italian heritage. Or as my mom puts it, not a calm bone in my body.)

St. Patrick's day will always hold another distinction for me, though. It was the day I discovered I was pregnant with Luke and my life changed and my world spun and tilted and re-shaped itself in an irrevoable, wonderful way. Scary as hell, but wonderful.

first flowers

I am abysmally bored with accounting, and have only a moment, but I wanted to post just a couple of images of my new flowers. This is the first time I have ever had a real garden (all of my own design) and bulbs, and I love looking out my office window to see:

and my new crocuses:

We planted nearly two hundred bulbs -- daffodils, crocuses, and tulips (which are about to bloom), and I thought two hundred bulbs would just look so extraordinarily crowded. And ha. They barely make a real dent in the beds. (The beds are large, though.)

This winter, we put in a bunch of shrubs; I'll be adding quite a few more things, like althea ferns and some grasses and some plant I saw which had wonderfully deep purple leaves (I can't remember the name). More photos when I get those up. And when the tulips bloom.

me and cardboard tubing

I woke up this morning from the strangest dream... the space shuttle was hurtling toward Earth with some sort of problem, and I knew how to fix it. And the way to fix it required a phenomenal amount of cardboard tubing. Seriously. Cardboard tubing, and I was frantically pulling it all together, getting whatever it was ready for the shuttle (I seriously have no idea why) and somehow, it worked. So yeah, I'm sure NASA is going to be knocking on my door any minute now.

(No drugs were involved in the making of this story. And no space shuttles. Although I have to say that Tamar somehow was in the dream at one point explaining where to find cardboard cogs and gears. Yeah, I know. I am weird.)

ha!

And over on the In Passing... site, one overheard conversation that cracked my ass up:

"Remember Kenny?"
"New guy, Josh's old co-worker?"
"Yeah. Tonight he was leaving the office and said, 'I'm going to go home and cook these steaks.' I didn't really care, but I said, 'What steaks?' And then he says, "Didn't you see them defrosting on my desk? I bought them from this guy. He was selling them out of the back of his car in the parking lot at McDonald's.'"
"Ew. Ew. I don't even eat cow but ew."
"So in case the next story I tell you about Kenny starts with 'So we haven't seen Kenny in a few days...' Now you know why."
--A guy and a girl waiting in line for breakfast at La Note

feeling great

Damn, but I woke up this morning feeling great. TERRIFIC. Yay me. No headache, nothing but good sleep. (Where on earth does the phrase, "like sunshine in my pants?" come from? I mean, that is just crazy, but it keeps bouncing around in my head to some weird tune I can't identify.) (No notes from the peanut gallery that I am also crazy. We already know that, thank you.)

geez.

I felt so grouchy this morning when I woke up, if it had been an Olympic event, I could have gold medaled. For crying out loud, I need a decent night's sleep before I hurt someone.

tuber talk

Y'all, sometimes, I just do not know where the brains went, but they did not stick around here as we have clicked along. As evidence, here is a conversation from last night:

Carl
(telling a gross peanut story)
And then he was hopping around
like some hopping around thing... you
know, kinda like that guy that
you see on TV. The one who's
dressed like a peanut in all of those
peanut commercials? What's
his name?

Toni
Mr. Peanut?

Carl
That can't be his name.

Toni
The peanut guy?

Carl
Yeah. That can't be his name.
It should be something easier
to remember. Like "George."

Toni
Because calling a peanut shaped
cartoon "George" is easier to
remember than "Mr. Peanut?"

Carl
Yeah.

Toni
!!

And then later, when we were playing rummy and I was fairly well stomping Carl's ass and we were laughing and cutting up, I laid down a big set of points.

Carl
Cheater cheater, pants on fire.

Toni
(snorting laughter)
Pants on fire?

Carl
Wait a minute, that didn't come out
right....... what is it again?

Toni
Liar liar, pants on fire.

Carl
What goes with cheater cheater?

Toni
Pumpkin eater.

Carl
Pumpkin eater? I like
mine better.

So now it's "Cheater, cheater, pants on fire" around here. For everything. Just so you know.

grace under pressure

I cannot imagine the hell of the adoption process... the hours of waiting, of hoping, of auditioning, in a sense, to get to be a parent. I cannot understand the absolute intensity of the emotional rollercoaster, and how anyone can put themselves through it, but I think if every parent had to go through this before having a child, the world might be better off... because parenting is very difficult work. I read excerpts of lives like Maria's in Transitions and Poop: She's Home -- at how she had the baby, then the adoptive mother changed her mind... and then realized that no, she couldn't parent and wanted Maria to have the baby after all... and I think I would have never been able to manage the kind of grace and unselfishness Maria has displayed here. Being concerned for the birth mom is a smart thing to do, of course, because it sets the tone for the relationship from then on, but it's obvious when I read stories like this that Maria cares and is trying very hard to do the very best she can for both the child / her child now, and the birth mother. It amazes me, that grace. That is a lucky child.

why our dog doesn't sleep in our bed

Miss Doxie's entry. Go.

beauty...

Go check out Leya's journal, Use My Sky. I enjoyed the entry on beauty, particularly when she's discussing her art and says, "I prefer my paintings to sit on the cusp between crude and beautiful..." She's got a link in her sidebar to a gallery / website of her art... I am in love with the vibrancy and passion of her work.

Oh, and I am drawn to the photos she took of the blizzard there in another entry (more recent than the "beauty" one). It's fascinating to me to see how she sees the world and then see Tamar's photo blog how that ability to capture and compose an image reveals itself in Tamar's astute eye.

router woes, solved

Turns out, you can follow all of the directions exactly, and if the router is just plain old broken or persnickety, it won't work. I finally took some time todayto call the tech service, and they walked me through the process (about ten times) and then assured me that (a) I was doing everything correctly and (b) since I had internet access when it wasn't hooked up to the router, it was the new router. I exchanged it a few minutes ago, hooked it up, did the one thing the guy told me to do and voila, fixed. And now the laptop can surf from anywhere in the house without us battling for the desktop.

Yes, we are dragging into the new century in spite of ourselves.

what matters

There are a lot of people checking out this journal from TUS. I suppose you're wondering if I'm going to comment on the uproar over there. It's just not that big of a deal, really. I've pissed off a lot of people because I was honest and spoke my mind and supported a friend. Truly, there are a lot worse things in this world. I run a construction company. I eat people for breakfast when I need to, so I don't so much need the whole trainwreck / drama on a discussion board that's supposed to be there for enjoyment. I've got enough real things on my plate that do matter, consequence wise. If the IRS was really fucking pissed at me? Hey, that I'd care about. TUS? Not so much. Perspective.

routers

Carl gave me a wifi set up for Valentine's Day (does the man know me well, or what)... and the only drawback is that it's been a total pain to install. For one thing, the instructions say DO NOT HAVE THE ROUTER CONNECTED to the computer when you're first doing the set-up... but half-way through the set-up, it stalls and can't finish because it's NOT HOOKED UP, except at no point in between the two does it actually inform you when you're supposed to connect it. Grrrrrrrr.

undone

Bad dreams. Strange dreams. Dreams of flying were good, and I particularly loved this one this time, since I seemed to have so much more control over where I went and moved easily enough between standing and flying. The strange dreams: rabbits. I suddenly had rabbits everywhere, and Carl had informed me they were our pets now and they were housebroken. They were quite cute and funny, driving the cat mad with distraction. The dog wasn't terribly happy either, but they were great fun for her to chase, so I suppose that worked out okay.

This whole week to come is stressing me out already. I have too much to do, I have way too many fires to put out. (Or maybe that's rabbits to catch?) What I really want to do tonight is sink down into a book and escape my own freakishly loud incessant brain for a little while, but I cannot. It's one of those busy nights for family (a thing for my brother) and company (guests spending the night), and I have to be a grown up and be nice to people.

Sometimes, I really don't want to be the grown up anymore.

degrees, continued

Carl told me I wasn't nearly that bad. If he gets to where he can say that with a straight face, I'll let you know.

degrees of separation

Yesterday was a bad day. To explain -- no, too much. To sum up:

toni, "normal" in the morning: "Hey. What's up? How are you?"

toni, without sleep for a day: "What in the world do you want now?"

toni, without any sleep for a couple of days: "What the FUCK do you want? Why the hell are you bothering me with this?"

toni, without any sleep for a couple of days WHILE PMSing: "What the hell is your problem? Why are you even LOOKING at me that way? What the fuck do I have to do around here to get someone to pick up the GODDAMNED phone and make one TINY little FUCKING phone call for themselves, huh? Was I born with the TELEPHONE as my sign or something? Did I come out of the UTERUS with a phone cord attached to my EAR or WHAT? Whaddya mean, am I feeling okay? Do I sound like I'm feeling okay? Do I LOOK like I'm feeling okay? Why are you running away? GET BACK HERE AND FIGHT LIKE A MAN. Where are you.....ooooooooooooooohhhhh, chocolate. Thank you, sweetie. Yes, I love you, too."

insomnia girl

You know you are in trouble when the insomnia has lasted for a couple of days and it's four a.m. and you decide that if you just bored yourself to tears, you could maybe possibly fall asleep, and the thing your brain comes up with to repeat ad nauseam is, "Two, four, six, eight, how do we procrastinate?"

And no, there apparently wasn't an answer to that question (sixteen hours later, still repeating).

dead girl walking

I finally slept last night, after a week of (a) insomnia and (b) stress and (c) Carl being both sick and stressed. Carl woke me up at 11 today. Eleven. Wow. I haven't slept that long or that soundly since I was a teenager. And it's not raining! It's beautiful out, with the sky a crisp aquamarine. The only mar is that it is still winter here. I think I would enjoy (at least the sight of) winter if there were something visually stimulating about the landscape, but I look out the windows and all I see are naked tree limbs and yellow-ochre colored grass and muddy ditches. No blankets of snow to help me pretend that winter has the capability of being pretty.

Green. I crave green. Spring is just a couple of months away. It's always this time of year (when the purple magnolias start blooming, and I finally have one by my kitchen window!) that I start feeling hopeful that spring won't be too far away and I just might make it after all.

oh, well then, that's perfectly okay

In this article, "Justin Timberlake said Wednesday that his own family was offended by his racy Super Bowl halftime duet with Janet Jackson, but he insisted he thought only her bustier would be revealed when he pulled on her costume, not her breast."

And he seems to be really upset that his character is being called into question. Because you know, it really is perfectly okay to grab a woman's breast and rip off a garment in public to reveal a sexy undergarment. Why on earth would anything be wrong with that? Certainly millions of little girls should know that they, too, can aspire to be someone who has their shirt ripped off to expose their bra or undergarment, and millions of boys should associate that sort of activity with "sexy," "popular" and "profitable." yeah, that message is totally okay. I can't imagine why so many people are so upset with Timberlake.

I'm sorry, I think I've sprained my eyes, I've rolled them so much over this article. Must go sleep now to recover.