Processing

It's hard to know where to start talking about this week. I'll start with flashes of memory: the sound of the wind on Monday afternoon as the hurricane passed through, sounding like an ear-splitting whistle or a woman screaming, for hours. The sight of my roof shingles strewn across multiple yards. Walking the dogs with my cousin through the neighborhood puddles. Eating shrimp and chicken breasts saved from a powerless freezer by my cousin, who cooked them over a camp stove in the backyard. Putting pots down under one ceiling leak, then a second, then a third. Watching leaks that were drips turn into leaks that looked like a stream from a running faucet. Watching the mold appear on the ceiling in one place, then two, then three. Smelling the mold as the stench set in. Seeing my dad pull up my driveway in the rain and hold out a ten-pound bag of dry ice that he found heaven knows where for me to put in an ice chest. Stepping in mid-calf-deep water in my Tevas while splashing through my backyard picking up shingles. Lying in bed sweating because there's only so much air a small battery-operated fan can produce. Laughing deliriously with my cousin and B. Running down the driveway in my pajamas in the pitch darkness and rain to tell a truck full of very tired-looking firemen carrying hoses up my driveway at two in the morning that my smoke alarm was set off by the water flowing from the monitored smoke alarm in the ceiling and that there was no actual fire. Watching my cousin and B. disappear into my dark attic to survey the damage. Watching B. climb onto the roof to put up a tarp with bricks from my dad's house while the dark clouds swirled behind him just before it started storming again. Hearing about how my dad fixed his phone line by climbing into a ditch with twist ties and a plastic bag. (Still not sure how he did that.) Seeing how excited my mom was to have a phone line again.

I'm not saying any of this to complain. I am better off than many people, most people even. It has occurred to me as I've begun to peek my nose past my cellphone, which was my main communication for a few days, that there's a lack of understanding beyond this state about what has happened here. I'm as happy as everyone else that the waters did not flow through New Orleans this time. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been water and devastation. I have friends in this city who have been told as recently as today that the best case scenario for their power being restored is 21 days or more. Living without power might be better than being flooded (as many have been) or crushed by trees (which many, many, many, MANY homes and businesses have been and which actual PEOPLE have been) or dead (not sure of today's count, but yesterday it was 19 in this state), but it sure is miserable, especially for old people and sick people and little babies and kids. And it sure makes it hard to dry out homes if there's no cool air circulating and it's topping 90 degrees every day. My relatives would like to go home, but you can't go home when you live in a city where you can't drink your water or flush your toilet and have been told you won't be able to for the next month.

I guess I just want people to understand. Kids are out of school. People are not going to work. Small businesses are losing income and throwing out tons of spoiled food and products. People are waiting for hours for gas -- my cousin got to the gas station at 7 a.m. yesterday and did not fill up until 10 a.m. Three hours in a gas line. Few stores are open. The line just to set foot in Walmart? Around the entire circumference of the building. I've stopped counting the trees I've seen that have cut through houses because they are everywhere you look. Both houses next-door to my parents' house and the house across the street from them all have holes in the roofs. It just kind of freaks you out to realize it could have been you and then it makes you feel really sort of guilty to feel such deep relief that it was someone else. I am sort of an emotional basketcase over three leaks and mold and a messed up roof. Which is sort of unacceptably self-indulgent, and I am working on it. And I GOT MY POWER BACK. Making me one of 25% of the city's people who have power right now, 5 days after the storm. I am so thankful for that it makes me want to fall to my knees and weep.

Meanwhile, I've missed the entire Republican National Convention, not that I think I could have stomached watching it anyway, and I'm now reading things like this that are just about pushing me over the edge of sanity. Wake up, voters. Please, please, please let's all be awake and pay attention and not sit back and let this happen. It is terrifying me and making me feel like puking.

I don't know what else to say. I am worried about the people of my state and of my country. I want us all to come to our senses and be okay.

Scenes from my neighborhood: