Lunch break

Having an iced coffee for lunch in order to use coffee shop's wireless, which I still don't have at home. Damn you, Gustav! I just hope it comes back before this weekend because cable TV's still not working either and I need to see Mad Men win a lot of Emmys on Sunday night.

First of all, thanks for your encouraging comments on my last post. They mean a lot to me.

I feel like I'd like to say a few more things. I just want to be clear that I don't think all McCain supporters are evil meanies. My parents, for example, are people I love and respect beyond measure. They have their own personal reasons for believing what they do, and they are not hateful about it. I really do respect that we all have our own personal reasons for supporting the candidates we do, and I don't paint all McCain supporters or Republicans with a big, barfy brush. The men in the coffee shop = assholes. All McCain supporters = not assholes. I understand this and just want to make sure I state it explicitly.

Later that day, I went to a baby shower where I had a nice conversation with an engineering professor about the situation, and it was nice to touch base with someone on the same page as I am. Still later, I was at the gas pump and a woman complimented me on my Obama shirt, and we had a nice chat. It was a nice way to balance out the ugliness of the morning's encounter.

Two of my heroes have written about this lately: Eve Ensler and Anne Lamott. Check them out.

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So far, I've done Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred three times. I know Jillian from The Biggest Loser, and Linda recommended the DVD. The first time, I did it without hand weights and thought, "This isn't hard at all! What is everyone complaining about?" Ha. Ha, ha, ha. The next two times, I did it with three-pound hand weights. Which doesn't sound very heavy, I know. But ow. That's really all I can say. Also, I can't do the squats where you put one leg behind the other, squat, and do bicep curls as it makes my back knee feel like it's going to snap in two. So I just put my feet shoulder length apart, squat, and do the bicep curls that way. The great thing about this video is that you're done in about 20 minutes. The bad thing about it is that it makes me realize what a wimp I am. But I'm working on it. I love when Jillian barks about things like "FALSE MESSAGES OF LETHARGY." It fires me up, it truly does. I'm not doing it every day (alternating with Punch, Kick, and Jam, gelato, jogging outside, french fries, weights at the gym, and chocolate chip cookies), but it's definitely good in a pinch. Note: I do these workouts in my living room, which has very hard ceramic tile flooring with no give whatsoever. I simply cannot do repeated jumping jacks and butt kicks and jump roping on that kind of floor without severe ankle and knee pain. For some reason, even running on concrete roads and sidewalks is easier than that. So I throw down the yoga mat and do the serious pavement pounding exercises on it. It really helps, though I'm not sure it's entirely safe as sometimes the mat feels like it might go flying. And three-pound weights are definitely heavy enough for me right now because of the many reps ... I don't think I could complete the circuits with a heavier hand weight right now. If that makes me a wuss, so be it.

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B. and I started Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and turned it off after the first 30 minutes. I finished it later on my own, and all I have to say is DON'T give up on this movie. It is so much more than it initially seems. There is a shift after the first third or so, and suddenly what seems really silly becomes more serious, and the performances are wonderful and it's really moving and I loved it! I highly recommend it. Amy Adams and Frances McDormand are unsurprisingly great and give wonderfully nuanced, layered, heartfelt, heartbreaking, and funny performances, and Lee Pace -- wow. Lee Pace. If you've never seen him as anything but Ned on Pushing Daisies, you already know he's fantastic, but he's REALLY GOOD in this movie. His English accent is perfect, at least to my ears, and when his character really comes onto the scene about 40 minutes in, it's what really snaps this movie into place. Everything about his performance in this screams Future Movie Star in the most beautiful possible way. Give this movie a chance ... it really lifted my spirits and put pep in my step. I liked it so much I watched every special feature and listened to the director's commentary and then started the movie over for the third time. I am becoming attached, so much so that I feel emotionally incapable of returning it to Netflix.

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I don't know what else to say. The weather has turned in the past few days; I am sure it will get hot again, but it's been such a welcome change in the air. I still do not have a new roof or a roofer or anything fixed on my house, and I am growing accustomed to the mold smell. It's just incapacitating, somehow, deciding how and when to do all this and how to pay for it. And I'm still really ill about and saddened by Gustav and Ike in general and by what they did to my state and to Texas.

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In other news, before Gustav came along and ate all of my money with his giant ridiculous should be illegal deductible and in spite of the fact it might cause me to fail both of my classes, I bought a plane ticket to Hawaii. Where I am going very soon. Like some kind of lunatic. Who cannot wait.

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:

Pre-storm update

Taking a moment to take a moment. I got up and ran three miles this morning outside and it was the best three miles I've run in a long time. I kept telling myself, "Be happy the sun is shining and you are outside." Anticipating a hurricane is no fun. I finally found battery-operated fans in a Bed, Bath, and Beyond miracle. Then the challenge became finding D batteries. This is a situation where employees laugh in your face when you ask them if they have D batteries. My dad finally found some at Office Depot, where he literally filled his shopping cart in triumph. He's working on his generator right now. My cousin from Houma is coming, so I'm washing bedding and trying to de-pet hair his room as much as possible. "I like animals!" he insisted when I warned him that they can be a bit much. Everyone thinks they like animals until they go from living with zero to four overnight. I guess in the grand scheme of things, a few pets and their antics are small potatoes compared to your house being covered in water. I haven't gone overboard on buying groceries. I figure we can live on peanut butter by the spoonful for a few days. Right now it's sunny and you'd never know a storm is coming. It is very strange. I think a lot of people around here are having serious PTSD flashbacks from three years ago this weekend. Today is the five-year anniversary of my grandmother's death. She loved weather. She loved weather events, weather forecasts, and the weatherman. Everyone is just basically running around like a straight-up lunatic. Many gas stations are out of gas. One of B.'s school friends just informed me there is nary a loaf of bread left in the city. Every Wal-Mart in town closed at 11 a.m. this morning. Which was kind of weird. I was in a nearby parking lot after having coffee and beignets with my parents and sister and there was a giant emergency loudspeaker from Wal-Mart droning, "THIS WAL-MART IS NOW CLOSED. EVERY WAL-MART IN TOWN IS NOW CLOSED." If you ask me, they closed a little too early, but I guess the employees needed to get home and prepare, in which case, I'm glad they got to go home and do that. Being a town that people evacuate to rather than from is a bizarre experience. I'd certainly rather be in the situation I'm in than a person fleeing my home and not knowing if it's going to be there when I get back. I do worry about things like telephone poles or trees falling on my house, but I have been told and know that I am a catastrophizer. School is canceled for days to come. The power will probably go out tonight or tomorrow morning. I want to be a good hostess for my cousin and make him feel safe and comfortable. I want to help B. not be stressed about school and other things. I want us all to be safe. I want this hurricane to weaken and not hit my state or anyone else's.