 Heart Aches |
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Thanks to Toni and her divine husband, my fence is being taken care of, and it will be a big old relief once my dogs can be free again. It's not easy to confine two dogs who are used to spending all day running around the yard, and tying them out has been ridiculous because they get tangled in about two seconds and sit there and can't reach their water and bark and basically act like the miserable sad sacks that they are. If something as minor as some tree and roof and fence damage has given me such a headache during the past month, it pains me to think of those who have astronomical amounts of work to do on their homes. Or those who can't even go to their homes to repair them or even know yet if they need repairs. Or those who are ready to move back to fix them but there's no water or power or sewerage or, you know, 911 to call if they fall off the roof or cut off their leg with a chainsaw. Once again, sitting here thinking of these things makes me feel ill, so I will stop for now. My aunt, the one whose home and school were wrecked in Katrina, went to the ER yesterday with chest pains. I hope that she will be okay. I cannot even begin to imagine the heartache she feels or the kind of pressure and stress she is under right now. She feels personally responsible for the education of hundreds of students who are scattered far and wide and has spent years upon years building an amazing school that is now really fucked up. She's going in for an angiogram this afternoon. I don't know much about her heart problems except that she got a buttload of bypasses done a few years ago. I can't even think about it. On my lunch break today, I stopped to see my aunt in the hospital. My mom read a prayer from a Joyce Rupp book that was based around touching a stone but she didn't have one so she started asking us for pebbles that might be in our shoes. Then she grabbed the Kleenex and said we could pretend it was a rock because it was paper so it used to be a rock. My little brother said, "Paper used to be trees." Yeah. So after much rock-searching bustle, I pulled off my grandmother's ring and said, "Here, use this!" As it is a rock and so forth. So Aunt Cam slipped it onto her pinky finger and my mom read the prayer and Uncle Joe barged in, arriving mid-prayer wearing his back brace that looks like a bullet proof jacket, and then we were done after some tears were shed. I put the ring back on. Uncle Joe showed us the pile of CDs he'd brought, including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and an audio version of someone saying the rosary. My family=crazy. But I love them anyway. Also, I hate that fucking hospital. It is the site of my grandfather's taking ill and dying in 2000, one of the most traumatic experiences in the life of Eliza so far. Anyway! All she wants to do is get back home and rebuild her school and find good places for all of her students in the meantime. She was sitting there hooked up to a heart monitor and all kinds of medications in her hospital gown and all she could say was that someone has to go to the school and get the students' desks out. "The students love those desks," she said. They're the really old-fashioned wooden kind with the square metal box under the seat. Her best friend and colleague said, "They're getting the desks out! I want the desks out as much as you do! But you can't worry about it anymore, that's how you ended up in here!" And it's true. She loves that school; she worries so much about that school; she is that school. She will probably will her heart to keep beating just so she can go back there and get it going again. My aunt is a formidable woman. She takes no shit from anyone. She will be okay, she will, she will. The soundtrack to the Rent movie came out yesterday. I am going to be buying it because I want to hear the differences between it and the original Broadway cast recording. I am getting kind of weirdly excited about the movie while also being quite scared about the whole thing. What if it's awful? I mean, what if it's just awful and people make fun of it? I don't know why I care, but I do. I haven't watched The Amazing Race from last night yet, but I look forward to it, especially after reading this article. It would be pretty awesome to see a New Orleans family win something like this, wouldn't it?
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2005 elb |
I bought one of Jette's shirts. Don't you want to? Colleen's wish lists for kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina: games and books. Thanks, Colleen. |
