We’re going to Gainesville. The Kid and DH will stay there for the next few days. I will leave for Ohio from Jacksonville on Monday. I’ll return to NOLA next Sunday.
Insert standard disclaimers here about neighbors with weapons.
Archive for August, 2008
Well, it’s that time of year again. We have four seasons in south Louisiana: King Cake, Crawfish, Mosquito, and Hurricane. The summer started out so quietly as far as severe weather goes; and we’ve had very quiet seasons for the last two years. But now we’re looking at only the second major storm to hit the states this year, and the first to hit Louisiana since Rita in 2005.
I hate this. I really, really hate this. The tension is just unbearable. My friend Mike said that it’s because you have so much time to watch it come at you. A tornado, or an earthquake, can be devastating, but neither gives much warning - it hits, and then it’s over. I’ve been watching Gustav now since it was a wee tropical wave off the coast of Africa. It seems like a week. We have an evacuation plan, but I’m really, really hoping we don’t have to implement it. There’s a chance the storm could head down to Corpus Christi, and not that I wish ill upon the Christi-ans, but let them drive to Dallas or San Antonio or whatever. Memphis is a haul, it’s a holiday weekend, and I just want to stay home and relax.
Like that’s gonna happen. The relaxing part, I mean. Yeesh.
My daughter told me a funny story today.
My grandson and granddaughter were jumping around and yelling. My grandson was yelling “War! War! War! War!” over and over again.
My daughter asked, “M, why are you yelling ‘War’?”
“Because I’m a Republican!” M replies!
My granddaughter A shouts, “I’m a pelican, too!”
Then she starts flapping her arms like a bird, shouting “War! War! War!”
Because that’s the sound both Republicans AND pelicans make.
I’ve been working really hard this week, and I’ve had trouble getting motivated to do anything else, including blogging. Today I did a little work in the kitchen, helped DH get the hurricane boxes together (2+ months after the season started; oy) and baked a blueberry pie.
I had a depressive episode last weekend that was pretty harsh, but I’ve come out of it OK, I guess.
I have begun the plotting stages of a blog about feminism. I have a couple of cobloggers signed up. We are going to start out with a review and discussion of some seminal feminist writings. Our first is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. We’re going to read it in the original French. Ha! I glanced at it about 25 years ago and thought, “Gee, this is hard,” and put it back down. Maybe my brain is up to it now. I’ll put a link here once the first post goes up.
Two weeks ago I went to my 30 year high school reunion. It was a really neat experience for a number of reasons.
I have always (always) compared myself to others and come up lacking. There were always people who were smarter or prettier or thinner or more popular or more sensible or any number of things. This was particularly the case when I was young, and I’ve only started to get over it in the last few years. Going to the reunion helped a light bulb go off - we’re ALL older. I’m not the only one who has gray hair and and gained a lot of weight. Everybody has had ups and down over the last 30 years, and those of us who attended all seemed to have the same perspective: we’re here, we’re older, but we’re alive. Let’s party! All that high school sturm und drang was then. This is now. We’re grownups.
Another neat thing was seeing again some people who I was really close to - who I loved - and who I’ve lost track with over the years. Seeing them happy and successful was such a rush. Gordon is on his second career, teaching business at a Dallas high school. Joel is a minister in Buffalo.
And then there was Bettina. One of the main reasons I’ve put off writing this for so long was because I didn’t want this to be all schmaltzy and stuff, and I didn’t know how to write about connecting with Bettina again without going all squishy. Bettina and I were really, really good friends in 7th and 8th grade. Best friends, really. We passed notes in classes and did theatre stuff and ate lunch together and slept over at each others houses and spent hours on the phone. Hours. But I made a new friend the summer between 8th and 9th grade, and Bettina and I had a kind of falling out (over a boy, if I recall correctly) and we really weren’t friends much at all in high school. I have felt pretty crappy about that occasionally, because I wasn’t a very good friend to her. Kind of shallow and immature.
Leading up to the reunion, we found that we have a lot of things in common. We are both in very, very happy marriages after being divorced from (different) losers named Jeff. We are both feminists. We’ve both recovered from high school and regained our balance and become successful people. Far from envying her success, I celebrate it. I feel like it’s my success too. Not to take away from what she accomplished (which is quite a lot) but that I empathize with her journey and recognize her achievements and what it took to make them.
All these years later, I have my friend back. And I’ve forgiven myself for being shallow and immature when I was fourteen.
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