What Now

UPDATE

The sky has finally cleared and the sun is shining again...up here at least. I can't believe the utter devistation that has happened along the coast. What makes it even more dumbfounding is that so many people stayed behind. I'm sure they had reasons, and I hope they were good ones. I'm not judging, you understand, I'm just completely bewildered by it. I kept thinking that I wanted to do SOMETHING, but I didn't know what. I'm too terrified by needles to give blood, I didn't know where to donate money, and I'm usually not good in any kind of crisis, so going down there to help was out of the question. My question of what I could do was answered in an e-mail from the employee association. They wanted donations of personal items, baby stuff, and pet food. Therein, I found my niche. If nothing else, in a crisis, I can shop. I still feel like I should do more.

We didn't sustain any damage, really. We lost a few branches from the walnut tree, and leaves were EVERYWHERE. It looked like fall came early, only all of the leaves were green. We lost power for a few hours, too. Steve and I would have never thought about getting up Tuesday morning if he hadn't gotten up to go to the bathroom and noticed the clock was off. I had to go and find my MP3 player, which unfortunately, has a pair of headphones attached that I used when I worked at the radio station (i.e. the Princess Leia hairbuns) to listen to the time and the weather. It was physically impossible to lay down with the headset on, so I decided to go ahead and get up and get ready for work. A lot of places had closed for the day, but not the SpRocket. I swear, on Judgement Day I'm going to have to ask God if he can wait until 5:00 for me to get there, because we WILL be open. Steve and I had enough hot water to take showers, but no lights to see about getting ready. I was trying to find clothes that matched and put on makeup, and I couldn't dry my hair, so I got to work looking like Edward Scissorhands. I'm not sure why being darker than normal might have cause this lapse in judgement, but I put on this shirt that I don't normally wear because it's not big enough. I suppose in candlelight, everything looks better, so I didn't think of the ramifications of wearing a button up shirt that was too small. By the time I got to work, I knew that I was in some kind of trouble. To put it delicately, a deep breath could have caused dangerous button projectiles. I kept my lab coat/utility jacket on until I had to leave for school, and I had no problem at first. When I was walking out, a security guard stopped me to ask a question, and while I was talking to him, I noticed a breeze. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happened. I can thank God that I was holding the proof of a sign, so I just held it up and kept my composure. The last thing I wanted to do was bring attention to my...plight. Before I went to school, and it made me late, I had to go to Wal-Mart and buy a shirt to put on. It took me all of five minutes to buy it, but then I realized I didn't have a place to change, so I figured I'd do it in my car. Trying to be suave about it, I pulled the t-shirt over my head and over the shirt I was wearing. That being done, I had to figure out how to get the other shirt off. Let me just say that if anyone tells you that they were in the Wa-Mart parking lot, and they saw a woman in the front seat of a Durango who looked like she was having a fist fight with herself, that was me. I finally got situated, and I think I will be burning the evil shirt that started the whole mess.

Anyways.

As for the weekend, it was busy. We were having the Saturn/Apollo Reunion here at work, and I was slammed with sign requests. It wouldn't have been so bad, but two of the printer heads on our fancy printer went out, so I had to figure out how to make decent signs with only yellow and magenta ink, and vinyl. It wasn't easy. I was busy at work, and then ran to church to help serve the dinner for the Teacher's Appreciation thingie. Hardly anyone came, shame on them, but we had enough there to actually feed. After cleaning, I took the balloons and sucked the helium out of them and sang Ella Fitzgerald songs. I'm sure that the other ladies wished I did more cleaning. : )

Saturday was a series of unfortunate events for Steve. It didn't start out that way. I think we will have to give him the fourth Bless-His-Heart Award. We spent the morning cleaning the living room and working in the yard. I was doing the living room, and I was doing a meticulous job, starting in one corner, moving furniture, hanging pictures, and dusting. By the time I got to the other end of the room, it looked great. Steve decided he would work on filling in the doorway that he sealed up, so he taped a sheet of plastic over the electronics nook and started sanding...with a power sander. While he was doing this, I was happily ignorant doing my homework back in the bedroom. After a while, Steve came in COVERED with white powder. He told me he needed help cleaning up because he had made a mess. I told him I was doing my homework, and he'd have to do it himself. I will spare you the blow by blow, but after he came back in and told me I HAD to help, and I threw a fit about never finishing college and spending my life cleaning up his messes, I walked into the living room and saw what had happened. Apparently, it isn't possible to vaccum up plaster dust because the vaccume cleaner will suck it up, and blow it back out with the exhaust all over the place. Our living room looked like your stereotypical haunted houses, covered in thick dust and hazy. I will still mad at being made to clean up when I had other things to do, which in turn caused Steve to get more mad at me for fussing, and in his haste to get away from me and into the garage, he shattered the window on the kitchen-to-garage door...and he was barefoot. So there he is, trying to clean up glass, and just as he got it all up, he opened up the door again, and a shard of glass fell and stabbed him in the arm. By this point, I realized that trying to clean the living room when stuff is still flying about in the air and resettling, was moot, I went to help him clean up the new glass while he cleaned up his arm. After that, he was completely out of it, running into things, spilling things, and etc. I was glad when we finally got done and left to see his parents. I was afraid he would kill himself. All together now: BLESS HIS HEART!

Sunday was pretty uneventful, save for the fact I forgot that wearing black pants is bad when all things in the living room are coated with white powder. I had white handprints on my rear-end where I was looking for something in my pocket. Nice.