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I watched some footage of looting this morning. I have to say that I understand why it happens. It is very hard on the store owners, but the store owners and clerks aren’t there to take money and people NEED supplies. Most of the people I saw in one clip were adults carrying large packages of diapers or food. I have no arguement with those people. Anything they can do to keep their loved ones alive and healthy while waiting for evacuation is okay with me. That flavor of looting will voluntarily cease to exist if emergency teams can provide other sources for essential supplies. Unfortunately in this case some of those people won’t get help for days. If I were in their position, I would loot too. I would also try to provide restitution when survival was no longer at stake. Many of these people will do the same.

I DO have an arguement with the healthy young men who were filmed running off with bags of dry cleaning. I suppose it is possible that they needed the clothes for survival, but I doubt it. Their faces and body language were too gleeful.

Oh, and I’m also mad at the New Orleans mayor who thinks that choppers should have been pulled off of rescue efforts in order to plug the levee and prevent property damage. People first Mr. Mayor.

NOTE: I’ve edited this entry on Sept 2, 2005 as I refined my thinking about what was important. Some of the comments will no longer be pertinent.

Over the last day or so I’ve been watching the fears of hurricane Katrina’s landfall and the evacuation of New Orleans. New Orleans is a city that I’ve wanted to visit someday and now it may be too late for me to do so. I feel for those people and I find it strange to realize that on this same beautiful clear morning when I’m sending kids off to school there are other people huddled in shelters in fear for their lives. There isn’t much I can do for the people in New Orleans right now except send prayers, so I’m using the excess anxiety in a little mental exercise of imagining what I’d pack if I ever had to evacuate my home.

If I had to evacuate and had no time to plan or pack I’d grab the kids first. If there was time I’d make sure they had shoes and I’d grab our 72 hour emergency kits.

If I had 10-30 minutes to get out I’d also grab my file of Important Records (birth certificates, passports), scriptures, a toy or two per child, some extra bedding, Kiki’s hamster, the entire contents of the medecine cabinet, and some clothes.

If I have an hour to plan, then the limiting factor becomes “what will fit in the van?” In addition to everything already mentioned we’d put in additional food, photo albums/scrapbooks, Howard’s external hard drive (containing back-ups of his computer), additional books/toys, back ups of all my computer data, and the camera.

It is amazing to realize how much of what we’ve accumulated I’m willing to abandon in an emergency.

The tub in our master bathroom has one of those pop-up plugs. You push it, it pops open. Push it again, it pops closed. At least that is the theory. Ours actually requires hitting 5-7 times before it grudgingly pops partially open or partially closed. It needs fixed.

The tub in the kids bathroom worked great. We used it all the time. Then one day we discovered a small bulge in our downstairs ceiling. Popping it got us wet. Water does not belong dripping from sheetrock ceilings. That is bad. Some unintentional experimentation demonstrated that water run down the drain in the kid’s bathtub runs out of the ceiling in the family room. So, tub two needs to be fixed.

Since our house has two showers separate from the two tubs, we’ve still been able to stay clean. The tub problems have been gathering dust awaiting funds enough to pay a plumber. The funds finally arrived last week, but I’ve been busy so never made the call. (I also suspect that part of me was still trying to figure if I could solve the problems without spending money. Not logical, but oh well.)

This morning a toilet clogged. 10 minutes of plunger work, 1 soaked Sandra, and 1 liberally splashed bathroom later and I still had a completely clogged toilet. I decided that since I needed to call a plumber anyway, I’d let him deal with it. He shows up today sometime between noon and 2 pm. Hopefully by the time he leaves all my plumbing will work again.

My kids started school today. We all had to get up almost 2 hours earlier than we wanted to. Thats a big biorythmic shift to swallow all at once. Add to that the imposition of Schedule and today was rough. It is now 8 pm. I only have half of my kids in bed and none of them are asleep yet even though theoretically the younger two should be in order to get enough sleep. Homework time was exhausting for me. All of it was exhausting for me. The schedule seems overwhelming to manage. I know that I’ll adapt and in a couple of weeks it’ll be easy, but right now the thought that I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again makes me want to cry. They kids each had a great day, so that’s good at least. How is it that I can simultaneously feel like the schedule is a workable one and also feel like it is insane and no one could manage it?

The best part of today featured an unexpected package in the mail. It was a gift box full of small toys for my kids. Thank You SomebodyStrange and Davesanngel, that was incredibly thoughtful of you. It was a much needed morale boost in the middle of a very rough day. Rather than “sensibly” saving up the toys for a birthday or christmas, I’m going to hand them over to the kids right away because sometimes the unexpectedness of a gift is half the value. You picked well, the kids will have a blast.

And now back to parenting with me.

I unexpectedly ran into an old family friend today. This woman has been a friend to my family since before I was born. She was my primary teacher when I was 5. Every memory I have of her breathes warmth and love. She was the first person of Tongan decent I ever knew and I’ve had positive inclinations for all Tongan people ever since. She was that wonderful. Seeing her today was like going home. Even more like going home than actually visiting my hometown, because when I’m in my hometown I’m confronted with all the changes time has wrought. I had a wonderful, but short, visit with her and her husband (whom I didn’t know well as a child) and I’ve discovered that they’ve moved to a town only about 20 minutes from here. I may play adopt-a-grandparent because my kids are short of local grandparents and I’d love for them to know her.

I’ve spent a good portion of this afternoon sorting through random memories that were dredged up by this encounter. I’m suddenly thinking of wading and catching polywogs in The Arroyo. I’m remembering a chestnut tree that used to grow in the courtyard of our church building. (It had the most fascinating spiky balls that fell from it yearly. Do chestnuts do that? Maybe it was something else.) I’m remembering tagging along on my brother’s Cub Scout outings because my mom and this friend were the den mothers. I’m remembering playing with a dozen friends whose paths went different ways in junior high and high school, people I haven’t thought of for years.

All of these memories seem imbued with a sort of idylic glow. They were happier, less worrisome times. But not because the world was a safer place, I don’t believe it was all that much safer, the glow is because I was a child and it wasn’t my job to make the world better. I was free to just enjoy it. The times that my kids will remember as idylic are taking place right now. Years hence my kids will look back on today as some sort of golden age when life was simpler. I will too. When I am a grandmother, watching my children raising children of their own, I too will look back on today as a golden age.

This is why I need to keep this journal, so that years from now when I want to tour The Golden Age, I’ll have a guidebook.

Yesterday we had a marvelous BBQ with some friends. Any excuse to make kebabs is a good one, but this excuse was even better than most. These weren’t people that I’d had much contact with, I’d met them once. Howard had met them at a couple of local conventions and corresponded via email many times. After dinner Howard and the dad disappeared into his office so that they could talk about ship designs in the Schlockiverse. I was left to talk to the mom, her teenage daughter, and a pre-teen niece. One of the things I really enjoyed was watching the way this mother and daughter interacted. They were obviously really good friends. They shared all sorts of geekish interests and spent a good part of the time talking to each other while I got to sit quietly and observe. (Note, I didn’t at all feel left out, I was thoroughly enjoying listening to the conversation and occasionally participating.) I hope that I can foster that kind of friendship with my own kids through their teen years.

The afternoon of fun was even further enlivened by Gleek getting stung by wasps. Apparently they’d created a colony underneath the pink towel that had been hanging over the deck rail for a month. The wasp colony had significant objections to Gleeks decision to use the towel. She got stung twice on her arm. We slapped on a plaster of baking soda and water and gave her some benadryl. While I was administering this first aid Howard went out with a can of raid and wreaked Daddy Vengeance on the wasp nest. The first aid seems to have worked because within an hour the stings were reduced to little pink dots.

Interestingly the mosquito bite that Gleek acquired right between her eyes on the day before yesterday began swelling up. By bedtime she looked a little bit like a star trek alien with a nose prosthetic. Howard assured her that even though she looked like a bejoran it was okay because all the bejorans on Star Trek were pretty. This resulted in her refusing to let me medicate the swollen bite at bedtime because she wanted to look pretty. The bite continued to swell overnight and she awoke this morning with one eye swollen almost shut. She has decided it isn’t pretty anymore and she cooperated with medication.

Words do not come easily for Link. This represents a constant challenge; he is surrounded by a family full of very articulate people. Because of this I’ve become very aware of the fact that if I don’t listen when Link feels like talking, then I’ll never know what goes on in his head. This afternoon he came and crawled into my lap for a snuggle. His stated excuse for this was that he was sad because he’d had to come home from a friend’s house in the middle of an interesting game. (Zelda four swords) It soon became clear though that he needed to express frustration with his friend. Link wanted to complete the level in this co-operative game, but the friend just wanted to goof around smashing pots. After a lengthy discussion of the game I decided to grab the chance to talk about the upcoming onset of a new school year.

Link did not respond positively to the introduction of this new topic. Link faces school with mixed feelings. It is the place of recess, and computers, and soccer and reading, but it is also the place of writing and work pages and peers. At least this year I’ve got him on the earlier schedule that he wanted. Then out of the blue Link started told me “Olivia lies.” Since the topic was school, I made the connection that this must have been a classmate from last year. I was informed that not only does Olivia lie, but everyone knows that she does and she liked Link and Link did NOT want to marry her. He was extremely relieved when I told him that he could pick his own wife when he was ready and he wouldn’t have to marry anyone if he didn’t want to. Link then formed a plan that when he is grown up he’ll take his wife for a walk and Olivia will come up, and Link will say “Sorry! I already have a wife!”

In another sharp mental turn Link then informed me that after his birthday he wants to always stay 8 years old. He then huddled close and hugged me tight. “I don’t want you to die mom.” This declaration and the tears in his eyes demonstrated a whole new level in Link’s thinking. He really comprehended death and feared it. Unfortunately I cannot in all honesty promise that I will not die before he does. I did promise that I would take good care of myself and try to avoid death for as long as possible. I was also able to discuss with him my beliefs about death and afterlife. They weren’t as comforting to him as I would have liked. Mostly I just held onto him and loved him while he faced his scary thoughts.

This deeply important conversation was held with Gleek and Patches in the room. They had no comprehension of how important the conversation was. All they saw was that Link was monopolizing the prime real estate of Mommy’s Lap. So we were continually bounced on while trying to discuss death. Howard wandered in at about this time, I think he heard the sadness. It was good because he was able to participate in the conversation which ended with dragging out a photo album which contained pictures of Howard’s deceased parents.

There are whole worlds in my kid’s heads that I know nothing about. I didn’t even know Olivia existed, or that my son was already having to fend off would-be girlfriends. I had no idea that Link was thinking about death and afraid of it. Only by talking to them do I get these glimpses into their worlds. No, not talking. I talk to them all the time. It’s by LISTENING that I find out who these people are that I call my children.

I realized something about myself today. Ever since I can remember I’ve always said that if I ever owned a dog, it would be a large dog. This opinion was derived from the beauty of certain large dog breeds such as german shepherds and irish setters. It could also be from the fact that the family dog during my childhood was medium-large. I know that I consciously belived that a large dog would be a better home guardian than a small one. Also somehow in my brain small dog = yappy & annoying. Somehow I believed that small dogs were for people who carried them around everywhere, dyed them pink, and named them Froo-froo. I managed to continue in this assumption despite the fact that I know many owners of small dogs who are nothing at all like that.

Today my assumptions have shifted because I finally recognized something about my own behavior. When I am confronted with a dog, I am reluctant to touch it. I’ve always told myself that this reaction is due to my animal hair allergies. But the fact is that it is only large dogs I am reluctant to touch. I’ll imediately pet, scratch, pick-up, and snoogle a small dog with no concern for allergies at all. This finally clicked in my head today when Gleek found a pair of cat-sized poodle-mixes in our front yard. I scratched them and found a stray hope in my head that their owners would not be found so I could keep them because they were so cute. That stray thought was despite the fact that I have no intention of taking on the responsibility of a dog right now. We found the owner visiting next door and returned the dogs. But now I’m left to ponder that maybe I’m not a large dog person and maybe I never have been. The insight is fairly moot since I don’t intend to acquire an animal right now, but it is fascinating to notice how I’ve been fooling myself for years.

I applied for reduced-prices school lunch today. I have mixed feelings about it. Anything that lets me spend less money is a good thing. But I much prefer being a contributor than a dependent. For years I’ve willingly paid taxes knowing that some of that money would get spent in welfare programs like school lunch. I always knew that some people take advantage of the system without real need. I never expected to benefit from the programs directly. Defining “real need” is hard. If I look at things one way, we’re rich. We have a house, we have cars, we have food, we’re in no danger of losing those things. On the other hand our income is low. It isn’t permanently low. But we are currently making ends meet by a steady depletion of assets.

In the end I signed up because my kids like getting school lunch with treats we can’t afford at home. I’ll pinch pennies somewhere that the kids won’t feel the pinch.