Post Traumatic Stupid Syndrome

Even though the girls' school was undamaged in the storm and never lost electricity, the rest of the county didn't fare as well and they were ordered by the school board to stay home for the rest of the week anyway. Bureaucracy. Liability. Sheesh. I didn't mind however, that I had to take the rest of the week off work to watch the kids because Jorge was back east, I had big plans. There would be furniture removal! And cleaning! And painting! The DSL would be hooked up!

My productive week was pretty much a bust. The old furniture is out, bare necessities are in, I narrowed down the paint chips, but that's it. It also looks like I will be on dial-up for a few weeks.

Jorge and Sarabelle rescued his mom from her sky-high Ft. Lauderdale condo Wednesday. Because there was no electricity and her building's elevator's emergency generator is a piece of junk, it was necessary for them to climb eighteen flights of stairs. She made it over to our new house -- I won't be referring to it as our "Forever Home" for reasons that will be clear to you shortly -- and immediately fell very ill. She has been in the hospital here with what may be pneumonia. If they discharge her this afternoon, Jorge will take her back to Lauderdale later today. She has been threatening to leave the hospital on her own and take a bus home. My mother-in-law is fiercely independent, can you tell?

Friday night the girls and I went to a spectacular Halloween party at a Gulf-front Mediterranean Revival estate. Jorge joked that we got to see how the other half, no, the other 10 percent live. If I had not met this very down-to-earth woman prior to this event, we went mini golfing with her and her son, the other fifth grader in the school, who brought his own putter, I would have been thoroughly intimidated. I would estimate the expense of this annual blowout to be the equivalent of a small wedding. While everyone was very pleasant and we had a great time, I was very aware of, and slightly uneasy with, all the posturing and judging going on. Sarabelle was invited to attend the youth group gatherings at one of the island's churches. The girls at the party who are members were lauded as "very good girls" and are all Sarabelle's age. These are the highly mature and responsible girls tapped for local babysitting services. The ones I saw may indeed be very good girls, but they all appeared and acted more like sixteen or seventeen year olds, and less like the twelve or thirteen year olds they purportedly are. Yikes.

Between what Jorge has been personally experiencing back in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Palm Beach area and what I have been seeing on the internet and hearing on the radio, we are disgusted. The whining began just one day after Wilma. "Where's my water?" "How come we don't have electric?" "Why can't they do something about these gas lines?" Stories of stupidity, entitlement, and pathetic dependency abound. "I stood in line for four hours and all I got was one bag of ice and six bottles of water?!" "FEMA should be here for us! We depend on them to take care of us when something like this happens." And though the damage there wasn't even that bad, life has come to a screeching halt. Imagine if, or when, a real catastrophe strikes... My brother told me his neighbor has a huge natural gas generator permanently installed at his house and is operating both airconditioning systems, all appliances including his pool pump, and outdoor landscape lighting for his six bedroom home. He said there were about forty people over the other night using his kitchen to cook in. Hmmmm. Did it not occur to any of them that it is wonderfully cool outside, that no one needs the air on, that they only had to open their windows? That if they needed to cook they could use matches and all the tree debris in their yards? Maybe use that barbecue grill on their porch or that pretty little terracotta firepit on their patio? That the gas shortage would be more quickly resolved if they would all stay home for a little while instead of driving all over town looking for gas? My mother said her neighbor's teenaged sons were so grateful for the food another neighbor brought over because they were "starving." Two days after the storm. I can't believe there were no boxes of cereal or snacks or even a single loaf of bread in the house. How many days did they have to prepare for this storm? Spare me the excuses and the drama.

Jorge has finally decided he wants a place where, in his own words, "I can pump my own water and slaughter a hog if I need to." [Said while using his imaginary pitcher pump.] Since he has now taken possession of this bright idea as his own, instead of (not) listening to me for the past twenty years, maybe we will finally move in that direction.

Thanks, everybody, for keeping us in your thoughts!

Strange

Wilma came in as a 3, but because we were north of landfall, we barely had hurricane force winds. Around 5:00 AM, the sound of rain lashing our windows woke us. I refuse to say it sounded like a freight train, everybody uses that tired old simile -- be more creative, people -- however, it did feel like we were riding a freight train. The winds kept the house rocking and bumping for hours. The rest of the day, well after the storm had left the building, we experienced gusts from the cold front that moved in.

Surprisingly enough, it was our family and friends over in Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach who got the worst of Wilma. Even though the storm was only a 1, or weak 2 in some areas by the time it arrived, they were much closer to the eye and had pretty heavy damage: roofs peeled back, cars and windows smashed by flying palm fronds, and boats broken loose from moorings, for starters.

The cooler air is such a welcome change. Sarabelle left the house today wearing a long-sleeved, cowl-necked sweater, with a coat of her dad's on top of that. We had a good laugh when we pressed the button on our car's console to check the outside air temperature. It was a frosty 72 degrees. It's all relative.

We headed over to the marina to check on our boat and let out a collective, "Uh oh," when we did not see the T-top bobbing at the dock as we pulled up to our slip. That was followed seconds later by a relieved group, "Whew!" when we discovered the tide was extraordinarily low due to the high winds pushing all the water out of the harbor, and our boat was still there. With wind continuing to blow around 40 MPH, we didn't dare attempt a trip out to the island. We're sure it's fine.

After that, we drove over to the new house, which also survived in perfect condition. We measured, discussed color schemes, and started emptying closets and kitchen cabinets. Oh, yeah, did I tell you the house is completely furnished? Priority number one is to rid ourselves of the serviceable, yet old-ladyish household goods.

School has been cancelled again for tomorrow and with Jorge and Sarabelle heading back to the east coast for the remainder of the week, I will have to take the day off work to stay with the kids. Twist my arm. Gracie, Elle, and I will spend our free time tomorrow establishing a base camp at our new house. It will be a real treat to regain that one and a half hours we've spent in the car each day driving to and from work and school. I'm pretty sure the new neighborhood has DSL, but I'm not so sure we can be hooked up immediately. It may be a few days before I get my connection there up and running.

Busy Day

We waited for a change in the track. We thought it might break apart after hitting the Yucatan. Denial? Wishful thinking. We spent yesterday boxing up books, fifteen banana boxes worth -- and we still have a few more to go -- instead of making storm preparations.

This morning we are riding out to the island to board up windows, stopping by our new house (we closed Friday in spite of some eleventh hour complications) to take some insurance photos, just in case, and returning home to throw the panels up over the windows, or at the bare minimum the sliding glass door, here at the Punta Gorda house.

Wilma looks to be heading toward Marco Island. It's only a Category 2, and being north of the storm will spare us the worst winds and storm surge, but you never know. Charley was supposed to hit Tampa and was only a 2 right up until it made a quick, unexpected right turn into Charlotte Harbor.

On the bright side, the steering current for Wilma is a cold front. So when we're out picking up debris in the yard and the power is out, at least it will be cool.

Shanghaied

We are looking forward to a nice long family weekend. School had been called off for today last Wednesday, before Wilma slowed down to a crawl delaying her arrival until maybe Monday. My plans were to stretch out on the couch and catch up on my reading, and get back into a read-aloud with the girls, not spending my family's time on the computer.

But I have been assigned a research project:

Find and arrange airfare and travel plans for the five of us plus my mother-in-law over the Christmas-New Year time period. Destination: CHINA!

A tenant of my MIL's recently returned from a trip to Shanghai marveling how the Chinese are light years ahead of us. Shanghai is a city with over 20 million people, brand new superhighways, thousands of brand new skyscrapers, all sparkling clean. He believes China will easily be the new world power. My MIL said that if anyone is going to beat the U.S., she wants to see it with her own eyes. We have been invited to accompany her on this great adventure.

Let's go meet the conquerors!

It's a quarter 'til freak-out

Try to sleep. Wait until morning. See where this thing is going -- we'll have a better idea then, when it makes some progress.

Find out it's a 5 and the most powerful recorded storm EVER. Repeat these facts several times in wonder to the sleepy husband you just telephoned and woke. Discuss plans. Scoff at plans. Make no plans. Wait and see.

Open a house for a showing. Observe barometer hanging on the wall: Change in Weather. Numbness. Sit weakly in front of computer screen remainder of day while nervous vacationers pop in wondering what to do. Click on NOAA. Check projected path. Check for new advisories. Click on Wunderground. Check storm computer models. Analyze strike probability data. Debate odds loudly. Click on Navy weather site. Compare models. Speculate. Hit "Refresh" often. Swap hurricane stories with co-workers. Try to be upbeat. Make half-hearted jokes. Wonder when the window panels will start going up.

Main street stroll to the grocery for lunch. Game faces on. Ho-hum. Business as usual. Just another day in Paradise. Overhear a conversation that So-and-so's family has already packed up and headed out. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

"Turn, turn, turn, damn it." "We need it to turn now! We need to be on the north side of it!" "Let it hit Naples, they could stand to have their hair mussed up a little."

Boarded windows appearing. But it's too soon...

Find station with Regular gas priced at $2.68 per gallon. No gas. Pass twenty more stations -- five are dark and fifteen have cars stacked five deep at the pumps. Find station with no lines. Pump ten gallons before station tank runs dry. Everyone driving a little faster, a little more erratically. Grocery shop for school lunch fixings. Notice bread and water shelves have been picked clean. Impulse shop. Balance towering stack of supplies in arms. Distribute more goods to little helpers' arms. Realize a cart would have been smarter. Top off tank at a gas station close to home. "Hurry up ma'am, it's about empty." Pay $3.01 for Premium.

Check the "cone of uncertainty" online. Debate staying up for near hysterical newscast. Know that this thing's path is not going to show much progress in the morning when you wake up -- presuming you get to sleep. Realize it won't make any noticeable progress until it's ready to hit, and then will blast through when it's too late. Hope there will be enough time for spouse to travel from Tampa to Fort Lauderdale to Punta Gorda, to the island to remove a few valuables, and back to the rental to board up the windows.

Stay or go? Stay or go? It's still to early to tell.

Really too early to tell...

...if this thing is going to hit us or not. All the same, my boss had to postpone the catered, open bar, live band street party the office was hosting this weekend to celebrate a new high-end promotional partnership.

The good news is we are scheduled to close on the house Friday and we were able to bind our insurance just before the storm was named and entered "the box," the very large rectanglar area encompassing parts of the Gulf and Atlantic, the Carribean and southeastern U.S., that insurance companies use as a guide for risk management. Once a named storm enters the box, the Insurance Nazi says, "No policy for you!" Woohoo! If it all gets swept away, we're covered. We could build a new house from scratch our way, instead of making renovations to the existing structure.

Oh, sure, we said we were moving right in, that the house was in good, clean, liveable condition, but you really didn't think we'd be satisfied with that, did you? C'mon, we're contractors.

We're already planning a massive relandscaping project (I'd rather have a beautiful garden than a beautiful house), which will have to wait until we reorient the garage to a side-entrance and relay a new driveway. Then we're thinking about converting part of the garage into an office (we're not garage car-parkers), repainting the interior and exterior, doing something to the roof because once we repaint the house the roof's going to look crummy, bumping the back room out to include the space that is currently a screened porch, maybe put in a pool, and while we're at it, it sure would be nice to get rid of those low, popcorned ceilings...

And so it goes.

Let it blow, let it blow, let it blow.

Lalalalalalala

What?

Wilma?!

I'm sorry, I can't heeeear youuuu.

Lalalalalala...

A few new links...

This is a little late, but Sarah at Poppins has finally filled the void, providing a "Sassy, Secular home away from homeschool." Check out The Denim Jumper.



Words On Us is a great spot for book lovers, homeschoolers, and autodidacts. Deborah has helpful tips for running a book club, intelligent book discussions, and her famous brownie recipe. What more could you ask for?

Serenity now

Not having health insurance and a deadly family history is a bad combination. A few weeks back I opted to have some tests done with a mobile medical service, so that if anything really awful turned up, like the scary hereditary condition both my parents bizarrely have (what are the odds, huh?), I could get some health insurance before it's too late without leaving a trail of pre-existing conditions.

Cheating? I call it self-preservation. I have no qualms about abusing such a ridiculous system.

The good news is, I am not in any danger of spontaneously combusting.

Playtime

The question occurred to me the other day, as we sat in a family-style restaurant observing one of the staff's daughters and her friend waiting for the mom's shift to be over. The girls were tucked into a booth and occupying their time playing dolls.

I thought about the role dolls play in girls' lives.

Little girls have played with dolls for eons. Whether made of porcelain, corn husks, or sticks and clay, they've been dragged around and loved, training little girls for the day when they would be real mommies.

Then along came Barbie. Women were liberated. Barbie could be anything: A ballet dancer! A stewardess! A nurse! A bride... Oh, well, but she had really stylish clothes and drove a sportscar! She was showing girls the possibilities, the potential they had to be anything. She was training little girls to be career women.

I watched the two prepubescents deeply engrossed in dressing, undressing, and redressing their dolls in preparation for a big night out in the party bus and wondered, what exactly are Bratz dolls training our daughters to be?

Today's lessons:

1) The brain is amazing and words are fun.

Words are so fun I was dreaming about them this morning. Whatever bizarre scenario my unconscious mind cooked up -- it involved a conference and a tractor trailer -- morphed into a consideration of the words, "roll" and "over." A rollover for an eighteen-wheeler is a dreadful thing, while a rollover of finances has a more positive connotation. Dogs understand "roll over" as a trick to be performed hopefully for a treat, and snoring spouses are prodded and ordered to roll over for the reward of a peaceful night's sleep. As I considered other possibilities, the word itself became a giant billboard I could no longer ignore. I obeyed its urgent, red, uppercase command, my eyes flew open, and I saw the clock's digital readout: 5:30 on the dot. Time to go!

2) Using words accurately is critical when writing a press release.

I enjoyed correcting punctuation errors on a release being sent out from a new promotional partner on our behalf, but the most fun I had was discovering that the author bungled her own title, leaving out the most critical first "L" in "Public Relations Director."

Today's inspiration:

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday

-- Billie Joe Armstrong ("Holiday" from American Idiot)

The Good Life

What do you consider it to be? Are you living it? Would you make any major changes? What would they be?

How would I answer those questions?

Hmmm. The good life for me would be surrounding myself with my kids and husband, enjoying each other doing whatever it is we choose to do as a family. Travel, running a farm, whatever. But we are not there yet. Right now we are obligated to complete the tasks necessary to take us to the next step. And the next step seems so pointless. We're heading back toward suburbia. We've made some great moves financially, protecting our futures, or at least cushioning them a little -- unfortunately, at the expense of our present. Change is not something I am afraid of, as those of you still reading SCHOLA after any length of time already know, but there are some very big changes that must be made around here, and I'm worried; worried that it may be too late. Our family is fractured. Jorge is still working his ass off on the east coast, though thankfully not commuting daily. (He bought an Airstream and parked it over there for accommodations during the week. He boasts about being a fat, balding, middle-aged man living in a trailer, truly at the top of his game.) Some kids are in school, and one is shuttling back and forth with her father. My hours at work coincide with school so the majority of us are home at the same time, but once we arrive back at the house and I start doing the single mom thing, everybody is off in a different direction with friends, computers, or television. Not what we wanted. At all.

Is it Survivor: Guatemala, or the latest National Geographic issue on "The Next Killer Flu," or a need to bring this shattered family back together, or maybe a longing for the days when Jorge and I lived much more simply, or the likelihood of a 10-40 year period of increased hurricane activity, or rising fuel prices? Likely a combination. Or maybe, as I mentioned to another blog buddy (yeah, you're getting scraps today, sorry about that), it's PMS, but I feel a strong urge to run away -- down to Belize, down to operate a jungle lodge like we planned so many years ago.

Of course I'll have to wait at least until we close on this next property.

The Good Life? To live intentionally. To act and not only react. To choose a path rather than have it chosen for you by default. We've been actively making choices, just the wrong ones. We are living someone else's life.