Emily, flying is so much easier and you shouldn't have too much trouble with getting around.

So, I have entered all of my students into my gradebook on my new district-issued computer. Which means, YAY! I can check their homework for five minutes before I go to sleep. Or maybe I'll just go sleep.

Yeah. In pretty much the same sense, alive and grateful for it, but kinda wondering, "well what the fuck do we do now"

Honestly, you just keep moving.

Thirteen years ago my family lost everything but each other (and that call was a bit too close) in a fire. For a week we wouldn't be out of sight of each other. It wasn't even conscious-- if one of us went to the kitchen for a glass of water the other three would follow within a minute or two. It was really weird when we noticed what we were doing, but we kept doing it. That week we were pretty much stranded -- the fire had happened between blizzards.

The following week we began picking through the sodden, frozen, filthy mess and salvaging some few sentimental things. My two teddy bears and baby blanket (that are right here) are among the few things from my childhood. It took a long time and what the friend we were staying with considered an unreasonable amount of work to save those few things. It was entirely worth it. When I press Theodora to my face and sniff as hard as I can I can no longer smell the smoke -- which was not the case for many years. I just sniffed her now to check. No smell. It feels wonderful. To anyone else she's a 35 year old rag. To me she's proof of the past and the future that kept coming and getting better even when it felt like it would do neither.

Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like a million years ago. The smell of a house fire can still make me tear up (or get anxious if I don't realize what I'm smelling, say its down the block and I don't know it). The upheaval remade us and didn't destroy us.

I know the situations are different. Our tragedy was just ours and our neigbors and not the whole city. Our family is not your family. Our family knew within ten minutes that we were safe and, while there were horrible 'what ifs,' we didn't have the prolonged terror so many people are experiencing right now. Much is different.

But I suspect much is the same too. You just keep moving forward. You save a few things to bring you (even if it is shallow) some sense of material comfort. My extended family sent us photos that my Mother had sent them over the years. My Mother's sisters gave us Christmas ornaments that had been gifts from THEIR Mother and identical to those we had lost. It was such a joy to get them 'back'.

You just press on. You keep moving. Eventually things are rebuilt and, weirdly, outsiders start to forget even though it is still a very much a living pain in you. You write. You cry. When you can't cry you read Liz Bishop's "One Art" until you do. You thought you were a grown up before it happened and now you know you were a child. Sometimes you get pissed at people who have no clue. Sometimes you envy them. Sometimes you pitty them because someday they will likely learn. Sometimes they seem like aliens.

It's a long process. But if you just stay alive and keep moving it happens. And you build new things. And you mourn the old things. And the wound becomes a part of who you are and that eventually becomes ok.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll forward that to Cyn.

You're in my heart, Heather, Dana, T... very much in my heart.

Oh, also, Kenneth Cole was our orientation dinner speaker tonight, and he's totally my new boyfriend. FYI.

Free shoes for everyone!

what the friend we were staying with considered an unreasonable amount of work

?!?!?! only if someone dropped dead doing it. sorry that you didn't have the support back then (I realize -- 13 years, you're probably over it, but I hate seeing bad situations made worse by insensitivity)

I think I would want to be with Allyson and Trudy in a survival-type situation; Allyson would have the firepower and canned goods, and Trudy would keep me from flipping out.

while a good portion of society exists by social contract, there is a substantial portion which is only law abiding only because the police are right there.

This is my biggest nightmare.

Like Mad Max, you know? Or some other dystopian story. No Man's Land, for Batfans. It scares the crap out of me, too.

What's better for self defense? Baseball bat?

Well, it does beat a hammer. As does a knife. But if you're worried about handling weapons in general, go with something less intrinsically effective (and therefore potentially dangerous to your untrained self).

Very few people can swing a baseball bat so badly they're more a danger to themselves.

I can fuck someone up with a baseball bat, big time. I could probably kill someone with a baseball bat, actually, if I hit that person in the head or the right spot of the chest.

a group calling itself Columbia Christians for Life alerts us to the fact that a satellite image of Hurricane Katrina as it hit the Gulf Coast Monday looks just like a six-week old fetus.

Honestly, this made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Because they are so so SO pathetic.

Got in touch with my parents finally, once they discovered that text messages will go through even when cell phone calls will not. They moved to the hotel my grandparents are at, which actually has power and phones. I feel much better.

Dana, I am so glad to hear that, and glad your family is okay. I'm hoping their homes are intact. Heather, same for your friends (and family?) who are affected.

And I'm so glad that -t and her DH evacuated -- has anyone heard from her today?

?!?!?! only if someone dropped dead doing it. sorry that you didn't have the support back then (I realize -- 13 years, you're probably over it, but I hate seeing bad situations made worse by insensitivity)

Oh, I don't mean to make her sound bad. She is a very practical and efficient woman and didn't see the point of changing the water in a bucket holding a teddy bear or a baby blanket two or three times a day for several weeks. The water turns black, you change it, black, change, repeat, repeat, repeat...

I suspect she thought it was hopeless and didn't want to see us disappointed further. She gave us her buckets and her garage nonetheless. And her home -- the four of us lived in her rec room for a month.

Dana, I'm so glad you heard from them and they're okay.

And oh, Trudy, that's a remarkable post. Thank you for sharing it.

It's much appreciated. I think I needed to read that story to let my crankyness subside a bit. I'm angry at the news because it feels impersonal or something. I don't know. I don't want to hear friends and family referred to as "residents" or "people here" or whatever. It's totally irrational, but there you go. It's nice to hear, or read something that's about successful emotional survival, as I expect Krissy, Cyn, Matthew & family, Joel and Kristi and Beverly will get on without the stuff. No one's going to let them be homeless or without.

It's the less tangible stuff you were talking about up there that I couldn't seem to get past, and couldn't imagine how they'd be able to.

Anyway, it was cool. Thanks.