It is so. damn. hot.

Yes, yes, I know, it's been ages again. I have attention issues.

My epiphany as I headed to bed last night had to do with the invention of the post-it note. As background (stay with me here), it has been approximately 156 degrees and 125% humidity here the past couple days, courtesy of our friendly 2-states-away-and-still-making-my-hair-frizzy buddy, Hurricane Ophelia. Seriously, worst weather ever, at least in the 8 years I've lived in this swampy pit of a climate. We canceled classes at my sons' preschool today because it was so hot. Anyway, and as usual, I digress. So, it's hot. And, more importantly, it is sticky. As I dressed for bed last night, my arm actually stuck to my side. I had gotten sweaty, then flung myself down in front of the (sad, inadequate, not dehumidifying) air conditioning unit to cool/dry off, then immediately become soaked again from the most minor exertion, cooled off, sweated, cooled off, repeat....all day. So, by bedtime, I had a thin but visible veneer of dried sweat. Attractive, I know. I wore a virtual shield of deodorant yesterday, so you need not imagine unpleasant aromas during this exercise. Good god, could I make this post about nothing any longer? Short story long, when my arm stuck to my side, then peeled off, I was reminded of post-it notes and how cleverly they stick but release. I'm guessing they were invented by another inmate of the mid-Atlantic.

I hear fall is due next week, between 2pm and 4pm on Wednesday - I hope it's not late, or I'll miss it while I'm in Italy. I'll be sure to bitch about the freezing cold when I get back.

Another overdue update

My friend Yvette is nagging me to write more, so here I am writing, despite a distinctive lack of things to say. Blame her if this is more than usually boring.

I'm slowly weaning myself off of 24 hours Katrina news coverage and trying to find more constructive things to do with my life. In the same Katrina vein, though, now that the Red Cross has called for 40,000 volunteers, I really want to go. Anyone out there want to watch my kids for 3 weeks?

My boys both started preschool last week. I'm just starting to realize how liberating this could be. My big boy is in school for 2 hours every afternoon, at the same time as the little guy's nap. Two hours, 5 days a week, all to myself. I already have a mental list of projects to do, but I think we all know napping will trump project on many occasions.

Other upcoming events - my baby's turning 2 on Friday, which seems wrong and impossible. He's becoming such a person, even if he is still mute. He's an excellent mime, so communication is less of a problem than you might imagine. The week after his birthday, I leave for Italy - I'm about equal parts excited and terrified. I know it will be an amazing experience, but it sort of feels like amputation not to see my kids for 11 days. Oh, and that man who lives here, too.

So, Yvette, there's an update. I'll try to think of some entertaining stories and come back soon.

If we must blame, blame Bush

Like everyone else, I've been glued to the news this week, weeping and feeling helpless at the unthinkable horrors in the post-hurricane South. I haven't said anything about it on the blog because it's so overwhelming, and what could I say that hasn't been said anyway? However, I just saw a poll that indicates that the blame everyone's looking for is shifting away from Bush and toward local government, and that makes me mad. I can write mad a lot more easily than I can write depressed.

I'm not saying this is the appropriate point in this crisis for blame to be laid anywhere, but people are pointing fingers with or without my input, so I may as well add my two cents. In the midst of my despair and rage earlier this week, when it seemed that aid was awfully slow in coming to New Orleans, I did have moments of relief - a feeling almost like camaraderie with my fellow Americans - when I saw and heard people from both parties united in their frustration and anger at the poorly organized response. It almost seemed that the silver lining of this crisis might be that it could unite a sharply divided citizenry and focus everyone's attention on helping each other instead of on ideological differences.

Now that the last evacuee has finally been removed from the squalid conditions at the Superdome and the New Orleans convention center, it seems that people are already returning to their pre-hurricane corners. The poll I just saw indicates that people agree that the federal and local governments were both unprepared for this kind of emergency, but that most people are not blaming Bush. I do understand that there were failures across the board, but with great power comes great responsibility, and Bush has made some really bad, really big decisions that directly contributed to this week's failures.

1) Bush created a Department of Homeland Security to cover emergencies of this scope, whether natural or man-made - he diverted money and resources to the new department, was reelected largely because of the sense of security it gave the public, and encouraged a meek legislature to suspend many of our civil rights to give it teeth - yet when the acid test came last week, the DHS proved to be woefully unprepared. Four years and huge piles of dollars later, we deserve better than this. This article is pretty slanted, though appears to have facts straight, and its last line is one of its best - "Homeland security should begin at home."

2) Bush sent National Guardsmen to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under false pretenses. Whether or not one supports the war in Iraq (and I agree that we can't just leave now that we've so badly destabilized the region), even the administration now admits that the reasons they gave for pressing this fight were invalid and ultimately proved completely baseless. The National Guard has long been the most truly defensive branch of the armed forces, aiding and protecting citizens in times of natural or man-made disaster. Unfortunately, our military has been stretched so thin with the war in Iraq that much of the National Guard has had to go to Iraq to supplement our strength there. There is no way of knowing how much more effective the rescue process in New Orleans would have been with a stronger National Guard presence, but it's a fair guess that their experience would have come in very handy.

3) Bush chose the war in Iraq and tax cuts over many necessary social and infrastructure programs, one of which was funding for the maintenance of the New Orleans levees that ultimately failed this week. Local governments warned of the possible failure of the levees and asked for sufficient funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to strengthen them, but Bush had other priorities. He owns a big part of the flooding that followed the levee failures.

4) The argument I'm hearing from the White House about why the slow response was not their fault is that the state has to request assistance before the federal government can come in. First of all, I think there's a case to be made that the local governments did request assistance days in advance of it arriving. However, my bigger complaint is that this is a very childish "I'm rubber and you're glue" type of defense. Their argument is, essentially, "but they didn't ASK for help." Okay, George. I guess we're meant to believe that the entire federal government is so incapable of evaluating a crisis and independently determining what needs to be done that it must wait for specific requests before acting. Sadly, I actually don't find that all that hard to believe.

I do understand that coordinating food and transportation for nearly half a million people must be an enormous logistical challenge, and that immediate aid was probably not even physically possible. My concern is not so much with the timing of aid as with the timing of security. You can not convince me that it would have taken four days to establish a meaningful military presence if one of our great cities had been invaded by a foreign enemy instead of by water and homegrown gangs. The atrocities committed by a subset of New Orleans citizens on the unprotected remainder should not have been possible. Stories of violence and lawlessness began coming from New Orleans last Tuesday, the day after the hurricane, but a strong military presence was not in place until Friday afternoon. That is simply unacceptable. The defense I have heard most is that people on the ground fired on the first responders, so the first responders just went away. Now, I'm not at all saying that it was okay for the people on the ground to shoot at anyone, least of all those providing aid - but wouldn't the logical response be to overwhelm those breaking the law, rather than just giving up and leaving the vast, defenseless majority to be preyed upon?

Okay, I think I'm finally winding down - thank you to anyone who stuck it out this far. I do think that helping the victims is the most important thing, but blame does have its place. If we do not learn from our mistakes (or identify people who persist in making them at others' expense), we really will keep repeating them. I hope that there really is a unifying silver lining here, and that the checks and balances built into our government begin applying to the president a little more effectively.

Speaking of drinking...

I just went down to our disgusting, mold-smelling, cat-dwelling pit of a basement to use the sort-of-bathroom down there (because it seems like less effort to go downstairs to use the bathroom even though I KNOW I'm going to have to walk back up the stairs after). That long, overly informative sentence was not even the point of this post. It may be a long haul, brace yourself.

Here, I think, is the point. I had three thoughts following one upon the other that proved to me conclusively that I have had too much to drink in my effort to drown the anger at all the idiots referenced in the post below. Here are the thoughts:

1) I saw a spider (common in our basement, they outnumber us by a margin of something like 1,000,000 to 1), and instead of my usual (over)reaction of revulsion and fleeing, I marveled at the delicacy and near-transparency of its legs. How odd is that?

2) I washed my sheets earlier today (odd enough in itself, as I avoid laundry as much as possible until at least 3/4 of the members of my family are going about in pajamas or less). On my way up from the basement, to avoid further trips down this evening, I decided to bring the now-clean sheets back up. Unfortunately, all of my laundry baskets are currently in use (holding clean but either folded-but-becoming-unfolded or never-made-it-to-the-folded-point clothing), so I dragged the huge, disfigured, drawn on by children box that originally held our artifical Christmas tree over to the dryer and put the clothes in that. Then hauled it up the stairs. Then, upon seeing my husband's incredulous face, realized this was less efficiency and more insanity.

3) I sat down at the computer and saw the google talk window that shows that I, myself, am online and available. How is this necessary information to me, I wondered? Usually I approve of Google, but in this case I think they have overstepped. I know I'm available, don't waste my eye motions on a green dot that only references me.

I'm sure there's more, but I've lost interest. Going to re-watch Closer, as I made my husband turn it on after he struck out on other viewing options (crap movie on Oxygen of all things (is he gay?), WWE, NFL). I may have to go back through this post first, though, and count the hyphens. And parentheses.

I hate people

I used to be a nice person. I was a friendly child, had lots of friends growing up and even through college. Unfortunately, my first job out of college was running an internal IT Help Desk at a company that had absolutely zero standards for intelligence and seemed to actively encourage rudeness among its employees. My tenure on the help desk hardened me to people (and telephones, though my Pavlovian reaction to the ring of a telephone is another topic altogether). Working at that job, I developed a theory about people that is best expressed via the following chart (look! a graphic in my blog!):









This week, I have had to deal with a ridiculous number of people who were both stupid and mean (see category IV above). Not just the regular fast food employees and telemarketers, either - I have had horrific encounters with the following:

• Doctors (I went to beg for assistance with a heart problem that has been ongoing now for 9 months and was told that it was all psychological, despite the fact that the same doctor later heard the skipping beats and acted surprised that they were really happening)
• Government employees (in re: the preschool and ridiculous regulations I'm convinced are only in place to discourage people from trying to help children)
• Insurance companies (took my money as a deposit so I canceled my old policy, then had a call from the new company asked why I opted NOT to do business with them)
• Heating oil companies (was on hold for 17 minutes to get a representative to say yes, this is the only dept you can reach directly but no, they have no information and can only put you on a wait list to receive a return call within 3-4 days, and this is their SOP not a reaction to recent shortages).

This is why I'm for gun control. Look at the chaos in New Orleans - how much worse is the situation there because lunatics have been pushed to the edge with guns available for looting from the nearby Walmart? I'm being driven to drink by the idiots I've dealt with this week, I can't imagine how the refugees in the South must feel. I know I'm not to be trusted with heavy weaponry, why should I trust my fellow man?

I do feel for all of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina. I hope that this administration is at least as responsive to our citizens as they finally managed to be to the tsunami victims earlier this year.