Ah...sleep

For the first time in 5 days, I slept a full night. I finally feel more like my normal sleep-deprived self again. ;O)

Kitties are suffering a bit of PTSD--very clingy and whiny. They fall asleep fitfully and wake up screaming for me all morning. I'm glad I can be home for a couple of days with them. They also have fleas again from being around indoor/outdoor cats. We just got the fleas from the vet killed. Now, we've got to bathe them and bomb the house again, which means packing them up in the car for an hour. They are going to start hating that car.

Most of my friends are accounted for, so that's wonderful news. It seems that most suffered minimal damage to property and only a little emotional scarring. I think we all were pretty affected by the threat. It seems sort of silly now that it's over, but it was a serious situation regardless of the relieving outcome. Glinda's blog, a temporary one set up for families, gives a play by play of the action from Katy, a suburb of Houston.

I have to give much deserved props to my car, Slick, who got me through another adventure. I've had him for almost 10 years now (and 102,240 miles), and he has never let me down, knock on wood. Damn fabulous gas mileage!

Mmm...back to cleaning house and eating Dibs, the new ice cream treats from Dreyers. Addicting.

Lovely Rita

The metermaid that she was, Rita left us parked on 290 Wed/Thurs for what seemed like eternity. What should've been a 3 hour trip for us, spanned into 26 straight hours of driving, non-stop. We're back safe and sound with minimal damage to the duplex.

Highlights from the evacuation:

• Seeing the Jones Rd exit sign for 3 straight hours and then finally passing the exit on the 4th.
• Finally convincing Gordie that she was going to either have to pee in her car or pull over on the freeway because getting off 290 was impossible.
• Gordie peeing on the side of 290 while Bubba in his truck screams, "Girl, I tell ya. When ya got ta go, you got ta go, but Girl, you take a looooooong time to go."
• Edgy in shining armor does a 3 point turn in the middle of gridlock to face a car in the middle lane and give some guy a jump. Sad moment: no one would let him turn back around. He finally laid on the horn and backed up.
• Finding a back road at Cypress (after 10 hours on the road) and moving at 60 mph in Deliverance country.
• Being able to say that for the first time in my life, I was actually happy to see College Station (Aggies still suck) because we found gas as we were running on fumes. Doesn't matter that we waited an hour in line. I could've danced on the damn pump, but I had to pee too badly, so I danced behind the dumpster.
• Eating our first meal at the only place open, Chick Fil A. How odd that my first job would provide me my first nourishment in 24 hours.
• Making it to Central Texas College 26 hours later to meet my friend, Jo, who put us up at her house.
• showering
• The beautiful hills of central Texas, which made my home for 4 days.
• Making a trip to Walmart (still the devil) after 48 hours of no sleep, which rivaled the 4 hour saunter around Michaels post Guavalamp. I bought produce--thank God for veggies!
• Knowing that all of my friends and family were safe and sound
• The "Your call cannot be completed as dialed" (CCBCAD) tags designed especially for the hurricane: "We're sorry. The person you are trying to reach is a hurricane evacuee. He/she cannot check voicemail or answer the phone."
• The weather channel--the only place where you can watch a hurricane beeline for your house with 70's porno music in the background. Bomchickawawa...Local weather on the 8's.
• Passing Jones road this afternoon at 80 mph. :o)

Sobering moments:

• Going through my house Wed and trying to decipher exactly what possessions were essential and what were superfluous. It's harder than it sounds.
• Watching Rita grow to a category 5 with still hours to go and at a beeline straight for Houston.
• Realizing after 8 hours and 3/4 tank of gas that I had only driven 17 miles and thinking for the first time that I might actually be stuck on the freeway when the storm hit.
• The view of the parking lot at Kroger in Cypress when we could finally exit 290. It looked like Armageddon. People were lined up in denial, waiting for the gas trucks to come, despite the fact that Kroger personnel said that they wouldn't be coming. Others were camped out in the parking lot with fearful looks in their eyes. Shelves were completely empty aside from sushi and diet soda. I guess in times of trouble, aspartame doesn't call to you...
• Thinking after 10 hours (19 miles) on the road that if this were a more urgent (meaning less time to evacuate) evacuation, we would have all died.
• Finally making it through 290, finding a back one lane country road, and then getting stopped (with car turned off to save gas) for 3 hours at a construction site while they let 10 minutes of traffic through at a time. Losing Gordie on that road. Edgy running uphill in 103 heat to try to find her to no avail, only to find out that she had turned around and was sitting miles back at a quickie mart because she didn't feel like sitting through the traffic.
• Losing cell phone connection to friends and family.
• Walking through the hill country and noticing that somewhere internally I was hoping for the hurricane to wipe out my job and home so that I could leave and start over, even with absolutely nothing. Then flogging myself for having such thoughts.
• Gordie's revelation that she was going to fling her car into the ditch because she didn't want to live anymore and being helpless because we didn't know where she was and lost phone connection.
• The conflicting feelings of being glad to return home but hating that home meant Houston.

Anyway, all is safe and sound and cats were wonderful on the trip. I'm exhausted, so nite nite.

F*d up priorities

Have you noticed that the Texas Trinity seems to be Bush Jr., Jesus and football?

What Would Ellen Ripley Do?

By far the worst prose I have ever graded-- One of my 11th grade students was supposed to write a myth. She writes of a British boy who meets a Cherokee boy in the woods, to whom she refers as "Indian." She further writes that the British boy gives the following salutation: "I am a human from Britain. I come in peace." Good lord. I can't live here, much less teach here, anymore.

A Grim Grimm

Truly I wasted not only 2 hours of my time watching Brothers Grimm but of Glinda's, Pulchera's, and Edgy's. Terrible movie. It couldn't even qualify for campy--just crap.

The shot of the evening is set for the party on Saturday: Pineapple Upside Down Cake. After a few attempts, I've duplicated the one that Man Hands made for me on my birthday, so we will imbibe in his/her honor. Maybe Glinda will even partake, since it is in honor of the only Brobdingnagian she finds attractive. ;O)

The cocktail of the evening will be a Manhattan, a swanky classic.

On other notes, I got my MP3 player this weekend, so when I ever get the time, I will fill it up. I still need to find time to make Glinda her box set. If I hadn't have wasted 2 hours at the movies today, I might have time to do so. Now I must go grade the most pathetic papers ever written. I'm averaging 5 a night--can't do any more.

Pushin dem childrens raht on ahead

Been offline for awhile and can't access Blogger from work (you've heard enough about that). Anyway, latest bitch about pisd is the announcement given in today's "9th grade expectation graduation initiative meeting." The stats they gave us in the meeting show that not one 8th grader in the district failed last year. They passed every single one of them to cook the books and look good for NCLB. A teacher mentioned that she used to work at one of the middle schools in the district and that everytime a teacher failed a student (6-8th graders), he/she would have to fill out an IEP (indiv educ plan) on that student and discuss ways that the teacher could've improved teaching in order to make that student pass. This doesn't sound bad in theory, but the directive was given in such a way that it intimidated the teachers. Teachers who had to fill out IEPs were looked upon as poor teachers, so everyone would just cook the gradebooks. This explains why at least 2 students in each of my classes can't read at all and why none of them can recognize a noun. It also explains why the students have no initiative or desire to try. One of them said today that 40s and 70s are the same thing, so why bother? NOT IN MY CLASS! :o)

This whole Katrina thing has got me down, and I think I'm not alone. Morale is very low at work, and everyone I talk to says that they are having sleep problems and are overwhelmed and stressed more than usual for no reason. There's a strange energy in the air everywhere, it seems. Am I nuts?