If you write it, they will come...

Ok, it's not the best I've got, BUT hey, we've had a hurricane, Boy wants to drag me out late at night, I'm employed, but not making any money. Here's my attempt to get back in the groove. I haven't forgotten you guys (although I'm afraid to check my stats given my lack of posting). Once I get settled down, I promise to be back full-time...and to be better at my writing. Dude, at least I'm making an effort...right?

When Boy finally got home from his crazy-work-a-thon on Sunday night, he lay on the bed pondering all the things he would do with the extra money earned from the double-time. However, when we really started talking about it, we figured out that there would be no extra money. Boy gets paid a small hourly rate, and the bulk of his income comes from sales performance at the stores. As the company had not adjusted the quotas for a week’s worth of the stores being closed, his paycheck for the month would be much lower than usual.

Boy’s not the only one. I’m also an hourly worker who missed several days of work and am now scrambling to figure out how I’ll pay the rent next week. Around town, we’ve run into several friends who work bar or wait tables and are facing the same issue. Even though we’re on the path to recovery, the aftermath of the storm has created additional problems.

Half a million people are still without power and Boy is one of them. The energy company has the grid back up and is now working to repair fuses, but transformers won’t be fixed until later. As Boy has a blown transformer in his backyard, we’re expecting it to be awhile. Twelve days without power is starting to wear on a fair number of people. (500k, to be exact. Well that, and those who are housing them.) Because the power company is just fixing fuses, but not transformers, there are plenty of people who stare sadly at the neighbor across the street with air conditioning. Then again, it could be worse. Over a quarter of a million people in this city are still without running water…and our friends in Galveston no longer have houses to come home to.

Monday I dragged myself into work, still strangely exhausted from the events of the last week. To make matters worse, after being away for 72 hours Boy locked me into a death grip as I attempted to sleep. Hot and tired, I’d wait for him to fall asleep, then scooch over a pinch. As if unable to sleep without me in his grasp, Boy would awaken a few minutes later and scooch over to grab me again. I ended up ‘sleeping’ on the very edge of the bed and came into work extra grumpy. Wine-Time Girl laughed at me as I groused that the googly phase had ended.

An hour or so later Boy texted me saying he had cigarettes and wanted to drop them off. The night before he’d smoked some of mine and I’d joked that he’d have to get me more.

“Gah!” I moaned to WTG, “I can’t even get away from him at work!”

I texted Boy back directions to my place and asked him how his day off was progressing.

“You’ll see,” he replied.

Have I mentioned that I’m a ‘worst case scenario’ kind of girl? This is how someone with my personality can end up law school. I live life planning for gloom and doom. The words ‘you’ll see’ sounded pretty ominous to me. Something had gone wrong, and that was clearly why Boy was running over to my office under the guise of cigarette delivery. He must have dinged his car. Had he totally wrecked it, he would have called immediately. But I bet it was something like that. And oh, it was totally my fault because I’d kicked him out of the house at the crack of dawn, insistent on arriving at work early in order to get in some extra time. Poor guy, after working for nearly 60 hours straight, too. Geez, I’d even taunted him to wake up by throwing the dog on the bed. Martha had not complied, of course. When I’m in bed she jumps all over the place, but Martha is one of Boy’s biggest fans, and seeing the opportunity for some alone time, she immediately curled up next to his tummy in the spoon position. …little traitor.

And how big of a jerk was I for complaining about the cuddling? Ugh. Clearly, I was a horrible person.

Boy finally texted, and I ran downstairs to find him just as he was about to walk through the wrong door. Although Boy clobbered the SAT, he does struggle with little day-to-day things like the location of his wallet, the concept of time, and storefront entrances. When he saw me, he proudly produced a pack of P-Funk 100s, my style of cigarette which since the storm has been more difficult to procure than a chainsaw or a generator.

“Where did you find them?” I squealed.

“I got the hook-up,” he answered.

In Boy language this means one of two things: either the task was fairly simple, or it involved some kind of shadiness where I don’t want to know the answer. I snatched up the pack and immediately ripped it open like Charlie Bucket would a Wonka Bar.

“So you want to see the damage?” Boy asked alluding to his earlier text.

“Yeah, might as well,” I said as he led me to the car, one hand covering my eyes.

Guilt washed over me I peered through my fingers.

There it was.

“You bought a banjo?!?!”

“Yeah.”

“But…we figured out that you were short on money this month and…”

“Well, I went to the music store to buy some strings, and the owner mentioned that business had been really bad since the storm, and next thing you know…”

A few minutes later, back inside, WTG came over to my desk to inquire as to the Boy’s news.

“So?” she asked.

“The googly phase is totally back,” I said with a large grin.

Things that hack me off...

On the Ike Page at the Houston Chronicle there's a series of photographs documenting the storm and its aftermath day-by-day.

Flipping through them I came across a picture of a husband and wife, cleaning out their house which was devastated by the storm. Underneath the picture was a caption that said something to the effect of, "[Mr.] & [Mrs.] clean up their home after the storm. Because the [last names] are undocumented workers, they cannot register for aid from FEMA. They plan to stay with relatives in the [such-and-such] area"

Way to be a sleaze-bag and post names and immigration status in a major newspaper, Newspaper Dude. I mean, after they lost their HOUSE and all, why not?

College Football Makes Everything Better...

As of yesterday, half of the city has power. This percentage for me has stirred a mental shift into thinking that we're on the downhill slide of this thing. Most of my friends now have power, but Boy is still without. My first day at work was worthless; the second, an improvement. By Friday I was feeling the groove. Finally things are getting back to normal and as a bonus, my landlord left me a message about job stuff. Yee-haw! I thought for sure that wasn't going to work out, but the hope is once again alive.

Today I borrowed clippers from the next door neighbor and trimmed drooping branches. Then the neighbor came by and leaf blew my lawn for me. (AWESOME!) In appreciation, I gave him two cigarettes.

Boy is on this crazy schedule to get all the stores operational again. Yesterday through Sunday he's working 9 am - 5 pm and then 8 pm - 6 am. Yeah, he's working twenty hours a day for three straight days. Yuck.

Currently, I am drinking a Pearl Light and watching the Texas A&M game. My alma mater is not on television today because we are playing this dweebie little engineering school that is devoid of a football program. No matter. I can listen to it on the radio (as I watch a muted Georgia game) and will be more than entertained to text Boy updates as my Horns pound his little wimpy Owls into the ground. Heh-heh-heh.

Darn it...

So Boy and I both returned to our respective jobs today. Though more than half of the city is still without power, there was something calming about returning to a sense of routine. We sat out the hurricane at his house, but since my electricity is up and running, he's been squatting at my place. Five days of "vacation" caused some back-up, and he was at work past 10 tonight. Boy is a regional manager for a large retail chain and today he was in the stores lending a hand. Despite only two stores being open he caught over $35,000 worth of forged checks. When he finally finished up, he called me to say he was running by to check on his place.

About half an hour later, I received a mildly freaked out phone call, ridiculous for the boy who is always so laid back and go with the flow.

Looting.

The looters hit three houses on his street before they had the bad fortune of attempting to loot someone who was home. Had those guys not been there and called the cops, Boy would have arrived at his house at the same time it was being robbed. We've both had so many ups and downs over the last few days that this event caused gave both of us fear and anger. We've already sat through a horrific storm, watched our town get torn apart (and in Boy's case, roof damage), suffered the loss of plumbing and power. That someone would take advantage of our vulnerability, break into the place where we feel the most safe, and then proceed to take our things is in a word, shitty. (I know it's technically his stuff - I'm speaking in collective violation.) And the most horrible thing is, the dudes who broke into the houses will probably out on bail in 24 hours while the guys who caught them sit fearfully in wait in a house without lights.

After the whole thing, Boy ran over to my place, checked to see that I was okay, gave me a hug, calmed down and is now headed back to his house in order to grab as much stuff as he can before the curfew hits.

I'm ready for the traffic lights to work in this town. I'm ready for the strange sewage smell to go away. I'm ready for there to be a fence once again between me and my neighbor. I'm ready to look out the window and not see a tree through the roof of the house next door. I'm ready to not sit in fear when Boy visits his house after dark. I'm ready for quiet siren-less evenings. I'm ready for this to be over.

Still kicking...

Hey y'all. I'm alive. Completely stressed out, totally tired, wanting to cry, but I'm okay. My house is safe, no flooding or roof damage, and unlike 70% of the inner city (aka 1.5 Million people), I actually have electricity now.

There are trees and roofs and standing water strewn everywhere about the city. Today is the first day that a fair number of stores are open, and about 20% of the traffic lights are now operational. Cars are lined up for blocks and blocks to get gas, but that's good news in the sense that the stations actually have gas. I went several days without electricity or running water and cannot tell you how happy I am to be able to flush my toilet. Luckily, the weather's turned a little cooler, so the people without power will get a respite from the hot, humid nights. The sound of chainsaws fill the air, and this city is working to get back on track.

I will say this, the people of this city have been awesome. From the morning after the storm, the citizens were out clearing roads and helping neighbors. This was AWESOME because the clearing of debris REALLY helped with the drainage, and water levels subsided fairly quickly. In addition, the people of Houston started bringing water and non-perishables to drop-off areas for others after FEMA and the governor's office basically fucked things up. (No small feat when these people had no idea when they would be able to replenish what they were donating, but hey, when the National Guard runs out of bottled water, what are you going to do?) The mayor and city officials appear to be working their asses off. THE GARBAGE TRUCK ACTUALLY CAME BY YESTERDAY. Four days after the devastation, President Shrub and his mini-me Gov. Perry are down in the area seemingly doing little more than surveying the scene for PR purposes. Hopefully that's all the more they will do as any action on their part will probably hinder progress. Sorry if I'm being whiny; it's been a rough 4-5 days.

No pictures. I didn't take any the morning after the storm because the sight made me want to cry. (I don't see any need to remember these moments.)

Best line I've heard during this whole shebang:

The news was out interviewing people who were waiting in line for ice and/or water.

NEWSGUY: Sir, how long have you been waiting?
DUDE: So far we've gone about 2.5 hours.
NEWSGUY: Two and half hours and you're still waiting in line? What's your reaction to the organization and response of government officials in providing emergency aid items?
DUDE: Actually, I was in southeastern Louisiana for Katrina and Rita...and this is nothing. This is pretty streamline and efficient.

Smack. Down.

PS - If you are one of my friends from the Houston area w/o power and for some reason can actually read this, you are more than welcome to come enjoy the a/c and charge your cell phone. The washer/dryer however, is booked for the next few days.

Reasons to love this state...

Of course by now all that's on the television is storm coverage, and I'm watching with a train wreck intensity.

A small nugget of awesomeness:

Newscast Dude (in response to the smooth evacuation of Galveston): You know Galveston has got this down. This is not their first rodeo and these boys are locked and loaded.

I love this State.

This town is a shitstorm...

I woke up this morning to the sound of my mayor on the alarm radio telling certain portions of the city that they were under mandatory evacuation instructions while the rest of us were advised to 'hunker down.' (Wait a sec? Some of us were not just advised, but ordered to leave, and the rest of us are completely safe and should stay put? Something tells me this is a step-by-step process for traffic reasons and in a few hours, the rest of us will be told to get the heck out of dodge.)

On my way to work I stopped to fill up my gas tank and was miffed to already discover a wait. Having done this once with Rita (where I waited in line for an hour), I decided to go ahead and be late to work because I knew the wait would just get longer as the day progressed. This was a smart plan as when I drove home from work the gas station no longer had *ANY* gas at all. You can imagine what the line is like for the stations that still do.

Work was a frenzy where people tried to act normal, but spent most of the day glued to their computer screens. At 3 pm, they finally told us to go home. The bummer of all of this is that I'm an hourly worker, so an early day and no work tomorrow means *no money*. I came home to check my stock of necessities. I have 6 large bottles of Pellegrino, three cans of Progresso soup, ten protein bars, and one can of Goya black beans, plus twelve rolls of toilet paper. This was probably enough, but just in case, I ran to the store and fought the crowds to pick up three bottles of red wine. I figure if my windows get blown out, or I lose electricity (A/C) and/or internet, wine will be the best thing to get me through it.

As for my plans, I'm staying put. I don't care if Ike is bigger than Katrina. I'm fifty feet higher and fifty more miles inland than New Orleans. Plus, we've got at least 24 hours during which the storm path could change. Despite a lack of rain, the tide on the coast has already risen and certain portions of Galveston are starting to flood.

Boy and I are in a debate as to where I will choose to 'hunker down' for the storm. He wants me and the dog to come over to his house which might not be a bad idea. He lives in this cool old brick house that looks like one of those old four-square apartment buildings except that he's got the whole thing and it isn't partitioned. I live in a little clapboard garage apartment with a ton of large windows in every room. On the flip side, the area where he lives is one of the oldest areas of town and is known for its poverty and high crime. It's undergoing a "regentrification", but by that I mean Boy is one of two white people who live there. (It's actually a pretty awesome neighborhood with the oldest African-American newspaper in town and hands-down the home of the restaurant with the best chicken and waffles. Decent music scene, too.) If there's going to be looting, I would put his neighborhood in one of the top five areas. Then again, my own neighborhood would probably be like #7 given the number of people who will go crazy without their drugs. (I would guess that all the druggies in my neighborhood buy their stuff from people in Boy's neighborhood.)

Anyway, I gave the boy my whole "I'm a tough girl" conversation and assured him that I could stay at my place and take care of myself. However, he might win out in the inadvertent guilt trip category: today he called me at work to tell me that he shopped around and found a pistol for me and wanted to know if he should go get it. Depending on how anxious he gets over the next 24 hours, I could end up going over there. (Case in point: as I was writing that last line, he texted to see if I was ok. Gah, I never should have told him about that time the guy cut my electricity.) That being said, is it just me, or is the boy totally adorable?

That's it for now kids. Pending internet availability, I will be your storm cub reporter for the next few days; it's not like I'll have anything else to do.

Martha says hi.

Hola. I’m not feeling especially witty or in the mood to write right now, but I realized that it’s been a week or so, and I felt that you guys deserved an update. The reason why I haven’t been writing lately is because a) I’ve been extremely tired from being overly social and b) I’ve been walking around slightly dazed with a stupid grin on my face.

Yep, I called him back, and we were supposed to go to a sporting event for our first date, but plans got a little rearranged and we went camping in the hill country with his friends in conjunction with an outdoor music festival. Yeah, my first date lasted three days and lacked make-up, showering, and plumbing. Lucky for us, things turned out well, and I practically received a gold star at the end of the trip for my camping abilities. Who knew?

So the boy: he’s extremely laid-back and very social. People will stop by his house for a beer or to play a little music, and the next thing you know, it’s four in the morning. Oh yeah, he plays guitar and writes songs. (I didn’t know this when I met him.) He’s into the outdoors, and I almost got dragged to a beach party this weekend. There was a lot of hint dropping about a fishing trip, and I figure that will be the next big adventure. In the meantime, we’ve gone to a live music show because as it turns out, we both like alternative-Texas-folk-rock. We’ve also met friends for beers, and gone to a party together. Today I was supposed to go to a pro-sports game with him and then have dinner with his friends from the Ukraine, but I bailed because I was just so tired from the weekend. (The boy is from Texas, but he grew up primarily in Europe and the Middle East. Consequently he speaks about half a dozen languages so he really can befriend just about anyone.) At social gatherings we’re both independent, but every so often I’ll be talking to someone and feel his hand on the small of my back. It’s kind of cute.

So yeah, I haven’t been writing lately because I’m kind of just enjoying the moment – because who knows, it could all be over in a week!