Part 17: The Borderline Merry Ol' Month of May

In the first week of May, things did not seem so bleak. We took our 7th and 8th grade class trip concurrentl with the high school retreat. The retreat was scheduled to leave New Orleans the DAY that Hurricane Katrina hit us. Thankfully, they cancelled the trip ahead of time. Could you imagine having a brand-new high school, open for 8 days in all of history, and have every student ten hours away in Mentone, Ala., where cell reception is non-existant? Luckily, we had paid attention to the news enough that they got on the phone and alerted parents ahead of time.

This trip ended up being fun. Having the now significantly smaller high school with all of our 7/8s was more fun than we expected. We stayed at a sleep-away camp, where we split the two schools into two different areas. We only had the 8-hour train ride and 2-hour bus ride, as well as our closing-night campfire together. It worked out well, except for the sheer amounts of rain we had.

On the Wednesday of our trip, we had a surprise visit from Patty, the school president, and Mike, the Academy principal. Wiley, the high school principal, was on the trip with us. They interrupted all of our activities and called a meeting in the lodge. This is where we learned about our new patron Saint, Reggie Bush. Students and teachers and administrators alike wound up in absolute tears over the news. Happy tears, mind you...tears of relief....and we were all in absolulte shock over how wonderful he was. I managed to place a collect call home to Mark from a landline to share the news with him. And George W. thinks he's the Bush who's got the term "Shock and Awe" down pat.....he's grossly mistaken!

Melissa, who was my original teaching partner, was picked to go on the trip with us ot replace another teacher, Kerrie, who had daycare issues and was unable to join us. That also made the trip pleasant....especially since our train ended up being about 3 hours late arriving back in New Orleans.

Besides being a place where we learned fantastic news about our school's future, and a place to bond with my students, and a place where I got royal treatment by planning the trip with two other teachers (royal treatment being used here as a term to mean "sleeping in a special teacher building and getting chocolate ice cream one day"), as well as a place where I didn't have to work much with my current teaching partner, it was a wonderful escape. We left Louisiana. It was my first time out of state since my trip out West last summer with my travel camp. I stayed in New Orleans for the storm, evacuated to Baton Rouge and Morgan City right after the storm, went to school in Thibodaux for a few weeks, then came back to Metairie. I did not get the luxury of straying far from the destruction the way most people, my parents and brother included, did. I was able to leave the area and watch as the destruction levels decreased....until it reached an untainted perfection in, of all places, Northern Alabama. Until, at one point, on the train ride back to New Orleans, it started creeping back into our psyche and lines of vision.

There's really nothing more depressing than leaving the mess, going somewhere tranquil and beautiful, and then being faced with the stark reality of returning home.

On the train ride home, though, I was informed of the most excellent news I'd heard since August: my father's business was open again!!!! He was open for mild automotive services, like nails in tires, and had the convenience store open again. In a matter of days, they would start pumping gas again. The darkest days were over. A different mood came over the house. While my father came home very late, and usually aggravated, it was all very different from before my trip. He had some of his old complaints -- cranky customers, high gas prices (yes, even service station owners hate the raised prices!), and long hours. Each day was a new record high for gas, for service, and for food sales. The first day he opened, I drove almost 9 miles out of my way to get gas from him. He was the only person I would go to once again. I will fill up on Friday without needing to just in case I drive a lot on the weekend need gas, all because they close early on Saturday and are closed on Sunday.

Thank God.

Suddenly, the end of the school year was upon us. The week after the trip was the eighth graders' last real week of school. The next week was their exam week. Then, they graduated, leaving my classroom with a whopping 6 7th graders, assuming we had perfect attendance. Graduation was really nice. We were able to go to the church on our old campus to hold the Mass and ceremony. They all did so well, and it was a lovely day of happiness combined with sadness. Mark came to the graduation, because in April he switched from the overnight shift to 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. After the ceremony, we went to lunch at Semolina's. We tried to go to P.F. Chang's, but due to Katrina, they are still closed on Mondays. Ah well. I had the rest of the day off, which was nice. Then, it was back to the 7th graders to prepare them for their exams. Once those were over, we had to do report cards, and then we had to pack the entire school and the entire high school and move back to the other campus. We were being evicted, and the administration rearranged the school structure, really, to make us all fit in on the New Orleans campus.

The day of graduation, the school borrowing our campus, St. Dominic, was packing up. It was strange seeing them there. Good strange, though. Their campus had been repaired enough for them to move out. They will have a normal school year in the fall.

Also the week of graduation, we held our Annual Gala. It was a '70s theme: "Stairway to Heaven." They had a band, a silent auction (the adirondack chair my students painted and our room mother designed went for a couple hundred dollars, if I may say so...), and lots of food and spirits. They also worked out a deal for reduced prices on hotel rooms. Naturally, we took them up on that. It was a lovely hotel, and it was a nice break from our cramped quarters in my parents' house. The next day, we wandered around the French Quarter, giving local shops some business. They had given us the next day off, and Mark had taken the next day off, so we made good use of it. It was a nice distraction from the daily routine.

The following week, we had a barrage of parents and students needing service hours help us pack, caravan, lift, reach, and unpack. In a matter of three or four days, we were completely moved over. All that was left was unpacking and organizing.

However, in the midst of all of this, my maternal grandmother took a horrible turn. This is the grandmother who was in Houston for months and had been transferred to Hammond, La. She was 87 years old and suffered from Alzheimer's. She fell ot the bed and had a HORRIBLE black eye. My Uncle Mike flew in with his oldest, my cousin Cristina, who was going to be a college sophomore this year. He had been in around Easter with my aunt and their younger daughter, Stefanie, to visit, and he wanted Crissy to get one more visit in. One week later, roughly, he was back in town to say good-bye.

The last day I was supposed to report to school, I had a frantic call from my mother. Her youngest brother, David, called her to say that Granny would not make it through the night. My mother had already spent the weekend in Hammond watching over her. She needed me to bring her an hour away to Hammond, because my father could not leave work, and my brother had started a new job on the Westbank and couldn't leave. I ran downstairs, told Patty that I had to leave for the family emergency, and ran to my dad to get gas. I ran home, changed my clothes, freshened up, grabbed a snack, and flew out the door with my mom. When we got to Hammond, my grandmother was in horrible condition.

Part of Alzheimer's is that your body shuts down. As a result, your body undergoes physical changes. She was already working on being unrecognizable; with her black eye, vacant and glassy stare, and constantly open mouth breathing shallow, rasspy breaths, she wasn't even a shadow of what she once was. At one point, she was a hearty 5 foot 7. Over the course of her almost 10-year batle with the disease, she seemed to shrink in height, stature, and definitely weight. When the nurses came to turn her, she was literally skin and bones. She looked like the Civil War prisoners you see in pictures of the Andersonville camp. Barely alive and hardly human.

My brother got our messages and drove down, too. He met us there, and we bought food for my mother for dinner. She was staying the night in Hammond. My Uncle Dave came by for a while, too.

A few times, there were some freaky moments. She would seem to stop breathing for long periods of time, and then would start again. A couple of times, she tried to sit up, made a strange noise, and feebly lifted her arm while staring over our heads. What was she seeing?

I went to follow Geoff home, but he missed the turn to head back to New Orleans, and I didn't. I remembered where to turn. Nerd.

The next day, my grandmother was still alive. My mom's three brothers worked together to persuade her to go home, that maybe Granny was hanging on because she was around. Dave brought her home, and my mom was as okay with that as she could be. Sure enough, on June 7, my grandmother died. They checked on her hourly; the last time was 6 a.m. Mike called the Assisted Living Center a little after 7, and when they checked on her, she was gone.

The phone call came minutes before I had to wake up. I had just started back at JCC Camp, as assistant camp director, and it was our orientation week. Yet I got up, got dressed, and went to work feeling relieved.

Am I inhuman? No. If you had seen her....

In addition, my grandmother was not a very grandmotherly type. We were not close at all. She and my mother had a rotten relationship until Alzheimer's altered her personality completely.

The stresses her illness and longevity placed on our extended family was astounding. My mother and her oldest sister were no longer on speaking terms. But my grandmother's looming death ended most of the bitterness, and they were able to make up.

All of this was just in time to celebrate the birth of the fourth generation at the end of April. My oldest cousin, Erin, and her husband, Jim, had a baby...sweet little James. We met him at the funeral.

On June 9, we held the funeral at St. Philip -- the church I grew up in and was married in. In fact, our wedding was the last time our whole family had been in that church. Before that, it was Geoff's christening. We buried her in Greenwood Cemetery, then had an "Irish wake" at my Aunt Maureen and Uncle Lance's house. This means that from about 2 in the afternoon until midnight, my entire family ate, drank, and laughed. Everyone from my older aunts and uncles to my 15-year-old cousin was drunk. Even Erin, Jim, and James stayed until 11 p.m. He's a great baby. So good and so patient... It was a raucous time. All of my mother's cousins were there, and at one point, Geoff's two roommates and all of our friends showed up.

The day ended, at it was Saturday, June 10. My birthday. I didn't realize it was coming until about 2 weeks previously when Mark mentioned he was out birthday shopping for me. I was confused until i realized how close the day actually was.

We spent the day at Audubon Zoo. It looked good. A lot of trees were down, but otherwise, it looked okay. Almost all of the animals there survived Katrina, unlike the Aquarium, which lost almost everything. We went with Geoff, Alicia, Kurt, Mike, Jean, Crissy, and Steffi. That night, we set up Chris' inflatable waterslide at the Cabin and had a fun party. In all, it was a pretty nice birthday.

Monday was the first day of camp, which meant my days were fun and action-packed.

Stay tuned for the Summer months....

Hotlanta, my birthday, and a Lily update

Really, though, Hotlanta is a misnomer. Yeah, it was warm, but I didn't sweat like I do here. I wasn't oppressed by the heat. I didn't feel like dying to escape the heat. Although, since I'm probably going to hell anyway, I guess that would only make matters worse.

But what if we have it wrong? What if we've been told that hell is hot and steamy just so we won't want to go there? What if it's cosmic reverse psychology and hell is really this happenin' place made of ice cream where they don't want too many people to go there? Like, a po-boy place that looks shitty on the outside is generally the home of the best po-boy ever. Don't let the outside fool you. Could be a cool in-joke, you know, hell being crappy.

Anyway, kids were fine, new guy is okay, trip didn't suck too much. Went to the Braves game the first night. They lost. Their catcher got reallllly hurt...taken out in an ambulance, as I later discovered, because he had a concussion and whiplash from getting slammed in the face mask by an Angel. (Which seems to support the above theory...) It rained a little, but sometimes, sitting in the cheap seats is okay, just because we were so high up with our $5 seats that we were under an overhang when the rain started. Girls in my room kept me awake until 3:30. Mostly by quoting "Napoleon Dynamite."

Next day we spent the whole day at Six Flags. Rain held off until 6, which was fine, as we were leaving at 7. So we killed an hour in the stores. By this point, most of the kids were out of money. We waited half an hour for our bus driver to show up. When I called him, he said he was in traffic about 20 minutes away. This, apparently, became his excuse for everything, as he was ALWAYS 20 minutes away. Tried to go to the Hard Rock, but it had been rented out for the night. Walked down the block to a restaurant that had a piano on wires above the bar. It was in a glass case. Anyone who wants to can get on a step ladder on the bar and play. That was kind of neat. We thought the piano was for decoration, but we were wrong. Girls had a pre-teen friendship meltdown that kept me up until 1:30. Skanaky, sweaty, and dirty from Six Flags, and couldn't shower until crisis was solved at 1. I am SO glad I don't have to relive my teen years. Yuch.

Next day, we went to the World of Coke. You can drink Coke products from around the world. Some good, like lemon from Israel, some nasty, like lychee nut from China. And "Beverly" from Italy had an aftertaste even after you washed it down with tons of real American Coke. Hwarf. Then we went to Underground Atlanta. I scheduled it simply to get an aqua massage. Damn thing was GONE! ARRRRRRRGGGG. After the night before, I needed it. Driver was late picking us up, again, and when I called him after 30 minutes, he was, once again, "20 minutes away." This made us late to Andretti Speed Lab, which we had booked as a party. I called the people, and they said it was okay if we were late.

Andretti has top-speed go-karts that look like race cars. They make you wear suits and helmets like real racers. Gloves are optional. I came in second in my race! Anyway, the party was my unofficial birthday party. We got Fuddrucker's kid's meals, an ice cream cake, one race, and $10 token cards for the arcade. I won an orange and yellow stuffed monkey. It rules. The experience ruled, too. I like go-karts.

From there, we went to Camp Barney Medintz in Cleveland, GA. It's about 2 hours north of Atlanta. It was in the mountains and was GORGEOUS! My legs are sore from all of the up- and downhill hiking we had to do over the next few days. We had kosher burgers and chips for dinner, then got a tour of the camp. The cabins are unairconditioned, but the mountain air was cool enough that the fans and screens worked. I'm tired of bugs, though, and grateful for central air now that I'm home. We went out to the Iceberg, which is an inflatable rock climbing wall in the shape of an iceberg. You climb up one side, then slide down the other side into the lake. I am unable to climb rock climbing walls, so I did not do it. After that, we went to milk line, where we got fresh baked chocolate chip cookies and whatever milk or juice we wanted. Mmmm....

On Thursday, we had French toast for breakfast, then we went to arts and crafts. We made cool friendship bracelets with a weird name, something like "Kumi-ha-imo" or something like that. Then we went to something called "Group Initiative." We did some stupid bonding stuff, like human knot. We're such a dysfunctional group, though, that we almost didn't get the knot undone. Finally, though, we did it. Then we did this dumb-ass logic puzzle called "The Magic Shoes," where we had to get everyone across the lava lake, and you could only cross it if you were wearing the shoes, and then you could only wear the shoes once, blah blah blah...and the way it fell, I had to carry a tall, thin girl in my arms and a short girl who probably weighs more than i do now that I'm at my heaviest weight ever, on my back, and I almost made it across when she shifted her weight and I fell forward, jamming my left shoulder, hurting my left ankle and knee, and skinning my right knee. I was in considerable pain. I thought I was badly injured, but my shoulder had popped back in, and really, when DON'T my knee and ankle hurt? But my skinned knee (my first in probably 15 years) is pretty nasty. And boy, did I get muddy. Red mud.

Then we went fishing. A couple people caught small-mouthed bass. I caught nothing. We had kosher chicken nuggets and corn for lunch. Then we had rest period, followed by basketball and dodgeball. We moved on to the volleyball court, the batting cage, and the tetherball. I kick ass in tetherball. "Wanna play me?" I think I won because every time I'd hit the ball, I'd say, "yesss" like Napoleon, and it would crack the kids up, and they couldn't return my hits. Dirty? Yeah. Fun? You bet. We were supposed to have free swim in the pool, but that was closed for undisclosed reasons. Probably Baby Ruths in the pool. Anyway...then we had linguini in garlic cream sauce, garlic bread, and peas and carrots for dinner. We went to the Blob after that. It's an inflatable pillow....huge....and you jump off a platform onto it. Then, you crawl across it and sit on the edge. The next person jumps on it, and it launches you into the air, landing in the lake. It was cool, but I didn't get to go. Line was too long. New guy had his bathing suit on backwards. That was awesome. Kriss Kross to make you, jump, jump! Too bad none of the kids will get that joke....and probably he won't either, since he's only 19. Then we went to the low ropes, where a cute Israeli guy instructed us. We had to hike through a lot of forest to get there, and we had to cross a creek by sliding across a metal rope while holding a metal rope above it. Scary, but awesome. Only half of the kids did the course, due to time constraints. After that was milk line, then an early bedtime. We also had to pack most of our stuff, then load it on a truck to take it the half mile (minimum) trek to the front office of the camp.

Woke up at 6 a.m. EST on Friday, my 26th birthday. Got the kids together, then went down the hill with what we'd needed overnight. Long and hard hike that early. Ugh. Especially on your birthday. Slept on the bus most of the way. Had to eat Burger King for lunch. Hate BK now, after they changed their fries. Kids pooled money and bought me a little cheesecake for my birthday. Made the BK Lounge experience a little better. Watched the first two Austin Powers films on the bus on the way home. Hit T.S. Arlene evacuation traffic in Mississippi. Didn't get home until 6:30 p.m. CST. Relaxed a little. Opened Mark's gifts. He gave me "The Best of INXS," the first and second seasons of "Danger Mouse" (DM was one of my first boyfriends. The other was Montgomery Moose of "The Get-Along Gang." Nevermind that he was basically a big frat guy...), and the first season of "Soap," one of TV's all-time best shows. Got Cane's for dinner, then went to Dunkin' Robbins, where I got a mint-chocolate chip and chocolate cake ice cream cake, plus the free dozen donuts you get for buying a cake there.

Went to Geoff and Gootee's house. Blake gave me a Neighborhoodies.com gift certificate, Caroline gave me Rufus from "Family Guy," Alicia and Kurt gave me a gift card for New York and Company, and Geoff and Calie gave me a gift card to Best Buy. Oh, and Kevin went to Sav-A-Center and bought me some cupcakes that said "#1 Dad" on them. How special is that? Liz came over and brought me a "Fantasy," which is only one of the best daiquiris in the world. She brought Halley with her. Roman showed up for a while with two of his friends, too. It was a great night. Got home at 4, woke at 1:45.

On Saturday, my parents took us out to eat at Acme. Then we went to their house for a blackout cake from Maurice's. They gave me my new contacts and a skirt, and my mom apparently is waiting for another gift to come in. Also, I got a mix CD from Devon, featuring midwestern bands, most of which I've never heard of, and many which I've just never heard, and it's great! I love finding new stuff to listen to! And I got a card in the mail from Annie, my pen pal. Good day overall!

Sunday was my first Sunday where I didn't have to work. Woo-woooooo! Went to Ground Pat'i with Alicia, Geoff, Calie, and Kevin while Mark worked. Hung out with them, plus Kurt, after.

Lily: Saw her Friday night, we thought, under my car. Could have sworn I heard her, too. But we didn't get her. Then, on Saturday, Mark went to do laundry, and he saw her by the neighbor's house. We couldn't get to her, and she went under the house. But that means she wasn't hurt by the glass. On Sunday, the neighbors came home, and they let Mark in their backyard. Couldn't see her. On Wednesday night, he got home from basketball, and she was under the carport, eating the food we leave out for her. But he couldn't get out the car fast enough. The lady under whose house she is living is trying to help. She has cat carriers by her doors just in case. She also saw her the other day, but was on the toilet, and by the time she got out there, Lil was gone. Nice lady, even with the TMI. Haven't seen my baby since then, though.