I went back to NOLA, but my city was gone…

I am in a state of shock and despair. My city, my beautiful city of corruption and decadence and mystery and enchantment is gone. Sunk and still sinking under an abyss.

I’m out. I’m safe. Me and mine are still in Ohio doing our thing, but our hearts are in NOLA and the people we can’t get a hold of. We were supposed to be back there right now, moved back for good. But stupid me I didn’t get my “Abnormal Psychology” class in last semester so I stuck around to get it here, at the school I’ve been at for a couple years. The move changed to next April. Nine months later.

Now this. I’ve been in a daze since yesterday. I was monitoring the blogs and the RSS feeds from various local sources and yesterday after Kathrina came through and the winds died down I got the “all clear” and went about my plain old life here. My daughter just started first grade and I had my first class on Tuesday morning and I’m starting a new job and I have to get all this paperwork done for a court case and Mia’s childcare and so much stuff.
So today I get a call from a friend who tells me that my former home on Esplanade Ave. is under 20 feet of water. I hear that the levee broke and the city is flooding. Today, I’ve been watching the information and I can’t believe my eyes. I’m just in shock and I feel so powerless. I want to help and give shelter and to somehow make the waters recede. To salvage what is left before it’s all submerged and destroyed.

But I can’t. I’m just me. I’m in Ohio.

All I have is my thoughts, my prayers and my good mojo.
I hope everyone is safe and that I hear from you soon.

Feeling Helpless

Nasty ole’ hurricane is ravaging my fair city of New Orleans. I’m up here in Ohio and can do nothing about it. I’ve been on the phone all morning trying to determine the locations of my friends and family. I have heard from the ones who have left the city, but I have a handful of people that I’ve been unable to hear from and I’m concerned that they have decided to stay and weather this Catagory 4 story as it give them their first direct hit from a storm in over 40 years.

To keep up on the details of the storm I recommend you checking out what the locals are saying about the storm.

Spine Yuckyness

Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Blog Entry
We had a sleepover last night at the house. There are twin girls in the neighborhood that go to school with Mia and I told them “sometime this summer we’ll have a sleepover with you. Since school starts tomorrow I thought that Monday would be the best night to make good on my promise.

So, last night we got out sleeping bags, rented movies and made popcorn and let the three girls have a slumber party. I think they had a great time and I’m glad I’m able to do these things. It’s almost seven a.m. and the girl’s mom should be here any minute to pick them up. Today is Mia’s last day at day camp. I have another house cleaning to do today and I have to get down to school to find out what’s going on with my financial aid and my school schedule. Then I have a bunch of paperwork to get together for some tasks and laundry. Laundry soap. I have to remember to get some laundry soap so I can do that laundry. I thought I was going to do laundry yesterday, but I’m totally out of soap.

Yesterday my back tweaked out. While I was cleaning I could tell it was just grinding on itself. It was pretty painful last night. I took my meds for it and just tried to take it real easy during the slumber party. It feels a little better this morning. I wonder if I’m able to have more of those epidural steroid shots. Those really seemed to help, just not for long enough. I’m just not crazy about the idea of “interbody lumbar fusion with cage instrumentation”. Drilling 2” long screws into my already deteriorating vertebrae just sounds like a bad idea to me. I know I’ll have to have it sometime… I know that. I know that the pain isn’t going to get better and that it is going to get worse. I know that I can’t even support my weight enough to life my feet off the ground while I’m laying on my back and bending forward or sideways is impossible without excruciating pain. I just can’t imagine people living with this much pain BEFORE they invented this surgery and I want to know what they did before some orthopedic surgeon invented this “cage” thing. There HAS to be a better way. But my pain is a part of my life now. For over two years I’ve had moderate to severe pain every day. I’ve learned ways of managing it, but that doesn’t treat the problem. It just takes care of the symptoms. It would be nice to have a revelation on how to treat the problem that my spinal canal is too small for the nerves that are running through it and the alignment of the little suckers.

Take care of your spine everybody. You’ll be glad you did.

Yahoo 360° MySpace YahooIM: chinakrysdarrington WordsToAbyss

Monday, August 22, 2005

Monday, August 22, 2005
Blog Entry

Testing, testing…123. Testing the new Blog Template. Check, check.

Blog templates SAY that they support most HTML formatting, but I’m not convinced about that. We’ll have to see my pretty.

I have two days before Mia goes back to school and both those day I’m cleaning houses!!! Not even my house, although that one is pretty good. I’ve been able to keep things tidy along the way for the most part. I’m helping a family friend with his house, and his girlfriend had some health issues affect her cleaning lady, so I said I’d help her while her lady was off healing.

Tonight we’re having a 6 year old sleepover at the house. We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully I’ll be online doing my work this evening and the night well go smoothly. I’m still pretty excited about Yahoo Messenger with Voice it is really cool to be able to send voice messages to my friends. Since I have a DSL connection it makes a lot of sense.

Okay, I just wanted to test this template out with the new links at the bottom so let’s see if it works.

Yahoo 360° MySpace YahooIM: chinakrysdarrington WordsToAbyss

Insane week

So, this month has pretty much zoomed past me at light speed. I had a job opportunity kind of drop out of the sky and land in my lap. The opportunity, that is, not the job itself. Still, I just had my third interview today and the position feels like a good fit. I like the company and the members of the team which I’ve met seem not only to be talented at what they do, but generally nice people as well.

So I’ve been really busy getting organized for my presentations and meetings with them. Then all of a sudden my back has taken a turn for the worse. Constant pain. It feels like my vertebrae are just grinding on eachother and smooshing together. Yesterday I woke up with a migrane more severe than I’ve ever had. I think it has some relationship to my spine being out of whack. Who knows though.

I’m supposed to start school in two weeks, but I’m not sure if I should cancel my classes pending this job offer. I think I should just keep them and if the offer is that good, cancel them. I hate paying for stuff I’m not going to use. I should meet with an academic advisor concerning this.

I love the fact that my spine surgon AND my family practitioner are both unavailable to me. My FP is moving to another practice far away and my specialist is an “out-of-network” doctor since they switched our heath plans on us. So, I’m back to scratch. Sometimes it feels like I’m running up the down escalator.

That’s life for ya. DharmaPunx #4 this weekend. Boo ya!