2001

Tonight Lowen and I watched a documentary called "Winged Migration" about birds. It has almost no narration, just lots of birds, along with a good bit of migration. But this is not a review.

It reminded me of a little piece of time I had once that seemed parallel to time instead of being measurable by it. It was that spring break that I went to Florida with Julie and April and Christina and we stayed in a condo right on the huge expanse of beach. It was perfectly hot the first three days until a storm rolled through and left us shivering in wind and rain. That afternoon, just before the storm, it felt like rain and the sky was cloudy against the grey-tan sand and the splashy green ocean and it seemed like thousands of seagulls decided to settle on the beach for a while to do whatever it is that they do when they sit on the sand in big groups like that. More seagulls than I had ever seen on the widest beach. A beach it took a long time to walk across. But when I saw them collecting from the window I had to run out to where they were and I ran back and forth, ran fast and with all of myself like you do when you're a kid, to see the seagulls start to lift off as I got near them, like a big white sticker being peeled off of the sand, one side to the other.

It made me feel like I did when my mother used to shake out a sheet over my head a long time ago let it slowly drift down - like my own white sheet world, just for an instant. Under a big cover of huge white that only I could see.

It was truly captivating and entirely gratifying. I kept running and the gulls continued to indulge me by lifting off in a synchronized panic over my head until the rain started and I was soaking wet, because I knew it was one of those moments that give you enough energy to live the rest of your life. I can't believe I forgot it until now.

zen and the art of self-destruction

Why won't this door shut?
I did, I took a little frustration out on the door of Dan's huger-than-life truck from my position behind the wheel. As the designated driver of all the band's equipment and a couple of band members themselves, I sat in a massive white semi-elderly truck deiseling in the alley in the dark. I tried to slam it three more times, with increasing force, before looking down to see that it was actually my digital camera blocking the door, sitting there just an inch or so from falling out of the truck. And rapidly being destroyed. By me.
Moments like this one bring to light the fact that any and all problems in my life are truly, and usually directly, my own fault.

Not a disaster, just a mess

As it turns out, KPR itself misspoke and Lawrence was not declared a disaster area. I thought that sounded a bit extreme.

The storm was what's called a "microburst", a term which I personally think was made up by local newscasters in coherts with the people at the national weather service to sound technical and impressive and still somehow like an explosion of tiny fruits. It means that the whole town was struck by tornadic winds without there being definite, fully-formed funnels. Isn't it more fun just to say tornado?

In unrelated news, I completed my nursing aide class on Friday! I'm now qualified to work as a 'trainee' until my real certification arrives in approximately three to six weeks. So this morning I re-applied at the hospital and the nice HR lady told me that if I hadn't heard from them in a week I should call them to check on it. I would have done that anyway but it was very encouraging to be, uh, encouraged to do so. I also found out that there's a shift open for 12-hour days on the third floor, by far my first preference. There's also a shift open to work nights in the ER but I don't know if I'm up for that just yet. This hunch is based on the following facts: a) I have no experience yet, b) I have a hard time staying up past midnight, and c) I am very squeamish and would be most likely laying on the floor if anything actually happened. So I'm aiming for the third floor - surgery and pediatrics.

Most hospitals require six months experience though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And applying other places.

My First Tornado

There I was, sleeping peacefully, when I heard a loud banging noise that woke me up. I could tell from the vague light coming around the closed blinds that it was early, and I wondered what had woken me up. I sat up on my bed (which is actually just a mattress on the floor) and peered through the blinds behind me at a big, dim, avocado green sky. Hmm, storm, I thought in my barely-awake capacity to think. Maybe I won't go to church. The thought of laying in bed late listening to the rain sounded great and I snuggled back down under the covers. Less than five minutes later I had already drifted back to sleep when I thought I heard the rain starting, only it didn't sound quite right. It sounded like the house was in a car wash and I could hear branches banging on my wall. There aren't any trees close enough to bang on my wall and this was weird enough to wake me back up, when the plastic over my other bedroom window that faces the street started to whip in and out like it was going to explode at any moment. Hurricane? I thought in my grogginess and jumped up to move the african violets off the desk in front of the window so that they wouldn't get thrown all over the room when the window broke, as I felt sure it would. I pulled the blinds aside and didn't have any time at all to adjust to what I saw as the trees around my house were bent as far as they would go - I could see branches and trees falling over and my eyes clamped onto my car in the street, waiting to watch it roll over or be smashed. The air was full of rain and debris and just to the left of my car the debris in the street whipped around in a swirl, moving down the street from my left to my right. I couldn't see a funnel, just the swirling debris moving closer to my car. Tornado, I finally realized. I should go to the basement. I should RUN to the basement. But I was fixated and didn't move until the final swirl of gust that felt like it would blow our house away forever, at which point I ducked under the desk. My heart was going at a rate I never seem to attain in cardio workouts and I honestly could not move from that spot. And then it was suddenly gone.
It wasn't until then that I heard the sirens and simultaniously heard my frantic downstairs neighbor Skyla come pounding up the stairs to wake us upstairs people up. We all piled downstairs but we knew it was already gone, it was so dead quiet now. The whole thing may have lasted thirty seconds. Slowly we emerged out onto the porch and then out into the street as our neighbors did the same. Pajama-clad people full of adrenalin looked at each other in disbelief. "Was that a tornado?" The nose-ringed man in blue plaid asked us. Yes. We saw it, we said, although not sure that we really did.
Over the next couple of hours our little part of town became a huge block party of the disoriented but grateful masses. No one was hurt, and the damage didn't actually seem too bad. A few broken windows here and there, a lot of trees down, many many cars damaged by winds and branches, but houses were still standing and generally speaking nothing too extreme had happened. One woman found her neighbor's propane grill in her tree, and a man on the next block over from me had all four of his vehicles completely crushed by two different trees. As we walked around the neighborhood only one house was missing its roof, and his neighbor told me it had landed on HIS house and his chimney was gone. "We can't find our chimney" he told me.
I have to say, I feel terrible for the people who have damage to their property, but part of me feels elated. I've dreamed about tornados since I was a little kid, but never did I expect to glide through it without anything really happening. My neighbors and Dan and I came back to my house and all made breakfast together - the first time we've all done something together. It felt like a weird slumber party.
They say that the KU campus has a lot of damage, and Nate's dad lost two of his huge trees. There are power lines across sidewalks and streets that have sparked a few fires, and we're still in a tornado warning, so I guess it's not over yet.
I just heard on the radio that Lawrence has been declared a disaster area. Wow.

all motivation... gone

If you, like me, read the classifieds for temporary job listings, let me help you out here. Avoid anything having to do with delievering phone books. True, you can do it on your own time, but you do have to get it all done in three days. Here are some things I didn't think of before giddily laying my hands on those bright yellow covers:
1. Books are heavy
2. 726 books are really, really heavy
3. Driving with 726 books in the trunk and back seat of your car is pretty much like strapping two oak trees to your hood and will bring your gas mileage down to eight miles an hour. If you're lucky.
4. You get paid 15 cents per book, which works fine when going to one destination to drop off fifty books, but not when you drive around for six minutes looking for an address that only gets one book. That's about a 300% decrease in profit margin there.
5. Delivering two books to a restuarant: +.30 cents. Parking meter while making delivery: -.15 cents. Having an empty car again: priceless.

(I disclaim all responsibility for making that joke. Am too tired)