some girls wander by mistake.

in 48 hours, i have somehow both ascended and re-descended back into my political hibernative state.

i've been completely out of the loop (haven't even watched a DNC speech yet) for ages now--sometime around the time hillary backed out of the race officially i decided to just lay low, to re-engage into political news readings and discourse closer-to election time.

but palin as VP has me through the roof. i want to read more, but the more i read, the less i can stomach. and since everyone else is blogging about this far more eloquently than i can, i just need to let them continue to do so and sit this one out. while i'd love to think the mccain/palin ticket is so bad it assures obama's success, i guess i'm scared of what another year of feeling hope then hopeless will feel like.

--

meanwhile, new orleans is being evacuated and it's breaking my heart.

thank the gods, it's cold in fl! yesterday i opened all the windows...by nightfall, the house was 67 degrees. amazing.

hurricane wilma in central florida was really just typical storm weather, with stronger winds. a few branches down, and [inexplicably] my trampoline-pad was torn to shreds. by afternoon, the skies were clear, blue and beautiful, with strong wind blowing the trees around, and circulating the most amazing cool breeze. james and i found a little cemetery in the front of my neighborhood, so we walked around there, went home, then went out for pizza and ice cream.

i was semi-productive with my day-off, though. garage is getting clean, party is 80% cleaned-up after [the house was kind of trashed], watched annie hall and army of darkness. it's been a pretty incredible october this year...and halloween hasn't even come yet!

she's coming later, it seems, which is good-good-good news...i told sparkle_m0ti0n on the phone last night that he was the only reason i wasn't surrendering to wilma and rescheduling. now it looks like i might not have to, but this is equally stressful: i am soooooo not ready for a party! i'm still waiting for another advisory or two to make the official party announcement.

last night james and i went out for fondue. it was my first time, and i have to say i wasn't that impressed. i had always sort of glorified the idea of melted cheeses, breads, and veggies, but after it was all said and done, i was left with a belly ache. i don't ever eat fried foods, and essentially that's all the second-course is: fried-in-oil-foods. our waitress seemed super-annoyed by all of our questions [even though she spilled my water on me which should've kicked her into ass-kicking gear], and i had to hold back the desire to play total white trash and complain, "you mean we gotta cook our own food?" we're planning on going back one day with a group of people just for dessert [comment if you're a sweet-toofer!]...

i'm finally well, which is also a relief. lots of oj, rest, cold-eeze, vitamins, cough drops, water, soup, nyquil...has to work eventually.

there is nothing i could talk about that isn't completely trivial/insignificant in the face of hurricane katrina.

the remaining family i have there, we think, made out okay: they were on the west-side of the storm [above new orleans, in gonzales and a neighboring parish].

still, a city i love will be forever changed. baton rouge, my hometown, has a good deal of destruction. louisiana as a whole is looking really rough.

our house flooded twice in louisiana when i lived there, and the thing a lot of people don't understand about gulf-state floods: the ground is clay, and that water has nowhere to go. houses submerged are going to stay submerged for days, even weeks. it's so, so depressing.

all is well--we never lost power this time 'round, and everything in general looks like it made it through OK. no major debris, no additional damage [just stuff still damaged from the last one, like our fence]. just a lot of rain and wind. it was kind of cool to see it all happen during the day. those trees sure sway.

hurricane jeanne accomplished-list:
*dyed hair [mine underneath-intensive red, top-blue black; raptorgirl-dark plum highlights; starscha-blue black with blonde streaks]
*gained 10 lbs
*wrote a little

everyone left this afternoon, except robertaroberts who is still here and i secretly wish would just move in already. she is nice.

i have the day off work tomorrow and i am joyous. so much needs to get done.

2473.6 miles, approx. round trip.
we made it home late last night.

my mom is freaking out, and it's freaking me out...she's talking in the sort of riddles that are both morbid and distressing. her voice trembles. it makes me so sad to feel so unsafe, and so ignorant to what the next few days may hold.

we're packing like there might be nothing left to come home to--worst-best case scenario includes a missing top floor; worst-worst scenario means that the 7 lives that are held in one car prove more valuable than valuables.

best-best case scenario is that i'm being wickedly ridiculous, and i'll laugh about all this over a few glasses of wine.

well after 48 hours without power, things are finally [for the most part] back to normal. i have never been so grateful for A/C in my entire life.

charley hit orlando around 9pm or so on friday evening. we prepared very little--just put all the candles in one place, and made sure to have plenty of lighters. the storm came, and sasha and i camped out in our closet with all the dogs, buried under some blankets. we lost power sometime shortly after. as the power went, the sky went nuclear-green and ultra-blue, and that's the last thing i really saw. the storm sounded bad, but we had no idea what it looked like outside. upstairs, the house shook the most [but our houseguests slept through it]. downstairs, all of the windows rattled, and there were a few thumps and thuds. i didn't hear any impact, though, and this was a very good thing.

we slept in the sticky heat [god florida is *so* damn hot, even at night], woke up early morning and went outside to survey the damage. our yard--front and back--was littered with roof shingles, which thankfully were not ours. many of our neighbors lost about 30-40% of their roofs. there were branches and yard debris everywhere, and a lot of overturned potted plants.

we, on the other hand, lost our entire road-facing fence, parts of the back fence, the gate, and a sapling elm tree from the backyard. minimal damage, to say the least. but my trampoline survived the storm!--sasha is calling it "the warrior" from now on. the house was splattered with leaf-bits and dirt: it looked like charley vomited all over.

so saturday morning sash, jeremy & i spent the morning picking up debris and shingles. it was a mess. the neighborhood looked pretty rough, but everyone was out there with chain saws and rakes and garbage cans. our errand out to get more garbage bags [and lunch] proved that the rest of our area was affected pretty badly--traffic lights down everywhere, billboards wrapped around power lines, trees uprooted. so few places were open for business, and the few gas stations that were had lines and lines of cars.

we did have phone service, and the calls started coming in from various folks around orlando. my parents' house suffered a tree through the roof; james's entire neighborhood had trees down, some on top of cars; downtown was purportedly torn-up pretty badly. almost everyone i knew was without power.

by saturday afternoon i was stir-crazy--i never realized how dependent i was on electricity. i cleaned out our fridge [which included throwing away 2 big garbage bags full of spoiled food], touch-up painted, made a craft box and a sewing box, and organized my office. after several hours of this, i was drenched in sweat [again], so i took a cold-water shower, and sasha and i headed to the movies. we made it a double-feature--napoleon dynamite and harry potter 3.

today we did a little more driving around. all the damage orlando suffered from hurricane charley is so depressing. it's going to take so long to get things back to normal. ucf looked terrible--so many trees uprooted or split in half. i've heard rumors that parliament house is "gone," and that historic winter park had a lot of destruction. i don't dare drive around to check it out myself: the roads are chaos.

but we are safe, alive, and well. thanks to everyone who kept us in their thoughts during this ordeal. life will go back to normal soon, i hope. as of right now, things are sort of strange and sad.

that give us days off work, and i am always grateful.

thank you charley for being so fierce and nasty and letting me work from home and get paid for it. simple pleasures, i guess. but working in my pjs on a friday the 13th has never sounded better.

ALSO: anyone in the tampa/st. pete area who needs a place to crash [cough, cough], i hope you know our number. be safe.