As many of you are well aware, today is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. What pisses me off is that all day… Katrina has been all up in my grill. I woke up, the first thing on the clock radio is the DJ saying what he was doing a year ago. I turn on the TV and instead of the morning traffic report, I find the local station is doing a SIXTEEN HOUR Katrina retrospective, pre-empting all their programming for the day. I get into my car, and every DJ on every station was yammering on about hurricanes. I popped in my Green Day CD for the morning commute instead. (something I NEVER DO!) I go to check my e-mail, and Hotmail has all these disturbing Katrina pictures. At work, the company plans to throw a “lunch picnic” of sorts to commemorate the occasion. My boss is downloading pictures of the devastation to decorate as we speak. I log onto bloglines to see what up in the world, and Everyone whose blog I subscribe to (with the exception of Drew, who never updates his blog anymore) has written about Katrina.
Sheesh. Now I have too. I feel like such a lemming.
The crime of it all is that I woke up in a good mood today. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, my next road trip is a scant 48 hours away, my weekend was spent creatively, and all in all I felt good. This is impossible to maintain when surrounded by people saying things like “we must never forget” or “yeah, the water was up to my waist before I could react” or the ever popular “the government did nothing!”. It’s bad enough that whenever I have met someone new for the past year, the initial conversation is ALWAYS about flooding, hurricanes, evacuation spots, FEMA’s ineptitude, evacuation plans, or how many relatives are currently crammed under your roof. And psychologists around the country are wondering why so many of us here in “the Big Hard” (not Easy anymore… trust me on this) are ready to snap?
I admit… this has not been an easy year. My bills are still behind, I changed jobs about as often as people are supposed change the oil in their car, many of my friends moved away from me (either physically or emotionally), and either the floors in my house have gotten weaker, or I’ve put on some weight.
Now is the Indian summer of my discontent. I need to get some sand under my feet this weekend, and some sun on my tummy. If anyone says the word “hurricane” to me on the road trip, I swear I will end them.
Of course, according to the weather channel, Tropical storm Ernesto will be following the path I was going to take… (Sigh).
Focus on the beach, Rob. Focus on the beach.
4 comments:
What if someone says "Would you like a little umbrella in your hurricane?" :)
Had to talk hurricanes to simply voice my dicontent for the whole affair. The subject is officially history on my blog.
Sorry, I had a Melinda week, so I've been focused on some bad sh*t. My aunt passed away on Friday. Heard from my Mom on Saturday that she ran into a friend of mine that I lost touch with (phones aren't up in part of the city) and that another friend of mine passed away. And as of yesterday, my grandmother is in ICU awaiting a pacemaker. Hurricanes are a happy topic this week by comparison.
I didn't blog about it either.
That's how it is up here around September 11th. Everyone is so insistent on constantly mourning, and while I don't think it's apropos to celebrate, it's hard to get through that day without tons if it jammed into my face.
Call me, can't miss eachother while you are up here!
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