Finding Him……

Once a friend said to me that she hadn’t expected to be single and childless so late in her life. I have to admit, I hadn’t expected that either. I figured though I was having all the fun I wanted, at some point I was going to find a man who loved me and wanted to be with me the rest of our lives. I ran into lots of men, and loved some of them, but none of them turned out to be the one that would light up my life.

Oh, I thought a few of them were. I thought I had gotten lucky a few times but that didn’t seem to pan out. Nothing really wrong with them. I was at fault too. They were good men and there was love involved, but not that kind of love that can weather all the storms. When it got rough, it got really rough and I couldn’t handle it. I realized I had completely lost who I was in the midst of trying to keep him happy and it wasn’t working. He wasn’t happy at all and neither was I. What was I doing? Why?

I met another one and thought he was going to be the one who saved the day for me. Things were sweet for a while but when I really needed him, he wasn’t there. He gave one excuse and then another but nothing to really explain his absence. It became clear to me that he wasn’t the one either. I figured men were in my life for a reason – to teach me a lesson and I hope I learned those lessons. But that didn’t change the fact that basically, I was still alone.

I met one other man who just snatched my heart out of my chest. He was everything I ever wanted except for the fact he wasn’t as honest as he should have been. And apparently he was looking for something other than what I had to give. He wiped his feet on my heart and left.

So here I am. Still alone and hopeful. And yes, older. Am I too old? I don’t think so but I guess some do. I don’t look my age and most of the time, I don’t feel it. Yeah, I have days when the body just doesn’t want to cooperate but don’t we all? That doesn’t always have anything to do with age.

I use the Internet a lot. I know about online dating. I met all the men I had been involved with the past few years online. I had been successful before so I thought I would be again. I was wrong.

I prefer to date white men. If I was a white woman that would be just dandy but I’m not. I’m a black woman and white guys have always been my preference. I’ve not had to face a lot of ruckus over that fact but that’s because I had already embraced my “different-ness” from most of the people I knew and I didn’t care what anybody thought. All those things I liked and did were all a part of my own unique identity and I had no thoughts about changing any of that for anyone.

My parents were of course alarmed and distressed and we had discussions over it but they both realized I wasn’t going to change and they took a deep breath and faced the tact that their baby girl wasn’t going to make their lives easy at all.

Some of my friends understood it and some didn’t. They did what they did and I did what I did. Some thought I was brave because I made the choices I made and I thought some were cowards because they didn’t. It didn’t change anything. We remained friends even if we didn’t agree.

While I wanted a man in my life, I was quite clear about what I wanted and what I didn’t want. The guys I grew up with were just not ready for prime time. They might have been curious or playful, but they weren’t ready to think about having a long term relationship outside their race. That was ok. I really didn’t want to think about that with them either.

Racially, things looked all right in the place where I grew up, but if you scratched that surface, racism was still strong and alive there. No matter what, they still thought they were better than me. And I knew better. I left home as fast as I could for greener pastures. I came home off and on for different reasons and I played around with guys, but I never really got serious about any of them. It just didn’t feel right for me.

I didn’t meet anyone that I wanted to get married to. I didn’t meet anyone that I wanted to reproduce with either. I didn’t sit up at night dreaming of having a big wedding and wearing a white gown or any of that. I thought of it once in a while, but it wasn’t a big thing to me. I wanted to travel and see the world and meet different people. I wanted to have a great job and make money and buy a house and have all the cats and dogs I wanted to have. I wanted to have an active social life and do all kinds of things and have lots of friends. I went to college late and got my requisite degrees and went on about my life. Not one of the men I met was a keeper.

Was this my fault? Was I purposely not looking for men to be lasting and loving mates? I’m not sure about that. It just didn’t happen and I didn’t question it. I went on with my life.

A couple of years ago, I sunk into an awful depression. I had a lot of setbacks and it threw me for a loop. I’ve had moments and perhaps a few weeks where I was down but nothing like this. I lived every day not seeing the sunlight or feeling the air from outside. I sat in my room and though I communicated with people online, I rarely saw anyone outside the people I live with. I didn’t want to. I felt like my feet were stuck in tar and that I couldn’t pull them out. My insides were full of black goo and I couldn’t move. My eyes were coated with darkness and I couldn’t see. I was hopelessly stuck. And I didn’t know it.

It wasn’t until I had to take a trip and get out of the house for almost two weeks that it became clear to me that something had been wrong. I saw a young couple that I loved very much starting their lives together and joyfully expecting a baby in the future. I saw my young nieces, ready for life and not even sure of what to do or where to go. I realized I had lost my voice and I had lost my way. When I came home, I sought help and got it. I’m still struggling with it, but I’m coming out of it. I can move and I can see and most importantly, I can feel.

Ok, I’ve always been a late bloomer. I never did anything on the same timetable as everybody else. I was late finding out about sex. I was slow to have a serious boyfriend. I went to college later. I found my career later. I got married late in life. I know my pattern.

Now I am ready for the man who stops the breath in my chest when he walks in the room. I’m ready to listen to him talk and just smile. I want to see the devilish twinkle in his eyes and feel the love when he looks at me. I want to have the sex that leaves me breathless and sated. I want to laugh with him till I have to run to the bathroom. I want to wake up and look at him and marvel that he is there with me. I want to have fun with him. I want to fight with him and I want to make up with him. I want to share my life with him.

But first, I have to find him. And right now, I don’t know how. Sometimes I’m afraid I will never find him. Other times I think I will spend the rest of my years alone, that I am too old and that it doesn’t matter now. I hope that is not so but I just don’t know what the next move should be. But I won’t give up. I know he is out there, and that he is looking for me too. That’s what keeps me going even when things look bad. Maybe I’m late…but I’m ready. 

Broke in America

I don’t have health insurance. I haven’t had it for well over a year. Like most Americans without insurance, I had it when I had a job. I was paying over $300 a month for coverage for myself and my spouse. We are both over 50 and have a variety of ailments that we need regular medical care for and we take a few prescriptions.

I lost my job a little over two years ago. For a while, COBRA payments were affordable, but as I struggled to live on less than half the regular salary I was earning, it became difficult. My unemployment payment was barely enough to cover my rent and the cable and utilities that I usually paid. I struggled to keep it up, but it was apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to afford it for long.

I went looking for an alternative and realized what a boondoggle it can be to try to shop for it. Every scam artist and desperate sales person must have been just waiting for a dope like me to fill out some questions online because soon, my cell phone was blowing up and I was getting half a dozen emails a day trying to convince me that they were all looking out for my best interest with the plan that was going to work for a couple of middle aged folks like us.

I settled for one and soon regretted my decision. When I was insured, my doctor visits cost me $30. You know how it goes. You have to give those folks your insurance card and pay before you even see a nurse. Somehow that all seems so very cold, but it’s how it is. If you are going to a specialist, it cost $50 a visit. That doesn’t count the tests they say you need or the medications they shove at you. Prescriptions are a huge expense.

This new fangled plan I was shelling out over $200 a month for only covered $50 of my visit and I had to pay the whole lump and get the $50 back later. So if a visit to my doctor cost $250, I had to pay the whole thing and wait a few weeks for the $50. The cost of my prescriptions only dropped by a mere dollar and I was taking a few that cost me well over $40 a month.

My spouse had to have an MRI which about $1000 and the “insurance” company balked at paying it. They only covered $25 or some ridiculous amount like that. Where in America can you get an MRI for $25?? In somebody’s dreams, that’s where. His doctor charged $500 a visit and one of his prescriptions cost over $1000 a month! The agent I spoke to referred me to a mail order plan that would charge $15 a month for each prescription. That had nothing to do with the plan he sold me.

When I sat down and thought about it, I realized I’d been duped and decided to get my money back. I called to cancel the plan and promptly the next day, they deducted the payment out of my meager bank account. It took me nearly a month to get my money back.

What now?

A friend of mine was going to a free clinic and I decided to go too. The people there are kind and helpful and getting in was rather easy. Of course I had to fill out a lot of paperwork to prove I was nearly indigent and that I couldn’t afford to purchase insurance. I did that. When I told them I was stressed to the point that I could not sleep at night, that I lay in bed each night with my stomach twisted in knots worrying how I was going to pay my share of the rent, the cable bill, the gas bill and still eat AND get my prescriptions and perhaps a few personal items like lotion and deodorant, they referred me to the county hospital to see a psychiatrist.

I wasn’t suicidal or homicidal. I was just stressed and afraid. I’ve always been able to handle things and suddenly, I wasn’t able to do it. Every month, something had to wait and wondering what was going to get disconnected for non-payment was frightening. I knew my roommates were doing the best they could, but neither of them were working either.

My brother, my beautiful, proud and strong brother has glaucoma and is nearly blind. He has been suffering for years from a debilitating mystery ailment that has sapped his strength and energy to the point that a trip up the stairs leaves him breathless and he sits at the top of the stairs huffing and puffing like an old man. He’s 55. He has had numerous tests but no one can say what is wrong with him. He sits in his darkened room everyday and it rips my heart out to see it.

He’s unable to go out on the range, riding horses and doing wagon trains with troubled youth as he did for years. He can’t ride his motorcycle anymore. He gets disability but a scheming ex-wife figured out she could get all her back child support and went after him and now she gets half his disability check leaving him a whopping $600 to pay rent, eat and help with bills.

I am not talking about a man who weaseled out of his child support payments. He always made sure he was making payments when he was working, but when he got injured on the job and then lost most of his vision, he wasn’t able to work, but she still wanted her money and her payments are based on a job he lost years ago when his sight first began to go bad. So he fell behind and she did not bother to call and ask why. She demanded her money and so now she gets it. We, however, struggle from month to month on what’s left of his check.

My other roommate had also lost her job and had been getting by on long term temp positions that she has taken the past few years. But when she doesn’t have a job, she has to fall back on unemployment like I was. She’s always been a trooper and has worked hard to help everyone around her and she has always kept us smiling because she’s a walking ray of sunshine.

Not now.

The good times were gone for all three of us. We struggled to keep our cable/internet paid because it provided the only entertainment we could afford to have. We almost never have enough money to go out for fun and restaurants are out of the question. Once in a while, we could scrap up some change and use coupons to go to IHOP for breakfast but those times are few and far between.  The last time we all went out to dinner, we came home and found that we had been robbed. All of our computers and software and a couple of cameras had been stolen.

I am a writer, and I use my laptop to work. My roommate is a graphic artist/designer and she had just bought her computer not a month before. The thieves even took every bit of her expensive software. Oh, yeah, and they broke in and stole our lawn mower too.

So in the midst of all this, yes, I was having a difficult time. I had fallen into a deep depression and I knew I needed help. I went to the county hospital and found that also is a tricky thing. I had to be at the clinic before 7 a.m. because they only see so many people each day and if I am late, I have to come back and stand in line again. I finally got in and saw a doctor and told her that I wasn’t going to hurt myself or anyone else, but that I wanted to go to sleep and not worry. She gave me a couple of prescriptions and sent me home.

I no longer have the luxury of making my own appointments when I go to the county hospital. They tell me when I have to be there. She told me to get an appointment with another doctor to try to find a way to handle another ailment I have and I dutifully took the charge sheet she gave me and gave it to the nurse as directed.

The nurse was busy and looked at me like I had two heads when I relayed what the doctor told me. She said to write my name and address on a piece of paper and she would send me a letter and tell me when my appointment would be. Four months later, I got the letter and she had made the appointment with the wrong doctor for the wrong ailment, so I wasted two more trips with that doctor and now, nine months later, I still have not seen the doctor I was supposed to see and this is after the second doctor also attempted to get an appointment. That is my reality now.

I still go to the clinic for the rest of my care. The place is crowded now when I go and I have to wait longer. There are a lot of people like me who cannot afford health care.  I needed to have my prescriptions written again and I waited more than an hour to see a doctor who promptly forgot to write one of them. I asked to be signed up for prescription assistance because in all this time, Congress graciously decided that people like me didn’t need unemployment anymore and my benefits were discontinued. Now I have no money coming in, but those bills are still coming.

I now know how those elderly on Medicare feel. There are times I can’t get my prescriptions because I can’t afford them. I am lucky that I got a bit of assistance with food stamps, but when I applied for state medical aid, they denied me because I am “employable.” Tell that to the jobs I have applied for over these two years that haven’t even bothered to tell me to go take a flying leap. I’m too old to get a job it seems. But I’m also too young to get Social Security or disability. So I’m sitting here terrified and mortified again because I can’t pay my part of the bills.

This nightmare that we are living in is no joke. I wonder what the elected officials are thinking when they slash the benefits for the elderly and the disadvantaged. Do they really believe we are living the high life on $300 a week? My brother got a letter today saying that his medical assistance from the state of Illinois is going to be discontinued after this month. Luckily he bought an insurance plan to cover his prescriptions because he has a few that cost $200 a month without insurance or any kind of assistance.

How can they in good conscience make decisions that so deeply affect people like us? Do they sleep at night? Do they look in the mirror and say “There by the Grace of God go I” and realize that they could very well be in the same circumstances that we are?

We are educated people who have always had good jobs. We’ve always worked hard and never had to ask for assistance. We have worked in service to help others and though we have never earned a huge salary like some, we have always been able to live and have some pleasures in life. Now we sit down to the dinner table and look at each other like frightened deer. The house we live in is in foreclosure and we are behind in rent. Not badly. We managed to keep it up as long as we could, and she worked with us, but it has gotten a bit harder now. She is underwater and is struggling too.

What has happened? When we go for a drive, which is rare, with the price of gas and parking, we see these huge houses and folks walking around their big expensive cars and taking little Suzie into American Girl to buy her a doll that is so expensive it would pay our electric bill. They are all smiling and happy and seemingly don’t have a care in the world.

Where did we go wrong? Did we not work hard enough? Did we not get our education? We have been good citizens. We have never been in trouble, we always paid our bills, we vote in every election. We have volunteered and worked in community service and we are good hard working people. When did it get so hard to be just regular folks? And how long will this last?

And everybody is fighting and scrapping for every dime we have. It seems that everywhere you look there are ads. You can’t look at a news story, or even a music video on You Tube without sitting through an ad or two. Don’t these folks realize we are broke???

I was especially outdone with the ads that ran during Christmas. It seems there are a lot of folks who can afford to buy their mates expensive cars and put big bows on them for Christmas presents. Wow. I don’t know anyone who can do that.

I don’t know what is to become of us. How can we even consider ourselves a great nation when we cannot keep our people fed and clothed and in decent housing? When they cannot get the medicine to remain in relatively good health? What happens if they fall gravely ill or have an accident and require extensive medical care?

How long will this madness last?

Dignity

Ladies, say the word with me. D-I-G-N-I-T-Y. It’s something we all need to keep in mind and never forget – especially when we are dealing with men. Let me elaborate.
Some of us start getting worried about getting married when we are in our 30’s or 40’s. We wonder if we have done something wrong, if we have been too picky or that something has passed us by. By this point in our life, we have lowered our standards a bit which really is a good thing. We are no longer looking for only drop dead gorgeous men and we usually understand that a bad boy is just that – a bad boy.

So we start wondering where we have to go to meet Mr. Right. We go to the grocery store and stay too long – spending too much money. We go to the Laundromat when we know we have a perfectly good washer at home. We go to church and anyplace else we think will work in our favor. Sometimes we dress a bit too provocatively and if we go out with our friends, it no longer is a night with girlfriends – it’s a hunting expedition. And we’re serious about it. Hungry eyes watch every single man that enters and wonder if he might be The One.

It’s about this time that we get envious of the younger women. For some of us, things start going south and we see lines in our face in the mirror and every day we see a few more gray hairs. Our bodies are not taut and tight like they used to be and we can’t help but wish early transmission failure on the young skinny girls getting all the attention.
And when a guy does come talk to us, we have been known to think, “well, he’s not all that cute, but he does like ME,” and he starts not to look so bad. The question in our head is will he be a good husband and could he support a family? And if we think he is a good candidate, it’s about then that our dignity goes right out the window. We can protest all we want to but we are in the first steps of settling and settling is never good.

We all have a list of things we want in a man and as we get older, that list can be less and less important. Because we want to settle down and have a family, we are willing to strike a few things off that list, and in doing this, we build up the ego of a man who might not be worthy of us and before long, we have created a monster.

Men assume that they are valuable commodities and if he is good looking, rich, and all that, he doesn’t think he has to have just one woman. He usually has several women in and out of his life and you have to decide you want to be one of the harem. They also know that we want them and we will tolerate their bad behavior just to be with them.

Ladies, ladies, ladies! Let’s back up. If you were busy with your career or if you were having fun before you started thinking about settling down, that is what you were supposed to be doing. Perhaps you weren’t ready to have a marriage and kids when you’re 25. All of us aren’t. I believe we need to get those demons worked out and get drunk till you puke and ride the electronic bull and go on spring break while you are still single. Have your fun! It’s ok!

And if you were becoming the corporate maven, again, good for you. If you have worked at that early in your life and you may have a nice little nest egg and you have learned a lot and it will help you later. There are some who believe a girl shouldn’t take her career so seriously but I disagree. If it’s what you want, go for it. Just remember having it all means you have to do it all and not all of us are able to do that without some resentment and anger later on that will eventually destroy your relationship.
When that day comes and you decide you are ready, keep in mind all the things you have been through. Recognize that you are successful and that you have worked hard and deserve only the best. Be proud of what you have done and maintain that pride as you begin to look for a mate.
Settling is never good. Eventually, you will tire of him or you will be resentful and if that happens AFTER you have walked down the aisle and brought Junior home, which will be a lot of trouble for you all. If you date a man who isn’t worthy of you and you allow him to treat you badly, well, you know you made a mistake. Now what? Do you really want to wake up in the middle of the night and look at him sleeping and wish you were anywhere else but there with him?

Do you want to be in a relationship with a man you settled for because you were desperate and then meet the man you SHOULD be with? Or do you want to engage in an affair because you are unhappy with the man in your life and that will be a lot of trouble for you all. If you date a man who isn’t worthy of you and you allow him to treat you badly, well, you know you made a mistake. Now what? Do you really want to wake up in the middle of the night and look at him sleeping and wish you were anywhere else but there with him? Why complicate your life that way?

If a man tries to hit on you and you know you really don’t like him, say no thank you and keep moving. If you see he has a mean streak, walk girl. Walk fast. And if he’s violent? Don’t even look back.
Don’t get the baby blues and get pregnant and have the father walk off and leave you with the responsibility of raising your child alone. Keep those contraceptives close and use them. Do you want to be on the Maury Show, trying to get the baby daddy to recognize his child? “Jerome, you ARE the father!” Do you really want that? Think about it.

If he has two or three baby mamas, do you really want to be caught up in all that
drama? If he has to give all those women money, will he still be able to give you the life
you want? And if you don’t have children, do you want your weekends to be devoted to
taking care of his children? Please stop and take the time to think about the life you are
consenting to and if it isn’t what you want, don’t settle just so you have a man. You will
regret it later.

Keep your dignity intact, girl. Don’t settle. Stay clear about what your goals are and stick to your guns. It might take a little longer but wait for the right one. Hold out for your joy and remember that you are worthy of having the love you seek. If you have chosen to date interracially, you have given yourself better odds. And don’t date the first white guy that approaches you. Wait for the right rainbeau. People can smell desperation a mile away and it’s not a good scent for you.

Don’t sit in your house and complain that you can’t find the right one and whine that all the good men are gone. They are not. They might be a little harder to find these days, but they are not gone.  You may need to be patient but don’t give up and don’t give in to the wrong one.

Maintain your dignity. Please.

A Peculiar Situation

There exists a fragile relationship between white women and black women. Sometimes we can be close friends and sometimes, we square off like two combatants in the ring, warily eying each other. I think basically we want to be friends and like each other. As women, we understand that we share so many of the same issues but external things (like men and jobs) always seem to come between us.
When I was a young woman and just entering the fray of women’s rights, black women complained that white women didn’t understand the true depth of our plight. There became a rift – ‘womanists” and “feminists” which basically was the same thing, but one was black and one was white. I just shook my head in frustration because I was and still am tired of divisions caused by race. I joined in and tried not to offend either group and I still think of myself as just a woman who wants to be treated fairly.

Is it that we don’t trust each other? I suppose it could be. Stereotypes have reared their ugly heads in many a budding friendship between women of different races. They think of us as inferior and not as bright and we see them as dizzy white girls. Is it resentment? Sure. Black women have had to deal with the sobering fact that when it comes to the equation of choice, most men would choose a white woman or even an Asian woman over us. It’s hard not to be a bit cranky about that.
I have seen the hurt and anger in a black woman’s eyes when she sees a black man with a white woman. She feels all kinds of rejection and resentment. I date white guys so it has never bothered me. But there are thousands of sisters who feel the bite of rejection when they see that. Once again, we come in second. I can relate to that feeling.

Sisters get really riled with the never ending idea that our culture pushes at us – white women are superior, they are the ideal and we are just second rate. I remember the days of the back-handed compliment, “You’re pretty for a black girl,” which implies that black women are generally ugly, but I am an anomaly. Or when they used to say “Oh, you look just like Diana Ross!” Or Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, or whichever black woman was popular at that time. So I’m not attractive unless I remind you of a black woman you are used to looking at? Yeah, you’d be resentful too.
 How many years did it take for cosmetic companies to start formulating make-up and skin care in the many shades we come in? Or proper hair products for us? It took Madison Avenue a long time to realize that women come in all colors. And sizes, but I’m not going there right now.

I have known black women who want to date white men but have a deep abiding hatred of white women. I ask them how they think they will get along with his sister, mother, aunts, etc. How can you love him and hate them?

Yes, I have known some very arrogant white women who looked down their nose at me. With a toss of their hair they dismissed me as any kind of threat in their quest to find “The One.” Because of their assumed right to the throne of womanhood, they never thought anyone would dare pass them up and look at lowly me. Some of those girls had a lesson to learn. Some men like us and all those men aren’t black. Surprise!

 I think it’s kind of funny when you’re out and about and you meet a white girl and you are talking and in a very patronizing way, she points out the black guys saying how hot they are. I tell her to go after them and point out the one I like which just happens to be the one she likes. I love that look on their faces at that moment that they realize I am more of a threat than she ever expected.
I have had close white girlfriends since I was about 13. I never saw anything wrong with it, though some of my black friends and family did. I have never had to compete with my friends nor have I ever wondered about trusting them as friends - most of them, anyway. I have friends I know I can always count on through thick and thin and I know they love me every bit as much as I love them. I am very lucky there.

I don’t hate white women. I don’t like the way they are lauded over and the sense of entitlement that some of them have. I know that I am just as good as they are and I feel I should be considered to be just as much a woman as they are. And isn’t that what it’s all about? I mean, after all, we are all women. We share more than we realize sometimes and we should be able to stand together and support each other when things get tough. No petty jealousies. Just women standing together to face the world.

I love that.

The Death of Customer Service

Whatever happened to the days when businesses were concerned about their customers? Remember when they used to say "The customer is always right?" When they promised "service with a smile?" Those days are long gone now, my friend. I imagine the new motto is "The stupid customer sucks and once I get his money, who cares?"

What has happened? Why is conducting business such an ordeal now? I don't understand. In this economy, where each business is competing for every dime they get, why don't they care anymore? Why the snarky indifference? Why do they lie to you? It doesn't make sense.

One reason is the loss of politeness. I suppose that people who never learned to be polite could not teach their children to be polite and so we have a world teeming with indifferent, rude and selfish people who truly believe that the world owes them something just because they are here.

My mother and father taught us not to touch anything that didn't belong to us. When we were children, if we entered our parents' bedroom, we did not touch anything unless we asked first. Oh yeah, we were intrigued with the perfumes and powders and little jars and keys and jewelry but we knew if we got caught touching it, we'd get in trouble. Mama had a glass jar with a top that had sunflowers on it and I loved it when she would tell me to go look in that jar and bring her a hair pin or a bobby pin or a safety pin. That way I could see what was in that jar without getting in trouble! Wow! Daddy had a leather valet case on his dresser where he kept his cuff links and rings and watches. I loved looking in the mirror in their room and looking at what was on their dresser. But I didn't touch it!

My parents kept the house stocked with food. We never ran out of anything. My Mom always had at least 10 cans of sliced peaches on the shelf and I don't even know how much toilet paper and paper towels. We knew if we used it to let her know so she could buy more. If we wanted those peaches, we asked.

When I was grown and used to come home to visit, Mom would buy things she knew I liked - Pepsi,   butter pecan ice cream, apples and popcorn. I would open the fridge and ask, "Mom, can I have a Pepsi?" and she'd say, "Brenda, I bought those for you; of course you can have one," but she was pleased that I still asked.

People don't do that anymore. They walk right into your room, sit on your bed and reach over and pick up something of yours without asking. I am always aghast. I would never do that. I am appalled with the person who opens the refrigerator and sees the food or drink that I bought and decides it's all right if they drink or eat it. Again, I would never do that. What nerve! And what must they be thinking? "Damn them, I'm hungry so I'm just going to drink it and I don't care."

And so those same people are working in the public now.

Every once in a while, I go to McDonald's. For years, I ordered pretty much the same thing - two regular hamburgers, medium fries and a Coke. But lately, a McDouble costs less, and it's basically the same thing, just with one bun, so I order that. And I always order it WITHOUT cheese. I'm lactose intolerant and I save my cheese consumption for the really good stuff like lasagna and spaghetti and my brother's fantastic grilled cheese sandwiches. When I eat that, I take my pills to help me digest it. But I don't always have my pills when I'm at McDonald's and truthfully, I don't really like cheeseburgers that much.

But almost every time I order one, when I get ready to eat it, lo and behold, it's a cheeseburger. It's gotten to the place that I won't leave now unless I check it first. They almost always get it wrong.

And when I go to the grocery store.....I take my own cart. I usually buy more than I can carry so I bought a cart because the walk to the store is my daily exercise. When I check out, I take everything out of the cart so it can be priced and then bagged and put back in my cart. In the past couple of months, I've had to go back to the store three times because the baggers forgot to put one of my bags in my cart. How hard is it to do that? I guess it's hard if they are talking to each other and not paying attention to what they are doing.

It used to be that stores didn't stock the shelves until the evenings or over night when there were no customers to be in the way. Now, they have the huge cart in the middle of the aisle and they give me, the customer, the dirty look if I want to go down that aisle. I remember when they used to say, "Oh, excuse me, mam, let me move this over so you can get through. Can you reach that? Can I get that for you?" Once when I was at the store, the girl stocking the frozen section put her cart right in front of the door of the section I needed. She parked it, gave me a surly look and walked away.

What is wrong with people???

When I upgraded my cell phone, I usually went online, picked my new phone, spoke to a representative to get the information right and my phone would arrive in a day or two. Earlier this year, I went to do that and found that the procedure online had changed. I went through a few extra steps but finally got it and thought my phone would arrive overnight. It didn't. Five days later I called them. Now my ex and I live in two different states, but this is on our account. It's been this way for 3 years. They sent my phone to him.

When I called, they said for him to bring to the phone to the nearest FedEx office. That just happens to be 40 miles away from him and not convenient. So they sent someone to pick it up. I went through the entire order with another representative who realized at the last minute that she too had put things in motion to send the phone to the wrong address. She said she corrected it but a week later, still no phone. Finally, I spoke to someone who said he would send the phone to me and did. But then there was that box at my ex's door....

Usually when a prescription expires, the pharmacy can call my doctor and get it for me. I called in a prescription and when I went to get it, it wasn't ready. I waited a few more days and it still wasn't ready. "We faxed it in," they said. Faxed? Why not a call? When I went home, I noticed that all my prescriptions had expired at the same time, so I called my doctor's office to get them renewed. Usually, I get a nurse who looks it up and calls them in for me. I left three messages, only to find that no one had done a thing. I finally went to her office and after sitting in the lobby for over an hour, someone finally spoke to me and that night, after a 3 week wait, called my prescriptions in.

When I lost my job, I was glad to be able to get the COBRA assistance to keep up my health insurance. My ex and I both have pre-existing conditions and we need regular doctor visits and prescriptions. At first, the payments were manageable, but after a few months, the price went up and then as things got more difficult for me, it was harder to keep up the payments so I was forced to drop the coverage. I went to the Internet and checked for another insurance company that would take us both and not bankrupt me. He pays our cell phone bills so I handled the insurance for us both. I spoke to a few but settled on one that seemed like they would be fair. After talking to a few representatives, I signed up and paid the premium. It was only later when I was going to make a doctor's appointment that I saw I had been misled.

With the insurance I had had in the past, I paid $30 to see my doctor and $50 to see a specialist. With this insurance, they only paid $50 so the rest of the bill was on me. So if I went to see my doctor, I had to pay $200 on the spot and wait for the insurance company to pay me $50. The price of my prescriptions only changed by a dollar or two. My ex was paying even more. We talked about it and realized that we'd been had, and agreed that I needed to call and cancel the policy which I did. And then they promptly withdrew the monthly premium AFTER I cancelled the policy. It's been a week, and I still haven't gotten my refund - despite their promises to "expedite the refund as soon as humanly possible."

I can't believe it takes someone 7 to 10 days to push a series of buttons on a computer to assist a person who has already expressed their dismay and how much this erroneous action has hurt. A person who cares about people and about how their company is viewed would have made that happen immediately.

I don't get it. When you work for a company, you become "we," don't you? You speak of them in ownership terms as if they belong to you or you belong to them. You're proud to be a part of that company, aren't you? So don't you want them to be viewed in the best light? And don't you want to look good? Don't you want to be seen as the person giving the best customer service? Doesn't it matter anymore?

I remember when you called a company and you got a person on the phone. Now you get lost in a never-ending loop of mechanical voices, reminding you that you are late with your payment when you are calling because something doesn't work and you can't get through to tell them.

My roommate got fed up with the slow Internet service we had. The company provided cheaper service but you got what you paid for. You couldn't even play a song all the way through without it stopping to buffer at least 3 times. At least!! She is a graphic designer and builds websites and needs things to work rather quickly, so she decided to change service. Oh, there was also the matter of when the bill was due. If you missed the due date by one day, the next day, the service would be slow coming up and you would be directed to a site reminding you to pay. And each day you were late, the delay was longer and longer till you finally coughed up the dough.

She got a good deal when she got the service so she decided to change from satellite TV to cable. That meant that I no longer needed the dual DVR box that was in my room that had handled both our TVs. So I called our provider and told them what I wanted. I wanted a single DVR box in my room because it would lower my bill. They said they would mail the box to me and that I could return the old one by mail as well. A week later, I opened the box I received and what do you think I got? A dual box with no DVR. I spoke to a technician for 10 minutes before he got that they had sent me the wrong box.

Again, I just don't understand why all this is so hard. Don't they make notes? Don't they listen? Or do they just not give a damn?

Why can't we go back to people listening to the customer? What about checking to make sure you got it right?? Why not do things to make the customer happy? After all, won't that make them want to do business with you? And maybe they will refer their friends to you as well? Doesn't that make sense?

When I was teaching, I was alarmed at the number of messy, untidy and completely wrong assignments my students turned it to me. They always had an excuse for it, or didn't get why I was "so picky about it." I would never have turned in a paper with a lot of work crossed out or with spots all over it where they erased mistakes or attempted to or had crumpled it up and then straightened it out. I would have thrown that away and worked on it again to make it look as good as I could so that I could get a good grade. Some of them got angry because I asked for neat looking work. "It don't make no difference," they grumbled. And further, they would cheat and did not see where that was a problem. That told me something right there. They didn't care.

So now those same lazy, inept people are working in our businesses, messing up your orders and botching your phone calls on a daily basis. And what if that person is working in a nursing home, or a hospital, giving your loved one the wrong medicines or treatment. Or perhaps giving it to YOU.

Scared now? I am.

Another Letter from ......??? They Just Don't Stop!

The language and words in this missive of love is eerily similar to many of the others I have received. I just cannot take these seriously. I don't even answer anymore. It's so pathetic....

Your profiles took me away
My name is Maxwell Anderson, Iowa,USA 47 year old,. Divorced. I'm a single Dad of a 15 years old Boy who is the apple of my eyes. I'm new in this and my English is not the best either. I hope you won't judge me with spellings.here tells you little about me so that your curiosity won't get the best of you. I am 5.10 ft tall, toned, blue eyes, brown hair, I work in the construction field, of mainly building of which i log homes .am currently working on a project in Africa Nigeria and i believe distance doesn't matter where emotion exist. Only the hearts speaks, I enjoy watching and playing sports (especially soccer), camping, long walks, car trips, and good music. I like going to the theaters to see a good movie. Reading is something I enjoy as well. I like traveling on holidays. I love snowball and long conversations with coffee, One of my biggest challenges is being super DAD. Sometimes I think I'm the best DAD in the world, other days I think different. I think my best virtue is my honestly and loyalty and my worse is my stubbornness. Most people guess I am younger than I really am, I don't smoke but drink occasionally. I have very strong character and moral values and I know where my boundaries
are.have been Div for 8years and i think its highly the time to move on with my life and get rid of the pains i had been having with the memory my Ex Girl. I am new to this online dating stuff i just want to give it a try and see if my soul mate would be some where there on the internet.
I read your profile it seems like one in a million i just hope you will be nice in your attitude as your profile. You seems like someone with great sense of humor. I like your photo. seems like you've really got a busy life.. What were you thinking about when you had that picture? Age different and beauty doesn't matter to me I believe it's not all about personal appearance it about having true and faithful feelings. I want to explore more on life together with the woman I'll love.
I want someone to grow old with. being basically good and decent person is extremely important to me and I am looking for the same in a prospective partner. in Love, caring, honest, sincerity and understanding.I want a simple woman with a simple dream in view of life. who is ready and willing to devolt all her time for a relationship as her second job, not someone who sends 2 or 3 emails and disappear. Woman to love me and my son as who we are. someone that will in here and hobnob me. show me inc eradicable and inestimable love and passion, make me trust in hope and love in her. a woman who understand the meaning of love and feelings as trust and faith in each other, not the one who see love as way of fun and sex only, a mature woman with nice vision of what the word LOVE is all about, free to write back any time. lonelyandtired41@gmail.com OR lonelyandtired41@yahoo.com ,Add me on IM. I love it when I've got mail.
Hope to hear back from u soonest...
Maxwell Cares

Life In Exile: The Journal of New Orleanian Far, Far, From Home...

Who the Hell is Katrina??

 
The week before Hurricane Katrina arrived; I was in New York City for a business conference.  We were staying at a hotel on 51^st and Lexington in Manhattan.  I had been wandering around the city visiting some of my favorite haunts all that week after I was finished with my work.  I was worried about money and upset because my husband had been fussing at me about it.  I wasn’t happy with my job at the time because my salary had been cut and I needed to make some changes in my life.  I just didn’t know I was about to do it immediately. I had no real idea just how much my life was going to change in the next few days.
 

One night, my husband called me from New Orleans to tell me about a hurricane that had formed and he didn’t like it.  It was erratic and nobody really knew where it was going.  It hit Miami and instead of losing power, it went across Florida, jumped into the Gulf of Mexico and continued to build strength.  It got bigger and stronger and everyone was nervous.  I didn’t think much about it because I wasn’t home.  But I remember him saying he didn’t like the looks of this storm.  I got home late Thursday night and decided not to go to work that Friday because I was tired.  And that’s when I saw what Katrina was doing.  She was heading right for us!

And Why Is She Trying to Kill Us All?

Saturday, August 27...

We had originally planned to stay at home and stick it out.  We were listening to the news reports and the weather reports almost all day long, so we knew what they were saying.  It didn’t look good.  If Katrina kept going in the path she was in, she was going to hit New Orleans head on.  It would be bad.

 

But all the other storms had all veered to the east, sparing us, so we really thought this one would do the same thing.  The year before, Hurricane Ivan was supposed to be heading towards us.  Most people evacuated and ended up spending up to 12 hours on the interstate trying to get to Baton Rouge which is only an hour away.  We didn’t leave that night and I remember being very nervous and wondering what was going to happen. 

 

Ivan was due to make land fall about 3 a.m., so I went out on the porch and looked around.  It was dead silent, no wind, no rain, no noise and no people.  Most in our neighborhood had left, so there was no one around.  It was actually quite eerie but I was glad nothing happened.  Unfortunately, it lulled us all into a false sense of security and most who should have left when Katrina was approaching didn’t because of Ivan.

We were worried, but not really that afraid.  Our double was pretty secure, it was on a platform up about 4 or 5 feet above ground and we had gotten some food to hold us a short while.  My husband is a native Miamian, and he thought we could stand to stick it out at home and he had always been right before.  We had boards, so we decided to board up the windows and batten down the hatches, as it were.  The landlord had left New Orleans after Ivan, so there were tenants in the other side of the double.  They were two young kids who hadn’t thought about boarding up and they were going home to their parents in Mandeville.  We had boarded up the entire house before, so we did it again.

 
While we were boarding, we noticed our neighbors in the apartment behind us sitting leisurely on the porch, not boarding or packing.  I knew they had 3 or 4 little kids, so I didn’t understand their attitude. 

"Aren’t you boarding up your apartment?” I asked.

The man looked at me smiling and spoke to me in that familiar New Orleans drawl, “Naw, baby.  I ain’t worried.”

“You should be,” I responded, “this storm is coming right at us.”

“They said that about Ivan too and he didn’t get us.”

“So you’re not leaving?  You’re staying here?”

“Yeah, dawlin’.  Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to us.  God is gonna make sure.  We gonna be safe in His love.”

I shook my head as I walked away and wondered if I would ever see him again.  Later I noticed he put one board over one window and went in the house.

 

My brother Eddie had just moved in with us a few weeks ago and was at work.  The news people said the bridge was going to close over on the West Bank and he worked in Gretna at a mall.  He’d just gotten this job and was getting back on his feet after a nasty breakup in a relationship that had lasted over 25 years. I felt bad that this was happening now, but I had no reason to think he wouldn’t be back at work in a few days.  

I got in the van and went to get him, telling him that the storm was headed our way and we needed to go home and get ready for it.   His co-workers all looked nervously at me as I told him we had to go home.  Some of them had to drive a while to go home and they were waiting for the supervisor to tell them to go home.  No one was shopping.  Everyone was at home getting ready or many people had already evacuated the city.  We went to bed that night hoping for the best.  By then, I was really afraid.  I had been watching television all the time and most of my friends had already left town.  If this one was THE one, we had to go too.  We agreed to wait until the next day and see what the weather was like before we made a decision.

 

August 28, Evacuation Day!

 

We woke up to dire warnings.  A twenty-foot wall of water, no power for God knows how long.  Damage from tree limbs.  High winds.  No electricity for no one knew how long.  No water.  Animals coming up from the swamps.  Mosquitoes.  Sewage and oil and no telling what else in the water….oh, yes, and dead people floating in the street, for God’s sake!  It could be catastrophic.  So far, it was still headed directly for us. By now, I was scared to death.  The local weatherman said it bluntly:  if you can get out leave NOW.  We agreed it was time to go.  But where?

 
My mother-in-law had lived in a little town in north Florida called Blountstown.  It was literally a 2-stop light town with very little going on, but there was a house there that we owned now, so we had a place to stay while we waited out whatever Katrina was ready to throw at us.  It was a 7-hour drive away from New Orleans and we’d been doing some work on the house since his mother had died so we felt all right about leaving. At the moment, it seemed the perfect place to run to.  So we decided we would head out on I-10 East. The Governor had said that I-10 East was relatively empty.  Yeah.  Right.

We figured we would only be gone a few days.  If it hit, we could wait till they started cleaning things up and then come back home.   I didn’t pack much because Blountstown is a pretty informal place and I didn’t think I would need much of anything to wear.  I took shorts, tee shirts and stuff like that. There isn’t much of anywhere to go or do there anyway.  We decided to empty out the refrigerator and take the food with us.  We had lots to drink, so we took that too.  We packed all the cat food and a litter box for them and on a last thought, grabbed one of our computers and shoved it all in the van. 

 
We had not eaten breakfast or lunch.  Everything was closed.  All we were thinking about was getting away before that storm hit us.  We always left the cats as the last thing to put in the van.  None of them really liked to ride and they were nervous – undoubtedly picking up on our stress.   Four of them went in the van with no problem.  The last one, Max, our Psycho-Cat, ran and hid.  We searched all over before we realized he had crawled up into the bedspring and was cowering there in fear.

 

He had recently been to the vet and had had several teeth removed.  He had been in pain and unable to eat for a while, so I imagine to him, going for a ride meant going to the vet again.  We ended up tearing the bedroom apart to catch him and we rushed him out to the car so we could leave.  When we caught him, we were getting ready to go and I opened the door to the van to climb in and he and our other tabby Moe, shot out. 

 
After much cursing and recriminations, we tried to catch them, but they ran under the house, determined NOT to go with us.  We knew we had to leave and like most others, we assumed we would only be gone a few days, and we left them, hoping for the best.  The wind was picking up and the rain was beginning to fall, so we knew we had to go.  The roads were packed with people and we knew if we were getting out, we couldn’t wait around.  The storm was due to hit land early the next morning.  We made jokes about how the cats would be angrily waiting on the front porch for us to return.
 

We had headed out to a short cut I had found that would have gotten us to I-10 at the last exit before the Irish Bayou, right at the foot of the bridge, but when we got to St. Bernard Parish, they turned us back with rifles in hand.  I guess they thought we were looters, not people just trying to get to I-10.  We drove back and ended up sitting on in traffic for hours.  We sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic, just to get out of town and across the bridge.  All the traffic was going east and there was no choice.  We moved maybe a few feet every few minutes and we all crawled along going to God-knows where.

 
My family and friends started calling me after seeing the dire warnings on the news. While I was in the van, I got calls asking if I was all right.  I was so scared I was shaking, but I managed to assure them that we were leaving and that we would be all right.  I wasn’t so sure of that myself, as we were driving through rain bands of driving rain, but we kept going. We didn’t talk much as we inched our way out of New Orleans. 
 
When we got to the I-59 and I-10 split in Mississippi, we found we were herded up north into Mississippi and not east into Florida as we had planned.  We were furious.  We had to drive almost 50 miles north into Mississippi before we found a two-lane highway that would take us back to Mobile, Alabama.  We couldn’t get gas because no stations were open. 
 

We had a full tank when we left home and we passed many people who had to abandon their cars or stayed on the side of the highway with their cars.  What would happen to them if the storm hit?  They were right in the path! If we didn’t keep going, we could get caught too.  We worried, but we kept going.

 
No bathrooms.  We were hot, tired, hungry and had to use the bathroom but we couldn’t stop.  Everything on the interstate was closed and the state troopers were pushing us along.  We ended up using a bucket we’d brought because there was nowhere to stop.  The rest areas were closed too.
 

We finally found a gas station open late in a very small town and we got some snacks and drinks – the first thing we had had to eat that day.  We also went to the bathroom and got gas and drove on to Mobile.  And that was scary.  We were the only vehicle on the road.  THE ONLY ONE on both sides of the interstate.  It was eerie.  A sign told us that we couldn’t take I-10 in Florida and we called the State Police to ask what we should do.  He said there would be signs and hung up.

We stopped in Daphne to go to a cash machine to get cash so we could stop at a Waffle House and eat.  We turned into the wrong drive and a policeman pulled up and demanded that my husband get out of the car.  He accused him of drinking and we told him we had been driving from New Orleans for hours and that we were hot, tired, hungry and thirsty.  He let us go.  We drove on to Pensacola where we found a Waffle House and we had some food and some rest.  We just sat there for a while, grateful to be out of the van.

August 29, Katrina hits and Exile begins….

 It took us nearly 24 hours to take a trip that normally takes 7 hours.  When we got into Florida, we stopped at the rest areas to find they were all packed.  People were sleeping on the benches, on the concrete, everywhere they could find a place to lay down.  They were on the ground and everywhere.  All the cars had sleeping people in them.  They were even sleeping on the floor in the restrooms.  We were just amazed and stunned. 

 

We arrived in Blountstown the next morning just as Katrina was making landfall.  At first, I thought we had dodged the bullet.  Katrina hadn’t hit us directly and maybe we would be able to go home in a few days.  I went to bed Monday night feeling pretty good.  Our house sits up high and I thought we would not get much water.  If anything, our power would be out, but it would be all right.

 

But later the next day, we heard the awful news.  The levees had broken in several places and the city was filling with water.  We watched in horror and we began to feel the worry and fear that has haunted us for months.

 

We wondered about our friends.  I work at a housing project on the West Bank, and I began to worry about "my" residents and how they would fare.  We couldn't call anyone and all we could do was watch on television just as everyone else was.  I felt my heart sinking as I watched.

 

All that week, I looked at the people going into the Superdome and the Convention Center, praying that no one I knew was there as the stories were on the news about the conditions there.  I saw the people on the roofs being rescued.  The streets were full of water.  You couldn’t even see the houses – just the roofs!  I knew lots of people who lived in the 9^th Ward and in New Orleans East.  Had they all lost their homes?  How far had the water gone?

 

And the looting?  I was stunned and angry to see the people actually robbing the stores – smiling like they were proud of what they were doing.  And I was very ashamed.  Very.  I could see their getting food, water, clothes and maybe shoes that they needed.  But looting the Beauty Connection?  Why?? 

 

The Walmart that we shopped at in our neighborhood was looted and the police were using it as a sanctuary.  We even saw cops walking out of there with DVDs and CDs!  Were people shooting at helicopters?  Babies being raped?  Murders in the Convention Center?  This was getting to be more than what anyone had expected it to be.  It was a nightmare.

 
And there wasn’t much here to take my mind off what was going on back at home.  Blountstown is no place for a Chicago-born girl.  There is no theatre, no entertainment; no Walgreens, for Christ's sake, (my measure of civilization) and you have to drive 23 miles to get to the Walmart!  Many residents here proudly display their Confederate flags and we get many strange looks as we move about town. 
 

Well, there is me, African-American, my Jewish husband and my brother who rides motorcycles, so he has a scarf tied on his head under his ever-present hat and his colorful Chuck Taylors.  Oh, we are quite a sight here!

 
There is no Trolley Stop, or La Madeleine for breakfast.  No Houston's or La Peniche for dinner.  There is the Apalachee, the Huddle House (it closed shortly after we arrived) and Parramore’s and their sign for "good eat'n cats"(!!!). 
 
The house is dark and dank with mold.  The halls have dark brown paneling and it is foreboding.  The rooms are small and dark. My late Mother-in-law is still in the house in spirit and she impishly hides things from us.  We don't have a phone, cable tv or internet.  We go to the library every day to check our e-mail.  We have breakfast at the Huddle House and try to pretend we don't notice the stares.  We wonder why my husband's parents ever bought a house up here!  But if I show them my driver’s license, as I am the only one of the three of us who has a Louisiana license, we get a discount on our meals.

As time passes, we realize in horror that we will not be going home for quite a while.  My thoughts turn to our cats. I go to every website I can find and leave a message that they are under the house and need to be fed or rescued.  I send their pictures out on several lists.

 

We try to reach FEMA to get emergency assistance.  I try 8 times online only to get knocked offline or frozen out just as I am completing my application.  I try to call for 6 days before I finally complete an online application.  We find the Red Cross center in Panama City and apply for emergency aid and they offer us food and advice.  We see all the frightened and worried people there - most of them from Mississippi and not from New Orleans like us.  Most of them are white. 

 
We get a check and when we ask about FEMA, they give us instructions to go to Ft. Walton Beach.  We drive there, and though we get information, we don’t leave with money in hand.  One check has been deposited in our account, but my brother still doesn’t have his assistance.  I don’t qualify because my husband already applied.
 
To ease the boredom, and to get things we need, we drive to Panama City and to Tallahassee. The traffic in Tallahassee freaks us out, so we don't go there as much.   We go to the local thrift shop because we need clothes.  They let us have whatever we want free of charge.  My brother worked for Sears and the store in Panama City gives us a huge discount so I begin to pick up some more clothes as I left home with a few pairs of shorts, some tops, a pair of jeans, flip flops and some skirts.  My brother and I are still getting paid by our jobs, so that much is good.  That gives us a little less to worry about.
 

Meanwhile, the tension mounts for us.  We argue about nearly everything. We are uncomfortable and uneasy and worried sick.  My brother is still reeling emotionally from the break-up of his marriage.  He’d been with that woman off and on for 25 years and he had never expected things to end the way they did.  He sits in his room and stares at the walls in confusion, rage and pain. 

 
My birthday is September 12.  I’m not feeling much like a celebration, but my husband asks me what I want for dinner and I say steak.  So we drive to Panama City to a steak house we saw advertised on television.  We get lost on the way there, but get directions and find our way there.  The hostess talks to us briefly and we tell her we are from New Orleans.  She has been there and we tell her about leaving there. 
 
I notice while we are eating that the man in the booth in front of us keeps looking at us.  I can’t figure out what he wants, but he makes his intentions clear when he is leaving.  He says he overheard us talking about New Orleans and asks if that is where we are from.  We say it is.  He says he would like to buy our dinner for us, seeing as it is my birthday.  We are stunned and don’t know what to say.  He says it would be his way of helping and we reluctantly agree.  Both of us have tears in our eyes as his wife and he wish us well and leave, paying our check.  The unexpected kindness amazes us.
 

Another evening prior to this, we had gone to a restaurant in nearby Bristol and my brother noted that the group in the booth behind us was also from New Orleans.  We talk to them and when we leave, the server tells us our bill has been “taken care of.”

 

This is one aspect of this we had not expected!  People tell us they want to do something to help and a small act of buying lunch or dinner for a family is their way of contributing.  We wonder if we have done enough to help others and determine that one day, when we are better off, we will make sure we help people that need it.

 

One day, I realized I needed some more hair supplies. Where can I go to buy the things I need to care for my hair here in Blountstown?  We ask a waitress who tells us we need to go to Quincy, a town about 30 miles away. We can also get a vet to give us a prescription for my 17- year-old cat who has glaucoma. 

 

We set out for Quincy. It is a nice drive and we arrive and to our surprise, it seems the town is mostly minorities.  We see many Mexican restaurants, Chinese restaurants, and shops and stores that sell things with a decidedly "soul" flava.  I breathe a sigh of relief, as does my beleaguered brother.  He has been looking for a lady to get his mind off his ex-wife and has seen no likely candidates in Blountstown.

 

We find the hair supply store on the town square!  My husband goes outside to observe the town and he meets deputies who are taking up a collection for Katrina victims.  He tells them we are from New Orleans and they invite us to the Justice Center for coffee.  I buy the supplies I need and we go to meet them.

 

They are having lunch and graciously invite us to join them.  They call the reporter for the local paper who interviews us and takes our picture.  We are overwhelmed.  They take us back to their collection trailer and insist we take some things home with us.  We look at the baby items and blankets and food and we realize we don't need any of it.  We don't want to take anything that someone else in worse shape than us might need.  They INSIST and put two large boxes in the back of our van.  They then drive us to a vet's office who gives me the medicine I need for my cat instead of the prescription.  My brother even meets a young female deputy!  We love this place!

 

I start planning a support group meeting for other Katrina survivors who might be in the area.  I need to do something before I go insane.  The director of the library gives me carte blanche to do what I need to do. I fax out copies of the flyer and an information sheet to all the local media and business owners and government leaders. 

 
Our friends in Quincy have donated lots of snack food in the boxes they gave us, so we bring a lot of it to the library to use for our meeting and for any other events they may have.  We are unsure of how many people will show up as we only know of about 15-20 evacuees in the area.  We prepare emergency information packets for them, but only one very nervous and worn out couple shows up.  We are disappointed, but we all try to help them get what they need.  One couple is better than no one!

We don't know what we want to do.

 

Part of me wants to go back to New Orleans and help rebuild the place I have called home for the past 13 years. But part of me wants nothing else to do with New Orleans as career-wise; it has been a bust for me. I have been laid off from the same company twice, had my salary cut from the one I had when I left and had been just barely squeaking by. What will happen if there is another storm? We find out soon enough when Rita appears two weeks later.  The levee breaks again!  And there are still 2 months of hurricane season left – this year.

 
My husband says he despises New Orleans and does not ever want to return. I know I don't want to live here, but this IS cheaper for us as we were paying an insane amount for rent in New Orleans.  My brother fears he will die without ever meeting Ms. Right if we stay here.  He may be right.
 

I miss New Orleans.  I miss reading the weekly alternative newspaper, Gambit.  I miss walking down St. Charles, going to Rue de la Course for coffee, or the Fair Grinds.  I miss meeting my friends in the "dog park" on Camp Street. I want to listen to a brass band and Second Line.  I miss going to the store and having the cashier call me “dawlin” or “boo”.  There were things I hated about New Orleans, but there is really no place like it.

Would it be the same once they dried it out?  Would the people come back?  Are they all like me, confused and worried and indecisive?  Or all they being given money and treated better in hopes that they will never want to go back again?  Will New Orleans be “gentrified by natural disaster?”  Will I be able to make money there or will it be business as usual?  So many questions to answer.  I can’t think.  My head hurt when I try.

 

And what am I going to do, exiled here in the Bible Belt? Without cable tv, one is forced to listen to ministers railing about hell and homosexuals ad nauseum on Sunday mornings and late at night.  I am used to A&E and the History Channel. We have 3 televisions at home.  We have one small one here.  We had digital cable in New Orleans.  We have rabbit ears here.  We rent a lot of dvds and videos.  We try to keep it light or fun so that we don't get too depressed.  We don't need movies to do that.  Just thinking about our lives right now is depressing enough.

 

On Saturdays, I go into a chat room with fellow European soul music aficionados and we listen to music and chat for a few hours.  I can’t do that here because I can’t download anything on the computer in the library. When I turn on the radio here, I hear mostly country music.  A friend sends me a cd player/radio and it takes a while before my brother and I discover some Old School music stations nearby.

 
I find out later that a friend of mine died on her roof waiting to be rescued.  They think she had a heart attack.  She was barely 50 years old. This hits me hard and hurts so badly, I can’t sleep for a few nights.  She was a young, wonderful, loving, caring and fun woman.  I grieve for her.  Another friend was packing her car to go and two guys came up and put their gun up to her breast and demanded her car.  One of them recognized her and let her go.  Another young man I knew wasn’t so lucky.  They killed him and his brother and took the car with all the family belongings in it.
 

Yes, we should be thankful.  We didn't have to go to the Convention Center or the Superdome.  We got out all right.  We weren't rich, but we had a place we could go to.  I cried at the sight of dead bodies outside the Convention Center.  I thought about the Zulu Balls and the jewelry shows I had been to there.  I remembered watching Orpheus and Bacchus right outside the Convention Center where the parades roll inside for the balls.

 
I thought of all the Essence Festivals I had worked as a volunteer and attended and how I had always had a good time there.  I had been to Saints games and to Sugar Bowls and sales and other events at the Superdome.  It would now always be haunted with those poor souls who lived there in that purgatory before FEMA "realized" they were there suffering. 
 

At first they said they were going to tear it down, but now they say they can fix it.  But for this year, no Bayou Classic, no Sugar Bowl and maybe even no Mardi Gras? My heart aches at the thought.  I have no more romantic notions about New Orleans.  Those had been wiped clean years ago.  But for all its problems - it was still HOME.  And for now, I don't have a home.   There doesn’t appear to be much to go “home” to.

 
And now, there are millions of us, scattered all over the country like a huge litter of unwanted mutt puppies who feel the same way.  What are we all going to do?  What will happen to us all when we are no long the big news story?  Our friends begin to call us and we call them.  For a while, we couldn’t reach anyone in the 504 area code.  It took a while before we were able to get through to each other. My cell phone doesn’t work here in Blountstown, so I have to get another one that will work here.
 

All the time, I worry about my two cats. Are they dead or alive? Have they been foraging around our apartment, or were they picked up and taken to a shelter?  Did someone bring them food? There is so much I don’t know. 

 

One day, in October, I was looking at my e-mail when I got one from a girl with a picture of a cat.  She wondered if he was one of my missing cats.  I looked at the picture and felt the first joy I had felt in weeks.  It was my Moe!  After several e-mails and phone calls, we arranged for him to come home.

 

We decided to go home and get our things out of our apartment.  We started trying to get a rental truck and found we couldn’t get one from anywhere near New Orleans.  We got one in Panama City and we set out to go get our possessions.  When we came back, we would go to Vero Beach to get my brother’s stuff and we would pick up Moe at the airport in Orlando as they were going to fly him home to us. 

As we got to Mississippi, we could see the footprints of Katrina.  All the road signs had been blown to smithereens.  Lots of places on the highway were gone.  We knew the I-10 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain was gone, so we would have to take the Highway 11 bridge through Slidell to get to New Orleans. 

 

It was dark when we got there and there was lots of traffic.  We got mixed up because there were no signs to tell you how to go and we stared in amazement at the destruction we saw all along the lake front in Slidell. The houses had been slammed, cars were overturned, it was dark as there was no electricity and the silence was deafening.  The road was narrow and we drove over it nervously looking around.

 

The worst thing was driving into the city.  It was dark and silent.  We drove along, silent and amazed at what we saw.  I had never seen anything like that in my life.

 

We didn’t see any lights till we got to downtown New Orleans and we didn’t really see many then.  When we got to our exit, we were thrilled because it all pretty much looked like it always had.  But most of the businesses were closed and some were still boarded up.  We almost jumped for joy when we turned off St. Charles to our street and saw no flooding or debris.

 

There were some trees down, but it looked all right.  And when we went into the apartment, the lights were on!  And we had running water!  But the chimney had been destroyed and water had gotten in from above and our ceiling had fallen in the bedroom.  Sheet rock and insulation was all over the floor and the bed.

 

We pulled out blankets and pillows and we slept on the floor.  A couple of friends came over and helped us pack up.  I went to my job the next day and packed things up.  We needed more boxes, so we drove out to Jefferson to get them.  I had a dental appointment out there too, so as we drove on Claiborne Avenue, I saw destruction I hadn’t imagined.

Some of the buildings had water lines that were 7 or 8 feet up the side of the building.  I didn’t want to think about what those places looked like or smelled like on the inside.  I didn’t know what to think about what I was seeing.  There were no traffic lights, and abandoned cars were everywhere.  And almost no people.

 
When we finished packing, we were hungry.  We went looking for a restaurant.  We found two on Magazine Street, so we drove the truck there and walked over to the restaurant.  We had to wait in line, but so were hundreds of others and nobody minded.  That night, we went to sleep, with a radio on, listening to New Orleans music. I cried the rest of my tears that night.
 

After we loaded the truck, we rested a day, and then got back in the van and drove to Vero Beach.  I had hurt my ankle when we first went inside our apartment in New Orleans and it hadn’t gotten better.  I went to an emergency clinic and got it x-rayed and found out I had only suffered a severe bruise. 

 

We loaded up my brother’s things and visited some of my relatives and headed out for Blountstown, stopping on the way to pick up our cat.  He was skinny and drugged and had a couple of spots where he’d suffered some contusions, but he was home again and we were happy. We looked for Max but we never found him.

 

When I look around and everyone else’s life seems to be going on, it just doesn’t seem fair.  I have bad dreams and I toss and turn at night.  My face hurts and I have headaches.  My stomach pitches at the sight of food.  At times, I just want to curl up and sit in the dark and listen to music. I don’t want to think or remember.  But I can’t turn the thoughts off.  Or the tears.

 

My brother and I both began to look for work.  I had 4 or 5 interviews before I found a job in Tallahassee.  I bought a car so I could get back and forth the 50 miles each way to work.  Me, who had always taken the streetcar or bus to work each day!  I got to work in less than 20 minutes in New Orleans.  I have to drive for an hour each way now.  My husband worked on the house and started making money selling stock options.

My oldest cat, Mouse, who I had had for 18 years died in October.  It hurt me worse than anything.  I had thought about the day he would die for years because his health had been getting worse for a while, but I kept hoping I could keep him near me.  I had promised myself, though, that I wouldn’t prolong his suffering in my own selfish need to keep him with me.  He’d been getting sicker since we came to Blountstown and nothing I did helped him.  When I saw he was suffering so badly, I had to make the decision and I did, but I cried till I was sick.  Losing him was the worst blow of all.

In December, I got a call that one of the places I had interviewed with wanted me to start with them.  I was thrilled.  I went back to work happily and the people I work with treat me much better than where I had been working in New Orleans.  I also make more money.  But it was too soon.  I wasn’t ready to go to work.  I was too deeply wounded and I should have waited. 

 

I miss my friends in New Orleans.  I feel guilty because I am here and I think I should be there helping rebuild.  I also feel guilty because I didn’t lose as much as most people in New Orleans did.  I wish I could turn back the hands of time. 

I haven’t made any real friends here.  I talk to my friends at home on the phone and my heart hurts when they tell me how difficult things are for them back in New Orleans.  I wish I could go back just to see how things are, but I don’t know that my heart can take what I know I will see.  The New Orleans I miss isn’t what is there now and I know that.  The crime is sky high and it’s not safe there for a lot of people.  Race has become a big issue because most of the people there are white.

 
I also hate the fact that everyone seems to be forgetting us. They think that we have all either found jobs or gone back to New Orleans.  People who have never been there say it shouldn’t be repaired.  That makes me so mad I could scream.  They also read all the negative press about Mayor Ray Nagin and comment on him and Gov. Blanco.  None of them were there and don’t really know what has happened.  I didn’t vote for Nagin and wouldn’t have voted for him the second time, but it raises my hackles when outsiders criticize him.  They have no right because they don’t know what they are talking about.  He didn’t do a lot of things right, but he didn’t do as much wrong as the media says.  New Orleans WAS a chocolate city – it was at least 70% black and if that’s not chocolate, I don’t know what is. 
 

He knows his base is the black people who either live there or want to come home.  But I don’t think anyone who was mayor then could have done any better than he did.  Katrina was bigger than anyone ever expected.  I blame the federal government for not coming to our aid sooner.  FEMA is a joke.  We were lucky we were able to help ourselves, but everyone didn’t have that option.  What about them?

 
I read everything about Katrina and New Orleans that I see.  I write letters to the editor and I speak out in our defense.  I won’t let anyone forget us and what we have been through.
 
The black people in Blountstown treat me like an alien. They stare at me, but make no attempt to talk to me. We stopped one young man one night to ask him for directions.  He took off like we were ghosts.  We laughed about it, but it was very strange.  We have not tried to make friends since.  Most of the white people aren’t much better and I’m an outsider and I know it.  It hurt at first, but I don’t let it get me down. 
 
Each day gets better. I don’t worry as much.  Life will go on and it may be better than it was.  There has to be a silver lining in this and though I haven’t found it yet, I know it is there.  My life will be better. Things are going to change and I am going to make it better.  I know if I can survive this – there is nothing I can’t do. 
 
I am a work in progress.

January 1, 2006