Living-Deliberately.com

Sigh. The temptation to sit glued to the TV is strong. At times this week, we’ve become desperate for any shred of news of Laurel and our loved ones. At others, we’ve felt calm, thinking they must be okay, surviving with neighbors and waiting for power to come back on. And others, we’ve been so grief striken and weary from the images of the babies that we’ve had to just turn it off and walk away, all the while feeling guilty that we can do that and the ones suffering throught it, can’t.

So this week has been a study in contrasts. The storm hit, and while we expected it to be “hard”, we had no real concept of how bad it would be. I filled up my gas tank on Monday, Andrew had his first day of scouts. Tuesday came and we were horrified for New Orleans but still fairly certain our family was okay. Tuesday was actually spent with our friends, The Pierce family. They recently moved here in similar fashion to us, from Seattle, and we’ve become field trip buddies. They live near a wonderful natural foods store that I’ve been wanting to try called Earth Fare.

My primary motivation for going there was hearing they carried Homeopathics. For those of you in Jacksonville, Earth Fare is like Native Sun with a really big budget. It’s a beautiful store with a full restaurant. For a long time I thought it was “Earth Fair”, in a field, like a green, eco, farmers market. Our drive there was long, and of course I got lost, so by the time we arrived it was mid-morning. In my typical fashion I’d skipped breakefast and had the shakes by then. So I drove through McDonalds and got some junk to hold me over and keep me from totally blowing the budget on real food. The irony is striking. I felt soooo snarky sitting in my van eating McD’s in the parking lot of Earth Fare! But a look around, realizing that I was surrounded by SUV’s and not a one of them took bio-deisel, I figured things equalled out! After all, this was not a hard-core environment…this was a yuppy/healthy one!

It was fun shopping around. I got David a fig cake and some English Ale. I also found another variety of organic baby food. A pasta sauce using real wild truffles! And a marvelous farm fresh milk in a glass bottle. Usually when I drink milk, it’s with food and I don’t really taste it. It serves more to just wash the food down. This stuff wasn’t chunky or separated like our previous experience and it was definately something to be tasted! Soft and creamy and buttery….it was like the essense of “wholesome”. It was easy to imagine raising pink-cheeked, healthy children on this stuff. It was easy to see rolling green hills dotted with soft brown cows with eyes you could melt in. Milk….my new guilty pleasure :-).

By Wednesday I realized I was sick. It felt like the flu and Celia had a cold, so we doctored up on my new homeopathic supply and took things easy. The news was getting scary and heartbreaking and we watched alot of it. The lack of communication was like hammering at a hang-nail sized doubt and realizing we’d just cut our finger off. David started to feel desparation for his family, wanting to head down there with basic supplies. Gas prices spiked.

Yesterday was both eventful and not. The “flu” was really a breast infection, that once treated correctly is clearning up quickly. Being cooped up resulted in a noise complaint from the neighbors and management. It’s hard keeping four kids’ feet quiet on an upstairs apartment floor! Eventually I had to turn off both computer and TV, to stay away from news and from friends venting thier own frustrations. Feeling helpless can raise emotions and I needed to bring mine down a bit.

Along with the events of this week, I realized I have created a blog-monster. They are fun and addicting; even Andrew wants to start one! But please everyone, if I don’t read yours every day or comment, it’s only a time issue, not an interest one. My online time ebbs and flows, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not.

At some point this weekend I’ll post new pics of the kids. Erin and Joel are coming for a labor day visit and the kids are very, very excited about that. We are venturing out today, to use some of that last tank of cheap gas, which should make Miss Portia downstairs very happy. What we’d like more than anything else is to hear from Tom and Carol, Scott and Jennifer, that every one is okay. Maybe soon.

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