It's Dolls Play

"My brain was broke a while ago." she says with a very serious face.  "Really?" I respond just as seriously. "And what happened when your brain broke?"

She tilts her head and smiles indulgently and says "It broke when I was dreaming." I nod and wait for more gems of  conversation. I never know when Carrie will offer up her version on how she perceives the world from her 5yr old station.

Some times I gently offer clarifications  if I notice she has veered off course and her knowledge base is becoming cluttered with information that may cause confusion if not corrected.

Yesterday she spent the day at her house. I visited and before she was aware I was there, I sneaked a peek into her bedroom to quietly observe her actions in her room.

She sat on the hot pink shag circular rug with her Barbie Dolls. She was faced away from the door where I stood and was oblivious of me watching. She was in earnest conversation with her friends as she tugged off their clothes to be replaced by whatever she chose for them to wear that day.

We had played with those same dolls yesterday. Doll play delivers a wealth of information and some of it can be an "eye opening", "gasp and keep your mouth shut experience". Married dolls were watched closely for dilly dallying with the single girl doll dressed in her slinky evening gown and tall pumps. Her Justin Beber doll was married, she says to a doll that much resembles her. The blond doll might be encroaching on her man. She was vigilant in her guarding and even had a face to face conversation between that dark haired doll and the blond. I listened as they agreed (the dolls) to be respectful of the marriage that existed and then she sent the blond off with Mr. Beber to wait for her while she went to work. Apparently she felt her conversation was enough to reinstate trust. I just listened and watched. Her doll play is as believable as those reality shows that are all the rage right now on television. I would rather watch Carrie's play.

I quietly and quickly backed out and slipped down the hall and out the door to my car.

Carrie was entertained and I was going to be childless which is the best way to get errands done. I had some shopping to do.

We didn't make it to the library yesterday. Maybe today. She won't be playing soccer either. After talking to the daughter, and finding that soccer dominates every weekend and isn't played during a weekday, it looks as though T Ball will be offered to Carrie.

I should be dressed by now. I've consumed a pot of coffee and I still sit here in front of the television news. This is posted and I'm done.

Cliff Notes and Hurricanes

A Cliff note here and then we will move on. Here goes.

Around 1972 I packed up and escaped from the town where I had lived most of my life. I moved to Providence, R.I. for about a year. If I got into the stories I could tell from that one year there, this would no longer be a Cliff note version of a part of my life so we shall move right along.

Illinois was my next stop and again, life stories we all have, a year there and after that, it was one state after another for years and years. My travels were better then any two week vacation. I got to spend from 6 months to a year in each location which gave me plenty of time to know the locals, their activities, where the parties were and whose house to hang out at. I was young. What else can I say?

I could be a tour guide for the lower 48. I was every where.

Eventually my travels led me to Morgantown, WV...this was sometime around 1987.  I had never been in Morgantown though I had grown up in WV.

 22 months there and then to Mississippi for a year  and finally to Louisiana in 1990. While in Mississippi, I started college and finished here in Louisiana in 1993. Hold on, I'm getting there...the Cliff notes are just to catch you up a bit.

The year was 1992 and I was sitting in a classroom listening to a professor's lecture, taking notes and paying close attention. I was a better college student then I ever was a high school student. Age does inspire wisdom sometimes, besides...this wasn't free.

For a week now we had watched a storm in the Atlantic. As it got nearer to land, it was predicted to hit south Florida. A few days passed before it made landfall in Homestead Florida. The Gulf states believed they had escaped this storm. We watched the televised reports of the devastation left behind. That huge storm moved over Florida, slowed by striking land but not enough to prevent it from entering Gulf to begin it's journey toward another landfall. Alert now, we begun another period of waiting and watching as it roared across the Gulf picking up the speed it had lost when it hit Florida.
The days passed and the path was watched closely.
Never knowing until the last few hours of a storms approach exactly where it will make landfall, many do not evacuate and by the time the landfall is predicted on a bullseye, it's too late to leave. The roads are conjested and the exiting is impossible.
Classes were in session and that's where I was when word came that it would be making landfall in our area. Hurricane Andrew, the third largest hurricane to hit the US shores blew in and hit  Florida, crossed through and into the Gulf and would soon be on our shores! We were on full alert and glued to the weather reports watching the barometer drop, while observing the high pressure bands from the north determining  it's path and hoping it turned more north or south from landfall to this area.
 The sky was dotted with helicopters, their whirling blades cutting the air with a whap whap whap as they began heading into and out of the Gulf to evaucate the rigs. My husband was off shore and I was in class. Evacuating the rigs is typical when any large storm enters the Gulf. The whirring of those chopper blades resemble an attack of locusts. There air strip is directly across the four lane from this house and there was a trail of them flying two abreast both coming and going. Every chopper that PHI (Petroleum Helicopters Inc.)  has is in the air. It's a busy time for the transport carriers bringing the rig workers to town  after the choppers deliver them to the docks.

Back in the my classroom nobody  was concentrating on anything that professor had to say. Shortly she announced that those wishing to leave, could and we did. Everyone hurried to their cars and to their homes to begin the boarding up and stowing away and tying down of their possessions. The race was on!

I watched the sky filled with offshore evacuees, knowing that as soon as they made it home, there would be no rest for them.  We had hours before the storm would arrive and even then it wasn't pinpointed to exactly where it would make it's second landfall. Everyone had plenty of work ahead of them.

I'll cut right to that night right here. We stayed up most of the night. It was our first hurricane and early on the stores were packed with people stocking up on water and batteries. The home building stores were sold out of plywood and the noise of hammers could be heard from block to block in the neighborhood. Everyone had one thing on their minds and that was protection. As soon as the husband arrived, he finished what the neighbors had started. The windows were covered, the bathtubs scrubbed and filled with water, propane tank filled and we began the wait.

It was still dark outside when I passed out. It was still dark when it hit Morgan City, Louisiana. When the husband heard the winds, he woke me up and we both moved to the patio door. 

I could see his lips moving and knew he must have been speaking. Actually he was yelling. The roar was deafening. If train tracks had been attached to the top of this house and Amtrak was roaring along on those tracks, the sound of that hurricane matched what I imagine  the noise that Amtrak would make. I worried about the water oaks that easily uproot. The roots of those trees spread across the ground instead of seeking depth to support themselves and they are the first to fall. We had two of them that provided shade for the patio. Soon after this storm, they were taken down and hauled to the road.
The huge maple tree on the front lawn was another worry. It survived though not without having it leaves shredded and branches ripped off.

We waited. Expecting the roof to be lifted away and the walls to cave in, we waited.  

As the eye passed over us, a false sense of safety cocooned us. Quiet. Calm and clear. We went outside to see trees blown down along with power lines and rain being blown sideways in sheets. A large tree across the street lay on its side, the roots a perfect circle resembling  splayed out fingers. Tree limbs were scattered across the lawns up and down the street.
 Then the other side of the storm  hit but we knew it would be coming and as the winds started their roar we moved back inside as the outer wall moved over us again.
Once again, we huddled in the lightless room darkened by the hurricane wall passing above and listened and waited. It finally passed. We stepped out to investigate.

More rain and wind and for the remainder of the day we received gusts that were staggering. The barbeque pits were on and coffee was being perked on the old fashioned perkolators and poured into carafes to be delivered to the neighbors.

Plywood was being taken down to let light into houses that were without power. The heat and humidity were stifling and there was no place to run to cool off. All the power in the town was gone and it was time to exercise coping abilities.

Warnings were out to stay off the roads. Danger was in the form of power lines and power poles and trees that were shedding big limbs in the gusts. A nurse lost her life at an intersection where the stop lights were without power. She was called in to the hospital on emergency status.

We got into the truck and drove from the subdivison to the main road and turned around and went home. Trees and power poles blocked both the right side and the left side and leaving was not a option.

Back home the cleanup began. The sound of chain saws replaced the sound of hammers. Trees were being cut and hauled to the road. The trees had been stripped of their leaves. Those wet leaves were plastered like those plastic  stick ons the children use on windows at Halloween and Christmas. They were stuck the walls of the house and to the vehicles. Debris in the air had deposited where the wind gusts lulled. Everyone was busy.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner was cooked on the pits lined up on the driveways. This was an "after the hurricane" party and not the jolly one with food and drink before it's arrival.

We vowed to never stay for another one. We would pack and leave.

Each year we say this during hurricane season and we have never left when one is heading this way. Neither have our neighbors. We have decided when we see our neighbors, who were born and raised here, pack and leave, we will be following right behind them.

It's always a relief when hurricane season is past. We have been very lucky since Rita and Katrina blasted through Louisiana. Both of those storms wreaked havoc and destruction and though Rita struck within 20 miles of where I live, we were spared any effects of that one. Katrina that caused all the destruction in New Orleans and  Mississippi was 2 1/2 hrs from here and we sat and watched the television reports from our living room. Both storms were within weeks of each other. Those stories are told in books later. I visited New Orleans a few months later and wrote a blog on that visit. Rita's legacy is still visible from the slabs of concrete of whole neighborhoods that lost houses, the blue tarps still in use in Lake Charles and the pictures I have of the coffins floated to the streets in Abbeyville.
Since those two storms it has been mostly quiet. We wait. We wait for the next season and sigh with relief when we have a calm year.

aw..ba...ssssa

Carrie spent the night. She is teaching herself to read so the laptop becomes her instructor. She asks nicely if she may use it as soon as I finish what I'm doing. I smile and nod, close out the site and hand it to her.

She searches the desktop for her icon that takes her to her web site. Carrie is the only other human that is allowed to use this computer. The office computer is up for grabs on whoever gets to it first but this laptop is my domain. I know where Carrie goes when she is on it and I'm leery of where the other grands go so it's on lock down to them.

From the kitchen where I've decided since I have been chased away from my laptop, I'll do some dishes,  I hear her sounding out words on the website she visits. She is teaching herself phonics. Carrie missed kindergarten by 8 days and she so wants to read. She has known her alphabet and numbers for years now but putting them into words is her next step. Soon she moves to her blackboard in the kitchen and announces "ha...ruuummph...Ms. Nana. Take your seat. Class is starting."

I don't know how strict this teacher is so I quickly dry off my hands and hurry to my seat in front of the blackboard.

Poppy has bestowed upon this small teacher a "pointer" that telescopes and she has it pulled out full length. She sounds out "ca...ca...ca...and owl..owl..owl...and soon she has spelled "cow". She advances down the blackboard with her chalk and prints  out "how" "now" and "wow".  I copy them to the paper she has handed out earlier. She steps back and with the telescoped pointer she taps on each word she has written on the blackboard  and the good student I am, I sing out the name. She smiles and tells me I'm doing good. A little praise goes a long way. She learns quickly. 

I've questioned teachers about teaching her to read. Will she have bad habits to unbreak when she does get to start school. It's at times like these, I am wishing I had that knowledge of the steps that lead one from the alphabet to full words to sentences. 

My daughter tells me I have the "teacher gene" if there is such a thing. I can instruct someone on step by step learning to do something and I start very basic. I tutored a lot when I was in college and never assumed those I taught could skip steps to a certain level. We started at ground floor and moved up. This reading stuff is still a mystery to me. I need to take some classes on the how of it all.

Something I have always thought about doing was working with the illiterate. Volunteering to spend time teaching someone to read and knowing some day they could pick up a book and loose themselves in it. I fear I don't have that skill. I need a class in elementary education. 

Today I'm going to sign her up for soccer. There is a sign just down the road from my house advertising registration. I'll visit another neighbor that is a retired elementary teacher and question her about Carrie's next step or leap into words and sentences.

Tomorrow we visit the library and sign up for some library cards. Computers are great but I want her to be around real books too. We will be busy this coming week.
I'll be ba..ba...aaa...caaaaa  kkk.

January 1, 2011, There, it's Written

I flipped the on switch to the a/c unit and settled in front of the television, remote in one hand and a Kahlau in the other. Venturing out into the public arena is not something I will do on this the last day of 2010. I'm scared. I've seen the drivers here through the week day when there isn't a party going on and that acquired knowledge keeps me off the streets most nights and this one in particular.

Once when I was making a trip after dark, I approached a bar that set close to the roadside. A truck pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road heading my direction.  From a distance, my mind registered the oncoming truck. I didn't realize any danger until he got closer. The problem was, he was in the same lane as I and  was apparently too drunk to know where he was. The lights of his truck approached quickly, and in the seconds it took for that vehicle's headlights to fill my field of vision, I wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the left and claimed the other lane as mine barely managing to keep the car on the pavement. Severely shaken, I pulled back into my lane as soon as the danger was past and then  to the roadside to compose myself.

That was on a week day. A non holiday week day. That was before I had a cell phone. Many times I have wondered when that driver realized his mistake and if not, how many people were hurt that night.

I watched today as the neighbors stripped their houses and lawns of Christmas lights. Trees are discarded or packed away, lighted metal reindeer yard creatures are unplugged, boxed and stored and another Christmas is packed away. I'll miss the lights.

 My daughter and her family practice the same safety. They built a bonfire and are roasting hot dogs and marshmellows in the back yard between the bouts of rain showers. I received a text message with an invitation to join them but that would have meant getting dressed. I declined.

The snapping and popping of fireworks I hear and looking out the window to my left, I can see streamers and flashes of light behind the house across the street. The fireworks explode into the humid air and appear unclear and fogged. No sharp bursts of colors but muted and hazy as they push against the moisture laden air. 

It's midnight and I've fulfilled my self imposed obligation to see the new year arrive. 

May your New Year be happy and healthy with huge emphasis on the healthy part.  Personally, my goal is to make it through the month of March without surgery. The past two Marchs' were not a success.

Happy New Year one and all.

I'm done.