Stupid Deaths in Haiti

No matter what I do or where I go these days, Haiti is on my mind.  If I’m in the shower, I wonder how the people in Haiti are doing without basic sanitation.  When I grab a quick bowl of cereal or a banana, I know that many Haitians haven’t eaten in days and are hungrier than I’ve ever been.  When I pull my yummy German down comforter over my shoulders and snuggle in for a cozy night’s sleep, I am well aware that thousands and thousands of people in Haiti have no bed, no blanket and perhaps even no roof over their heads.

When I think about what the people of Haiti are going through now, I realize how incredibly lucky I was last year when I broke my ankle.  An ambulance was at my house within minutes, I had immediate and excellent care at the ER, and within three days my ankle was put back together by one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country, if not the world.  The four days in the hospital and subsequent months of rehabilitation were lucky inconveniences for me, one of the fortunate ones. 

For the thousands and thousands of Haitians who are lucky enough to be “only” injured, and not dead, there is little to no hope of the surgery they so desperately need and there is nowhere near enough medicine to treat their pain and antibiotics to stave off the dangers of infection as they lie in makeshift outside “hospitals.” 

And now the “stupid deaths,” as Anderson Cooper calls them, will begin.  Throngs of people will now begin to die completely preventable deaths.  They will die because their wounds are infected.  They will die because they don’t have enough food or clean water.  They will die because help was too long in coming.  They will die because this horrible natural disaster hit in the worst possible place to a country that simply wasn’t prepared for such devastation.

Watching the children of Haiti – those who were already orphans and those who became orphans due to this earthquake – tugs at my heart harder than any other part of this tragedy.  My friend Steve and his wife had already legally adopted a little girl from Haiti but were just awaiting the final stages of the adoption and their daughter’s arrival home.  Now they’re not sure when they’ll see their new daughter.  My hope is that the process will actually be expedited, and I’ve seen some indication on CNN that that’s happening for some of these children.

I remember when children were airlifted from Vietnam in the 70’s… my dad asked my mom, only in half-jest, if we could please adopt a Vietnamese baby.  I was in high school at the time and was all for it, but it never happened of course.  I only half-jokingly asked Tom this morning if we could adopt a Haitian child, should there be a similar airlift.  He looked at me like I was just a bit crazy and reminded me that we have four kids in college right now.  Yeah, I know, but…

I texted five digit numbers to give to the Red Cross and I gave online through the Clinton Foundation, like millions of other Americans and people around the world.  But I have a feeling that no matter how much we give it simply won’t be enough.  How can it be?  How can we, as a country or a country of individuals, help anywhere near enough?

*Photos via Google Images.

I’ve opened Live Writer. Now what?

This is new for me.  Since I started this blog almost four years ago I’ve had a constant stream of ideas running around my head and I could hardly wait to free them onto my blog. 

But now?  Now the ideas are more like a power surge that come to me like a bolt of lightning and then just as quickly disappear.  Or, because I suffer from a bad case of Social Media Confusion – I might post a quick Facebook status update instead of writing a well thought-out blog post.  (Twitter? Meh, redundant.)  And with my job occupying my energy during most hours of most days, 12 seconds for a Facebook update is much easier to commit to than 30 minutes for a decent blog post.

Take the post that’s been ruminating since last weekend when I saw this at the checkout stand at Target:

Normally I would have mentally down jotted a few notes about the memories this product evoked in me when I saw it.  As I absentmindedly paid for my socks and shampoo, I would have mentally ruffled through the old photos I keep on the little red Western Digital external drive, the old photos of Mom that caused such strong memories when I saw that silly Bumpits product.  Photos like this one…

…and this one…

I would have dusted off and tossed around old memories, as I drove home paying far too little attention to the road, of Mom at her vanity, pulling up a handful of hair at the crown of her head and then “teasing” it until it was a ratty mess, and then gently smoothing out the top layer over the mess, and declaring herself “put together.” 

I would have written about how odd this seemed to me when I was ten, and yet how I wanted to rat and tease my own hair to look just like Mom’s.  That would have launched me into a full description of Mom “putting on her face” as she sat in the backless chair at the antique vanity that had drawers on both sides for her extensive make-up collection and a lowered surface in front of the attached mirror, where she carefully arranged the particular make-up pieces she’d chosen to use that morning.

I would have written about myself at ten, in my fake Sperry Topsider tennis shoes (which might have led to a few sentences about my embarrassment of never having the “right” shoes and clothes because my German parents just didn’t get it), watching Mom’s mouth open slightly as she applied her mascara, or her eye closing halfway as she oh-so-carefully, and with expert precision, painted on her eyeliner.

But these days I no longer open Live Writer and pour my thoughts and memories onto my blog.  I want to… but for some reason that I can’t quite explain, I just haven’t.  Maybe I need a blog break.  Or maybe I need to not feel such pressure (from where? from whom? I have no idea!) to write about things that matter – and to write well.

I used to just write.  I didn’t care how well I wrote and I didn’t care who was reading and I didn’t care if I’d chosen an interesting topic.  I just wrote.  And I felt completely connected, completely transparent, and completely fulfilled with blogging.

There are things going on in my life now that I’ll write about someday, but that I simply can’t share publicly yet – and it feels dishonest and secretive for me to NOT write about my life as openly as I’d done for more than three years.  I have a very faithful following and I’ve always been so completely open on my blog that I feel like I’m betraying my best friends to censure myself a bit -- and that makes this not feel like my blog anymore. 

I’ll be back, I promise.  I love blogging too much not to be back full-force.  And I do believe that I continue to have plenty to say about family life and the process of empty nesting, about Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, about my career and my quest to get back to work that matters, and about my life in general, however mundane it is.  I hope my faithful readers will stick around… or will at least friend me on Facebook (refer to my blog when you do) where I do keep up because THAT’S easy!

One man’s marketing is another wife’s nightmare

One of Tom’s favorite magazines is Sport Rider because it appeals to the speed-demon, leather-wearing, risk-taking rebel in him.  The fact that the magazine is often left in the bathroom cracks me up because I can’t help but imagine this staid and stable 54-year-old engineer sitting on the porcelain throne pretending it’s the seat of one of these:

Tonight the magazine was open to an article about Shoei X-Twelve helmet.  Ooooh-la-la – what a helmet it is!

But the WIFE and MOTHER in me was drawn directly to this:

Seriously?  “The X-Twelve is equipped with Shoei’s EQRS (Emergency Quick Release System) for the cheekpads that allow quick and easy removal to allow medical personnel to more easily remove the helmet from the rider’s head”!

This is a product feature!  The marketer in my totally gets it… but the wife in me can’t help but conjure up horrible, gruesome, petrifying images that I can’t imagine any marketer wants conjured up. 

Of course I immediately brought this to Tom’s attention, asking him (yes, rhetorically) what it is about men that they have a desire to pursue an activity dangerous enough to demand the creation of such a gizmo.  Without missing a beat he asked me what it is about people that they have such a desire to pursue an activity dangerous enough to require the creation of “the jaws of life.”

Touché.  And point well taken.  But still – is this really good marketing?  Or am I just a bit too much of a fuddy-duddy wife?

Headin’ home, Seattle style

I hit traffic on the 520 Evergreen Bridge yesterday when I was heading home after dropping Kat off at her sorority. (She’d come home for 24 hours of “veg time” after a very busy first week of school.) 

Traffic at 4:00 on a Saturday afternoon?, I thought. Huh?!

Then I noticed why the cars had stopped right there on the bridge on a quiet Saturday afternoon at 4:00.  I quickly grabbed my camera from my purse and snapped some  photos: 

In stark contrast to last winter at this time, when Seattle was dealing with freezing temperatures and then flooding, we’ve had some glorious, clear, relatively warm weather lately, and The Mountain (as we Pacific Northwesterners like to call Mt. Rainier) has been out in all her glory fairly often.

Mt. Rainier, at 14,411 feet elevation, is so high it sometimes creates its own weather system. Warm, moist air flows eastward from the Pacific Ocean until it runs up against the ice covered slopes of the mountain, creating clouds which often obscure the peak.

It really is amazing to live amid all the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest!  Tom often talks about someday moving to Maui, but I have a feeling I’d miss the varied beauty of this place, with its TWO surrounding mountain ranges (Cascades and Olympics) , its beautiful lakes and rivers, and its actual seasons. 

Someday I will really, truly blog again (I hope). Until then, I will treat you to the only thing that put a smile on my face today.

Doing a little jig on my one-year “ankleversary”!

A year ago today I stupidly slipped on the ice on our front steps and broke the three big bones and tore dang near all the ligaments in my left ankle.

Today, just three weeks after having the hardware store in my ankle removed…

…I’m putting the whole ordeal behind me and steppin’ out! 

Kat has flown the coop

This has been a weekend of big changes for all the kids.

Elisabeth and CJ are moving into this cute little (ha!) abode for four months of house-sitting.  Peter moved from his own off-campus apartment in Pullman to a house full of friends that’s just a block from the Washington State campus.  Aleks “only”  moved rooms in his fraternity.

But for Kat, everything changed this weekend!  Last year she lived in an apartment near the University of Washington but attended the local community college.  She moved home last summer and stayed through the fall while she applied to UW for a third time, hoping that sheer persistence would pay off.  (I still don’t see why she didn’t get in the first two times… she had a 3.8 GPA in high school, along with quite a few AP classes and lots of community service – but we’ll let bygones be bygones.)

In late November, Kat was accepted to UW for Winter quarter, which would begin in five short weeks! 

Her persistence, it seems, had finally paid off.

Fortunately Kat was already somewhat enmeshed in the UW culture, especially the Greek culture, since her brother and some friends from high school were already in fraternities and sororities.  Within a week of being accepted to UW she was invited to join the Delta Delta Delta (“Tri-Delts”) sorority… and today she moved in!

As you can imagine, I was requested NOT to follow her around with the camera asking her to pose for pictures, so I was only able to sneak one of her and Elisabeth carrying a box inside.

The house itself is beautiful both inside and out (fraternities are often beautiful outside, but look like Animal House inside…) and the girls seem to be really nice. 

Kat only knows a few of the girls so far, but I have a feeling she’ll have 97 new friends within a few days.

Oh, and she’ll also have a full load of new university classes in a new major, Environmental Studies (which, coincidentally, was Tom’s major and is also Peter’s major).

So now Aleks and Kat are both at UW, just as they hoped to be way back in 2006 when we visited the campus and I took these pictures:

So now, with all FOUR children in college, Tom and I are back to empty nesting.  (Yes, it is indeed the financial craziness you’re imagining!!)  I’m sure they’ll be home often – fortunately doing laundry at school gets expensive – but most evenings will be pretty quiet around here.  With me consistently online in the evenings with co-workers in Mumbai, poor Tom will have to become addicted to bad TV… or a good book.

Winter cleaning

I don’t know what came over me…

It’s nowhere close to Spring!