Halloween flood in more detail

Halloween was great. We carved the pumpkin, dipped caramel apples, and toasted pumpkin seeds. Gavin helped me color decorations to tape onto the front door, and when the sun went down behind the rain clouds we painted our faces and prepared to head out for Gavin's first trick-or-treating. The little barefoot mouse caught on quickly, hurrying up to the doors with his candy bag, calling "teet teet teet!" in his best attempt at "trick-or-treat", while I followed along behind him with the umbrella, a bit sweaty in my pirate costume. We ooo-ed at the neighbor's haunted displays and scary smoke machine, we avoided a stampede of frenzied princesses, and returned with soggy mouse ears and smeared makeup to our own door, where Gavin emptied his candy onto the floor and rolled in it, tearing the wrappers off with his tiny teeth. He licked two lollipops and stuck them to the carpet, then slumped onto a floor pillow and tried to fall asleep in front of Lady and the Tramp, until I carried him upstairs for a wipe-down and a tooth brushing before plunking him into bed. Here is a picture:



My mother and I were downstairs, admiring the pumpkin, when the phone rang. The slightly tipsy voice of Eileen told me that while she and her class had broken a window and escaped the flooding library, our school was demolished. As she sat in class Saturday evening, she heard an explosion and looked into the hallway to see an inch of water rushing across the floor. Seconds later, a louder explosion, and a foot of water burst in. A third explosion sent the locked door flying inward (it was an out-ward opening door) and the desks, computers, and walls came down, rushing together violently. Geysers erupted from the floor. The class got to the windows and banged uselessly until one student picked up a stool and smashed out the glass. As the students climbed up through the window, four feet above ground level, the water flowed out with them, joining the river outside. Eileen was last to come out, floating nervously on a couch until it was her turn. Everything was destroyed. The computers, the furniture, the books, the professors' offices, everything, to say nothing of the maps and government documents departments next door.

I turned on the news and watched footage of the dark, mud-caked wreckage of my beloved library school. What would happen to us? When would we resume classes? Were our grades lost? What now?

Today I left Gavin with his dad and headed out to drive to Manoa, stopping at the store for a case of bottled water. I was so stressed, I was barely coherent enough to ask the cashier for a bag of ice, and when I hurried into the parking lot with my goods, a large man leaned out his car window and called to me, "Eh, my friend Rocko likes you!" I didn't know what he was talking about for a minute, it was such a clash from what was happening. At the university, the lawn was littered with documents. People with hoses rinsed off maps dug out of the wreckage, and students with wheelbarrows were carting off files to be dried. I was given a job, which gave me hope: I had to gather cleaning supplies and prepare our temporary room in the chemistry building for classes. Armed with the knowledge that life would go on, I enlisted the help of another student and scrubbed desks, dusted chairs, wiped down the white boards, and helped sweep the floors until the room was presentable. Satisfied, I joined the other volunteers for a slice of pizza. My cataloging teacher, covered from head to foot in mud, emerged from the building to join us, grimly acknowledging the loss of all his years of work as he lit up a cigarette and assured me we would be meeting for class next Monday. I suppose I should get on my homework, despite all the excitement, then.

Wholesale Destruction

Holy fucking hell

Big flood, almost killed 30 of my classmates. My best library buddy was down there when the water busted through the doors and filled up the basement in 8 minutes with about 10 feet of water, they had to break a window to escape. Library server destroyed, government documents and maps destroyed, computer labs and professors offices (with dissertations and current book projects) destroyed. Rare book destroyed. Our grades, exams, curriculum, homework, everything. The walls were coming down (the upper library survived) and the floor broke open with geysers.

I'm going to go down tomorrow to help salvage things, but the entire campus was based on the library server. Unless someone had backups of the cataloging files somewhere outside the library, we're talking years of work lost. We don't know when we may go back to class.

No air conditioning and a library of 300,000 books in flood conditions... there are going to be major mold problems that may set the library back a fortune. I can't even start to imagine the extent of this. I'm so heartbroken. I'm just glad it was on the weekend, so the cataloging department and others were closed, otherwise people would have been killed, because there are no windows in those rooms and no way to open the doors with that much water on the other side.

Fun in the Dungeon

Cataloging. Where we sit in a dark classroom with a 5-inch thick book of AARC rules and try to take notes on field entries and punctuation. As I was doodling in my notebook, someone mentioned Leda and the Swan and I wrote Leda and the goose. For some reason this seemed really funny, and I suddenly started laughing, burying my face in my jacket to muffle the sound. The girls who sit beside me are used to this, and ignored me. Sometimes I feel like the clumsy background character in someone else's movie.

After class, Yuri announced that there were unguarded donut holes in the diner, so I snuck into the quiet hallway, and as soon as the door closed behind me I started skipped loudly down the hall and skidded into the diner doorway like an ice skater. A group of students were staring at me. "Well that was embarrassing," I said, but only a stream of garbled syllables came out. Typical. I pretended not to notice, and went to my locker, eyeballing the tables. The donut holes were gone. My favorite bake sale sign-up sheet was no longer posted. Someone had signed up to bring "boiled frogs and bat spawn", next to which someone had scribbled, "don't you mean 'baked'?" to which a third person had added, "from the Triplets of Belleville cookbook?" You just can't get away with anything in library school.

The Root Canal

Yesterday, after waking up with only 15 minutes to head out for class, I found myself at the start of a long and painful day. After class (where we were reminded of the mid-term exam next week) I hurried to the dentist for the root canal I had been putting off. Used to the hand-holding of childhood, I was surprised when my mouth was swabbed and jabbed with the giant needle with no warning. My heart began to race and my throat started to swell closed. "Not to be an alarmist," I said, fighting back black stars, "but is it normal for patients to keel over and die after getting the pain killer? Because that would be a very anticlimactic end for me." The dental assistant said that I probably was not about to die, and that it was similar to an adrenaline rush because she had accidentally poked a vein in my cheek. Adrenaline, huh? So that's why I don't exercise anymore.

After that, the procedure was fine. I didn't like to see the drill bit pass over my head, because it looked like the kind that made holes in wood instead of teeth, and I could have done without the detailed narration on my gum trimming, but the pain wasn't too bad, it felt like a lot pain in a tooth many, many miles away. Today I was surprised to see my face looked the same as usual in the mirror, because it felt like I should have a giant purple bruise across the bottom half of my face. I hope the bone will heal by the time I have to come in for my second appointment in 2 weeks to be fitted with my gold tooth.

The day that never ended

My awful neighbors are soul-sucking ghouls. I do not want to go on another rant about them.


I sat shivering behind the reference desk, watching students bounce off the invisible shield and scribbling notes about medical journals for class. I was surprised later on to discover that Scott sometimes visits the academic library, and he stopped to chat over my mountain of encyclopedias. "Oh, yes, I'm making friends again now that I'm back in school," I said. "Oh? I thought you had friends. What happened to all the little gay people at your wedding?" He's gay himself, and thought John was cute. He seemed sad when I told him that the beautiful John was studying to be an accountant.

In the afternoon, as I inched home through the Honolulu traffic, I noticed that my hands were trembling slightly, I felt a bit weak. I wondered whether it was nutrition or homework that was causing a strain on my system. The fight with our neighbors immediately upon arriving home didn't help. I sank like jelly into the couch and poked my fingers into my ears as the argument outside quickly turned into a neighborhood-wide affair. We won, but I still find my fingers wobbling as I type. Nothing a shot of whiskey can't take care of, maybe.

Chicken and Rice

Today Gavin and I took a stroll up to the store to buy Mike a huli huli plate lunch. Gavin walked alongside the stroller, held my hand across the street, and pointed when we passed a mailbox, "Maaaaail!" I held him up to open the little mail chute, we waved goodbye to an imaginary letter, and went on to the store.

At home, we divided up the meal and shared lunch. Gavin tried to open the soda, and said "Eeeew" with his nose scrunched up when I helped him. He doesn't like bubbles in his drink, but he loved the chicken. I stopped myself from pre-chewing his meat for him (thanks, ancestors) and he gnawed it up. The cats joined us for a snack of chicken skin. Gavin lifted his arms to me, and we went upstairs to curl up for a nap. Together, we went over the events of the morning, from watching Snow White to drawing hearts with crayons, and he nodded and smiled, then closed his eyes as I said "and now it's time for a nap!" and fell asleep.

Domestic bliss.

Mike goes boom.

If it wasn't bad enough that my computer up and died, requiring extreme methods of resurrection, Mike's computer has decided to follow suit. He has rushed down to CompUSA to pick up another hard drive so that he can salvage his files somehow before having to reformat his computer. Very sad.

Gavin has found that throwing things is a very fun activity. Besides the joys of physics, he gets a lot of attention, too. Particularly this morning, when he used the case from Snow White as a frisbee and hit me in the eyeball with a sharp corner. This, I guess, to match the fat lip he gave me a few days ago by hitting me in the mouth with his plastic teletubbie. His laughter turned to crying, and then anger when I failed to recover fast enough. Since I refused to shower him with kisses to make him feel better and he refused to give me a hug in apology, we sat glaring at each other from across the couch (me with my one good eye) until Mike broke us up. It has been that kind of day.

my aching nerves

I'm trying to do my homework, I am. The time I've already spent on the computer this morning has caused my fingers to fill with... hurt. It's like my hands have 10 wiggling meat sticks on the ends of them, covered in ants. So what do I do? Post a blog entry about it! Yes, this is making my hands much better. I'll be typing all about the burning of the Alexandrian library in no time.

It's funny that Sal is getting into German. Just last night I spent an hour tracking down the source to a scanned photo of a chained book for my presentation, and ended up on the Babel Fish website translating a German bibliography to uncover the 1950's author who's book had been sampled. It's amazing to sort through German and realize how many roots to our words we share.

Also on my mind this afternoon is a situation one of my mama friends is going through that sums up the horrors of our medical system. I should write a paper on it - Kaiser and the Flesh Eating Bacteria (or would people confuse the two?). Many hugs and kisses to my mama friend.

If anything can go wrong

...it will. 

The First Week of School
The first week of school filled me with excitement, emptied my wallet, and loaded me with homework. I attacked my assigned reading, jumped on my cataloging work, launched into my first essay, and my iMac up and died. Obviously unimpressed by my enthusiasm. Poot. My screams had no effect on it.

And so, four days later, after re-installations, software updates, battery changes, head-banging, and disk doctoring, it woke back up and now only has OS 9. I finished my essay in TextEdit. Very sad.

To make matters worse, I can only log in to the library system to do my cataloging homework with a valid UH library account, which I will not have until my loans come through and I can prove to the Student ID people that I've paid up. My teacher has excused me, though I will be stalking through the library today until I find someone I recognize and force them to log on for me. Maybe I'll even find Tim, cornered in the construction wing with nowhere to run. I still think I can get him to play bass for Mike.

Toddlers
Gavin has been enjoying his extra time with his dad. Mike managed to get him into bed last Thursday, where he cried himself to sleep without the comfort of a warm boob. I'm glad that the two can manage without me, so that I may stay late some nights to do research at the library. It makes me think of the time Chris came over at bedtime while Beth and my mother went to a movie... long story short, I was relieved to come home and find that Gavin was not screaming and vomiting all over Mike.

Beth has been coming to visit more often. She's lonely, we think. Chris has started to behave more acceptably, although it is a constant battle to show him how to do it. Gavin has started testing his limits as well, and while it's mostly harmless things (how loudly can I chirp after mom says "keep it down"? etc), he's been throwing things a lot, and sometimes ignoring me when I say "no". Too bad for him, I'm bigger than he is, and after being ignored once I can bodily remove him or whatever it is he is playing with. He's a pretty easy kid, though.

Gavin has also developed an obsession with Snow White, and can point out every dwarf by name. He organizes his dolls into lines and marches them to "Hi Ho" (he sings it without the "hi", but he has the idea). Other recent developments include new words: heart, draw, and treat; as well as the use of the word "rock" to describe a mountain.

On the Personal Side
I've lost 7 lbs so far. Already I feel a difference in my appearance, and the way my clothes fit. Mike has been poking me in the ribs, since he can see them now. I'm officially the same weight I was before I gave birth, but I plan to lose another 13 pounds for an even 20 by Christmas.


Right, then, enough from me. There are computer problems to diagnose.

the beat goes on

Our neighbor is playing his ukulele outside our window again. I'm tempted to pick up the chanter and make some noise, but I'm tired. Today Mike, Gavin and I drove down to UH to pay the goddamn parking ticket, with full intentions of stopping by the Children's Center to check out daycare for Gavin. We did not. After an hour hiking all over campus, we limped back to the car after an unusually bad lunch at the food kiosk. I sat eating my tough pieces of meat (debating whether it was horse or cat meat) and I looked up at the sun-dappled stairs of the Hamilton Library, in whose basements I will live like a troll for the next year and a half. 

Safely home, Gavin and I played on the porch with his (clean) kitty litter box filled with water. He tip-toed on the hot cement, and then crammed his body into the box to splash happily while I hovered over him, my shadow shielding him from the sun and my back burning. I'll miss these days. I imagined myself on a bike, Gavin riding behind me in a baby seat, as I cruised toward his day care center to drop him off for my class, then riding on to the library, riding down to the lovely Olympic-sized heated pool for an afternoon swim. Maybe I'll ask for a bike for my birthday, it's been a long time since I've been on one. My mother is returning from the store, with ingredients to make fudge, which she has been wanting for two days. She's suffering from a severe migraine, and we've decided that this sounds like a good pain-killer. 

Feeling good.

Orientation

Yesterday, my mother and I abandoned Gavin with his father and went to orientation. The LIS program is located in the basement of the enormous research library at UH, and we felt excited as we trundled down the stairs into the chilly lower decks. Waiting for the students to all arrive, we checked out the refreshments. I decided to make a cup of Earl Grey, and picked up a peppermint tea bag instead, not realizing my error until it was to my lips. My mother laughed at me and decided to show me how to make a proper cup of tea, picking out the bag of Earl Grey I had been aiming for, and then poured hot coffee into it instead of water. Both of us proving too incompetent to make a cup of tea, we headed in to the classroom for orientation.

It was really interesting. I went into this field because my mother and grandmother liked it, knowing nothing of it at all, myself. It seems to suit me pretty well. Who knew? I was particularly intrigued by archiving, and the preservation of books.

I was foiled by my advisor, who did not recommend I take 4 classes, as I had planned. It seems that 4 classes, each requiring a 30-page paper, can be overwhelming. Gah. So 3 it is, and I will start on Monday, providing the Financial Aid office get my loan papers to me in time.

There are only 4 men in our class. One is a military fellow from Laos who is preparing to go AWOL, as his orders came in 2 days ago and he refuses to attend lock-down on Thursday. It will be interesting to see if his lawyer gets him off. One man is a large Hawaiian guy with tattoos and a big laugh, a professional photographer with 4 children. The other fellows are about my age, one is a skinny quiet kid, and the other is haole boy from the mainland who plays bass guitar. I plan to corner that one and twist his arm into playing with Mike. Overall, the rest of the women in the class are fun to talk to, and many also have toddlers at home. Libraries tend to attract a similar sort of nerdy people, I think, and I can't wait to get to know them better. Already, I was huddled up with a woman named Eileen, comparing schedules to make sure we had some classes together. I always get along better with people about 20 years older than me, for some reason, but there was a young woman from Oregon that I liked. Skinny, with jerky hand gestures, hunched posture, and bucket hat pulled down to her eyebrows, she was sharp and clever. I think this year is going to be great.

In the end, we were very late coming home, and had to pick up Gavin from the theater. I was so excited to see him after such a long day apart, but he seemed perfectly fine without me. My baby is growing up. All the same, he hugged me and cuddled up to nurse immediately. 

Part of me is sad about my wasted drawing potential, and I couldn't stop myself from staring at the art building as I walked by yesterday, but I feel this is the right path. Sometimes I have to tell myself that more than once, but I'm beginning to believe it more and more.