there's candy in my purse

I've a multi-tracked mind and too many things that seem impossible not to share. I'm baffled--on this beautiful Friday afternoon, I've hit all of my normal daily website routines, with the exception of Inertial Circles and the Wunderground, which since May have always been my first pitstops. They still should be, as we're just now hitting the peak part of hurricane season. Now that I'd brought it up, I had to go and check on those two sites to make sure Florence hadn't intensified. She hasn't, and by the looks of things she'll stay away from land and only be a concern to ships at sea. Forecasts like these make me leave work for the weekend as a very content girl headed for some kind of happy hour.
















(picture from Wunderground's 5-day tracking model)


Trucking along, as my other website routines brought great information but nothing of urgency, I found a couple links from Maitri's post that intrigued and motivated me. Such an impact was felt that it consumed the rest of my morning in the most beneficial of ways. I haven't felt this much conviction in quite awhile, so that along with the unusually large amount of coffee I've consumed this morning have together made me feel like the Princess of Power that I used to be in my younger years. I'll have to share these in chronological order, as that is the most fabulous order of all.

To give you too much background, I'll start with this: I used to be really organized. Back when I was going to school full-time and working full-time, I was convinced that I had finally blossomed into the aggressive, alpha-female that I'd always thought I wanted to be. The volition and resulting momentum proved to be the most addictive thing that I've ever come across, and I've come across some pretty addicting things. After doing that for a year, I unfortunately put myself into a situation that soon became a huge mental obstacle, and I stumbled very hard, losing all sight of what functionality and organization even meant in context to my life. It took the patience of some new friends and some time, but things came back together but in a completely different shape. The strongest force in this personal reconstruction was the formation of this, which is my baby of babies and my most prized possession. Creating and evolving that entity reminded me that, yes, I do appreciate structure and discipline, and even a little bondage now and then. However, the ways that had worked for me in the past failed to have the same impact now. Since, I've half-heartedly been seeking that path that will hook up with the other path that forks over to the other path of where I want my life to be.

Over the past few days, I've been fixated on a few things:

1. the sudden and annoying emergence of allergies, which I'd never had before,
2. a week-long bout with extreme and mysterious physical fatigue,
3. and the prevalence of an overall lack of energy, which worried me the most. My moods are just barely consistent, though lately I generally am bouncing off the walls or wallowing the greatest wallow of a wallower.

Things for an indeterminable amount of time have not been as pleasant as I wanted them to be, and over the past week have been reminded/keep reminding myself that "things" can only be as pleasant as the energy I choose to put into them. Last night, I implemented my plan of consciously creating positive energy, which seems really cheesy and kind of hokey, but works for me so back the eff off. Here's how I put things into action:

1. Jen and I went to New Orleans Take Out for po' boys, dirty rice, and Zapp's. (The road to happiness always starts with food. It's the easiest thing to bring any person joy--and I dare you to challenge me to that.)
2. We took it home and ate it while watching Marked Woman. It was a delicious combination.
3. While doing so, I finished my third go-around of Cash. I'd underline that properly, but blogger won't let me. (BTW, I taught myself "Folsom Prison Blues" last night, but don't make any requests for it of me yet. The thing is, I'm not very good at the guitar and I strum way too loud. Then, being that most of the notes of the song are out of my range, I've had to hike it up an octave, which means I'm using my falsetto for most of the song, which makes my voice barely audible amidst the clatter of me trying to play and sing at the same time. I'm really awesome.)
4. While eating Snack "I thought I was your Snack Pack"Packs and drinking homemade chocolate milk, we taunted all those on the PBS show which featured pleas from Attorney General and other wanna-bes, like Peg "Pead!" Lautenschlager and Ben "MySpace Took Over My Life" Masel.
5. We hooked up the VCR, watched Steel Magnolias, and brushed up on our fake Southern accents whilst memorizing more lines for daily reference, as there is always an occasion to quote that movie. (Our current favorites= "Drink the juice!" ,"No, no, you didn't bring your purse." ,"I can't even begin to think about how you make grey icing!" , "Nice, nothing--I own the radio station!", "I've just about cleared them out of Baby Jesuses!")

See? All that stuff is good for the soul, specifically mine. Food, treats, books, music, and movies that manage to combine two things of high interest: Louisiana and diabetes mellitus. Yay.

People, can we get back to business here? Thank you. I can't believe you've gotten me so off track. On the organization tip, Maitri's site pointed me toward Bryan Murdaugh's helpful blog which then lead me to his take on an organizational strategy called Getting Things Done. Bryan interprets this strategy and explains his interpretation so that one can get on the horse with it through Gmail. I love Gmail! Looking over my account, I decided to use this strategy. My inbox, which used to have over 1,000 messages in it, now has NONE. Besides that, I've found a way to get some projects of mine together in an effective and efficient manner. With that under my belt, I even put some projects together that I hadn't thought about in months.

Further, I re-investigated the site of someone who I had seen before in the blogosphere but who's blog I had never fully examined. I thought Kalypso was some kind of nom de plume for this writer of the Bloggging New Orleans community. Turns out, nope. That's her real name, and she's a real, live eleven-year-old who's had her own website/blog since she was eight. I had scanned over her blog in the past, thinking she was around my age because of the topics that she'd addressed, like how Walgreens causes urban blight, and because she was making home documentaries on the state of things in NOLA. Her first one is well known and has received national media attention.

The second one is much longer and even better. If you have a half-hour, I highly recommend that you take the time to watch it. It's really great for so many reasons, but the main reason is that it's the most accessible way for an outside to understand the state of things down there. The movie starts with Kalypso's own 11th birthday party, complete with pinata shaped like Meatwad. It moves on to a surprise birthday party for her mother and footage from her mother's graduation ceremony at Xavier for her masters' degree, which feature a speech from Barack Obama, the sexiest democrat alive. It also features Kalypso's band playing a rock song against Walgreens. This girl is extremely awesome. Her grandfather is a storm adjuster who during a moving epilogue while driving through the 9th ward compares that section of the city to Omaha, which shares(d) the same population--500,000--and what it would be like to leave the city of Omaha completely destroyed and nearly empty, even after an entire year passes.

Kalypso's friend Miranda, an energetic and charming youngster as well, gives us a tour of her family's FEMA trailer, which they had been living in since the storm. Miranda captures the essence of a certain feeling of New Orleans while she describes why she loves it so much. Kalypso then takes us to a Geek Dinner and the Rising Tide conference which took place a few weekends ago. There, she intervieuxs Maitri, who translated very keenly what an 11-year-old or any person can do to help: explain in your own terms what it means to live in New Orleans, explain that they are not okay, and that life is not simple there.

She then shows us the neighborhood planning meetings that go on, the instance at one when she met Mayor C. Ray Nagin, and gives a reaction to one of President Bush's recent speeches:

"I just don't think he knows how it is down here." Funny how true that must be, even though he's visited the Gulf Coast thirteen times since the hurricane.

Kalypso then gives a tour of a school in her neighborhood, which though is not being used still gives anyone access to it. There are no locks on the doors. She explains entering and looking around to be like looking at "a moment, frozen in time." It's true from what we view, nearly everything that was there on August 26th, 2005, when the school was last in session, stinkily haunts the classrooms, as she notes numerous times of the bad odor throughout the building. Molding desks, garbage hoppers full of books, the sights shown are chilling and saddening.

Lastly, Kalypso brings us along to a visit to Houston, where family friends had evacuated after living there whole lives in New Orleans. Three sisters sit on the couch and Kalyso gives them the microphone and each of the girls a turn to speak. They each come to the consensus that while Houston is "nice," they miss their home and compare it daily to where they live now. One of the sisters says, "They don't go outside here, ever." Their parents touch on the pain of being separated from their family. Access to others used to be so easy, and now they are spread out, some family as far away as Georgia. However, even with this in mind, their parents decide that Houston will be their place for now, as the major factor was the improvement in the girls' education. The eldest girl put it simply: Houston has more money to put in the school system. Her former high school had no gymnasium, her new high school in Texas has two, plus six tennis courts.

Overall, I was truly moved and would like everyone to take a moment for Kalypso's informative and creative reports on New Orleans. She proved to be as inspiring as the whole GTD/gmail thing from earlier this morning. Actually, her films made my search for organization seem trite and silly, because her work has reminded me that there are greater tasks to be accomplished and more innovative ways to Getting Things Done.