Well, I’m not sleeping well. I sleep around 8 hours each night but it’s just not good sleep. It’s not that I’m continuously waking up through the night or anything, either. My friend Marie suggests Tylenol PM and Pinot Grigio to help out each night. Yeah, it might help but how much, really? Not as much as getting to the root of why I’m not sleeping well. It could be as simple as my matress needing to be flipped. My back’s been aching a lot lately. Thank goodness for the athletic trainer at school. When my back gets bad, he’ll help put the ol’ spine right back where it should be! Mom said my back was quite stiff when I saw her on Sunday, too.
I’m not saying that all the stuff going on in my life aren’t contributing to the lack of restful sleep and achy back. I’m sure that has something to do with all of this. The last week and a half has taken a major toll on my emotions and patience — two things I’ve always been proud to have built to be quite strong. Things are settling down a bit. I’ve been able to have days where I can fully concentrate on what I love to do, which is work with some amazing kids. It’s also report card time and no pass-no play is taking quite a toll on our whole staff’s nerves. I’m scared to see the report on Tuesday of exactly how many failed and can’t perform with us anymore.
I’m also worried about how hurricane Rita is going to effect the gulf coast. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not keeping me from sleeping. Now that it’s a category 5 storm, things around here are getting canceled constantly. I talked to my friend Janelle, who’s a band director in the Houston area, and she said they’ve already closed school on Thursday & Friday and canceled all activities for Saturday. I’m glad they’re being pro-active and smart about the safety of their community. This thing is going to hit our coast so hard that it might still be a category 1 hurricane when it reaches Austin. I’m glad I’m not in the early stages of that wake!! Oh, but if I were, I’d be out of there so quick the first chance I got that you’d never know I was there. I don’t need anything else this devistating in my life right now. Even if I had to wait until the last minute, I’d be packing my things and getting the cats ready to travel now so I could pick up and go when the time came. It only seems smart & logical to me.
I mean, why stay? So you can say “I survived it!”? Whatever! Okay, congratulations, dumb ass. As if “I survived it” actually means anything than you’re stupid enough to take life threatening risks when there are better ways. Then again, I also believe in learning from others’ mistakes, as well as my own. There were people who didn’t want to leave when Katrina hit Louisiana. Now, they’re dead or homeless without their familes. We’ve got 3 kids from outside of New Orleans in our band right now who thank God everyday that they had the opportunity to leave as a family when they did (which was a week after the storm hit — they “lived” in Tulane Hospital’s parking garage for about 3 days while the hospital, where they were staying because their mom worked there, was being looted). Bless their hearts, they don’t know when they can go back home again but I always see those three together and they always seem so happy that they didn’t get separated. That’s really what matters in life, right? That you have your family and friends (who might as well just be family) to celebrate life with? Can I have an Amen?
Benford's Musings 
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