finding and giving

A couple of times today: I'm getting better at recognizing it. This quiet person clutching a bag want s to find letticie Boudreauxexe or something, i'm spelling it 8 differen ways because she is not sure how to spell it. we look in every database. we page. seh go out to look for her in the paging area. then page again. and i'm so sorry, i'm like, tears well up a little. AND THEN I FIGURE OUT IT's SOME MORMON who found someone on craigslist or sosemthing and is trying to bring them underwear. And I'm like, gentle with these people. "You want to find her to her something just fof her, that is very generous... but it is not a useful procedure for us, these people *wave* were in the floods, they are trying to find their families, are they alive, and where? they're paging old blind people wiht alzhiemers to find them. I think it is best if you take that underwear downstairs and donate to anyone you see.

I managed not to be harsh, but my people got the idea after a bit to catch those people and gently disengage them. push them aside and help the real people. some of those real ones ar aggravvating or a little loony but that is okay. I have seen the aggravating and the loony-off-meds reuniting so joyously. Amazing!

however i cannot fill out peoples fema forms. no. nor will i check your status. I will get up, i will take you all over the planet, to find your whatever, or housing vouchers but for fema you must pick up the devil phones and just fuckin' wait.

FEMA!!! pah!

also, the lengths of dumbness microsoft will go to! double pah! just go witih what works, check egos at the door....

the joy of getting good peole under you or of just noticing them and being all ike, YOU! you are super competent! I celebrate that! I assign you to do X thing! muahahaha. fun. i got the magic phone number for volunteers so i could suck them over to us and make them get food for us, water, cokes, extension cords, pens... I left an orderly row of 7 or 8 people al doing stuff at the lapdop desks... 2 hour later all chaos again.
yow i like those yahoo guys who are so funny and nice! i like jim forest who says someone (no names named) was programming like he though you could get 9 women pregnant for 1 month and get a baby!
and hours would go by on my own bolstering up the rather terrified volunteers up on my floor, i had made instructions for them and stuff, and thank god i did... but the first few time! yeow!!! people flip out. then i walk off and leave them at it until they get the hang of it. then finally seeing my posse downstairs, it's all like jim the boss guy, and will the slightly dour managerial guy, who liases like a laser, and james the kinda cute one! I have to hug him every time I see him now! i forced the afternoon volunteers to stay with me through till 9pm, what heros! I told the cab driver, "There is another kind of working hard; I worked so hard they had to, because otherwise they'd be ashamed."

around 3pm (from 7am) i started to lose it. looooooooooose it. i think tomorrow a little catnap would help and some real coffee?????i bet they have it up in 5th floor Fema Black Ops, those little cakesniffers!!!!!

you have new people in your face who are so sad, sincere, brave, resigned, not daring to hope, just enduring, just endjuring, and you can't go off and find your water or your notebook or go to the bathroom. no. i have to hide to do anything for myself. just an eyeclosing.

there was a lot of hugging and blessing today. oh, i love the woman in the pink shirt who does the Deep Search! I want to clone her! She takes the time, she treats it doggedly as research, like geneology... She finds people!

j. was like, Oh man, how did you DO that? we're doing all this stuff, and we know each other and you just come in and jump into what has to happen and see it needs doing and do it and tell people what to do without waitin' to be told. We need to fit you on our team somehow (uhu? hmmm) but where exactly? I shrug and say that it is my superpower to do this, and he goggles at me. i haven't the faintest... I was kinda thinking, What, dude, you think that half the fuckin' PTA isn't like this? The good half? But yay I'm glad they like how I come in with my blunderbuss a-blazin', and then trot about taking notes and making docco ... oh, my lovely socialtext wiki, i long for your cleanliness, but there is onnly an awful flat file of notes. too many things happen at once...

all the spanish speakers came to me... i helped a bit but then found a really fluent person downstairs.

Iris!!!!! by some odd miracle!!! two people and a kid successfully rescued a dog from new orleans and smugged it onto a HELicopter agasint wwhat they were told, and then smuggled it into the astrodome. And a worried computer guy cam eto me and said they had a local coujple would would take them in, well, "local" by greyehound bus 2 hours out. And ... Iris I reached in my pocket and pulled out your envelope of cash! And their bus tickets cost just a little less, and I rounded it up a bit! They came all the way dowon somewhere else looking for me to thank me with hugging and crying. and I explained that a woman in england hoped i could give money to someone who was trying to reunite with pets or rescue animals. It made a deep impression on them. my comp guy was just there with his mouth hanging open. it was the stuff of legends.

Comments

[Madeline]

I am chuckling with tears in my eyes at your posts today.

[Iris]

Oh thank you. That makes me so happy. You are just wonderful. And squid put on her blog the name of the charity that rescues animals after disasters, Noah's W1sh, another place to send money.And on the news yesterday there was a section showing kindly people with boats full of animals that they had collected up. (Hoping they weren't taking them back to be shot in the head).

[Jo]

Oh Badger, this is so incredible and touching and wonderful. Wow. Weepy.

[Lin]

"...did you ever know that you're my hero..." I don't know the rest of the words and I can't deep-down-stand the song, BUT...that first line applies to you, kid.

[minnie]

go badger!

[MaryB]

Badger, thanks for being our eyewitness, documenter-of-all-things-both-good-and-evil, and truth-teller.

[Melissa]

You are a wonderful and loving individual.
You are bringing these victims much love
and support.
Bless you,
Melissa