Hello Mr. Heartache

So hello Mr. Heartache
I've been expecting you
Come in and wear your welcome out
The way you always do
You never say if you're here to stay
or only passin' through
So hello Mr. Heartache
I've been expecting you

I wish that I could say it's nice
To see you back again
We're not exactly strangers
But we're not exactly friends
You know you're not invited but
You keep on comin' round
The last thing that I need is you
To kick me when I'm down

Hello Mr. Heartache by The Dixie Chicks

So hard to write. Katrina has infected me with a heaviness, a weariness. Almost nightly, Jack and I have hot, angry discussions about Bush... I rage on about how his negligence, his ignorance, his arrogance cannot be ignored, how he ought to be immediately turfed from office, how I cannot bear that smirk another minute and stuff much more virulent than that while Jack plays devil's advocate as he is wont to do, bitterly spinning this outrage the way he imagines they are going to. I think, if possible, he is even angrier than I am. It just too much.

I find myself literally running from the teevee these days, especially when they start talking about the pets left behind. I can't do that. I can't go there. I'm incapable of watching anything to do with animals in pain or in need or abandoned... I've always fled Humane Society commercials, World Fund pleas, anything remotely similar, tears in my eyes. It doesn't matter what I'm doing at the time. It's all amplified now with Katrina. There is an image in my head acquired from CNN while flipping channels that I cannot gouge out though I've been trying for three days.

And the "macabre mathematics"* of counting the dead has not even started yet. * a line I lifted from an article in the Toronto Star yesterday.

I don't want to write about this. I don't want to think about it anymore. But it is weighing heavily on me as I move through my days, trying to focus on my work (and I have lots to do), trying to regain the everyday-ness of my snug life here in the 'burbs.

It's hard. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to say it. I really don't want to say it. I just want everything to return to regularly scheduled programming.

It doesn't appear to me like that is going to happen anytime soon.

But if there is one positive thing to come out of this horror, it is that the media finally found its spine. Finally. This article sums it up well: BBC Viewpoint

P.S. In case you've been wondering, The Frozen Lady... she comes, she goes. She does not look impressed. In fact, she looks less and less impressed every day. I think she must be waiting for FEMA, for the National Guard, for help promised but bureaucratically bungled.

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