Still waiting

Miss S is in New Orleans, packing up. She says it's sad and strange and too quiet. Even in the relatively untouched Irish Channel, there are random spots of devastation. The brick building on the corner of Magazine and Jackson, that housed a florist and upstairs apartments, crumbled under a collapsed roof.

But Slice, Juan's Flying Burrito, Parasol's, the Creole Creamery, the Sav-A-Center on Tchoupitoulas and the A&P on Magazine are all open. Thus, pizza, tacos, cocktails, ice cream and groceries are available. I've also read that Cafe du Monde will reopen next week. Also, I hear men now outnumber women there by about ten to one. So if I liked the National Guard type, I guess I'd be set.

I want to go back. Instead I'm still waiting. I've been talking to a guy from Tulane's career services who is working out of an office at Washington University. He says give the DOJ till the 20th! Jeez. In addition to the paranoia of imagining what they're going to find objectionable about me, it's frustrating because that's my way out of this house, and it keeps getting pushed back. I can't go back to New Orleans just yet because someone else is staying in my house, and there's nowhere else for me to stay there.

I'm lonely here, and I'll be lonely in DC, and I'll be lonely when I go back, because none of my friends except A plan to move back. But I'll have the house and the livestock and a built-in social group through school.

I love my parents and I want them to be happy, but I'd like them to be happy at a bit of a distance. Anyway, I think they're about as happy as they're capable, and it seems the only thing I could do to make them happier would be to be an entirely different kind of person.