From our State Capital

Posted September 6th, 2005 by Michelle

I’m writing from a 24-hour Kinko’s in downtown Sacramento. I decided, with only a toothbrush and a bottle of water, to make the drive down here tonight, particularly when a very nice Travelodge employee gave me their absolutely lowest rate (still more than I could afford) for a room just three blocks from where I’ll be taking the Red Cross Katrina relief course tomorrow morning. I just couldn’t face almost three hours of rush-hour traffic, so here I am, without a computer, a clean change of clothes, or anything else. Also, I had a McFlurry for dinner, which is wrong on so many counts I don’t know where to begin. But I was in a hurry to get on the road, and I was following a Dairy Queen craving, and they just don’t make Dairy Queens out here.

I’ll be in class for nine hours tomorrow, and basically it is a number of different courses all shoved in together. The class is totally sold out, and I’m curious the kinds of folks I’ll meet tomorrow. How many of them will have also already worked for the Red Cross? What will their skills be? Will they all have met all the requirements (good health, able to lift 50 pounds, able to live in “hardship conditions”) or will there be some who hope their sheer will will get them down there?

I’m so incredibly exhausted… so much is going on in my work life, home life, personal life, everything, but a strange thing has been happening ever since I decided to go back to the Red Cross: it seems as though the hours of the day are expanded to let me accomplish everything that needs to get done in a given time period. I finished an entire funding strategy for my organization over this past weekend, and still had time to do a bunch of leadership work as well as read Harry Potter and sleep lots of hours. I’m really thankful for this focus, this clarity, and the chance to actually ACT.

I’m bursting to find out where they’ll send me and when exactly I’ll go. It’s hard to be prudent in these times, but I’m trying really, really hard to just take each day as it comes.

Thank you, all of you who are helping me go. Once again, I feel as though a hundred hands are behind me, gently touching my back and letting me know that I’m not doing any of this alone.

Full report on the class tomorrow night.