No Idea

Dear Diary,

Shelter Management Training  was sooo interesting.  When I left around noon, I offered to take the material back to the office for the director who needed to run by her house to  check on her son.  He’s been having some very serious asthma attacks.  He’s missed quite a bit of school already…(we started August 11th) and she is checking into having him admitted into the Homebound program. On top of this, her mother is in a nursing home and has just been put into Hospice care. I have known this lady for years…almost my entire life…having grown up in the same community, attending the same church, attending the same schools although she is a year or two younger than me.  I really like and respect this woman.

I have always respected the Red Cross and the work they do at some of the worst times. But working with them the past few days has been so enlightening.  Under pressure, they remain calm. With limited federal support they are so caring.  They seek answers for so many questions and share what they know to whoever comes in the door.  Their information changes  sometimes hourly.  They quite literally do a hellava lot of work for long hours every day.

Before I left this evening, I asked the director if there was anything that needed to be done around the office, not necessarily disaster related.  I told her I already had the cleaning of the CPR dummies on my list.  She smiled and said if anyone wanted to come and sweep and mop the floor and vacuum the carpet that would be nice.  She didn’t have to help me up since I was leaning against the counter. But I stared at her and said, "Are you telling me that you don’t have a fricken cleaning service"?  She said, "We’re the cleaning service. We empty the trash. We clean the toilets.  We do the floors."

I left in shock. I had…

…no idea.

~Susie