With Apologies to T.S. Eliot

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
(The Hollow Men ~~ T.S. Eliot)

It seems ridiculous that I haven't had end time to sit down and write. Sure, I have several posts half-done, but lately they seemed condemned to a save-file purgatory. There are so many stories from weeks and even months gone by that need to be told: Beaver Island (Beeeeeeeever Isslaaaaand!), Cedar Point, Dances with Dumpsters, Floods, Kittens, New Nephew, TinyTuna, Power Outages, Sixth Grade.... They will be told -- in time. When that time will be, right now, I have no idea.

It seems unbelievable that TunaU has started up again with such a vengeance, that many of us who have worked here for years and years can't remember such chaos. This year it seems like there are 80,000 students instead of 45,000 students, and they all have cars and bicycles and overflowing carts of groceries and cell phones stuck in their ears, and they all manage to be right in front of me all the time. Work has been utter pandemonium. TinyTuna, my office assistant and slave (because there is no school for another week, because somebody thinks that everybody in this world takes the entire summer off to fill the State Coffers with tourism dollars) has been thrilled at the fact that I have no time to sit down. Why? She hogs my computer all day long.

It seems sad that if you asked me to pick an event or two to summarize my entire summer, it would be painting TinyTuna's bedroom and dealing with the flooded basement. But there was so much more to the last three months, both good and bad. And yet, it just feels wrong to moan and groan about my real and perceived hardships when millions of people are dealing with the unimaginable devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

The more hectic the day-to-day becomes, the more desparately I feel the need to achieve a balance between the obligations of life and the importance of living. The rat race needs to end with a bang, before GreenTuna ends with a whimper.