I Have No Conscience

Editor Note: This entry was written originally in 2006.

I am sitting by my window, watching a storm unleash buckets of rain upon the always-saturated earth. The apartment is quiet without power, but I still have one or two hours of daylight and almost two hours of juice on my laptop battery. It’s a good storm; even Bean-The-Unruffled is skittering around nervously. I have the door to the porch open because only in a downpour like this is it possible to allow such a thing; the rest of the time the critter-bugs would flock. Today it was 97 with a heat index of 111. The crazy thing is that no one was talking about it, just another spring day here. I wilted.


The movers have not come yet; I am shocked that it takes over three weeks to move our belongings from Minnesota to Louisiana. The air mattress isn’t bad, but the after-work hours are a little bleak. Eat sitting on the floor, or eat standing up? At the moment I am sitting on the chair borrowed from our friends downstairs. It’s reasonably comfy, and normally occupied by one of the cats. The only other thing in our large main living space is a litter box. I’m sure my boyfriend felt really sad on Saturday, leaving all this comfort and excitement to go fishing in Alaska.

Anyway, I take it all back. Snobbery (see We are Snobs post) has a time and a place, and we are completely justified. So what if we’re snobs? It’s ok that we find it suspect that two teenagers are getting engaged while still in the early stages of high school. The two young lovebirds that frequent the office I share with the Native American dropout prevention coordinator have done just that. It’s definitely ok that we find it downright Jerry Springer that the two soon-to-be-married teenagers have parents who are also engaged. That’s right, folks, this stuff really happens. I’m not privy to all of the details, and I have no idea which generation got engaged first. I was working too hard to keep a straight face when they were present to do any further investigating.

I experienced an additional flash of Yankee superiority when completing my health insurance paperwork. At the end of the paper, where they ask a lot of silly and inappropriate medical questions, is question 18, which reads: “Have you ever experienced dizziness, loss of conscience, or fainting spells?” I’m still trying to decide if I should tell them about that one, or just leave it there for an occasional source of secret amusement.

The rain has stopped; power remains elusive. Bean has relaxed by my side; steam is beginning to rise from the earth. This is my signal to get up from the chair, close the door in order to prevent bird-like insects from entering the apartment, and coax Guinness out from behind the dryer, which is where she hides when she is scared.

But, I’m happy to announce that, while I remain open to my new surroundings and pleased to be on the adventure, my Yankee snobbery is back in full force and I will continue to poke the appropriate amount of fun at the steady stream of absurdities. There have been whisperings of a shrimp boat outing, and other down-the-bayou adventures, so I remain suspicious and curious, just as any Minnesotan would be.