I am discombobulated because I only have two more days of classes, four days of finals, two and one half days of packing and soaking in the midwestern countryside, and two days of sitting in a car before I am at Mt. Rainier National Park.

I am happy to have recovered from the twenty-four hour stomach flu. It is too bad my thermometer wasn’t healthy while I was sick. I really want to know if I really had a 108* fever like it said. I researched the internet to find out what happens when you have a 108* fever and they didn’t have a very large body of evidence to present. But the thing about your brains melting at precisely 106* is a farce. High temperatures like that can give you a seizure or make you go limp. They would kill the stores of vitamins in your body. They would kill your acidophilus.

Oh boy I feel swell! Maybe the fever damaged the worry part of my brain. Maybe I’m just happy to be feeling better. It sure feels good to feel good!

For all you curious people, no I did not draw that picture, it was found on the internet by typing in “discombobulated” to the Google image search.

I spent Saturday night as a refugee. I slept in a sleeping bag on a piece of cardboard in a parking lot between the lake, the expressway, Soldier Field and McCormick place. 26 people from Trinity were refugees that night with more than 5000 other people from the midwest. We marched, we held signs, we yelled, we wrote letters to the Ugandan president, we filmed part of a message to congress, and we were nourished by saltines and water.

Why? Because in Uganda, there has been a war for 21 years. It’s the rebels (the LRA) against everyone else (the government and the regular people). And no one cares about there cause, because it has been going on so long and everyone just wants peace. But the LRA wants to keep fighting, and since they don’t have any volunteer soldiers, they go around abducting children.

They take the children and beat them and make them kill their loved ones. They say, “Shoot them, or we will beat you until you are dead.” And so they change from children into soldiers, having no way to live but to kill. They live with the army in the wilderness and fight. If they escape from their captains/captors, their nightmares still follow them.

Some children walk from their homes in the outlying villages into the cities every night so that they don’t get abducted. They run the streets with their peers and then settle onto a slab of cement for the night. There used to be more children who did this, but the situation is improving, in part because of last year’s protest/simulation, the Global Night Commute.

This year was Displace Me, to advocate for those who have been displaced. Because of the violence, many families chose to move into Internally Displaced Persons camps. About ten years ago, the fighting was getting so bad that the president of Uganda told all the people living in the countryside and villages, “You have 48 hours to move to the IDP camps.”

48 hours to pack for a camping trip that would last for ten years. What would you bring to survive? What would you bring to keep, knowing that while you were fenced into an IDP camp, your family home would be looted and burned by the rebels? How would you feed your family? You are a farmer and there is no land in the IDP camp. There is no clean water. There is no industry. There are no jobs, no schools, no nothing. Just dirt, germs, flies, mosquitoes, AIDS, malaria, and a little bit of diseased water.

1.5 million people live in these IDP camps. There are children who have gone from birth to death-by-starvation in these camps. Around 1000 people die in these camps every single day.

They want to go home. They want to farm and eat what they have grown, instead of the mush that the aid trucks drop off. They wanted to be treated like the intelligent, independent people that they are. They know the camps have done little to keep them from harm and much to harm them. They want to go home.

So we left our homes to bring them home.

I had a good spring break. I got twenty-four hours more teacher aiding in. I now have only seven hours left to do this semester–and only seven weeks to do it in. I did not catch up on sleep and I did not get ahead on homework. Lori visited and I got to show her around the area. I filed my taxes and did the FAFSA. I watched Alissa run in a track meet. I performed Jabberwockiy at a talent show. There was a potluck at church.

Now I am back and the rest of the school year is going to go too fast.

A winsom-weathered weekend.

We started by driving to Dominick’s and finding flowers to fit a friend with a ruptured appendix. Then we headed to the hospital to see and support our sleeping sister.

Before supper I biked my mail to a box. Our evening entertainment included the Jazz Band and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I told myself as I sank into the sack that I should sleep until eleven.

I slept until 11:20, then bounced out of bed to load up my laundry. Lunch was in the gym, where we watched the wheelchair basketball game between the Wheelchair Bulls and the Trinity Trolls. Our team’s arms were aching.

After cleaning my corner, an amiga arrived to ask about some pronunciation problems. As I tutored Gloria, my new hispanic friend, on tricky words like “childhood” and “confusion,” I felt entirely in my element.

The quintessential sunshine summoned us to the tennis courts at the high school. It was my first time to try tennis, and I am not terribly talented at this activity. But it was fun.

We returned to ready ourselves for ushering at the Court Theatre on the south side. We rode in with the theatre director and his lovely wife. Viewing Flyin’ West for free was a fabulous favor offered in exchange for ripping tickets and saying “please turn your cell phones off” five hundred times.

It was almost time to change our clocks when I finally fell into bed. Not long enough later, I got up to go to church. After that I made myself a meal and slept with Shakespeare on my lap.

I took the long route all through the neighborhood to Liz’s vocal recital. Her lovely voice sang of spring.

“My soul hears by sight,
As to glorify the Creator
All things shout for joy, all things laugh.
Only listen: the splendor of the
Blossoming spring is the speech of nature,
Which plainly through our looking
Speaks to us everywhere.”

. . . . .

I finally fished my roller blades out of my trunk and tried them out. I can’t brake when going downhill. But the warmth of the sun made it okay that I always had to coast to a stop and turn around to go back up to where I wanted to be.
All too soon the day was done and I had to come inside, settle down, and do my homework.

“When the streams turn pink in the setting sun,
And a slight shudder rushes through the wheat fields,
A plea for happiness seems to rise out of all things
And it climbs up towards the troubled heart.
A plea to relish the charm of life
While there is youth and the evening is fair,
For we pass away, as the wave passes;
The wave to the sea, we to the grave.”



Now I know where the movie Benny and Joon got the idea to make grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron. I quote Shakespeare’s Henry V, Act II, scene i: “I dare not fight, but I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast cheese.”

Indeed.

The second asian lady beetle of my winter at Trinity dropped in on my tonight. Although they had been on a lovely sabbatical, my survival instincts kicked right in and the ladybug was soon enveloped in duct tape.

I hope that it is a long long time before I ever have to shop at Target again. I can’t stand that store. Not only did it take me twice as long to find what I needed, I ended up paying twice as much as I expected. And when I had finally made it through my list, I had no idea where the checkouts were. I was lost in an unfamiliar land of disgustingly skillful graphic design.
I happened upon a checkout and checked out. The cashier said, “Do you want a Target Redcard?” But really he said, “Djawannadargerekar?”

“A what?” I asked.”

“Adargar eckar. You can save 10%.”

I imagined a little keychain fob with red and white circles on it and thought back to how much I regretted never just getting a Hilander card during high school. And 10% is even better than the deals for cardholders at Hilander.

So I said sure and filled out the information they needed. Nothing too abnormal. Then he hands me the rest of the information and I instantly realize that they have signed me up for a credit card. So then I am really angry, but I have already spent at least forty minutes in the store, so I jut want to leave.

As I hastily put away my wallet and gathered my purchases, I heard the next-aisle cashier say to my cashier, “You got a Redcard? I’ve been trying to push them all day and I haven’t gotten anyone. They keep turning me down.”

I was furious. Now I wasn’t just a stupid girl who can’t tell a credit card scam when she sees one, I was the victim of their competition for commission. He had got me.

After wandering around the parking lot and finally finding my car, I sat down and took a look at the paperwork he had given me. What did 10% really mean? I found the section that said, “Shop RED. Get 10% off. Again. Again. And again.” The fine print reads, “Every time you use your REDcard, you will earn Target Rewards points. Every time you reach 1,000 points you’ll get another 10% off day at Target.”

So that’s what “You can get 10% off” means. I threw the paper down on the passenger seat and drove away from that stupid store.

Why did I choose to shop at Target anyway? It’s not like that was the first time I’ve been treated rudely at a Target. Well, first, because it is a little closer to school than the Wal-Mart. But mostly because in Social Justice Chapter we’ve been discussing how so many of our products are made by child laborers who never are able to receive an education or in sweatshops where they pay the workers fifteen cents an hour and force them to work ninety hours a week. And we’ve discussed that, in order to maintain its low prices, Wal-Mart is especially guilty of cooperating with and even setting up many of these factories, more guilty than stores like Target.

The only reason we can afford to have twenty t-shirts that we never use in our closets is because the people who make them can hardly afford one. So because Target has allegedly been less exploitative of its workers, I decided to shop there. Except today they made me feel exploited.

Anyway, I don’t know if shopping there makes any difference at all. I still bought Suave shampoo, Avery binders, and Nestle chocolate chips. They come from the same factory, and there’s no easy way to find out the conditions in these places. All department stores here routinely take advantage of extremely cheap labor in other countries and the cheap labor of trafficked human beings. The people who make our products are trapped between grueling, underpaid work and no work at all. They are slaves to the system that is so good to us. And if the best I can do to stop this is to shop at Target instead of Wal-Mart, it is a sad day.

So, I’m angry. I’m angry at mr. mumbling cashier. I’m angry at Target and there smooth, stealthy advertising (a turnoff to a career in graphic design). I’m angry at the companies who pay their workers wages that will never allow them to get out of debt and move on. I’m angry at the traffickers who tell foreigners that they’ll bring them to the United States and give them a job, only to lock them up in a factory when they get here.

But I’m not going to fall asleep tonight angry. I’m going to fall asleep dreaming of a store where everything is easy to find and my money goes to the people who deserve it. And there will be no credit card offers at this store.