purple room vents: A CROSS TO BEAR

This is going to seem very ungrateful and rude, this post. But seriously! I don't think I cannot write about the following experience.

As most of you already know (but for those that aren't fb friends I will briefly expand) I was awakened from a dead sleep by an insistent continuous banging on the front door, the banging accompanied by the constant ringing of the doorbell. I flew out of my chair…which is literally two feet from that door, whipped off my cpap mask and bolted for Monte. No way was I opening that door by myself. I would have gone for Spod but by the time he got out of bed and shuffled out we could all be dead. For all I knew it was a fugitive looking for safe harbour.

So Monte came up out of a coma type sleep, all confused and freaked. I quickly told him what was happening so he came out to the living room. I opened the door to find two tiny, I think Filipino, policemen. "You have to leave the condo right now! We chased a car into this complex and it has explosives in it." What??? Then they told us that it would probably be noon tomorrow before we could come back. (It actually ended up being 4 in the afternoon) You have to be kidding! "Maybe you drive around and get some breakfast." The time was 12:30 am. Sure…drive around all night then go get breakfast. Monte is 6'8"…Spod is 80…I am fat…this was not going to go very well.

I whipped around, gathered pillows, water, computer, phone, pills and galloped out of there.

We drove around and about an hour later came back and a different cop told us to drive up to the new Kihei police headquarters. They have bathrooms at least.

So we did. We parked in their lot and we were almost asleep when there was a banging on the driver window. And thats when the gong show started.

It was a lady from the red cross. She had an important official looking clip board and brilliant blinding (even in the dark) florescent vest with big RED CROSS written on the back. She told us that they were going to get us (there were two other evacuees in the lot) a room for the night. This was at 1:15 am.

Car after car arrived in the lot. I thought it was other evacuees…but no, it was more red cross volunteers. In the end there were about three volunteers to each evacuee. There was a 70 something long long ponytailed Santa type, a person of indeterminate age and indeterminate sex…I never did figure out if he/she was a he or she. One was old. Really old. There were several more but these four were the ones we basically dealt with.

And then…nothing happened. They all stood around a truck over yonder and talked and laughed and drank coffee and had a great time. We decided, around 2:30 am to just go to sleep. So we did. At 3:00 there was another banging on the window and instructions were given on where the hotel was (really close) and we were to go there. They didn't know where it was, just that it was close. No directions. So we took off and after a few minutes I happened to spot the sign and we went in and parked. In the beautiful lobby we met the other two people from the condos and then waited and waited and waited til the red cross people found the place. I was getting pretty agitated by this time.

Finally they arrived and I figured we would get a key and head off to a room. No. We were told to go sit on the couches in the lobby first. We did. And we waited and waited and waited. Finally around 4:00 am each of the three of us evacuees were assigned a volunteer. Spod, Monte and I got the old man. He sat down beside us and quietly said that this part of the process was to be private. He had a clip board with a form to be filled out. Now, I had already filled out a form with names, car info, addresses, phone numbers etc. for the hotel. Plus the first lady in the parking lot took all that info as well. And now a third time?

OH MY GOD!!! It took the old geezer five frigging minutes to figure out which side of the form to start filling out. He was on my right and Spod (who forgot his hearing aids and is really really deaf now) was on my left. Old Geezer started with Spod's full name (and unfortunately he has four names), two addresses (home and condo), birthdate (have you ever watched an old person write crap out? shaky and stopping every three letters to think) and when he heard Spod's year he was born (1933) he froze, looked up, stared for three minutes, I thought he had had a stroke, then said "1933?" long long pause "same year as me." And then they started to talk to each other, or at least tried. Old Geezer had a hearing aid too. Oh God…Geezer Hell.

Finally he repeated the process, laboriously slowly for Monte and me. I thought he was done when God forbid, he turned the flipping paper over. Oh NOOOOOO!!!

And these questions were dicey. They were designed for true disaster victims. Not us. And he simply could not figure out what to put. Twenty times he got up and dawdled over to the others, who had finished doing the same thing with the others ages and ages before just to check what he should put. "Does your victim need mental after care?" "Does your victim need clothes and sundries and shoes and wtf ever?" He closely and carefully read every damned question, ruminated over the obvious "n/a" answer, checked with the others…til I wanted to scream. It was truly a farce and ridiculous. A sweet old guy, bless him, but holy shit!

Finally he finished and then we sat again and waited and waited and waited. Whimper whimper! I do not know what the hell they were doing. Eventually, around 5:00 am the head lady called us over to the lobby desk. She had in her hand three keys!!! Yay…but hold it….not yet…she still had to sign a billion papers. And as she did this she kept stopping and talking and telling stories and talking some more. I want to kill someone right now. Finally we all headed to the elevators. And instead of handing us our keys, she says "One of you is on the fourth floor (not us of course) and you other two are on five. So you go on up there and wait for me." So thats what we did. And we waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally she arrives with a laugh…hahahaha I got lost and their room was right at the back…a long way. Yeah, real funny. Then it was our turn and we walked a mile to the back of the complex. We reached our room, she opened the door and handed us the key and left. Handed us the key. WHY THE HELL COULD SHE NOT HAVE DONE THAT A HALF HOUR BEFORE????

And the stupid part is this..the room was $140.00, which we could have simply just got for ourselves. Its nice to have that 140 paid for (over a five hour period) but we feel obliged to make a 200 dollar donation now. Next time we will take matters in our own hands.

But I am really impressed with the Red Cross overall. But I can't help but think that if all the people had been told to go up to the police station (three buildings with 8 units each) we would still be there being helped by the Red Cross. I think I would have temporarily volunteered just to expedite the whole process.

We came back here after a dismal breakfast at Denny's to be told we couldn't get in for hours yet. The national guard and the bomb squad were here, their crap spread out everywhere. We took off to Costco, got some snacks, headed out to Ho'okipa Lookout (Turtle beach), had a snack and fell asleep for an hour. Finally around four we got back in. Still haven't heard what they found.

Thats my vent for the day. My apologies to anyone associated with the Red Cross. They really are ass savers and this was just our experience. We are making a donation! TTYL