Bless My Mind

So, bless my heart and bless my mind,

I got so much to do, I ain’t got much time,

So, must be someone up above saying,

“Come on, girl! Yeah you got to get back up! You got to hold on.

Yeah, you got to hold on”

As I have told y’all before, no one within FEMACorps calls me Lisa anymore, unless it is absolutely necessary. Literally, everyone calls me Molly. I have even taken to introducing myself as Molly, writing it on my name tags, and getting nicknames off of Molly. My team never calls me Lisa, my UL doesn’t call me Lisa, and my friends certainly don’t call me Lisa. On a very rare occasion, if they really need my attention, they will, however, it has gotten to the point where I feel weird responding to it. I know what you’re thinking “how can someone just change their name like that? It’s so weird!” and I agree, it would probably seem really weird, but not within the AmeriBubble. We have been trapped in this little world with the same 25 or so people for the past two months and I have only been called Molly in that time, it doesn’t even seem weird anymore. What seems weird is introducing myself as Lisa and then having to explain why everyone and their mother calls me Molly. With all this said, let’s continue this blog journey with you keeping in mind that I am now Molly.

FINALLY!!! A FUN DAY!!!! (Sort of). Since leaving Sacramento, there has not been a day in our schedule where TLs have a “day off.” The Corps Members have not really had a day off either, however, they have had half days and they have not started work yet, other than their NCCC responsibilities. They also have brought their discipline on themselves, as I stated last post. But FINALLY we got a “day off” on Friday. Why do I keep putting day off in quotations? I think because it was one of the first time the TLs realized that even though we don’t have trainings and we went off campus, we are never not working or worrying about our CMs. Friday morning at 8:15am more than half of the teams loaded into their vans and we drove to the Carlsbad Caverns about 60 miles south of Artesia, NM. We arrived at 10:30am and the chaos started immediately. Teams ran out of their vans, rushed to buy tickets, asked us a million questions we didn’t have answers to, bought tickets for their teams, ran around the gift shop, and eventually entered the caves. If you can imagine 150 18-24 year olds wandering 750 feet underground in the dark without their team leader to control them and no cell phone service, then you have successfully imagined what our reality was. At 12:45pm most of the teams exited the cave to get lunch, which was also chaotic. The lunches came from the Chow Hall on FLETC and they were separated into turkey, ham, veggie, and PB&J . The PB&J were not in the cooler, however all the others were. They were also in a bag that had chips, cookies, and an apple. The sandwiches in the coolers were just sandwiches with separated bags outside of the cooler… Do you see how this is confusing? Chaos.

More chaos continued throughout the day…. Since CMs now have their government issued Blackberrys it has become slightly easier to contact them frequently- or so we thought. Some CMs thought it would be a good idea to leave their Blackberrys behind for the day making it impossible to contact them. Another challenge there is the fact that no one in the world gets cell phone service in a cave 750 feet below surface- also impossible to contact people. Therefore, when a team leader tries to text message or call their corps members to tell them to be back at the van at 3pm to return to campus, there is a high possibility that said corps members did not get the message. So, when the clock strikes 3 and there are still 20 CMs missing, it shouldn’t surprise us or stress us out, right?! WRONG.

Other than the stressors and annoyances, the Carlsbad Caverns were amazing. They were huge!! Stalagmites and stalactites everywhere!!! We walked around for about three hours making our way further and further down the caves before finally entering into the Big Room. As we walked around we saw things called “soda straws” which were really tiny stalactites; we saw the “bottomless pit” which is just a large cavern that goes down 150ft further than visible from the edge. It’s called the bottomless pit because the first explorers of it could not see the bottom and did not have the resources to keep diving down to reach it. They were truly amazing!!

The day came to a close and we eventually got all our corps members back into the vans to drive to FLETC. The TLs decided that we were still too stressed out after our fun day out so we were going to have a “very important TL meeting” aka we were going to drive to Roswell, check out some aliens, and go out to dinner. 13 of us left base and headed north for some downtime. Unfortunately, it didn’t go exactly as planned because we weren’t all on the same page about destination, purpose, and dinner, but eventually we got to the Cattle Baron Steak and Seafood House where we consumed a ridiculous amount of pretty good doof. By the end of the night we were all exhausted- mostly emotional, but some physical exhaustion as well. It’s tough for TLs to get time off out here and even when we are “off duty” we never are. I know I say it all the time, but it’s most prevalent now because we are together and we have a common bond of corps members holding us together. At dinner the conversation rarely steered away from our individual team issues or CM issues or scheduling problems or curiosity about what is to come in the future for us. There were multiple times where I would try to turn the topic to something else (mostly fish because it was a seafood restaurant and I have a ridiculous amount of knowledge on that topic #WholeFoodsProblems), but somehow it always comes back to work.

Now let me tell you about the most disappointing place in New Mexico: Roswell. Hopefully most of you know why Roswell is supposed to be cool, but if you don’t I’ll tell you why: ALIENS!!!! Roswell is known as the best place to site UFOs in the United States. Roswell is also a rundown town that still holds onto the alien theme, which is slowly failing. Even though there is still the Extraterrestrial Museum as well as numerous themed t-shirt shops and green tinted street lights with slanty eyes painted on them, Roswell  is not much more.  We made the most of it though by stopping at a gas station and taking our photo with a four foot tall Styrofoam green alien.

Our fun day off was short lived because we started our FEMA specific position training bright and early at 7:30am on Saturday morning.  I now sit in a temporary trailer classroom with two other teams learning about what it means to be a Public Assistance specialist while working out in a JFO. It’s hard to believe that in just a few days I’ll be sent out somewhere in the country and have to put these skills to work… Well, I won’t really have to, but my team will so good thing they’re paying attention and not writing a blog…. And just as I finish writing this I see the blinking red light on my Blackberry which never seems to go away. A perpetual blinking with other tasks or questions or spreadsheets needing to be made by the end of the day and it never lets up.