Dan and I headed out to Dexter yesterday and dug up some baby dogwoods, and also a baby maple tree. They spent the night soaking in tubs of water, and we will plant them early this afternoon before I go to work. It was beautiful out at my friend Jim's house, out in the woods. It was so pretty, so peaceful there. We could have stayed there for hours just enjoying the quiet and the trees and the little pond with its fish and the frogs that moved in this summer.

I've been spending the last few days in very deep thought.

On Tuesday I am going to have to hand in the forms as a volunteer to head down south for Katrina disaster relief.

I do not want to do it. It is my son's senior year in high school, and I do not want to miss my last chances to see him play soccer and wrestle. I do not want to miss his visits to the colleges that are high on his list this fall. If he goes away to school, this will probably be the last year he lives at home, and I want to be here, too.

I do not want to miss my younger son wrestling in a national championship this November.

My husband insisted that I use the last bit of money from my father's estate for myself, and I have bought all sorts of concert tickets with it, as music is one of the great passions of my life -- everything from Green Day to U2 to Sonny Rollins and the Vienna Philharmonic. I want to actually be able to hear those concerts.

I am afraid to go. I have bad allergies (including mold) and asthma. I am afraid I will get sick.

But I cannot see such suffering, knowing it is not so far away (it was bad enough seeing it on the other side of the world with the tidal waves) and do nothing.  If I did not volunteer to go, I would be untrue to myself.

I do not know if they will deploy me. They might head me off right away, as my department chief must approve it, and we are short handed and have been for months due to a federal hiring freeze. They might not need any pharmacy personnel down there. Since I have no first aid or Red Cross training, I might not have enough skills to be worth taking. But I have no personal choice but to offer.

So, while waiting to hear whether or not I will be deployed I will be spending the next few days/weeks spending as much time as I can with my sons, with my friends. For awhile at least, every day I spend at home, every night I spend under a real roof in my own bed (as opposed to a government issued barracks tent), every bit of music I can listen to, every flower I can plant in my yard, every second of time I can spend with my children, every meal I can eat with my friends -- all of those will be great gifts to me, and I plan to enjoy all of them to the greatest extent I can.