Ivan and Weston

It's almost Weston's birthday, and I've been thinking about the time just before he was born. We were living in Pensacola and Lloyd was gone. Usually when I tell this story I'm all vague about where he was so everyone will feel sorry for the poor hugely pregnant military wife who was abandoned and left to fend for herself in the face of a hurricane while her husband was off fighting for freedom and democracy or some BS like that. But you know I never lie on here, so the truth is that he was elk hunting in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, where there is no phone service of any kind. Also, as it turns out, no elk, but that's Lloyd's story to tell, if you can stand the swearing. Luckily for me, my lovely Aunt Ina came to stay with me while he was gone.

When you evacuate in advance of a hurricane, there are many items you should take with you in your hurricane evacuation kit. Some of the commonly recommended essentials are cash, a battery operated radio, non-perishable food and water, prescription medication, and blankets. We were a little tight on space and had to prioritize our supplies, so we couldn't be bothered with a lot of that crap. Here's the more important stuff we had instead:

Salami sandwiches

One extremely large pregnant woman

One lovely aunt who despises hurricanes and dogs

Two large dogs

Directions to hospitals with NICU facilities in three states

Emergency Baby Delivery Kit

Infant car seat

Dog food

Cocoa butter

Alas, we didn't have room for some other vital items, such as Georgie and Sandy, our two little rabbits, and Bella the cat, who you may recall from yesterday's post. We put Georgie and Sissy in the bathroom with tarps on the floor and loaded it up with hay, rabbit pellets and water, and left Bella to roam the house with bowls of food and water in every room and the laundry room filled with boxes of litter.

The trip was about exactly what you'd expect. The first day it took us all day to travel from Pensacola to Birmingham, Alabama, a distance of about 250 miles. The next day, we went to Memphis, where we stayed in a ratty dogs-allowed motel on the bad side of town for a few days. We had a nice visit to Graceland, where the photo of me above was taken. If you look carefully behind my enormously swollen body, you can catch a glimpse of the dead cat tote. After we spent a few days there, we decided we might as well keep going, since we had nothing better to do. So we went to Branson, Missouri, dogs and all. We took in a few shows and saw the sights while we waited for news of how Pensacola had fared after an almost direct strike from Hurricane Ivan, and for Lloyd to come out of the woods. After about a week, Lloyd flew in, sans elk, and Ina could not leave fast enough, shaking off the dog drool and coarse brown hairs as she went. You would think she would have learned her lesson, but I guess not, because several years later she came to stay with me again when Lloyd was gone and I was hugely pregnant with Shane. That time Lloyd really was in the sandbox, though. Before she came, she made me promise no hurricanes, no babies, and no snakes that time. Two out of three isn't bad, right? Because Shane was born in the early morning the day she was leaving and Lloyd was coming home. Sucker!

Anyway, we loaded up the now-filthy Honda with supplies from WalMart and headed back home. Seriously, it looked like the whole place had been carpet bombed once we got within 100 miles of Pensacola. We even had a hard time finding our way home because the street signs and landmarks had all been destroyed and it looked entirely different. We only had minor damage at our house, but a major mess. The cats and rabbits were fine, and the power came on shortly after we got back after having been gone a little over a week. Weston was born two weeks later.

Happy Birthday, Weston! And Ivan, may you rot in hell.

My life in cats

It's Chusok weekend here in Korea. If you're interested in Korean holidays, you can read a little about it here. It's kind of like a Korean Thanksgiving, only I doubt there are any apocryphal stories about ill-prepared immigrants and naively friendly natives. Even if there are, they are all written in Hangul, so I wouldn't know the difference, now would I?

Despite my complete ignorance of Korean culture, I'm game for participation in the local holidays, and today I am thankful for cats. Starting today, we are lucky enough to be cat-sitting the beautiful Mishka, who is one of our upstairs neighbors. Her family, who has not been here very long, has embarked on a two-week multi-destination trip back to the states, and I cannot decide if I should envy them or feel sorry for them, or both. But either way, today I have been thinking about all the cats I have loved and lost. Here they are, in roughly chronological order:

Charlie- I got Charlie when he or she was a kitten and I was a small child. The mother cat lived in my Aunt Luella and Uncle Butch's barn and I had my choice of kittens. Unfortunately, Charlie and I did not have long together; the cat had some sort of seizure and dropped dead in my arms shortly after. It's a wonder I wasn't scarred for life, don't you think?

Smoky- My dad found Smoky tied up in some trees in the woods near where we lived, and cut him down and brought him home. He was a beautiful big gray cat who liked to yowl and car surf. One morning he rode off on my dad's car and never returned.

SillyBilly- My dad found SillyBilly, a beautiful calico cat, when she was a kitten. He's always been a little vague about the details of this late night acquisition, but my sister and I were thrilled the next day when we got up and found our new pet. You know, I'm getting a little suspicious of these mysterious cat-finding trips of his, now that I think about it. Anyway, she lived with us for quite a while until she got hit by a car down the street and was returned to us in a cardboard box by one of the neighbors.

Fluffer- Fluffer was the son of SillyBilly and was a fluffy black cat. He was very mellow and would let us dress him up, but I don't remember what happened to him. I think he just disappeared.

Chebosco- Chebosco was a male orange and white cat, and I don't know where he came from or where he went. That's funny, because I really liked him. You know, now I'm getting a little suspicious of these unexplained cat disappearances and might need to have a little chat with my dad.

Katie and Kelly- When I got out of high school, I worked in a pet store for a year or so before I went to college. I should totally write a post about that place because it had everything: flashers, larceny, pathological liars, and mud puppies. One day, a kid brought in these two teeny tiny siamese kittens and said his male cat had dragged them home. They were only two or three weeks old, and I took them home and we bottle-fed them until they were strong and healthy enough to eat cat food. Katie, the boy cat, was always glossy and a little wild- he moved around my parents' neighborhood for years until finally they didn't see him anymore. Okay, now I'm definitely going to talk to my dad about this. I just hope he doesn't have some cat-fur quilt hidden in his closet or something. Kelly, the girl cat, had an obsession with pushing her paws into things and was a big licker. She was always sickly, probably because she was bottle-fed formula instead of breastfed, and died fairly young.

Lewis and Clark- After Lloyd and I got married and moved to Pensacola, the first thing we did was adopt Lewis and Clark. Their original names were Tyler and Cassie, and they were not related but had bonded deeply in their foster home. Clark (formerly known as Tyler) was an old male orange and white cat, and Lewis (formerly Cassie) was a sweet, younger, long-haired gray and white female cat. We had a pleasant, but short-lived relationship with both of them. Well, I did anyway. Clark didn't care for Lloyd, and the feeling was mutual. He moved in with the neighbors, much to Lewis' dismay, and soon died of feline leukemia. Lewis liked to follow us on walks through the neighborhood, and one day she followed us down the street, then peeled off to investigate something. When we returned, she was laying dead on the street. I was very traumatized by this and embarked on some immediate retail therapy. One of my purchases was a bright red leather tote bag by Kenneth Cole. I carried it for months and called it my 'dead cat tote'. People looked at me strangely, but that's never bothered me, and it made me feel lots better. After Hurricane Katrina, I donated the dead cat tote, along with my entire work wardrobe, to hurricane victims who were trying to relocate and start new jobs. I hope it helped somebody else as much as it helped me. I got some additional cheer out of it, because it was a splendid tax deduction. Thanks, Lewis!

Bella (pictured, above)- I got Bella as a kitten from someone at work shortly after Lewis died. An email message was going around about kittens available for adoption and one of them was a calico, like SillyBilly. I wanted that one, but it was already taken. I decided to get one anyway, and picked out Bella. Her name is Bella because I wanted something derived from SillyBilly and chose a girlish version of Billy. She is kind of a strange cat, not super friendly, and she hated Lloyd on sight. One day, when she wasn't very old, she didn't come home and we started looking around the neighborhood. We didn't have any luck, but a day or two later she hobbled home. We took her to the vet and found that she had two broken legs. Apparently this is a common cat injury when they get hit by a car. The car strikes them, breaking the leg on the car side, then they get tossed down the street, breaking bones on the other side. After several very expensive surgeries, with pins and everything, Bella was almost good as new. When we left Shreveport for Korea, we decided to leave her with some Catholic friends there. They immediately took her to family pet night at their local parish and had her blessed with the special water, and she still lives there happily in holy catrimony.

And that's the last of the cats. For now. As soon as we get to a place where we can have cats again, we are loading up. Don't worry, I plan to keep a VERY close eye on my dad.

Fourteen Dollars

Fourteen dollars. For fourteen dollars you can buy a tub of lower-end night cream. You could buy a new sports bra on sale, a diet book, two brow waxes plus tip at the BX, or an iron.

Fortunately, I don't need any of those stupid and useless things. Instead, I took my fourteen dollars to the thrift store on bag sale day and came home with a hot pink purse by Matt and Nat (or a Korean facsimile, natch), an elephant print scarf, two pairs of new looking shoes for Weston for next year (one pair are Keens), space pajamas for Shane, three books for the boys, four nice shirts for me and a pair of flannel lined pants that will fit Weston this (cold, Korean) winter.

I know I promised something new and exciting today; I do realize that most people do not consider my thrift store purchases very fascinating, and almost no one is interested in lengthy discussions about thrifting philosophy. I am a very poor dinner guest, as you have probably long suspected. I really do have something different, coming soon, but you probably still don't want to invite me to dinner.

Vision: Ode to my new yellow purse

I woke up this morning and said,
Korea again? Still? Oh, the despair!
Don't fret, they all said,
Go for a shop!
This is the land of fake purses aplenty;
it will cheer you right up!
Hmmmm, I thought, no fan of full price
It's Tuesday again, I'll hit the thrift!
And there it was,
my muse, my delight
Just the right size,
yellow, black and white
My heart sings with joy,
my wallet brims!
Shhhh, just don't tell Kate!

Thrift Store Kate Spade knockoff: $3
Composing appalling poetry and drinking wine on a balmy Korean night: Priceless