When Cats Err

Zamboni is a very large cat. Zamboni is a very large very FLUFFY Maine Coon cat.

Zamboni decided that while he was sniffing at the table, it would be fun to sit in Thing 2's forgotten waffle plate. Full of syrup.

Now we have to catch the Elusive CactusTailed CowCat, complete with bits of paper and string for camoflague, to either bathe or shave.

Important Notes:

Cats and syrup don't mix.
Thing 2 needs to be retrained.
Laughing your ass off with a sore throat is a Bad Idea.
Bathing a Coon is JPG worthy. Drowned rat, anyone?
Zam has a opossum tail under all that fur. Eeeeww.
Zam does not like baths.

WOW, can he yowl indignantly. Wow, he's loud. Wow, he's mournful.

He even has Harley and Flea seriously upset. Harley tried to come over and give him a consolation bath while I was holding and drying him. Poor kitten about gagged on the mouthful of fur. Zam doesn't particularly allow the other cats to groom him, so this was quite an experience.

All three are now hiding under my futon, plotting the demise of DG.

Babes in Fearland

We think that they're too young to understand, that it rolls right past them.

We think that they're not listening.

DG and Thing 1 just left to try to get food -- not that any of us have really eaten at all the last few days.

Thing 2 just came running out of her room in DG's floppy jester's hat and a striped dress, jingling away ... to see only mommy.

Thing 2: "MOMMY! Where's my daddy???????"

She's shaking, eyes wide.

Me: "It's okay, honey, he just went to go get dinner."

Thing 2: "Oh Mommy, I worried. I thought he was dead!"

I hug her, try to soothe the kid. Then there's a pause.

Thing 2: "Where's KAILEY???"

Me: "Honey, it's okay, she went with Daddy. They're all right, I promise."

Thing 2: "Oh good, Mommy. I was SO worried."

I'm trying not to cry.

Shots in the Dark

Sleep eluded me last night.

No, incorrect. Let me not be guilty of false information, however inane it might be. It's certainly relevant in this case that I be accurate.

While sleep managed to find me, the quality left a great deal to be desired, sporadic and poor as it was. Nightmares stalked the world behind closed eyelids, nightmares that I honestly thought I had put behind me.

And in those nightmares, a gunman with an AK-47 stalked the halls of our hospital. This time, I didn't cancel my appointment for the day. This time, I was there with the infant Thing 1.

This time, my family didn't escape.

I attempted to go to sleep around 1 am or so. Lesson learned for the moment to not even try it without being utterly exhausted. At least then the dreams have to fight overwhelming coma to affect me.

There was a sound, somewhere between 4 and 5 am that had me sitting upright, even more panicked. I hadn't set the alarm last night, but even without that, as I startled out of yet another nightmare, I heard the quiet "snick" of the front door.

DG came very close to getting a baseball bat in the head.

I was grateful that he was home. I know that some of the fear in my dreams came from real enough worries about his safety, but the early presence spawned all new concerns. Why the hell was he home early?

I know he had a good response, (because he couldn't possibly have really told me that "I just didn't want to be there anymore" -- RIGHT dear?) but my brain seems to have misplaced it. I stumbled somewhat dully back to bed.

I shouldn't have been all that surprised when I had what little sleep I might have returned to violently disrupted by the ring of the damn telephone every half hour.

And in between, more shots in the dark.

Good morning, America

"Good morning, America, how are you ...."

Drained. Crawled into bed somewhere after 4 am. Finally was talked into attempting food around 3ish, I think.

Worrying about DG, standing out at crossing guard. All right, worrying a lot. See, DG is dark, very dark, skin, hair, eyes. So much that especially in Hispanic strong areas, people have walked up to him and started speaking in Spanish, expecting him automatically to understand.

It's not a far leap for some minds to assume he's something else. So I'm worried. In the small town we call home, it's not TOO much of a worry, but elsewhere ... I can't help but worry about my husband.

It struck me some time yesterday evening just how very old are our souls becoming, and at an early age as well.

I was born during Vietnam.

I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the USSR, and thinking "It will get better now."

I got married during Desert Storm. My in-laws lived in Saudi at the time. They were issued gas masks and chem gear.

I clearly remember the first WTC bombing. And the Sarin Gas attack in the Japanese subways.

We were stationed at Fairchild when a gunman, ex-AF, walked into the HOSPITAL and opened fire -- on everyone. My husband worked in that hospital. He came home with blood on his uniform. My eldest daughter was born in this hospital. I knew most of the dead. One was my doctor.

The same week, a B52 went down on our base with half the flight command staff on board. My husband was on Search and Recovery when Fairchild AFB lost the BUFF. We distantly saw part of the crash from our front yard. We could see and smell the smoke from our house.

At our next base, we felt the shudder when the Alfred P. Murrah Fed Building was bombed in OKC.

Bosnia. Serbia. Yugoslavia. Israel. Palestine. Northern Ireland. Afghanistan.

I watched yesterday as the World Trade Center fell. As the Pentagon burned.

When is it supposed to get better?

I saw so much anger and hatred yesterday -- both directed, and aimless. After a few of the worst, I kept to reading posts from people that I knew to be, on the average, reasonable and intelligent instead of knee-jerk extremists.

Being an ex-military family -- DG was an instructor for Red Flag, the field hospital school -- as soon as the initial shock was over, he was on the phone, making calls, volunteering if needed. We're far away, but it's instinct. Many of my friends are either military, ex-military, or grew up in military families.

There's a saying about military spouses. If you think the soldiers are tough, look at the ones they leave behind.

We have to pull together. It's a pack instinct to the greatest degree. When one is hurt, we're all hurt and work together to solve it.

There's no other way to survive.

The skies are still silent today. There's not a cloud in the sky. The blue is rich, innocent, forgiving. There are no contrails. There is no roar of engines, no flashing of lights.

It remains an eerie silence.

Christ.

The building is GONE. The south tower has collapsed amid another explosion apparently.

All those lives .....

God.

The second tower has fallen. The World Trade Center is totally gone.

90-odd passengers/personnel on the planes. Thousands in the buildings.

Hundreds of police officers and firemen trying to rescue survivors.

The silence is deafening.

We live 5 minutes from the DFW airport. Airplanes -- and low ones, coming in on approach -- are a 24/7 fact of life.

There is nothing in the air right now but birds, and it is very, very quiet.

The local world has come to a screeching standstill. Things have changed forever, in a very dramatic way. The innocence, the shelter that we lived under is gone.

The grass is still green, children are still playing, and the skies are still blue.

They are also silent.

The innocence of the country is gone, wiped away in flaming moment after flaming, smouldering moment.

It is possible that we will never know the entirety of what has happened. We may never learn the names of all that have lost their lives today. Many of the missing will remain missing, with no body to grieve over, and only memory left in their place. Recovery can never be complete. There will always be guilt, horror, anger and grief.

So many lives lost.

The shoe, as they say, is on the other foot.

What has been Real Life for the rest of the world has now been made real for us as well. We've joined the victims of mass destruction, become the newest children of violence, become another statistic.

Will we cope as well as they have? Will we come together and go on?

Will anger win out? Revenge? 'Justice?'

The dying, I fear, is only beginning.

.....

Oh. My. God.

Kinda makes you think about that recent Infocom data seizure, doesn't it?

Fuck.

And with passengers on board.

I'm going to go throw up now.