June 9, 2001 we awoke at 3:00 a.m. to two very happy Labradors playing in the foot high water in our living room. Earlier that evening we were at a friend’s restaurant drinking bottomless glasses of wine and vodka watching the rain. We were offering to help carry tables to higher ground as she had flooded many times before. We never predicted that hours later we would be standing knee deep in water calling everyone we knew for rescue.

I am no help in a crisis. I grabbed the two cats headed back to the bedroom and cried on the phone to my insurance company for an hour. My first new car, the one I didn’t need a co-signer on, was completely under water in the street. The agent asked if I was calling from Texas and I wailed “How did you know?” As if Tropical Storm Alison was only a local event that this person on the other side of an 800 number would know nothing about.

We were rescued by boat the next morning at 6:00 a.m. by the resident of a neighboring subdivision. They tied right up to the Crepe Myrtle trees in our front yard. A stranger from the neighboring subdivision was going door to door in the boat evacuating as many of us that would leave. The old woman down the street (who stole our cat- but that is a different story) would not budge. I think many of the neighbors who had lived there for 54 years or more without flooding couldn’t believe it was happening.

The waters subsided fast and by 10:00 we were back home to survey the damage. Everything was misplaced. Everything had floated to a different spot as if ours was a doll house and some cosmic giant rearranged it for fun. Mud covered everything we owned. At least those possessions that rest below four feet. Our golf shoes were caught in the ginger plant in the front yard, moved from the porch where we had left them that afternoon.

By 10:30 six people were at our door step ready to help. They put all of our clothes, sheets and towels in plastic garbage bags. Photos were taken away to wash and dry and try to salvage. Not many photos survived but two people in particular did what they could and for that I am eternally grateful. They had the forethought to save the photos of our childhood first.

Our furniture was taken to the edge of the driveway and discarded. Trucks began circling before sun down filled with families taking this or that off the junk pile. I needed at least twenty four hours to adjust to someone walking off with our life and would yell at them to come back later.

We moved in with a friend who was kind enough not only to take us but our two dogs and two cats as well. There we stayed for six months figuring out where to go next. Eventually we tore down the old and built up (4.24 feet) with the new. It took over a year for our neighborhood to rebuild. There are still empty lots that remind us of neighbors and families that never came back. The risk of reliving that night was just too much for many of them to bear. Many did not have flood insurance and were left to rebuild with very little money and a lot of sweat.

Watching the news, my heart is breaking for the thousands of families displaced and grieving by Katrina. They will return home and rebuild their lives from scratch. In addition to restoring their peace of mind they will have to acquire everything anew. New sheet rock, new floors, new beds, new mattresses, new appliances, new sheet rock, new carpet or wood floors, new clothes, new photos, new memories, new books. I could go on but won’t. I’ll keep the people that are effected in my thoughts and help as much as I am able.

Spoiled Rotten

After successfully reaching the bottom of a couple of bottles of wine last night I ran straight into the dog bed in our room. Now today in addition to the marching band playing its opus across my temples, I am also semi-limping around the office with a giant raised bruise on the top of my foot. When I explained the injury to a coworker she asked “The dog bed is hard?” Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and our dog has, not just one, but three beds.

There is the poofy downstairs bed for during the daylight hours when he must be locked in the kitchen to avoid further damage to our windowsills. When anyone so much as breathes in the direction of our house he goes into his rabid-dog-biting-windows-and-jumping-up-on-glass routine. We are partially to blame for the aggression. He was over a year when we snipped him. The rest of the aggression can be blamed on two very evil children who poked sticks at him through an iron gate when we were living with a friend. Looking back I should have poked their beady eyes out.

The wood bed I broke my foot on is upstairs. It has what every dog needs; a head board! My partner didn’t think the mattress that is made to fit the bed looked comfortable enough so she bought him a smaller but softer version (with his name embroidered on the side). Hard to believe but they don’t make wood dog beds as sturdy as those for human slumber. Every night as he spins around working himself into sleep position the beds makes the loudest creaks and pops.

The third bed, which is technically more of a furry fleece mat, rests on the floor right next to the world’s loudest dog bed. Best of all for him though is that he is going to his girlfriend’s tonight and will be sleeping on her mother’s bed.

Surprise

For the first few years of my childhood we lived in a small white clapboard house under a freeway overpass. Mind you it was not like the colonies of homeless you see under overpasses these days camped out with cardboard boxes and signs depicting one tragedy after another that are meant to trump one another in the need department. No, but it was close enough to be considered under the overpass. No one but a starving law student, his child bride and new baby would live there and anyway our Great Dane needed room to roam.

We had one neighbor who cultivated a giant vegetable garden on the side of his house. Having only two houses on the street as well as the field of fresh veggies leant a certain rural feel to the area. If you wore ear plugs to drown out the semi trucks above, you could almost imagine living in a small farmhouse somewhere. Besides this rural feel we had BIG country size bugs. I know because one day giant flying ants attacked me in my own front yard.

My partner would interject here to inform everyone reading this that she believes there are no giant flying ants but who are you going to listen to? A woman who has never been attacked by these creatures or me who not only was attacked by them but also lived to tell the tale? This is a woman who thinks all children have worms at some time or another in their lives. I assure you I have dated a few worms but never in my life had one living inside me.

I accidentally stepped on the mound one morning which must have set off an ALL ANTS AIRBORN alarm inside. They attacked my leg like the remnants of some street festival funnel cake rotting in a gutter. I was covered from toe to knee. My parents jumped into action to rescue me and carried me inside to put medicine on the stings left behind. The only problem being that I was as terrified of the medicine as the stings and therefore proceeded to run around the house screaming.

Parental ingenuity kicked in and my parents developed a plan. So as I sat on their bed, swollen red leg propped on a throw pillow, my mother informed me my father was making some “Surprise”. This was the name they came up with for the baking soda and water paste that is supposed to remove the stinging. Fool that I am, I wanted a “Surprise” so bad I fell for the ruse hook line and sinker.

My mother’s birthday is Saturday. I am having her over to our house for an early dinner, along with my aunt and uncle who are flying in from Colorado to spend the day with her and my paternal grandmother. She is bringing her own cake because she wants an ice cream cake from Carvel and it is closer to her house than mine.

One of my favorite photos of my mother was from a birthday before I was born. There is a sepia tone to the photo and it is of her standing at a kitchen counter holding back her long straight black hair to blow out candles on a cake. My father had baked her that cake. It was round, white with lemon filling and icing. He forgot to put the lemon filling between the layers so he lathered it all over the top. Then he spread the icing on top of the filling. In the photo you can see the icing sliding off of the cake, running down the sides to a big glob on the plate. Despite this goopy birthday cake she is smiling from ear to ear because the man she loves has made a cake from scratch.

There is another photo from one of her birthdays. This time I am sitting in her lap. The cake is on a table in front of us. My mother is not smiling in this photo. Again, my father has baked the cake. He let me help until it came time to write Happy Birthday on the top in icing. Just below Happy Birthday he has written “to our favorite five letter woman”. To accompany the cake we have bought her a rhinestone necklace that spells “Bitch”. Looking back it is a miracle my mother didn’t grab her purse and cigarettes and walk out of our lives forever.

So Saturday I will endure my aunt’s repeated attempts to offend me. I will endure my uncle’s fanatically conservative views. I will spend the day with my mother on her birthday and hope she smiles when she blows out the candles.

Now Someone Else Can Be It

Since I was tagged by Inspired who was tagged by Sass I hurriedly produced the following answers before heading home for the evening. If you are reading this and get the urge to comment that I am a dork, DON'T.

10 Years Ago Today:
Two years away from getting my degree after seven uninspired years of college.

5 Years Ago Today:
Working for my father while he worked on giving me a bleeding ulcer.

1 Year Ago Today:
In a cubicle around the corner. Now I have an office with a door. Movin’ on up!

Yesterday:
In the same office with the door.

Tomorrow:
Anywhere but here?

5 Snacks:
Cheese and crackers, french fries, peanut M&Ms, spicy Cheetohs, more french fries (I am such a health nut)

5 Bands I know most of the lyrics:
Captain and Tenille (ask me about their concert in Tulsa, OK), Fleetwood Mac (thanks to Inspired), Tim McGraw (does that count as a band), can’t really complete all five.

5 things I would do with $1,000,000:
Buy a country and beach house, invest some, write a book then publish it myself, go to Europe

5 bad habits:
smoking, eating French fries with nearly every meal, leaving my shoes under the coffee table, starting a load of laundry but not finishing, thinking I am right about everything

5 things I like doing:
bantering and laughing with my partner, cubing cows, reading, drawing, hand written letters in the mailbox

5 locations I would run away to:
Mexico, New Orleans, New York, Las Vegas, Seaside Florida

5 things I would never wear:
knit caps, head bands, anything neon, a half shirt, white pumps

5 t.v. shows:
West Wing, Law & Order, Dateline, E True Hollywood Story, Average Joe

5 movies
Gone with the Wind, Coal Miners Daughter, Urban Cowboy, Man on Fire, Sound of Music

5 famous people I’d to meet:
David Sedaris, Michael Connelly, Augusten Burroughs, Bill Clinton, Carl Hiaasen

5 biggest joys at the moment:
the love of my life, our home, our dog, our cats, and her father’s ranch house

5 favorite toys:
my camera, the big lens for my camera, sadly I too don’t have enough toys

5 things on my bedside table:
last nights cup of water, two picture frames, an Aveda candle, a friend’s Esquire magazine that I promised to give back to her three weeks ago, the last book I read

5 things I save:
postcards, old letters, obituaries, book jackets although I normally do not put them back on the book after I have read them, ticket stubs, little hotel soaps and shampoo

5 things I won’t travel without:
a big bag for those tiny soaps and shampoos, a black and brown purse, portable dvd player for the plane, sunglasses, a carton of cigarettes

5 cd’s in my car:
none, I took them all out before heading to the ranch this weekend.

Classic Cars

My employer’s car alarm began cycling on and off at two o’clock this morning and would not shut off. This would not be a problem except that the car is parked in her business partner’s driveway and they are together in Italy. So I was left to find an extra key and disarm the thing which started me thinking about all of the cars I and my family has had in the past.

The first auto tragedy was when we lived in the ratty apartments mentioned in my previous entry. My father was a law student and my mother was supporting us on the salary she made as a dental assistant. Nice cars were not a luxury we could afford. We had a Torino. Most people reading this have probably never heard of a Torino. Alas at one time we owned a classic. Ours unfortunately was also a lemon. When my father went to start it one morning the engine burst into flames. Quick thinker that he is he ran into the apartment to fetch a pitcher of water. I am sure the fire department appreciated his effort.

The Torino was replaced by a Cutlass. Now, before we go any further it is important to know that my father cannot hold onto money. He is a dreamer and a spender. Always with the best of intentions but as I mentioned we were poor so no matter the intentions whatever it was we couldn’t afford it. So he bought my mother a pony for mother’s day while we were still living in an apartment. A horse has to eat so my parents hauled a bag of feed to the stable. The bag split and they spilled on the back floorboards. My father is also not one to clean up after himself so a half-hearted effort to remove the feed was made. Back to the Cutlass. The roof leaked so when it would rain the back floor boards would be underwater sloshing on every turn. Eventually the floor boards dried but the end result of the water/oat combination was a nice carpet of green that you didn’t even have to leave the car to walk barefoot through.

When my parents divorced I was eight. It was agreed that my mother and I would drive from Louisiana to New Jersey to stay with my uncle until my father finished school. We filled the car with as much as possible and set out for the Northeast. This must have been an awful time for my mother but she tried to keep things upbeat. She did however chain smoke her way out of town putting each cigarette out in the ashtray no less. One day driving along she put one too many in that ashtray and whole thing caught on fire. We pulled into a convenient store and my mother asked me to go inside and get a glass of water. Actually she screamed it in panic. Not one to stay calm cool and collected. I ran into the store announcing to the clerk that our car was on fire. By the time I ran out of the store clerk in tow my mother had removed the blazing ashtray and dumped its contents in the parking lot so she could stamp them out.

I feel bad for people whose parents had new wood paneled station wagons and shiny Cadillac’s. Look at the excitement they missed.

Freshman Fifty

The niece of my very good friend is starting college soon. My friend attended freshman orientation with her yesterday and last night at dinner said she was jealous for these young students starting out what will surely be the last carefree years of their lives. Too bad they don’t know that yet. It made me think of my freshman year of college which I entered secure in the fact that I knew everything. If only someone had taken me aside and said:

1) You will eat too much junk food and before you know your ass will become the size of those prize pumpkins you see in Miracle Grow commercials. Corn dogs are not nutritional and should not be eaten for every meal.
2) Beer is not a staple. It does not make you smarter and your parents don’t really want to talk to your crying, drunk, sniveling self at two a.m. Speaking of beer…it is not cool that your friends who live off campus are wallpapering their bedroom with empty twelve pack boxes. This is not stylish.
3) You will learn nothing from soap operas or playing backgammon twelve hours straight while chain smoking in a room the size of a prison cell. In fact, not only will you not learn anything, in a year you will be crawling back home with your tail between your pumpkin size ass begging your parents forgiveness for wasting their money.
4) Pouring cold water on someone while they are in the shower, padding their door with feminine hygiene products or pornography is not funny. (Exception to this rule is padding large haired bleach blond small town girls door with pornography. It can be funny. In fact seeing them unable to bring themselves to touch the door can be a downright riot)
5) Don’t ever leave your cloths on the river bank and go skinny dipping in the middle of the night. You cannot see where you have set said clothing so when you put them back on and they are full of fire ants (including your underwear) don’t come crying to me.
6) If you have a roommate who sits in the dark with nothing but a candle listening to Desperado over and over again while chain smoking Marlboro Reds she is depressed and on the edge. Best to just back out of the room and give her some space.

If only someone had told me.

Cats are the most spiteful of the animal kingdom. We left for one lousy night this weekend. To teach us a lesson the cat decided to disappear for two days. Damn if I didn’t welcome him with open arms when he came meowing at the back door last night. I have always been a hangers on. I had a hamster that died when I was sevenish. He or she was my third or fourth hamster. I say he or she because I could never tell and when it came to naming my animals it really didn’t matter much. You are, after all, reading the girl who wanted to name her Schnauzer “Bosley John Bosley” after the character on Charlie’s Angels (the television show not the movie). The first couple of hamsters ended up becoming meow mix to our cat Lookie. This one however died a natural death. Not wanting to give up its memory too soon I took an empty check box of my mother’s and placed in neatly on a bed of toilet tissue. Dignified, I know. Because my mother refused to allow me to keep dead animals in the house, I was forced to find weatherproof lodging outside. The barbeque pit was the chosen spot for his/her tiny hamster mausoleum. My parents tried desperately to get me to agree to a proper burial but I was having nothing of it because quite frankly (the weak of heart should turn away now) I enjoyed going to the barbeque pit, opening the box, seeing his progress, and occasionally giving him the encouraging pat on the side. For those of you who know me it is no surprise that in our house I am in charge of dead animal disposal while my partner is in charge of insect disposal. Had my hamster had even a single visible bug on his/her decomposing body I would have buried him in an instant.
One day my mother had a friend over. They sat in the living room gossiping, complaining, and laughing. Not one to be ignored and void of many friends I asked my mother’s friend if she would like to see my hamster. Neither was paying attention and her friend absently said “Sure.” So out I went to the patio to retrieve him/her. I opened the box to show my mother’s friend who was quite frightened and sickened all at once. My mother was mortified.
When my father came home she demanded he convince me to get rid of the hamster. He walked me to the parking lot, check box in hand pointed to the big white dumpster in the complex parking lot and said “You know the big tombs in the graveyards in New Orleans? This is exactly like those.”
We buried the hamster that night.

I am losing my mind. Not really, not yet, but I am preparing. Judging from my family history I will have no way to avoid becoming a certified nutcase. I’m not talking about the kind of stand on a street corner yelling random obscenities crazy but the kind that walks through the grocery store buying dented canned goods so she can complete the maze through her living room crazy. I did have a great grandmother who did just that. She would sometimes share the wealth dropping off boxes of slightly damaged groceries on my parent’s front porch.

My great aunts lived in Washington, D.C. in one big narrow house. Auntie Mel worked for the government for years. Her actions later in life left us all to wonder if she worked as a test subject on experimental medical treatments. I’m not sure how long they all actually lived in the house but it was long enough for it to start coming down around them. The plaster had begun to rain down from the living room ceiling in big dusty chunks. Mel was sure this was not due to a lack of maintenance but the city buses that traveled frequently in front of the house. So she made a chart. If she was in the kitchen and heard a bus she would run to the front door to document the time and approximately how fast the bus appeared to be going. That chart ended up at the City’s transportation office where I feel confident it was hung in the break room for comic relief from what must be a thankless job. They never did reimburse her for the repairs to the living room ceiling.

Mel was fun, spunky. She drove until the day she contracted West Nile Virus and died. I use the term driving loosely because towards the end there she would get lost. A lot. Going the wrong way down a one way street at fifteen miles an hour with other drivers honking and yelling she would state to no one in particular “I’M NOT FROM AROUND HERE!”. That’s how I want to be when my mind goes. I am looking forward to leisurely driving down the wrong side of the street screaming “I’M NOT FROM AROUND HERE!” If you ask my partner she will tell you I am on my way to fulfilling that dream now. What can I do? It runs in the family.

How we ever made it this far is a mystery. Lately there have been too many stories of children being abducted leading me to wonder was my mother trying to lose me? We lived in a ratty student ridden apartment complex near LSU until I was eight. I rode my bike through the complex, roller skated the walkways, went swimming in the community pool, all out of the sight of my parents.
There was one time my mother followed me but that was because in the midst of a brat attack brought about by not getting my way I announced I was running away. Forget the leaving a note behind and sneaking away in the middle of the night. I found it was much more dramatic to announce one’s departure then proceed to pack the one item I needed most- my security blanket. I didn’t have a suitcase, bike, or car at this point so I packed blanky in my plastic Fisher Price ATV that you rode on top of and steered with a yellow plastic wheel that had an air horn in the middle. Off I went as fast as my legs could peddle. My mother, not wanting to ruin my obvious joy at making her suffer the thought of a life without me, followed a safe distance behind. When I reached the main road she simply stated “Alright Jacqueline that’s far enough”. Without fuss I turned around and peddled home confident that she wouldn’t dare risk telling me no ever again. Wrong.
There weren’t very many children in our complex so I became accustomed to approaching adults as potential playmates. Once my mother found me in a strange man’s apartment trying on his many female wigs. I saw nothing wrong with the exchange and appreciated the chance to play dress up with real wigs. How long it took her find me I have no idea but now you see what I mean by was she trying to lose me?

People like to complain about having a bad hair day. I'd like to tell you I have had a bad hair life. My mother defends the tangled mass evident in every childhood photo by saying I didn't like to have my hair brushed. Her solution..whack it off to right above the ears. If I had normal hair this wouldn't matter but I have thick hair. The end result is that I spent my entire childhood looking like a walking blond mushroom. Did I mention my thick hair is also curly. Not Shirley Temple ringlet curly. Wavy curly. The kind of curl that takes one side of your hair and lifts it out six inches where it just sits there not blowing in the wind. Unfortunately Flock of Seaguls was unheard of at this time so my hair wasn't even cool when it did the sticky outy thing.
One summer while living with my grandparents they bought a trampoline for the backyard. I spent endless hours jumping and sit bouncing in my swimdress until one day I had to retrieve something under the trampoline. It's all fun and games until someone gets their hair stuck in the springs. I'm not sure how long I stood there screaming "GRANDMOMMEEEEEEE!" but it sure felt like an eternity.
Shortly after starting junior high it became very apparent that I was not cool. I didn't dress cool, I didn't talk cool, no one cool wanted to be anywhere near me. To add insult to injury I wasn't all that interested in studying so even the smart kids steered clear of me. In an attempt to raise my cool factor I decided to get wings. There isn't a Goodie comb big enough for the wings I ended up with. A can of hairspray a day wouldn't make them stick. The next morning I just could not get the wings to flip back. My father ended up spending forty minutes curly them with a curling iron and getting them to semi-stick.
Now that I am an adult the hair doesn't bother me so much but I still want to rip it out every time my arms fall asleep from holding them over my head blow drying for forty five minutes. If you have thin hair and always wanted thick hair a word of caution... one wrong move with the scissors and you too could be a walking mushroom.