Sunday Muggy Sunday

It's late afternoon, and I'm watching the aftermath of Hurricane Ike on all the teevees. Galveston and the seaside Houston suburbs look just decimated. It's horrible, and breathtaking.

Our across-the-street neighbors have their parents in from Houston - Kemah, actually, which is a suburb that has been photographed a lot yesterday and today, as it got pretty heavily damaged. They have no idea what their house looks like, and probably will not have any way of finding out for several days, if even then. I cannot even imagine what that must feel like.

That being said, I feel like we dodged a bullet to some degree, here. It was bad, but it really could have been so much worse. The storm surge was not quite as bad as expected, and it appears that, for the most part, people got out, and did so in an orderly fashion, to plenty of shelters around the state.

(I note this in direct contrast to the clusterfucked exodus from Hurricane Rita three years ago, in which 9 people died in the storm, but ONE HUNDRED AND TEN people died in the evacuation. That nightmare will, I hope, NEVER be forgotten.)

Sadly, though, NONE of the rain hit Austin. Not one effing drop. Two counties over, they had three inches of rain; we sit, as parched as ever, grass and trees crisping and withering. I still have banana peppers - because apparently they are the cockroaches of the vegetable garden - but everything else looks deeply, deeply sad (even my tomatoes, which may have been the most successful tomato plants I have ever had). It's ironic - in the Alanis Morrissette way, which is to say not "ironic" at all, but "bittersweet" or "interesting" - that my friends in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and in Chicago, will see more of Hurricane Ike than we did.

And the Austin forecast? More of the same. Oh they say it'll be slightly cooler. (Only in Austin would the weathercasters be raving about a "cold front" coming in that will lower our high temperatures to 86 degrees. In September.) No rain is expected, but, inexplicably, it's still supposed to be humid. Never can figure out how that works.

Anyways, much goodwill to our statemates in the east. I hope everyone reading this from there is OK, and everyone's families are, as well. (Glad to hear the brother's OK, Karla.) We're heading up to donate to the food bank in a bit; probably to the Red Cross as well.

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Stella, the spazzy kitten, appears to be working out. She's a big hit with the kiddos, of course, and even with The Man (who plays the curmudgeon, but who has a deep soft spot for animals).

Here's the thing, though. Like I said, the decision to get the kitten was a very impulsive one. I, um, ALSO, sort of, made a verbal promise to this cat shelter lady last week to look at this sweet, but formerly abused, full-grown cat named Shirley*.

AND, um...I was not exactly forthcoming about all this to The Man.

So...don't tell him, OK?

*Shirley is my mother-in-law's name, so if this is going to happen, then she'll have to be renamed. Do we like "Rosie" or "Iris?" How about "Poverty-Inducing Li'l Parasite?"