Wow! Has it been a long time.... we've had an extremely busy Summer 2011. So busy in fact that I am months behind in posts. I will try to remedy that soon. Here are some of the high (and low) moments from May through July:
May: The McArthur-Wilson clan comes for a visit! We had so much fun with our favorite Canadian family. I wish they were back already- Galen and Raynham at Disneyland is my favorite amusement park visit EVER. The very next week we headed to Georgia to visit our family there. Jay's cousin Robert was married, and it was a fun wedding. The rest of the visit was not so fun - my Aunt Faye and Jay's mom have both been very ill. Jay's mom has gotten much worse rapidly, and my aunt had been told her cancer was terminal. We found both of them to be declining much more quickly than we had anticipated.
June: Our friend Helen received her PhD, and she and her husband Alias, along with their lovely sons, came into town for her hooding ceremony. It was a lot of fun to get to see them, though Jay was in Chicago for business. I visited the
Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA with my friend Gil, and then was called back to Alabama. My Aunt Faye passed away 6 hours after I reached her.
July: Sid and Joyce came out for a visit! They drove cross-country, and we spent the weekend touring the central coast. We visited
Hearst Castle, saw
elephant seals, and spent an entire day at
Solvang. Jay spent the next weekend in TyTy with his brother, visiting his mom. She is decidedly worse, which has been a hard thing for all of us to accept. The next weekend we headed to Great Falls, MT for our niece Ashly's wedding. Jay was the official photographer, and we so enjoyed visiting our family there.
So you can see our lives have been a bit of a roller coaster these past few months. Up then down, back up again. Just maintaining our work schedules and keeping the household in some sort of order has been about all we can handle lately. It's been a busy and difficult season, but visits from our friends and family has really helped us keep our spirits up. Thank you to all who have made the trip out and shared time with us - it means so much, and has been so needed. I'll try to get some pictures up soon!
But onto the title of this post. Early this morning (sometime around 5 am) the fire alarm in our apartment building went off. These fire alarms are LOUD, obviously for a reason. Jay and I practically catapulted out of bed, and began scrambling madly for shoes, and of course Meow. She was panicked, and that panic increased when I pulled out her hated carrier. That carrier means vet visits and kennel stays, and she associates it with trouble. She sprinted behind the couch, I tried to corral her, and she dashed beneath our bed. She wedged herself between a suitcase and a box of stored clothing, refusing to come out. Jay declared that she would be fine, and that we had to leave. If needed, we would send a fireman after her. He had scouted the building quickly while I chased the cat, and could find no smoke nor flames. We headed outside to the lawn with all our neighbors, and waited for the fire department to arrive. And waited. Jay finally called emergency services himself. At one point, he looked down at me and realized I was wearing my rain boots. "Why do you have your rain boots on?" he queried... just as the sprinklers turned on. Somehow in the back of my mind, I remembered that the lawns get watered around 5:30 or so, and grabbed my boots to keep myself dry. Jay however got soaked. Combined with a very rude and early awakening, he was in a foul mood. The fire department finally arrived around 5:40, turned off the alarm, and let us back inside. The alarm was apparently a fluke, and I'm happy to report that Meow does not appear to be deaf after her long exposure to the loud siren. At least she can still hear her food bowl being filled from two rooms away.
(click on photo to embiggen. I can say embiggen if I want to, dammit!)