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Barefoot and Pregnant

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7 Quick Takes Saturday!

7 Quick Takes Saturday!

Last updated on: March 9, 2017 at 5:13 pm by Calah Alexander

7 Quick Takes Saturday! 2017-03-09T17:13:14-05:00 Calah Alexander

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Seriously, this week has been insane. The first week of school went beautifully for Sienna, but unfortunately all the long, quiet hours of blogging I envisioned never quite materialized.

This is partially the fault of Florida and its stupid tendency to get hit with hurricanes, and my subsequent need to prepare for said impending hurricane, partially the fault of Lincoln, whose due date grows ever nearer and whose enormous piles of newborn clothes insist upon being washed and put away, and partially my fault, because every time the littlest minions were napping and Sienna was at school, I napped instead of blogging.

But elsewhere on the internet, things have been rockin’! I mean, look at the headlines! Todd Akin! Paul Ryan! The Empire State Building shooter! Obama’s Twitter followers! Prince Harry’s admirable bum! I have opinions on every single crazy thing that happened this week, and wanted to blog on all of them, and instead I slept.

I sincerely hope my blog survives this pregnancy.

When the Ogre was in Vegas, he stumbled across a little Italian market that I somehow missed during our three-year exile there, and brought me home bucatini and savoiardi. Genuinely Italian bucatini and savoiardi, in the familiar Italian packaging I love so much. I was beyond excited, and decided to invite our next-door neighbors (who also studied in Rome and understand the appeal of all things Roman) over tonight for bucatini alla’amatriciana and tiramisu…two things that can only be properly made with truly Italian bucatini and savoiardi.

I was so excited. They were so excited. The kids were so excited.

And then yesterday Liam got pinkeye and a fever and ruined everything.

I feel sorry for the kid, I really do, but I feel even more sorry for me. There’s nothing I love more than cooking for company, and Italian food is my favorite thing to cook, and outside of penne alla vodka, amatriciana and tiramisu are my favorite Italian things to cook, and besides, tiramisu. I was so looking forward to it. And now I’m really sad that there’s not a gorgeous tiramisu resting in my refrigerator and becoming magical.

If Liam wasn’t so pathetic and cuddly, I’d be seriously annoyed. As it is, I just really want some tiramisu.

So the night before last, I was getting ready for bed and the Ogre came into the bathroom with a really strange look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he just motioned for me to follow him, so I did. We walked into the front room, where there were three small (maybe one-month-old) kittens peering into the window and meowing.

It was so heartbreaking. They really wanted to come in the house, but we aren’t allowed to have animals in our house per our landlord’s request. So we set out some milk for them and they took up residence on our front stoop, periodically pawing at the window and meowing plaintively.

It broke my heart, and all I could think about were those poor little kittens getting eaten by bears or alligators or panthers, so finally the Ogre put them in our garage.

I spent a good deal of yesterday calling no-kill shelters (because did you know that even the Humane Society euthanizes?) but didn’t have any luck. We moved the kittens out onto our lanai when it got hot, and they’re still out there. We’ve been trying to find homes for them, but in the meantime our kids have fallen totally in love with them. Sienna especially. I told them that we have to find a place for them today, because obviously we can’t keep three kittens on a screen porch during a hurricane, and Sienna broke into tears and spent a half-hour mourning the unfairness of her existence in her room.

It was like looking into a time-traveling mirror. When I was little, all I wanted was a kitten. I was in love with kittens, obsessed with them even, but my dad is allergic and we couldn’t have one.

I was convinced that it was really a plot by my parents to make my life miserable and deny me the very thing that I wanted more than anything else, and I spent many long hours bemoaning the injustice of my father’s mythical “allergies”. Kind of like Sienna spent an hour this morning insisting that our landlord must hate her.

This was not an adorable or endearing look into my past. I’m in for a melodramatic few years, until puberty hits. And remembering my own hormonal wackiness (seriously, I swung from Hanson fan to goth to head cheerleader to Nietzschean pseudo-intellectual), I’m going to do the smart thing and just ship her off to a convent. With high walls. And nuns who understand that Nietzsche is not appropriate reading for teenagers who already think they know everything.

When I was in college I rectified the injustice of my childhood by rescuing a 2-week-old kitten from a crack house.

It was somewhat less picturesque than this pretty drawing, but the kitten became a fixture in our lives. I couldn’t have her in my apartment because my roommate was allergic, so the Ogre kept her for me. We named her Loki, after the Norse god of mischief, which was a perfect name because she grew up to be a perfectly horrible cat.

Seriously, the thing they never tell children about kittens is that they grow up to be cats. And this cat was a be-yotch. With a capital B. The only person she loved in the entire world was the Ogre. Everyone else she either treated with contempt and disdain or tried to kill with her claws. I thought I hated her, and then we had to get rid of her when we moved away from Vegas and I cried.

It turns out I didn’t hate her. I really miss her. The Ogre misses her even more. She was his late-night study companion. She’d always hop into his lap when he sat up late, reading in the Wisdom Chair, and sharpen her claws on his shirt. He said it kept him awake.

Why yes, we do have a chair called the Wisdom Chair. This is Sienna sitting in it. It’s called the Wisdom Chair because it was the Ogre’s father’s chair, and he used to sit in it when he called the family together for lectures. It’s the Ogre’s now, and any time he has to have a serious talk with one of the kids he sits in it.

I tried to get rid of it when we moved away from Texas, and he still hasn’t forgiven me for that.

I actually did dream that my house was clean last night, but I woke up and found that it…isn’t. And since we might have to put up hurricane shutters and do other hurricane-prep-things this afternoon, I must go do the Saturday chores. Grimly. Have a wonderful, hurricane-free weekend! I’ll just be here, stuck inside, depressed because I can’t see the sun. Again.

Dear Florida: you do not deserve to be called the sunshine state. I hereby dub thee “The State of False Advertising and Octogenarians.”

Go see Jen for more quick takes!

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