home, safe and sound

we made it home yesterday evening. the trip home was six hours, with a twenty-minute stop. so, about five and a half hours of driving. it was so much better. still, it was the second-longest time it has ever taken us to make that distance.

it is nice to be home. everything here is fine: no fallen trees, no power outages, no water contamination, no gas shortages.

the re-population was fairly uneventful. traffic was heavy and slow from before huntsville, but it kept moving along. we managed to sedate one of the cats, but our orange cat zeugma, otherwise known as spanky the great, or president kitty, was having none of it. we tried five or six times, but the pill always ended up on the floor, and me with deep scratches all over my body. he screamed much more ferociously all the way home. and he would claw at the cage, trying to open the doors. we passed a car on our way to dallas in which two cats sat perched, one on a box, one in the back window, calm as anything, just like they were sitting in a boring ol' room at home. i am totally jealous. why can't our cats be like that?

i guess i am glad we evacuated this time. we did what we could with the information we had. but, i will say that i will think carefully before evacuating again. it is always hard to assess risks, but really, how much risk were we actually facing? even if it had come into galveston as a strong 4, the potential danger was nothing like new orleans faced with katrina. and our house, in our neighborhood, would it really have been at risk? granted, the thought of no power for a week or so in +100 degree heat is extremely unpleasant. maybe that's enough. i don't know. i just will think it all through more carefully next time.

in other news, there was an interesting article about doulas in the new york times this weekend. the article has some flaws, but it was nice to see some coverage. i was disappointed that out of all the hundreds of pictures of doulas and new mothers, they used a photo of a woman who was bottle feeding. i know, teen mothers especially have trouble accepting breastfeeding, but what a great opportunity to show that some do choose to breastfeed. the article said that the rate of breastfeeding among teens who had a doula was up to 50%. that is fantastic. why not show a picture of one of them? breastfeeding is so hidden in our society, i find it shocking. i know, one must accept women where they are and respect the choices that they have made, but seeing baby hurricane evacuees starving because they lacked formula and clean water, when they were with their mothers and her breasts, just made me angry. it isn't just an age or class problem. the statistics are up a little, but still, at 6 months, only 50% of babies are breastfed at all (and only 14% of those are exclusively breastfed.) or maybe, the statistics show that at 3 months, 42.5% of infants were exclusively breastfed , and 51.5% were breastfed to some extent. At 6 months, these rates dropped to 13.3% and 35.1%, respectively. either way, things aren't so good for the babies. and i think part of the problem is the media's subtle, but significant, messages about the convenience of bottlefeeding and the unacceptability of images of breastfeeding. all a bunch of malarkey.

additional details

john paul pointed out that i neglected to tell you our total travel time:

twenty hours, thirty minutes

additionally, he wanted me to balance out my story by sharing with you my own moment of breakdown.

we had been travelling almost 14 hours. when we reached the contra-flow cross-over, it seemed as though everyone was going on the contra-flow and no one was staying on the regular freeway. thus, the contra-flow lanes were backing up, where as the regular lanes were clear. if we had had any sleep and hadn't been driving so long, we would have thought this through and realized that the contra-flow lanes would eventually be the better place to be. the regular lanes would still be clogged up with all the people who had been on the road before the contra-lanes opened up, whereas the contra-lanes would be clear up ahead. but, we thought only in the moment and stayed on the regular road. after about 5 minutes of wonderful free driving, we hit the backlog. it was sooo frustrating! we saw a way to exit the freeway, u-turn, and get on the contra-flow lanes. at this point, i was totally exhausted, it was really hot, i was worried about running out of gas and still being stuck on the freeway when the hurricane hit two days later, i was desperately worried about the cats, and i hadn't been to the bathroom in 14 hours! i seriously had to wee. during our u-turn, we missed a restaurant that had a bathroom and got directly onto the contra-flow lanes. and as soon as we did, we hit more gridlock! i totally lost it. i started crying hysterically and said all kinds of crazy things. but, we soon passed a forested area, so i made john paul pull over so i could relieve myself. and a relief it was indeed. from then on, we were both able to roll with the situation and we did fine.

we stopped for gas in madisonville. we did have to wait in line for 35-40 minutes, but they had plenty of gas and it all worked out. i did think john paul might come to blows with a jerk who cut in front of me in the gas line, but he kept his head and it was fine.

we finally reached casa yabraian at about 8:45 and had a lovely, light dinner. the cats settled in great and don't seem to be suffering permanent damage. they are still a little nervous being in a new place, but they are sleeping and eating well. we slept a long sleep and have had a pretty good day today. as an added bonus, cindy and david (whom you might remember from the wedding- cindy was the maid of honor) are in dallas visiting cindy's brother, so we get to see them!!

my dad, however, is in tyler, texas (in from florida, where he weathered 3 hurricanes last year.) he has been staying in his concession trailer at some state fair, but he is looking for shelter. the winds and possible tornadoes in that area are quite worrying. so, here's hoping he finds a good place to wait out the storm and her aftershocks.

un - freakin' - believable!

hello all. you have probably seen the pictures of the houston evacuation, but i know i didn't really understand what those images meant. let me tell you. the drive from our house downtown houston to john paul's parent's house in dallas is normally exactly a 4 hour drive. we knew the evacuation would cause crazy traffic problems, so we were expecting an 8, maybe a 12 hour drive. we left home at 15 minutes past midnight. at 8 am, we had just arrived at the exit i normally take to work (a 15 minute drive). at noon, we had not yet reached the woodlands!! so, if you know houston, you understand. the mayor had told people to be prepared for very long drives in the evacuation, but how in the heck do you prepare for it to take over 12 hours to get out of city itself?

we had tried to sedate the cats with benadryl per the vet's instructions. it seemed to work fairly well for xochi, our super-hyper-freaked-out cat. usually in the car he makes the most terrifying noises, but he was quiet most of the time. zeugma, on the other hand, must have vomited up the pill at some point; he was not calm at all. for 11 hours (!!) he screamed one meow a second, every single second. around hour 7, john paul took him out of the carrier and tried holding him in his lap. but, after driving all night without sleep and still being essentially in the center of the city, john paul's nerves were shot. zeugma wouldn't calm down and relax and his squirming pushed john paul over the edge. back into the carrier zeug went. not like being out helped him much. by hour 9, zeugma's mews were weak and quiet, but still consistent. at hour 11 he seemed resigned to his fate and gave up complaining. although i worried he was dying, thank goodness he stopped. it allowed us to calm down and relax a bit at a critical point in the trip. still hardly any sleep, and inching through the woodlands, his incessant meowing would have driven us totally crazy.

the scene on the road was crazy. it was just like the fatal scenes in every disaster movie ever made: people walking around between cars; cars pulling other cars on ropes; cars overheating and breaking down all over; cars running out of gas; cars stopped on the shoulder with people sleeping in the open hatches or on the road next to the car; many people not using air conditioners, maybe to save on gas, sweating in the 100 degree heat. i've never seen anything like it.

the highway department said they were opening up the contra-flow lanes of i-45 at 9am, then they said it would be ready at 11am. when we got there (just north of the woodlands) about 1:30pm, it looked like it had just opened up. but it made a HUGE difference. finally we were able to drive almost at 30 mph. for the whole trip, we averaged 12 mph. most of the night hours we were at 1, or in a good hour 2, mph.

i'm totally ready to move to a city with a smaller population, far away from hurricane strike zones. i have a feeling these kinds of situations are going to keep happening. jp's mom saw a nasa weather scientist saying that we'll see active hurricane seasons with extremely strong storms for at least the next 10 years. welcome to the consequences of global warming!

succumbing to panic

off to dallas. toodle-oo!

shock

like everyone, i am in a perpetual state of shock. yes, shocked about the disaster in hurricane hit areas, and the appalling results of the man-exacerbated disaster in new orleans, but mostly shocked by the total inadequacy and intentional idiocy of the government's response. the timelines of events are just incredible. here's a simple one and a more detailed one.

i mean, i knew this administration was terrible, but i am still totally appalled by the whole thing. i just can't believe it. and all of the heartbreaking stories of people who survived despite the best efforts of the government. it really is overwhelming.

i hope the tremendous flaws in the structure of our society revealed by this tragedy continue to stay in the forefront of everyone's minds. it is truly time to talk openly, as a country, about why we have a government and what responsibilities that government has to all of its citizens: to protect them from the devastations of poverty, to offer true safety in the face of emergency, and to immediately respond to disasters. i mean, FEMA turned away help!! this whole thing is just totally unbelievable. compare this to the response of FEMA to the minor hurricane Frances, that hit florida during the election campaign. there, FEMA declared miami-dade an emergency area, even though the hurricane did not hit the area.

it all just makes me feel sick. i know i am not saying anything new; really, i'm just speechless.