cha·os ( káy òss ): a state of complete disorder and confusion

I've got more to reoprt than my fingertips can handle typing. My brain has maxed out it's capacity to handle anything other than eating, sleeping, and making grunting noises. Bear with me as I report the happenings of the past three days here at Casablanca: the Jacksonville Edition.

Saturday we left for Jax, FL. We drove with two children, a dog in a crate, enough clothes to last us through the next week, a guitar, a sewing machine, a laptop, a portable dvd player, the entire Crayola factory, and so much toddler underwear we could have sewn it together to make a family-sized tent for us all to sleep under, just in case the car broke down somewhere in between cotton fields in south Georgia.

By the time we pulled into Grandma's house Saturday evening, we raced each other to the restroom. I had no idea that the carride down was actually the calm before the storm. Had I realized that then, I'd have slept the entire 7 hours instead of casually reading magazines and talking to Terry about "art, and all that stuff".

I don't think we exchanged any official greetings with Grandma, unless you consider Banjo's "red-rocket" hello on Grandma's leg a greeting. In only two short days here, we've had the opportunity to learn a great deal about his breed. While we thought he was an American Foxhound, and maybe he is, we are now leaning more towards the Beagle end of the hunting dog spectrum. I'm not really sure how these two differ other than in looks, but I do know that whether Banjo be foxhound or Banjo be beagle, Banjo definitly be hunter.

Grandma Lani has 4 cats. I'm happy to report that even after a few very close calls, she still has (present tense) all 4 cats. Instead of watching an episode of National Geographic Wild on tv inside an 800 sq. ft. Florida condo, we experienced it first hand as we watched the most classic dog and cat charade since Spike and Tom from Tom and Jerry. Koji, the sassy cat of the bunch, was the only brave one to make it out from underneath my mother-in-law's bed. The two met eyes, Banjo bowed his head, began tracing the floor with his sensitive hound nose, pointed it up, and began his howl and bay. Koji fought back with hisses and swats, sending Banjo into a hillybilly fit of revenge.

After that, things were a blur. There were cats flying off ceilings at speeds that made us all duck our heads and scream like we were caught in crossfire. "Hit the trenches, kids!" Terry managed to wrangle this poor fella back into his crate, while Koji scratched another mark off of her 9 Lives tally.

My children have never seemed so well-behaved as they have since we arrived. Then again, the confusion has been so great that they could have been smoking cigarettes and playing poker on the backporch for all we know. We were too busy pulling teddy bear stuffing from this dog's jaws and using a giant shoe horn to pry him off Grandma's leg.

Inspite of the chaos, we are thoroughly enjoying our time together this Thanksgiving. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday too!