Of Creatures Cute and Creepy

May has been a month of memorable moments, many of them involving cute or creepy critters. From the joy of introducing my mom to the Gambia and our kittens, to the morbid intrigue of dead blowfish, it's a month best captured in photos. Without further ado, here we go...

Even though I wasn't sure what my mom would think about the Gambia in general, there was one part of the country I knew she'd love: our kittens! I don't think I've posted too many pictures of them, but let me share a few to give you a sense of how overwhelmingly adorable they are:

Doug and Squeak

Mom and Eve

How can you resist that cuteness?!

Oh, the belly!

Some of the other creatures we encountered during my mom's stay weren't quite as predictably cute. During our walks on the beach, we discovered that it is the season of dead things washing up on the shore, particularly neon jellyfish and crazily swollen blowfish. I've included a scenic shot of the beach to make up for the ickiness of the dead-blowfish photo. But if you're squeamish, you may want still want to scroll quickly past the third picture, even though I can't help but stare at it in morbid fascination.

We saw some cuter critters when we hiked in the monkey forest. Actually, the monkeys make me a bit nervous, since they aren't scared of humans and will walk right up to you. They didn't bother us, but I couldn't shake the feeling that one of them might jump on me if I hesitated or stayed too close. (This could have something to do with the fact that a monkey jumped on me and gnawed through my pants pocket when I was 12. True story.) My mom, however, was totally calm, and thought the monkeys were awesome.

Mom at the edge of the monkey forest

Check out the hugging monkeys!

Perhaps the most annoying creatures in my life right now are the ones that live in my imagination. They're the invisible bugs that creep and crawl on me every day, making me scratch frantically for a moment until I realize, yet again, that these bugs are actually rivulets of sweat running down my skin. Because of them, I've fallen in love with swimming. Not only does the cool water cleanse me of sweat bugs, but the feeling of buoyancy I get as I glide through the pool is also the best antidote I've found for the stresses of work.

The other day, Doug and I were outside watering and trimming our go-go-Gadget super-growing plants when we discovered the most massive snails I have ever seen. This is a picture of the granddaddy snail, the largest of them all. Hold your hand out in front of you, and imagine a snail whose shell is the length of your index finger! These are no ordinary snails, folks. And one of our plants had SEVEN of them on it at once! Yikes! I'd hate to step on one of these in the dark...

Here we are, happily trimming and watering, oblivious to the creatures we are about to discover...

Whoa! Dude! The granddaddy of all snails!

And even though these aren't pictures of animals, I have to share them anyway because I am oh-so-proud of my first successful use of a power drill in our new home. (Don't worry, this episode was not preceded by any unsuccessful use of the power drill! :P) We decided to mount some new curtains in our living room to close off an open doorway and keep the room cooler when the air conditioning is on. Doug and I are having fun with home improvement projects like this!

Now our living room feels like a deliciously cool movie theater! Who wants to come visit?

From home to home, and back again

In a year full of firsts, I've just experienced yet another one: My First Trip Home. And one of the biggest things I've realized as a result of this trip is that home is a more fluid and dynamic concept than it used to be. On my flight back to the States, I met a German woman who said she was happy to be done with a stressful trip. "Are you heading home?" I asked her. She paused, then said, "From home to home." 

Hers is a phrase I've never had occasion to use before, until now. Having grown up in the same town my entire life, then venturing a whole 10 miles down the road to college, my sense of home is deeply rooted in one geographic spot. Sure, there was the junior year that I spent making a life for myself in Oxford's nooks and crannies, a year that stands out as one of my favorites. Yet as much as I loved it there, I always knew I was coming back to California, and I never made the mistake of referring to Oxford as "home."

But now, things feel a bit more complicated. Of course California will always feel like home: as I approach the green-turning-yellow light near TJ's, I realize I still know exactly how far away I can be and still make it through the intersection (perhaps with a slight tap of the accelerator). Going to the library with my dad, I marveled at the fact that I've been going to the same public library my entire life. (And yes, that guy in the bronze statue out front is still on the SAME page of his book. As a kid, I'd try to calculate how many words he could read a day and still stay on that page for one month, one year, one decade.) And of course, there are friends and family and kitties, so many loved ones in one place that I left wanting so much more time to soak it all in. Coming home on vacation is a challenge I encountered for the first time, and the stress of it caught me off guard: how to see everyone and every place I love in one short trip? (Short answer: you can't.)

Yet the world I return to is the land of many other important firsts: our first home as a married couple, our first time starting a business, our first pair of sibling kittens. It's still a foreign land, one that challenges me and scares me and annoys me and surprises me more than my first home. Nonetheless, it's the land where Doug and I have chosen to create our life together, and because of that, it too has become my home. 

And so, in my journey from home to home and back again, I am reminded of how thankful I am for all you precious, amazing people whom I am so blessed to know. As hard as it was to come home knowing I'd have to leave again so soon, getting a face-to-face dose of your love and support made it possible for me to come back and keep on living and growing here in this crazy new home of ours. If you take away just one thought from this post, I hope it's this: PLEASE GET SKYPE and email me your Skype name so we can video chat. I'm telling you, it is infinitely more satisfying than email. And I can guarantee you glimpses of some seriously cute African kittens! 

Delighting in the rainbow cornucopia of my latest trip to the fruit & veggie stands, while Eve looks on