The Fall of 2010

Working in a college, I've been thinking of "the fall of 2010" as no more than a semester we're still entering applications for (and still will be well into the semester... but I'm hoping to be many miles away from this job by that time). Weekend before last saw a redefinition of "the fall of 2010." It is now something my friend Betsey and I will be commemorating next year by, among other things, heavily tipping the spikey-haired waitress at the Post Office Cafe in Provicetown.

So I finally made my yearly journey to Provincetown. It didn't pan out quite the way I'd envisioned. It felt a little strange from the start, actually: I normally feel totally comfortable and at ease in P-town, completely at home, but I felt a little awkward this year. I chalked it up to the fact that it was closer to the in-season, and there were more people around, which may be all it really was. At any rate, something felt a little off. I still had a wonderful time, at the start. My friend Betsey and I had a pretty good drive there with a lot of great music, the bed and breakfast was nice, we took pictures of the ocean and bought lots of wonderful queer, arty things. Then the day we were to leave, as we were doing one last tour of Commercial Street, Betsey twisted her ankle on an awkward curb and plowed face-first into a brick sidewalk. Someone called an ambulance, they looked her over and cleaned her up a little but didn't think it was too bad. She didn't get to look in a mirror, and I couldn't really assess the damage very well (what I thought was a nosebleed was actually a mass of cuts below her nose), so she declined to go to the hospital. Being very resilient, she attempted to keep hobbling down the street until her ankle became too painful and she got a glimpse of her reflection in a storefront window. The aforementioned waitress saw us from across the street, came out of the cafe, and offered to let Betsey use their bathroom to clean up. She also helped us across the street, brought her a first aid kit and some ice, told us what hospitals were in the area (not many, unfortunately), and called a friend of hers who's a cabbie to drive us around the corner to our rental car for free so she wouldn't have to walk to the car. Hence, the large amount of tipping she will be receiving.
The rest of the day was spent in the hospital and on the road. Fortunately, Betsey didn't need stitches, but it's too soon to tell about scarring.

Then, as we were about to pull out of the hospital parking lot, my mom called me and let me know about the nightmare she and my dad had been living through all weekend in my absence. Apparently, my cat Buster (aka the light of my life) had developed extremely labored breathing and had to make an emergency trip to the vet. The vet discovered he has an enlarged heart and a heart murmur. One of his suggestions was to put him down, but fortunately it did not get to that point. He gave him a shot of antibiotic, not really expecting it to work, but it helped significantly.

Today we took Buster to a cardiologist (everybody was shocked that there's such a thing as an animal cardiologist, but I'm really not surprised), who confirmed the enlarged heart and heart murmur. He's given us prescriptions for heart medicine which should help Buzzy feel better. Nobody's given us a timeframe of his life expectancy at this point, so we're just trying to appreciate every day we get (secretly hoping that those days will stretch into years, but he's 18 and has heart problems, so I don't know how realistic my dreams of him living forever are...). Pretty much the good thing he told us is that it's not degenerative like cancer, so he'll most likely look good on the outside and maintain his personality up until the end. Which is good, because it's hard enough without having to watch my little boy waste away. My cats have always acted very healthy and very young for their ages. It's very hard to think of them being this old, or being sick. And it's very easy for me to be in denial, since I wasn't here for the worst of his illness. I have changed my treatment of him, though. I'm careful not to scoop him up or hug him too firmly. And I've been sleeping downstairs on the couch to keep him company. Sometimes he sleeps on me, but mostly he's been sleeping on a warm spot on the floor next to the couch, first on a pair of my pajama pants, now on a fleece blanket my mom put there for him.

Supposedly, I'm there to comfort him, but really he comforts me.