Saturday night, everything was as it usually is. The in-laws took us to dinner and then we sat around the living room chatting and listening to the beasts wear a path up and down the hall. Kathumpthumpthump Hal chases Midge. Kathumpthumpthump Midge chases Hal. Any quiet in between meant someone was getting pinned and given the what for. The evening ended with Hal asleep in my lap, purring and drooling.
Sunday, though, everything was just plain wrong. I wiggled my way under the bed to where Hal was hiding, wondering, why was he acting so strangely, hunched over like that? It was because he was trying so hard to breathe. I listened to the rasping sound of his painfully deliberate breathing and burst into tears. Fifteen minutes later, we were at the Emergency Animal Clinic. I handed the Boy my purse and climbed out of the car.
“Oh, no.”
I looked over from the cat carrier to the Boy who was standing on the hot concrete holding my now shattered iPhone.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“It really doesn’t matter.”
It really didn’t. I just couldn’t care about it.
The woman at the front desk whisked Hal away the moment we stepped inside. Respiratory distress. When the vet appeared briefly to talk to us some time later, he suggested that Midge could have brought the illness into the house. I clarified that she’d been with us more than six weeks, that neither cat had been outdoors and that both cats have been given clean bills of health regarding the scary cat-to-cat diseases (no FIV, no FeLV). He shrugged, unconcerned, gave us antibiotics and sent us on our way.
I left poorer and totally unsatisfied.
I spent most of the afternoon napping under bed, next to Hal who dozed on the heating pad I’d dragged there for him. His ears burned from fever and his breath was ragged, but he purred loudly as I rubbed his head. Which, naturally, made me feel worse. I kind of wished he’d have blown snot on me and told me what a horrible cat mother I was. By Monday morning, he was up and about acting as though nothing had happened, but I’m not buying it. Both cats are headed back to the vet for a full work up and I’m not leaving with any stupid shrug as the answer to why my cat couldn’t breathe. Ugh.
Necklace: $0 (bought in the Pearl District in NYC years ago)
Hair, Angie O’Neill: $100
Note: The cost of the dress fabric takes into account conversion from US Dollar to British Pound. Guess which one is worth more? Lots more? Were you to have this dress made with fabric bought in the US, you could do so for around $250.
The Groom – $380
Tie, Macy’s: $50
Shirt, Suit & Alterations, Macy’s: $180
Shoes, DSW: $150
Hair, Angie O’Neill: $0 (haircut given as a wedding gift)
Note: We could have gotten away with spending far less on beer (like, half) and we could possibly have had too much food, though I’m not certain since my mother took about 40% of it home.
Note: Rates for evenings are far more expensive, so we opted to host an afternoon affair at a savings of $1700. Also, it turns out people don’t drink nearly as much in the afternoon. Our wine bill (by consumption) came in a few hundred under budget and we had an insane amount of leftover beer. Cases of it. Votive candle holders we reused from my sister-in-law’s wedding. Toss ‘em in the freezer, pop out the frozen wax and voila!
Miscellaneous Expenses
Marriage License, Dallas County: $71
Invitations, Save the Dates and Thank You Notes, The Paper Guppy: Kindly donated by Maura at The Paper Guppy.
Postage, USPS: $150
Photographer, Mercedes Morgan: I won’t even tell you. Out of compassion, she cut us such a stellar deal, even driving from Austin to do it.
Minister, Neil Moseley: I believe it is customary to give the minister $100. We also let Neil and his wife Elizabeth watch our house and cat while we were on the honeymoon. You know, like as a tip.
Gas, ExxonMobil: One billion dollars. I kid. But seriously, the week of the wedding, I filled up my tank three times.
Please note that in general, dollar amounts have been rounded up and most include tax.
When people ask if the wedding was wonderful, I hear myself say, “Yes!” followed by, “mostly.” Mostly it was wonderful. Really wonderful.
The day was overcast and so we simply turned out all the lights and had the ceremony by candlelight. It was gorgeous. I walked down the aisle to Sinead O’Connor’s “In This Heart” and it sounded like a hymn (we recessed to Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore!” followed by Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera,” in honor of my beloved Sarah Brown, who could not be with us).
We bought the flowers the night before from Whole Foods and made all the bouquets from fresh, bright hydrangea. Also gorgeous. The cake was a plain 8″ round from Society Bakery that I put a leftover bloom on at the last minute. I can’t imagine doing any differently. Central market made the fruit tray, Jimmy’s made the anitpasto. Both, perfection. My brother made the hot food and crustless sandwiches and they were exceptional.
Also exceptional was Neil’s officiating. The ceremony was short and so very touching. So personal. A benefit of having known each other since we were 15, I suppose. The Dork Lord’s mother provided the groom’s cookies (a surprise to my new husband who loves nothing more than his mother’s ridiculous chocolate chip cookies). They are crack. Sweet, sweet crack. That we forgot a cake knife and resorted to cutting the wedding cake with my brother’s switchblade (he’s a cop – that’s how he rolls. Also, with a gun in his crotch, but we didn’t require that) was undeniably awesome.
I’m about to launch a post – password protected – about the not-so-awesome parts of throwing a wedding, and should you feel inclined, drop me an email (sorry guys – I cannot get email addresses out of comments. You’ll have tosend me an email – click on the envelope icon up there) and I’ll send you the password. I figure, if I want to moderate the kind of response I get from unabashed public whining, I should simply moderate how public it is. You see.
Here, at last, as some photos, a la Mercedes Morgan. I will apologize in advance that the slideshow is in Flash. I meant to take time to learn some new technology to code something more iPhone/iPad friendly, but I ran out of time and steam. I hope you enjoy – as you can see by the photos (which are heavy on the candid, light on the posed), we certainly did!
Ta da!
(Aside 1: In retrospect, I should have whittled these down a bit more, but whatever – you’re bored at work! I know you are! Aside 2: My brother’s little girl – so effing cute. Aside 3: My maid of honor/sister is maybe the most beautiful person in any room)
So many, many thanks to everyone who made it wonderful and for all the well-wishing.
I stood there in the bank on Saturday afternoon wanting to leap across the teller desk and claw the bank manager’s eyes out.
I’d gone to the bank with two checks: one, a wedding gift, made out to the Dork Lord and me, two, the Dork Lord’s paycheck, signed over to me. We did it that way because, as a new customer, Bank of America has held his paycheck for ten. full. business days. I don’t have to tell you that being absent his salary for ten days was something akin to being kicked in the face. With boots made out out hot molten magma.
What unfolded was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had with customer service. And in the end, I was left with the following explanation:
1. I cannot deposit his paycheck because they cannot prove that it’s really his signature on the back of the check. They have his signature on file, mind you, and I pointed this out very helpfully.
“Please just look at his signature,” I said. “I will happily give you his account number.”
No go, lady, sorry. Next.
2. I cannot deposit the wedding gift with my name on it because the Boy has not acknowledged, with his signature, that I have permission to deposit it.
“But, you just said you wouldn’t be able to prove it’s his signature anyway.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s correct. You will have to ask {insert name of brother-in-law} to reissue the check in just one of your names.”
“I can’t even aritculate how little sense that makes. I have deposited a dozen checks with both of our names on them through the ATM and have not had a single problem.”
“Yes, ma’am. You should track those. Those funds can still be rejected as fraudulent within the next two to three years.”
“Two to three YEARS?”
“Yes m’am. New policy.”
“This is crazy. Absolutely crazy.”
“I’m sorry ma’am. But good luck!”
And so here we go again. Ten more days without his salary and ten more days of wondering just where the hell I’m going to get the money to pull it off. I’d take my ball and go home but I gather that every bank on the planet is a nexus of stupid and that it would be a losing battle.
One of my favorite experiences on our honeymoon was meeting the owners of the villa we stayed at in Tuscany. It’s quite possible that there aren’t any two people in the whole world who are more genuinely charming. When we arrived at the villa, Riccardo was manning the fort on his own. Susan, his wife, was in Britain dealing with the death of her father, so Riccardo was going about tasks that, you could easily tell, were out of his normal jurisdiction. The meet and greet part was one of those tasks.
He fussed and clucked and zigzagged between the guest house and the villa, collecting forms and maps and towels and keys. Then he sat us down at table in the foyer to go over the details of our stay.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tilting his head to one side and studying me. “but ninety percent you look like chair.”
I only blinked. I looked like chair?
“When she was not old, of course. Very young with the long hair. You know, yes? Chair?”
I smiled. “Cher!”
“Yes. Ninety percent you look like her in the face.”
When I hugged Riccardo at the end our stay, it was mostly for that.
Once he’d finished with paperwork, shown us to our room and armed us with half a dozen hand drawn maps and far more information than we could process, he changed tracks rather quickly.
“The frigo! Come. I will show you where you keep your food.”
Like ducklings, we followed Riccardo through the foyer, down the hall and into a large, airy kitchen.
“The frigo,” he said, opening the door to a squat refrigerator. But before we’d even seen inside, he slammed it shut.
“Christ!”
The Dork Lord and I looked at each other, puzzled, both of us wondering what horrible, moldy mess must have overtaken Riccardo’s frigo. Did something spill? Was something rotten?
“These Australians,” he said, hands cutting the air with unspoken and unmistakeably Italian vocabulary. “They put red wine in the frigo!”
We smirked. And then Riccardo laid down the law.
“You go to the store, you get meat, cheese, chocolate. You can put anything you like in the frigo,” he said. “but not red wine.”
Eating a lot and spending money at the vet’s office. That’s really the most accurate summary of how I’ve been passing the time lately. Besides work. Which has been bizzzzy, but simultaneously boring, so let’s move on.
Hal stopped eating a last week. Insert days of nagging concern here. Because the last time we went through this and it took me far, far too long to notice, and resulted in hours of surgery and hundreds of dollars, I’m particularly honed to his kibble habits. So, two days after Midge went in for her Orphan No More check-up (2lbs 6 oz!), I wrastled Hal into his carrier and made the half-mile trip to our new vet. Taking Hal to the vet makes me feel physically ill. Because he hates it so much. It’s panic at the disco with a full set of claws after which he hides for at least a solid 24 hours. Forgiveness is hard earned after a vet visit – and I’m the one bleeding. Which is why I thought I was experiencing some sort of alternate reality on Monday afternoon when went about this whole business with complete calm.
Vet let him out of the carrier: complete calm. She checked his mouth: complete calm. He wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t freak out or bite or Ginsu knife anyone with his talons. She talked to him and petted him and he lay on the metal exam table in such a state of relaxation that she had to heft him up to prod at him with a stethoscope. His innards sounded fine, but she was mildly concerned there was something else at play. The ulcer in his mouth, while painful, was most likely not our culprit.
“Is he acting more lethargic than usual?”
“He’s a cat. How do you tell?”
“Fair. What about liquids? Is he drinking more water than usual?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t recall filling his water dish more often?”
“He… well, he drinks… out of the faucet. He comes and gets us, lures us to the bathroom, taps at the faucet and we turn it on. So, yeah, I don’t know that one either. I think I’m failing your quiz.”
“Okay, what about his personality? Has he been different?”
“He’s been pissed. We brought home a kitten. But come to think of it, he’s kind of always pissed.”
“Hmm. I think we’ll need to take some blood for anything conclusive.”
I conceded. So Hal calmly took a steroid shot for his mouth but the blood draw was a massive fail. I had to give him credit for even letting us talk about taking his blood within earshot and not calling on the powers of Chuck Norris.
Okay, enough cat talk. The lack of blogging combined with feline-centric content is starting to bug even me and I’m one of the most Content-to-be-Boring people I know.
We could talk about how I’m making a slideshow of wedding photos for you! Also of interest? I saw J in an HTC commercial on the big screen when we went to see a movie the other night. And my spinster sister (heh. I kid!) is getting married! We don’t get to go – it’s a big ole hurry since he’s a Navy man and getting shipped out to scary parts of the world and we haven’t recovered from our own wedding yet – but I’m gonna send a cardboard stand-in to be her maid of honor. Not that she asked, but I know any day now she’s gonna and I want to be prepared.
Oh man, oh man, you guys. I am toast. Yesterday was my seventh consecutive 12-hour workday and while it’s nice to know that all that overtime means a healthy paycheck, it also means that I haven’t had time to do anything else but wrangle cats and drool on myself.
Speaking of cat wrangling, Midge is an absolute, pure delight. Hal didn’t necessarily share that opinion and until about 72 hours ago, that cranky old bastard tried to kill her every time we turned our backs. I don’t just mean “used force to teach her lessons about who’s at the top of the food chain.” I mean, “dragged her down the hall by her throat” or “attempted to disembowel her with his fangs.” By the time I could rescue her, she’d be soaked in his angry, angry saliva. Regardless, that little fuzzball went back for more. Every. Single. Time. He’d hiss, smack, claw and bite and she’d hot foot it right back to him. Which, naturally, worried me because I’d seen that movie on Lifetime before. It doesn’t end well.
About three days ago, though, things shifted. Hal voluntarily climbed up on the couch to lay down with her. I glanced at the Dork Lord and we both shrugged and waited for him to realize what he’d done. And then eat her. But he didn’t. He just curled up in a ball and Midge… well, Midge rolled onto her back, whack! popped him in the nose and climbed onto the Boy’s lap to resume sleep. Somewhere in the middle of my amused shock, I swear I heard her say, “pwned!”
Lady friend has doubled in size in three weeks and I guess this is what happens when you weigh two whole pounds. You get to be in charge.
Because I am a glutton for punishment, I have rather unofficially assumed responsibility for Midge’s momma, too. Every day I feed her in under the bench on our front porch and we have conversations about life on the streets (she’s very vocal) and once or twice I’ve even managed to touch her ever-so-briefly. For a feral cat, she’s remarkably interactive.
Kittico, the cat rescue I contacted, said they’d be in touch about doing one of those trap-n-spays, but I’m guessing they’re over-extended because two weeks have gone by and nothing. Baby Mama is very young (8 months, maybe?) and I’d hate to see her get knocked up again before I can break that cycle. Obviously, we can’t take her in and she doesn’t want us to, but I want to do the responsible thing. I just can’t do it by myself. I don’t have the physical means (i.e. a cage) or emotional fortitude (seriously, cannot do it. Can’t. I would fall apart) to trap a cat. I volunteered to pay for the spay and her shots and flea treatments, but nada. Like I said, they’re probably over-extended. I get it. But now what?
If you’re in Dallas and have any experience with this sort of thing, I’d love some help. Like I said, I just want to do the right thing.
Okay, that’s not true. We took four… maybe five? Essentially, the things that were awesome in Rome are pretty much a google images click away, so we didn’t bother. I think we got a shot or two of our ridiculously funny apartment with the rock hard bed and shower so tiny you couldn’t lift or lower your arms without turning off the water. That’s worth sharing, so I will check with the Mister to see if he has ‘em. The things that were awesome in Tuscany were impossible to capture – smells, tastes, long evenings on the patio with the Australians who made us laugh so hard.
I think another reason we didn’t take any pictures is that we got to share all of that magical stuff on the spot – Can you believe this view? Here, taste this. There was never any sense that we needed pictures – proof to take back with us. We were each other’s proof. Sappy, probably. But true. And typing that makes me think about a line Susan Sarandon says in “Shall We Dance,” a delightfully cheesy ballroom dance romcom:
“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”
Anyway, Italy was wonderful and I will have stories and what few photos we managed to take later. Wedding photos are still rolling in, and while I figure out what to share and what to keep, I figured I’d share what might very well be my favorite picture so far. Because it’s us. The real, when no one’s watching, silly us.
We had been home from the honeymoon for exactly as much time as it took to sleep in our very own beds and stumble around our very own house in search of breakfast when I decided to go outside to water my withering petunias. I can be trusted to arrange care for my cat, but not to remember that I have plant life which also requires tending to. Oh, well. Nobody died. They just got crusty.
Quickly flash back to when we were scraping paint off the guest room walls a month ago and spotted one of the neighborhood’s feral felines with a kitten. It was just a puffball of a thing; could have fit in a tea cup. Naturally, I tried to snorgle it and was rebuffed in a low, snarly growl from its mother. The mother who, when I tried to feed its tiny offspring a bit of tuna before we left on the honeymoon, swatted its kitten away and ate every bit of food herself. Some maternal instinct! Anyway, I never got within ten feet of either mother or kitten – both were far, far too scared to partake of the fruits of my maternal instincts. C’mere you.
Now, fast forward to some plant watering when I see the kitten, still no bigger than a muffin, sacked out on the neighbor’s driveway, no mama in sight. I took a shot and called to her. And she came, trotting through the grass. More hungry than afraid, she stuck her little nose into my open hand. It took me a minute to realize she was mewing – her tiny mouth was open but no sound was coming out.
I scooped her up and pushed the front door open. Husband! We need food and water, STAT!
The kitten was all bones and fleas. I thought she might break in my hand. I thought my heart might break, too. The neighbor has been feeding strays for ages and yet, can let something like this go on? This kitten was starving right in front of her. Well, not in front of me. No way.
“Honey, would you be upset if I took her to the vet?”
Money being what it is, I knew committing to a vet bill wasn’t something I should just up and do without some discussion.
“Of course not.”
So the vet was called and an immediate appointment made and as we were headed out the door, the Dork Lord asked, “Wait, does this mean we just got another cat?”
“It means we will take care of her until she is better and we decide to find her a home or keep her.”
I wasn’t dead set on anything except not letting that tiny beast die on my watch. The vet pronounced her five to six weeks old, less than one pound in weight, and severely malnourished. She couldn’t even hiss when she got the most invasive of exams – too weak to make noise. He treated her for fleas and intestinal parasites, checked her heart and said that although frail, she would probably be okay. Come back in three weeks for a second treatment, he said, and if you decide to keep her, we can talk about vaccinations.
I didn’t think my husband was up for a second cat, I told him. But we’ll make sure she has a good home.
But then the Boy named her. And then he nicknamed her. And sang her rhymes about cat food and mean old Sir Hal. And watched basketball with her asleep between his feet. And that’s how Midge (short for Midget) came to live at our house. She may be another mouth to feed but it’s like the Dork Lord says, she pays us back in cute.
