I feel like I should write one of those “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” essays for all of you. Let’s see, what did I do? I missed Joe, of course. And then I found a little guy who needed my help because his owner was abusive. So we welcomed him into our home:

His first rescuer named him Nutmeg, then his foster family called him Shoyu, but I thought he was more of a Charlie, so that’s his new name. He had a little bit of an adjustment settling in, but every day he’s more at ease with us and torments Freddie a fraction of a millimeter less. But when I see Charlie harassing Freddie, I realize Joe probably sent him to us as revenge on Freddie. And I’m okay with that.

My office also moved to a new building, and there has been a hell of a lot of adjustment from that, let me tell you. We’re finally settling in, but it will be nice when the new building is finally finished. Which, at the rate they’re going will probably be in ten years.

And then last week I started classes for an MA in history. I’m struggling a bit with getting back in the academic groove (I’ve been working on what should have been a simple one page article summary for a couple of hours now because I’m not used to formal writing anymore), especially while living with Rick. Relationships didn’t phase my first two degrees at all (because for large portions of both degrees I wasn’t in one), but it’s interesting trying to figure out time to study and write without neglecting Rick. Of course, he’s got his own adjustment going on because he started a new day job last week, and that’s been quite a change for him. We’ll work through everything, I’m sure, but in the meantime it’s still a little strange. But also in the meantime, I’ve got this stupid summary to write, so I’m going to get back to that. Hope you all are well, and thanks for the emails prodding me back into blogging!

Rick: So I think Amelia had a date the other night. She told me she went out to dinner, and when I asked her who she went with, she said “Um…a friend.”

Me: Good for her, going out with an English boy.

Rick: Well, she does love that accent.

Me: Honey, let me tell you something about women. We all love that accent.

Rick: Really?

Me: Yes. How else do you explain Hugh Grant’s box office success?

Rick: I always wondered about that. I mean, he’s not like that other one. The other one can at least act.

Me: You mean Colin Firth?

Rick: Yeah, him.

Me: He’s got the accent and he’s Mr. Darcy. That’s why women like him. He changed for Elizabeth.

Rick: And that’s why that story is total fiction.

Me: I know. Elizabeth got results in a few months. I’ve been working at it for seven years and what have I got to show for it?

Rick: Exactly.

Huh? I did a double take. This kind of shit cannot be happening, it’s too good to be true. But it is happening! And it gets better! Because he wasn’t nude hiking after all, he was in Buenos Aires with his mistress.

It’s days like this that go a long way towards making up for the Asshat Administration. The continuing trainwreck that is the Republican party: now this is good TV.

Good things did happen on the vacay, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. For example, in spite of the 87 straight days of grey skies we seem to have had this June, Mom and I went to the circus at Coney Island. That was fun. We also went to Sagamore Hill to visit Teddy Roosevelt’s home, which was awesome. Jordana and I found a wine bar in her neighborhood on Friday and I discovered a really great local honey wine, then we went to the Botanical Gardens, then to Celebrate Brooklyn with Thabiso. These are all good things, but on the whole the impression this vacation left me with was “not restful.” And then I came back to work yesterday to find out that we’re expected to be in the new office in the new building on July 20, so now we are stressed out about that. I think I need another vacation.

Joe passed out of this world on Tuesday night at about 8:30, right as Keith Olbermann was reading the day’s World’s Worst Persons. He had been going downhill for a while, and by Sunday he wasn’t really able to use his back legs. We were bringing food and water to him and taking him to the litterbox when he acted like he needed to go, but on Tuesday morning he wasn’t showing interest in food or water anymore. His breathing had also changed early that morning-it was shallower and more labored. We knew that he was going to go soon, and decided that if he could, we wanted him to pass at home with us instead of with the vet. Joe hated the vet, and I wanted him to have good memories at the end, not be stressed out. I made some calls to let people know what was happening, and we settled in for the wait.

Tuesday was the longest day of my life, and also the hardest. We don’t think he was in pain-he never cried out, just rolled back and forth as his hips would get uncomfortable and occasionally sigh. He stayed with us in the living room the majority of the day, although when the sun finally came out that afternoon we put him in a sunny spot on the bed-he loved to lie in the sun. We sat with him, putting water on his tongue when we could to keep it from drying out, telling him what a good boy he was, petting him, and letting him know how much we loved him. At about 5, I was sure we were going to have to take him to the vet, but I realize now that the waiting was much harder on us than it was on him. He had a couple of mini-tremors in the early evening, and we decided to settle in with him on the couch. Joe lay on Rick’s lap, I sat beside them, and we waited, continuing to talk to Joe and tell him what he meant to us and petting him. His breathing got slower and slower, and then he was gone.

I’m glad he got to go that way, with the two people he loved most holding him and being told how much he was loved in his own home. When it’s my time to come, I hope I can go like that. But even though it was a relief that he had gone relatively easily, that night was so hard on me. I’ve had Joe since I was 14, and every night that we were in the same house, he slept with me. Even when we weren’t in the same place, I knew that Joe was somewhere in the world. That night was the first night in almost 18 years without him. I cried for a long time, because although I’d had him for so long and we’d had such a good life together, when you get down to it, 18 years isn’t long enough. It doesn’t seem fair that this little guy whom I had loved so much, who was basically my little brother, was gone and I had to go on without him. If you’ve ever had a pet, you’ll understand what I mean. Pets love us so intensely-Joe was one of only two creatures in my life that looked at me with adoration every time he saw me (the other was the golden retriever I had as a kid, Brandy). I always felt like the center of his world, and suddenly that was gone.

Joe was a really phenomenal cat. I got him when our neighbors up the street threw him out of the house for having “relations” with his mother (dude, he’s a cat, you didn’t fix him or his mother, shit’s going to happen). We found him later that same day, when he was wandering the streets and came to play with me on my front porch. We had a number of outside cats that we fed and played with at that time, but that afternoon when he saw me and came hurtling across two lanes of traffic and right in front of a semi to get to me, I told mom I thought he was too stupid to stay outside. He might get squashed. She agreed. Boy were we wrong-he was just exhibiting typical gifted behavior: get really focused on something you want and display an alarming lack of common sense in the pursuit of it. We realized he wasn’t stupid when he figured out how to eject tapes from the VCR and then push them back in because he liked the clicking noise (I watched him do that for 10 minutes one night and am still sorry we didn’t have a camcorder to record it). When he figured out that pressing the buttons on the answering machine sometimes let him listen to Uncle Norm talking for minutes on end, we had to keep the answering machine under a box so he wouldn’t break it, too. To this day, these stories are legend among my friends.

Joe could also communicate in ways I’ve never seen with another animal. Until his last few days, I always knew exactly what he was thinking. He was a Siamese mix and had that distinctive yowl as a result, and never hesitated to tell you what he really thought about what was going on. As the years went by, he learned to yowl in ways that sounded like English. You knew damn well when Joe was telling you “No.” We also had a language of head nods. I would nod my head at him, he would do the same back to me. It was our way of saying “Hey, how’s it going? Okay here.” Bongani saw Joe do that one night and incredulously asked “Did that cat just give you props?” Yes. Yes he did. My friend Kim said on more than one occasion that Joe was my familiar, and she was right. If we had been in Salem in 1692, Joe and I would have been toast. Joe spoke my language, or maybe I spoke his. It’s a very quiet apartment without him, and yesterday after Rick went to Pittsfield to check on his ma for the first time in a couple of weeks, Freddie and I looked at each other like “Shit, now what?” For as much as Freddie harassed Joe, what I’ve learned in the past two days is that he really loved him as well. Freddie has been downright subdued since Joe left us, sleeping a lot, glued to my side when he’s awake. He knows that something happened and that Joe isn’t here anymore, and he’s trying to make sense of it just like the rest of us.

So if I’m a little quiet for the next few days, know that’s what I’m doing: remembering my best friend, trying to figure out what to do now, and spending time with the little guy who’s been left behind with me. Think good thoughts for us and for Joe, okay?

That didn’t sound good. Oh well.

So earlier this week, I saw a free David Byrne concert in Prospect Park. I figured that was my freebie quota for a while. Possibly for the rest of the summer. But no! Because today I was reminded that Shakespeare in the Park starts, and as every New Yorker knows, that shit is free! It’s also a royal pain in the ass to get tickets to unless you don’t have a job, because traditionally, you get up at the butt-crack of dawn to line up by the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, and even then, no guarantees that you’re going to get those tickets (they give two to each person standing in the right part of the queue).

Except! Last year someone at The Public (Theater, for those of you who don’t live here) apparently thought of us working stiffs stuck in offices all day and invented a Virtual Line. You sign up between midnight and 1 PM of the day of the performance, then log back in between 1 and 6 PM that day to see if you’ve gotten tickets. Today, I figured “What the hell, it’s the first show of the season, let’s see if I can get in.” I also figured I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in, because I tried a couple of times last year and it never worked out. But today, today my friends, it worked. I signed into the line at 12:55 PM, then checked back at 1:05 PM and I had tickets! So tonight, rain or shine, I am going to see Twelfth Night with Anne Hathaway and Audra McDonald. I’m jazzed! And hoping for no rain. Cross your fingers for me, will you? Because those chairs are open to lightning, and I would like to make it to Sage’s 8th grade graduation tomorrow intact.

Fortunately, although we got into line at about 6:20 (gates opened at 6:30) and were well back in it, we found a guy that Rick plays softball with. Who happens to be the head of security for Celebrate Brooklyn. (Hi, Mike!) He got us in ahead of most of the line, and we were able to set up our blanket and picnic spread in plenty of time, which means that when Amelia arrived in Brooklyn, she had someplace to meet us. Fortunately, she got in ahead of them closing the gates as well, because we hadn’t come up with a contingency plan for that.

The show was fantastic. It was a lot of songs that David Byrne had collaborated on with Brian Eno, but there were a couple of big Talking Heads hits as well, and they kept the crowd jumping. But although I was very happy that it was someone I liked doing the opening concert of the year, I was happier still that the venue was finally open. I spend a lot of time at Celebrate Brooklyn concerts/movies/dance pieces in the summer because it’s a great chance to hang out with friends and have a picnic. Seeing it through Amelia’s eyes last night, I found an added benefit.

“Wow, I didn’t know there were this many hipsters in New York!” she exclaimed when she got to our blanket. And thus the “Count the Hipsters” game was born. Last night’s total, before the show started: 54. Good times.

This happened to me yesterday, while I was knitting on the girls’ balcony for a couple of hours. The sun was stronger than I thought, even indirectly and it was the first time my fishbelly white legs had been exposed to the sun for any length of time. As you can tell (I think), the sun was on my left and I was stretched out on a bench – my left leg is also burned on the left side, but I showed you the pale part for comparison. True story, I didn’t even realize I was this burned until several hours later because immediately after I came in from the balcony we saw Mary Stuart on Broadway and in the pitch black of a theater, my legs just felt a little itchy and I was blaming that on the seat upholstery. It was only when we got out of the theater that I was like, “Oh. OUCH.”

Flash forward to today in the office when I am wearing business shorts (the very thought of fabric touching this burn made me want to scream, so I didn’t even attempt it). We have three part-timers in their 20s in my office. All three are black, and one’s family is from Jamaica. I tell you this because I became an object lesson for them this afternoon when they came in.

“Oh my god! I didn’t know skin could get like that!” Well, yes, I’m pale. I burn (new concept for them, I don’t think any of the three of them has ever had a sunburn).

“That’s going to peel, isn’t it? And then you’ll be brown?” Yeah, it’s going to peel like a mo-fo, but after that I will be just as pale as I usually am.

“You don’t get tan? I didn’t know white people could burn like that and not get brown from it!” (calling other young part-timer over) “Dude, come look at Julie’s legs!!” That’s because you have never seen Irish/German people in the summer. We are unique.

I’m looking at this as a culture exchange. They have taught me about weaves, braids, and hair moisturizers, so I feel like it’s only fair that I can teach them about pale-skinned freaks like myself.