Whirlwinds can bring in a nice breeze

The last time I wrote anything here, I was getting ready to leave for Florida, to meet John and Chuck at the beach house. I did, it was great, whatever. It was a week that went by too quickly. We were grateful for it, but yeah, it was too brief. At any rate, here's some proof that we were there:


Here, you can see most of what we did during the trip.
And here's Chuck, being Ansel Adams in his own right.




And here are John and I with an alligator. I don't think I need to explain myself on this one.

So then the trip was over and I came home. I finished out June with the rest of my teaching, preparing all the while for my move to the new apartment. The apartment is actually in Brooklyn, but it's a block away from Queens. I've taken to calling it Queenklyn. Anyway, there's a great deal of painting and fixing and primping needed before John gets here, so I'll be spending the month of July making magic happen. I've been busy doing very little else, actually. My world is comprised mostly of painting now. Paint fumes are my friend. Then, of course, there was that little thing that happened in the Bronx.

The week before I moved out completely from the old apartment, I was accosted by seven... seven Hispanic guys while I was walking home at around 9pm. There was some inappropriate touching which took place, and I had to lay hands on two of them before it was over. I'l leave it at that. The next day, John called me to tell me that my darling Apollo had passed away in the night, from an apparent cardiomyalgia... genetic defect that went unnoticed before. He died peacefully, in his sleep. Athena seemed fine, but we had her checked out anyway. Turns out she had little baby heartworms, but that's no biggie... just a treatment, and, since she was so young, she'd recover fine. She went in for the treatment, then came out two days later and back home for recovery.

A couple of days later was the final moving day. On my way from Queenklyn to the Bronx to finish my packing before the movers got there, I was part of a gun incident on the A train. It ended well, an no one got hurt, but it was pretty scary, and I did get to pull the emergency brake chord in our subway car. When it was all over, I continued on my merry way. When I got to the apartment in the Bronx, I began my final packing sweep; thirty minutes in, I got a call from John. Athena had passed away overnight. An autopsy showed the cause. It wasn't the treatment, since she was recovering beautifully from that... she had simply eaten a stick. Yes, a stick. It punctured the lining of her stomach, and the wound went ceptic; she died peacefully, and there was nothing anyone could have done.

I've had better weeks.

There have been a couple of other deaths that week... my sister-in-law's husband's father passed of cancer, and a friend of Nate's was shot and killed the following day. As for me, I'm just making sure I don't piss off the fates any more than I obviousy already have. Whatever's going on, I at least have paint fumes. Besides, I've started going to my two summer courses, which are rolling along just fine so far. At least it should keep my mind off of all the death. Ah, yes... hot fun in the summertime. But really, I'm fine, John's fine. We miss our kids, and it's ridiculously painful. We'll be fine, though. Hey... I can write a song about it or something, right? As for the other crap that's been happening to me... hey, more songs. I knew there had to be a good side to this somewhere. Well, not so much of a good side, maybe, but a different side that doesn't suck as much. I'll go with that for now.