There isn't, at the moment. I keep crying and crying and I can't stop -- well, I can stop for brief periods, but then something sets me off again. My darling little 16-month-old Turkish Angora cat, Michiru, is sick, and the recovery possibilities range from her being totally fine, to being healthy but having permanently lost her sense of balance, to having FIP (feline infectious peritonitis), in which case she will probably be gone within a month -- maybe within a year, depending how the disease progresses and how much life-prolonging medical care we want to throw at her. Is it any wonder I can't stop crying?

This is the sort of thing that a year ago I would probably not have talked about in a journal. I would have waited until I knew what was going on, and then mentioned it, probably with a fairly dry depiction of my emotional state. Instead, well, you're getting the play by play. I'm not sure why, but it seems wrong somehow not to mention what's really going on; it's unfair to Michiru and the time she has left, whether that's a few weeks or another decade.

G-d, this sucks though. I've never dealt with death before, not of someone I cared about. My dog died when I was in high school, but to be honest I'm not such a dog person, and said dog was about ten or eleven and in poor health anyway, and in general I was so spaced out during my entire pre-California life that things didn't effect me normally. I didn't cry for my dog until last winter. This is all new, and I really don't approve of it one bit. Cats are supposed to die of old age, not get sick when you've only had them for a year. And people keep telling me to look on the bright side, which I'm sure is met well but really confuses me. How do I look on the bright side? If I'm sad, I'm sad. If I'm scared, I'm scared. The 'bright side' is that everything might turn out all right, but that doesn't change how I feel now.

Phone call from vet. Not a lot of information; Michiru has the coronavirus, which is unsurprising, and they don't have the other test back which will (how reliably I don't know) indicate if it is really FIP or not. But now I know how to take her temperature, which will at least give me a clue if her fever's gone away or not without having to take her into the vet again. Fever going away would be a good sign.

It's funny, how even something so awful as all this can mix in with the good things. Despite worrying constantly about Michiru, I had a really wonderful time at Brad & Gretchen's wedding. It was just amazing, from start to finish. Aside from a few glimpses of high school prom pictures, I'd never seen Gretchen more dressed up than silk shirts and funky skirts. For the wedding she had her hair up under a half-veil, and contacts, and was wearing this breathtaking cream-coloured dress with a long train... I almost didn't recognise her when she first appeared. There was a beautiful ceremony in a garden, mostly done by Liralen (with blue stripes in her hair!), and afterwards dinner and dancing and delicious cake! The dancing was especially impressive; Susannah had only started teaching them a few weeks ago, but they both looked really great. Brad had a wonderful goopy expression on his face -- well, he had it the entire evening, but it came out even more during the dancing. The reception also included an entertaining speech by Carl in which he told Brad & Gretchen's engagement story, including the bit about me and Jim convincing her to agree that if she and Brad weren't married by their tenth anniversary (31 October) she would elope with him. I was really touched that he mentioned it, and amused too -- it was such a random dinner conversation to have led to an event that's so important to so many people. I love it that life works like that.

After all of the usual reception foo Gretchen threw her bouquet, which was a bit more exciting than one might have expected. I'd made Angie promise she'd come stand with me when Gretchen threw it, since I didn't want to be the only one there. As it turned out, Christy appeared and told me that Gretchen had asked her to help make sure that I was the one to catch the bouquet -- a rumour Gretchen later denied vehemently, I might add. Regardless, it turned out that a lot of people were down there, many with the expressed purpose of making sure I and I alone caught the flowers. With so many of my friends conspiring against me it's probably not a surprise that I succeeded (memory snapshot of the the bouquet hitting my hand and a cloud of pink and white rose petals rising around it, then gently drifting to the ground), but I was surprised anyway, and pleased and excited and glowing. It meant so much to me to catch Gretchen's bouquet, not just because of the part Jim and I had to play in her getting married this year, but also because Gretchen is a very significant figure on my inner landscape, and somehow having caught the bouquet makes me feel satisfyingly connected. Like I'm a part of her life, even though I'm really not much of one.

Oh, and having all these people conspiring about me catching the bouquet, and then Christy and Angie sticking the fallen roses in my hair afterwards, and everyone coming by and teasing me and Jim... that was wonderful, too. My friends make me feel so loved. It was a warm moment I'll remember for a long time, despite all the unhappiness with Michiru. Amazing to me that both can co-exist... I was worrying that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the wedding, that I'd always look back on it as 'the time when Michiru was sick'. And maybe I will, but I'll also be looking back on it as 'the time when I caught Gretchen's bouquet', and that's good to have.