Time, Warped.

A fall day in 2018.

I sit drinking my coffee, listening to the guy playing the fiddle in the square below as the tourists pass him by. His repertoire is seemingly limited. Or maybe he only plays what "works" for his audience of vacationers. Whatever his reason, this guy plays non-stop traditional-Québéçois-sounding fiddle tunes. The next guy who will take over that corner after him plays piano. Last week, it was non-stop Pachebel's Canon. The fiddle stops, and a kid is screaming.

Eight floors above, I take another sip of my coffee and type, still somewhat drowsy. I woke up at 11:36 a.m. The bedroom is dark with the blackout curtain closed; it's easy to lose all sense of time.

Booboo.

I had to put Booboo to sleep on Wednesday night. I took him to the vet on Wednesday morning because I thought he was constipated. In the car on the way there, I told him, "We'll get you fixed up; it's going be okay." But it turned out that there was water in his abdominal cavity and that he was severely sick. It wasn't constipation at all. The vet said it's a condition that happens very fast and gets bad quickly, and there was no way I could have known. We did X-rays to try to figure out more, and I rush ordered an expert opinion and went home with Booboo for the three-hour wait. We gave Booboo all his favorite things and lots of petting and ice cubes and his favorite toy. The vet had said she didn't want to give up hope, but it sure felt like our time together was unexpectedly coming to an end. Rapidly.

The summer of 40 and 100.

This was the summer of my 40th birthday and my great-aunt's 100th. Her birthday was July 2, which was a great way to reclaim that date. There was a big family reunion the week before her birthday, so I went down to where she and her children live, and my parents came up. More family met up there, then we all drove out to the middle-of-no-where West Virginia, to a camp resort where even more family people I'd never met before converged. Most were from the side of my great-aunt's late husband's family, and I didn't know them since I am from my great-aunt's side. (My grandfather was her brother.) It was great to meet and get to know the extended family.

While I was down there, before we went to the camp in no-cell-phone-reception-West-Virginia, I introduced them to my boyfriend via the magic of the Internet. We had hoped he would be able to come on the trip, but he had to work, so we did the next best thing. My second cousins were eager to meet him, and I wanted him to meet them all. As I sat down with my great-aunt and was in the process of connecting to my boyfriend using Google Chat video, I glanced over to my right and saw a stereoscope casually sitting on the table beside me. I thought about how much change my almost-centenarian great-aunt has seen in her lifetime as I watched her video chat with my boyfriend.

Icebergs.

Life is funny. I think it's the unexpected things that influence our life paths more than all the things we plan. Things like when I was placed in a French class (instead of my first choice of Spanish or second choice of Latin), or the chance timing of meeting someone and falling in love, or starting a new hobby. Sometimes change feels like a river whose path has shifted a little, and sometimes change is so dramatic that it creates a rupture, leaving behind only a Before and After.

I think about how my life's own Before and After as I stare into my closet and consider why I no longer wear certain outfits. Perhaps internal change is a lot like an iceberg whose only manifestation is the relatively small bit on the surface. We can grasp what's visible, but understanding its actual depth and nature is more difficult.

Lofty Endeavors, or My Debut in Four-Inch Heels.

I went to my first gala this weekend. It's been a lot of fun to think about dresses, shoes, jewelry, hair, nail color and other gala-related fashion details. I found my dress a month or so ago at a thrift store for $10. Don't panic on my behalf though: I know you are probably picturing the scary 1980s prom dresses that populate most thrift stores, but somehow I found two excellent formal dresses on the same day, plus some other non-formal finds.

August and Everything After...Is Unknown.

Somehow the months since mid-March have passed in a blur. A good blur. Like bokeh. The day I last wrote, I did indeed end up making madeleines that I gave to a friend for her 51st birthday. That evening at her party, I had a long conversation with her son. He seemed to be enjoying our talk, and I wondered if he might be interested in me. No, I told myself, he's younger...of course he wouldn't be interested in that way! But several weeks later, his mom put us in touch with an email, and we started emailing. Some weeks after that, he asked me on a date.

Most of the way through Q1.

So far 2015 has included some of the busiest months I have ever had. But this time has been good, mostly because in all the busyness, winter has gone by with me often in a survival-auto-pilot state. That might sound negative, but not having time to think too much in the depths of winter has actually been a relief. Supposedly February was the coldest in over a hundred years, but I was so busy going from one job to another that I hardly noticed. In fact, I was often loosening my scarf or removing one mitten because I was warm from jogging to try to catch the next bus so I wouldn't have to wait 6 or so minutes for another one.