This last weekend was our busiest weekend of the summer, as it concerned graduation parties – we had four parties in two days. We started the food fun on Saturday with a grad party for Jake and Katie, two fraternal twins of a great family we know from church. It was out past church, so it took about an hour to get there, but they have a lovely home and yard, and fed us well, and Mer got to beat me in two games of ping pong.
We headed back to our area, near our home, to the Octagon shelter in the Valley. Mer’s student Talia had her party there, and we ran into our colleague Jennifer there. I did not know Talia well, but she was very gracious to me at the party, and she really loved having Mer as a teacher.
Our last party on Saturday was Abby’s party. Abby was Mer’s student for two years, and she was in my improv group at school for a year, so we both knew her. Her home was large and beautiful, with a huge enclosed porch on which Mer and I sat. We knew many of the kids at the party, and several current and former CVCA parents joined us on the porch to chat for about an hour as evening fell. It was quite relaxing.
Sadly, our evening was not done. One of our cats, Cesario (“Cessy”), had been hiding in the basement for about a week. We had thought it was because of the Fourth of July fireworks and because of the heavy thunderstorms, but we had gotten concerned that he had been down there so long. Since our normal vet was closed, we took him to the west side of Akron, to an animal hospital that was open all the time.
We got right in to see a vet (it was about 11:00 pm, so they were not too busy), and they found Cessy had a fever. They did several tests, one of which was an x-ray of his body, and discovered one of his lungs was cloudy – about a third of his right lung. They wanted to keep him for observation and more tests, to which we consented. We left Cessy at the hospital and went home, getting to bed about 2:00 am. (For those wondering, it turns out Cessy has an abscess on his lung, which we are treating with medicine; the medicine may or may not work, which may or may not make surgery the only option – time will tell.)
On Sunday, we had one grad party – a student both of us knew well – Skyler. I have known Skyler since he was in eighth grade and joined his older sister in my Irish dancing club at school. Skyler was also in the Royal Fools improv club for two years, and Mer knew him through my clubs. Skyler’s party was at his mom’s house, in their huge back yard. Skyler’s older sister, Zivana, was there, as well as George (Zivana’s boyfriend of several years). Again, there was a bunch of students we knew well, and we had a good time playing bocce with some of them. Skyler also had his land tortoise roaming in the back yard, which was cool to watch. I picked him up at one point, and he is rather heavy.
After the party, Mer and I went home where we had a mellow evening playing games. I won a literature game called Dark and Stormy, while Mer kicked my butt at a cultural-literacy game called Finish Lines. We finished the weekend that way.