Saturday, August 30, 2008

The Thing That's Missing

Here I am, in Salt Lake City. The past three weeks have been grueling, to say the least. Emotionally, physically, financially, etc. The trip out was quick and smooth, but the adjustments have been difficult, though the city is beautiful. My apartment is quite lovely too, but when I moved in, I found out almost immediately that, worse than sewer rats,



I have toilet bunnies. Gross. I've put out traps and cheese but I can't seem to catch the suckers.

Though the area is lovely (I see mountains when I walk out of my front door! It's always sunny!) and the people are so nice they make Midwesterners seem like Bostonians, we've all been having some difficulties getting used to not being in Iowa. Bailey was so disconcerted with his new environment, that he promptly stopped pooping, then eating, then drinking. He was hospitalized for three days for what was basically an extended colonic. Maybe we should have moved to L.A after all.

But the danger seems to have passed for now and he is his old goatish self again. 



Here he is mid feeding-frenzy. His eyes kind of roll back in his head, like a shark's. After recent events, if Bailey could disembowel me with one bite, he probably would, and who could blame him.

While he was gone, Kevin and I passed our Bailey-less nights eating blueberries (her) and drinking beer (me) and watching Denzel Washington movies (us). Single girls in a crazy new city! It was almost like a sitcom, except instead of two hot young things in New York, it was a thirty-something grad student and her overweight rabbit in the LDS capitol. Hmm...that just made me depressed.

Kevin was thrilled at Bailey's return. She groomed the vet-smell off his head and ears and then rolled over on her back with joy. Then she humped him, which sort of killed the moment.

I have not been so lucky. My boyfriend has not been getting colonics at the animal hospital, nor humped by me. Instead he's back there in Iowa, kicking the restaurant into high gear for the start of classes, the first football game, the post-bar hours. Leaving him was really hard. We talk on the phone a lot, but you know, it's not the same. And Birdie, my stepdog, the pig on the carpet...I lay awake in the mornings thinking about them, spooned together in a big, half-empty bed, waiting for me to come home.