Our Second “First Date”

  A few days later would be the originally set first date. The plan was to go out for a quick dinner and then catch "The Corpse Bride" at the local movie theater. We laughed and talked the whole time. We were really hitting it off extremely well.

  After the movie neither one of us wanted the night to end so we decided to go have a ‘night cap’. Being a Friday night there was only one place I could think of to go and that was Moxie’s. It was a bar not far from us and Fridays were always Karaoke night.

  At the time I didn’t know what she felt about Karaoke, but I figured it would be fun nonetheless. I never claimed to be a singer, but I am an entertainer. As a matter of fact, I’m a terrible singer but I do sing with passion. Christine thoroughly enjoyed my renditions of songs throughout the night despite being neither on key or off key (they were all over key).  On the flip side, Christine was a beautiful singer. During her second or third song of the night another patron leaned over to me and told me that she was a “keeper”.  I didn’t need to be told that. I already knew.

  When neither one of us were singing, we danced while others sang. It didn’t matter the song either. I remember that at least one song was “Tainted Love” even though what I was feeling was anything but…

  That night we decided that since we had now been dancing during both of our dates so far, we should actually go to a real dance club sometime soon. Neither one of us was really versed in the nightclub scene, but I did know of the dance club that Mark and I went to the previous month called The Heartthrob. It wasn’t a super rocking place, but it qualified.

  I knew pretty quickly how head over heels I was for this girl. Christine was trying to be more cautious with her feelings. That was until she came home from her Volley ball game on Sunday night and found a burned CD taped to the front door of her apartment. It was then that she told me that she really let herself fall for me.

  The following week we went to that dance club and we spent the whole night dancing and couldn’t take our eyes off of each other.

                                 Ready to go Dancing

  Meanwhile, on a sadder note, during this whole time period, my youngest guinea pig, P-Chan, had developed a huge swollen face on her left cheek. It looked comical, but painful and she wouldn’t eat. I had ended up taking her to a vet for exotic pets (Who knew guinea pigs were considered ‘exotic’) She was diagnosed as having an abscess. If it was from a mouth puncture by a piece of hay, they could perform a surgery and drain it and she would be fine. Most likely it may be caused by her jaw and it will become chronic. I couldn’t just put her down, so I paid the hundreds of dollars for the surgery and hoped for the best.   

A few weeks later, after I met Christine, she and I were at my place sitting on the couch watching TV when the poor little animal went into convulsions. Christine said it was septic shock. We rushed her to a 24 hour vet and they checked her out. In the end they basically told me they couldn’t do anything, but they could care for her until I could take her to the vet in the morning for almost $1,000.  I couldn’t justify paying that just to keep her alive through the night and not even to fix her. So I paid $150 to take her back home and try to keep her alive on my own.

   I’ve only known Christine less than two weeks and she got to experience me cry over a guinea pig. I did the best to keep her warm and she made it through the night. I took her to the vet in the morning and they informed me that she wasn’t strong enough for immediate surgery and would have to keep her overnight and check on her the following day. I spent the whole day worrying about her surviving. Around 3:00 the Vet called and said she was doing well and she had been eating a little on her own also.  I was so relieved. I even called Lori whom was worried and had purchased her for me way back when. About a half hour later, the vet called again. She didn’t make it. I had to call Lori back and tell her the bad news.

  Lori wanted to come with me and pick up the animal for burial. When we got there, they had wrapped the animal and put it in the carrying case for us. A little girl inquired as to what animal was in there as they handed it to us. We told her a guinea pig and hoped she didn’t want to see this one. We got out of there fast and took her to an area near my apartment to bury her. Even though it was just a guinea pig, it was still sad.