Getting Ready To Travel

We're going to Fairhope, Alabama on Friday, for the Alabama State Poetry Society spring awards luncheon. So I have to spend today and tomorrow getting ready, as far as possible. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate to travel. I like to have traveled, for something to look back on and feel as if I've done things and been places. But the actual experience is like holding my breath under water until I get back home.

I haven't always been so backwards; I've been all up and down the east coast of the U.S. and parts of the middle west. I've been to Canada, and across the water to England. Flew low enough over Ireland to see how green it is, and to wish I were down there. While I was in traveling mode, I should have gone out west and down to Mexico, and I would feel like I'd seen all of Earth that I was meant to see.

Some of the traveled spots I like to remember are Madison, Wisconsin; Wells Cathedral in England; an oolitic limestone formation near Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Cherokee, North Carolina. I think I could feel at home in Wisconsin. But when I crossed the line back into Alabama, I'd probably dissolve in happy tears, the way I've always done.

At least this weekend, we'll still be in Alabama.

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The vet said she could give Mo a blood transfusion, and it might make him feel better for a few days. But if his bone marrow isn't making red blood cells, it wouldn't do any good in the long run. They have a calico cat running around the clinic who is their "donor" cat. I worry that maybe the blood types wouldn't match. Do cats have blood types? But she didn't sound optimistic about any treatment for him.

I know one thing: No more pets will enter this house while I'm in it, except to visit and go home elsewhere. Fleas, neither, if I can ever get rid of the ones I've already got.

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I got antsy and phoned River City Publishing in Montgomery. Talked to a nice guy who said they were down to judging the final few manuscripts entered in the 2011 Fred Bonnie Memorial competition. He took my name and phone number and said he would get someone who knew more to call me. When I told him the title of my manuscript, he said, "Oh, I remember that!"