The Pomegranates: Last night after the bible study class, one of the other woman distributed piles and piles of pomegranates to the rest of us to shuck, in preparation for the great jelly making party that is planned for this weekend. I took a bag full and wasn’t sure I’d be able to get them all done. Ha! Last night I dragged out my largest mixing bowl, a knife, and a cutting board, and starting peeling apart pomegranates. It became almost mind-numbingly hypnotic in a way, especially now that I have been taught the super secret perfect way to open a pomegranate. Okay, it’s not all that secret – you just cut through the flower at the top, score the rind in both directions, and then it just pulls apart in sections like an orange. Less splattering of juice (but, I might add, more splattering of escaping seeds).

Her tree produces some divine pomegranates. There were some I would open where the seeds were so dark they were almost black, and every once in a while I just couldn’t stand it anymore and would pop a few into my mouth. Oh, so good! Of course the one drawback to getting pomegranates from the tree is every once in a while I would cut one open and find a rather annoyed little bug who thought he’d found himself a comfy home. Those went down the garbage disposal shortly after doing the dance of the 'euww', because they were obviously contaminated with bug cooties and no longer edible.

I have no idea how many pomegranates I shucked last night. All I know is that I was up until after midnight and there are only about seven left in that huge bag, and I filled my big mixing bowl almost to the top with enough seeds to pack a gallon Ziploc bag. My fingers are a rather disturbing shade of sickly yellow green and this morning I kept finding little splotches of purple on the counter and the floor every time I turned around. And with the seeds in my fridge, all the seeds from all the fruit everyone else is shucking, and seeds from pomegranates which may or may not join in the fray, we are going to be making one huge amount of jelly.

The Novel: Yesterday after work I finally sat down and poked at the novel again, bringing the word count up to just shy of 6000 words. I didn’t touch it at all today, nor do I expect I’ll get any time to do a single bit of writing tomorrow, but this weekend, somewhere between the jelly-making festivities, going to see the new Matrix movie, and a friend’s birthday gathering, I’ll have to find a few hours to crack out enough words to at least get me caught up.

The Cats: The good news is that the x-rays came back as normal as could be expected for Sebastian and Rosemary. And the even better news is that, after this, the only reason we have to go back to the vet before the end of the year is for Rebecca’s follow-up bloodwork.

I’m not sure Rosemary and Sebastian were as thrilled about the procedure, considering I dropped them off this morning and they had to spend the entire day at the vet’s office until I could pick them up again after work. But they got to express their displeasure at the whole ordeal to me – loudly – the entire drive home so I am sure that makes up for the indignity at least a little bit. Sebastian got x-rays because of the heart murmur, and right now it looks merely like something we should just monitor. He also needs to lose a little weight. Big surprise there. Rosemary’s x-rays were to make sure she didn’t have any bladder or kidney stones, considering the urinary tract issue, and thankfully she comes up completely clear.

However. Things are not quite so bubbly and rosy as one might think. Because there were crystals in her urine (did I mention we *finally* got a sample?), she now gets to go on a special diet, and worse yet, she’s not allowed to eat the normal food that all the other cats eat. This means, to my extreme dismay and frustration, that we must now put everyone on a meal schedule. All this time we’ve been able to just free feed, but because Rosie can’t eat that food anymore, no one gets it. The only other alternative is to lock her in another room permanently and that just wouldn’t be fair.

So for the next few weeks things are going to be…interesting. She’s on a wet food only diet (prescription), but (all fingers, toes, and other appendages crossed here), assuming she does well, there is a dry version of this food we could try. And if we can switch her to that, it’s possible we could just put everyone on it as well. Assuming, of course, that the cat with irritable bowl can tolerate it, but I am trying very hard not to think about what will happen if she can’t tolerate it, or if Rosie cannot switch to the dry, because right now, this radical shift in feeding schedules and treatment is about all I can currently handle.