The cat (who isn’t sick anymore. I hope) Here is the story of the sick cat. At some point on Saturday, Tangerine got outside. We do not know when; all we know is that we didn’t even notice it until Sunday (for an extra heaping of bad cat parent guilt!) and then we could not find her anywhere at all, and we only found her after Richard put up posters on Monday morning and a neighbor called to say she’d been found. We can only assume that the whole thing was a huge trauma for her because when she came back she was nervous and lethargic and by the time we took her to the vet on Tuesday she was dehydrated and not eating, and basically we ended up force feeding her baby food and giving her fluids until Thursday afternoon when she finally decided that eating might be a good idea. Since then she has been doing her best to make up for lost time by sucking down food at every opportunity, and enjoying all the extra attention her very relieved humans have been giving her.

Jelly Two friends and I got together this morning and we made three batches of pomegranate jelly and 5 batches of jalepeno pepper jelly. The pomegranate jelly is very time consuming and also very tempermental and I have only ever had about a 50% rate of success in my years of making it for getting it to set into jelly and not just remain pomegranate syrup. The jalepeno pepper jelly is disgustingly easy and quick and very, very pretty, and the best part is that even if it does not set much, it doesn’t matter. We use the recipe from the Chevy’s Fresh Mex cookbook, and it is amazing.

For the pomegranate jelly, I shucked a bit more than half the pomegrantes from our tree to get enough seeds for one batch. My skin is so dry that it just sucks up any bit of dye, and the nifty thing about pomegranates is that while the seeds stain everything purple, the skin can stain everything an amazingly sickly yellow with just the faintest hint of green. If I had timed this better I could have simply said that the horrid coloration on my fingers was just part of some strange Halloween costume.

The niece Have I mentioned lately how much fun my niece is for the rest of us to watch (maybe not so much fun to her parents, from time to time)? The latest story, as related by my mom, is that my niece, who is six and a half, got so annoyed at the fact that her mom yelled at her (the fact that she deserved the yelling is, of course, irrelevant in the mind of a determined six year old) that she stormed off to her room and wrote her mom a letter, telling her that if she didn’t promise to never yell at her again, she was going to run away. I admit to wondering just how hard it was for my little sister to not burst into hysterical laughter and instead keep her calm about it. But anyway, the delicious irony of this is that it’s my little sister who was the one who tended to do exactly the same thing when she was young too.

The mind is a funny thing at 3 in the morning, when you are lying in bed trying, and failing, to fall back asleep. No matter how sleep deprived you might be, it will still insist on whirling around in a million different directions at the time when you want more than anything for it to shut the hell up already and let you go back to sleep. And I feel like, lately, the whole waking up at 3am and lying in bed with too many thoughts is becoming more than norm than the exception these days. Really, I need my life to become dull for a little while. No more worries about family members having risky sugrical procedures. No more worrying about cats who were lost outside in the cold for two nights and came home sick. No more obsessing about things I cannot control – the current administration’s latest idiotic and potentially disasterous decisions, the fate of our country in the grand scheme of the world, global warming, and on and on. Enough of all of these. I need sleep. I am tired of being tired.

It hasn’t been all bad, these past few weeks. My dad’s latest surgery went very well, since this time it was only the carotid artery they were cutting open instead of his ribcage. We flew up to Washington and spent a wonderful weekend visiting my little sister and my brother-in-law and the world’s cutest little six-year-old niece, decorating a Halloween gingerbread house, playing ‘soccer’ with a balloon ball, getting to feed alpaca, teaching my little sister and my niece to knit. There is a new yarn store opening soon in Davis, and from what I know of the soon-to-be owner, it’s going to be awesome. My very first knitting pattern I have ever submitted has been accepted for publication in a webzine (in December, yes I’ll post links). The pomegranate tree has produced a massive pile of pomegranates, some of which will be turned into jelly this coming weekend. We got to see Terry Pratchett in Petaluma this past weekend. I discovered how much fun it could be to commute to San Francisco and back by train. All good things, happy things, things that should let me rest easy and sleep through the night.

But the mind is a funny thing. And mine just isn’t ready to let go of all the things that are not so good and not so happy, and I do not know how to make it just stop spinning and leave me alone instead of waking me up at 3am and making me lie there instead, unable to do more than rest one hand on the back of our very sick cat and reassure myself over and over that she is still breathing and that she will be okay and the world will be a brighter place if only I could just figure out how to let go.

Today while at church I asked someone who has far more extensive experience about yards and trees and such than I, for advice on what to do with our tree. He noted that trees are actually far more resilient than we often give them credit for, and that it would likely be okay as long as we could drag it back upright and stake it firmly in place. So this afternoon Richard and I went to Lowe’s and tracked down a tree staking kit as well as a pair of tree clippers, and when we got home we hacked off large portions of the tree while it was still on its side and then dragged it back upright and managed to stake it into place. Apparently we are lucky in that it is prime tree pruning time right now anyway, so removing a big chunk of the weight makes it less top heavy and (we hope) less likely to go careening back down again in the (inevitable) next wind storm. I also took this opportunity to hack off a few of the small lower branches of the white peach tree, because it has a pesky tendency to grow branches that actually point down instead of up, and thus make the tree look more like a shrub and less like a tree. Although I should not speak too unkindly of the white peach tree because at least it is recognizably a tree. The pomegranate tree is the most un-treelike tree in our yard because it is just this wild shrubby thing with branches everywhere. I do not know if it ever will resemble a tree at all, but as long as it continues to produce pomegrantes as large and numerous as it currently is doing, it can pretend to be a low-running vine for all I care.

It was Joyful Noise Sunday this morning, which means it was busy. I picked up my dad for recorder group practice (since he’s not going to be allowed to drive again for a while) and there were only four of us but I think we sounded pretty good for our size. Choir is also smaller this year than in years previous – not sure if this is just because people are out of town, or if I am not the only one who is starting to really feel like I just need a break. The minister pulled my dad aside after the recorder group played and talked about how quickly and wonderfully he has recovered and everyone gave him a standing ovation, which was unexpected and a bit overwhelming.

There is a new Borders in Vacaville, which opened only a few weeks ago in the new shopping center along the freeway (and as an aside, it is a bit ironic and also extremely annoying that Vacaville can continue to get large retail establishments and lovely shopping areas, while my town has only managed to attract, of all horrible things to attract, a race track), so one of the regular knitting group members suggested we all meet there and check it out. I suggested to Richard that he could go with me because I knew it would be such a hardship for him to have to go hang out in a large, new bookstore for a few hours (not) so he brought along his laptop and we had a healthy lunch of coffee drinks and pastries and I sat with my knitting friends and he sat all by himself at another table and we both had a lovely few hours of doing things we like.

The good news is that I did manage to get my self-designed knitting item completely finished and bound off – twice, in fact (I bound it off last night but then ripped out the ends and tacked on another foot of length Saturday morning), which means that the total time it took to knit falls quite comfortably in the requirements for projects that Knitty is looking for. Not, mind you, that this is any guarentee in the remotest possibility that they will actually decide to publish my design, since I suspect that they likely get swamped with designs from hundreds of other hopeful knitters come submission deadline week, but I am currently doing my best to maintain my optimism, and at the very least, this made me actually *do* the darn thing, if nothing else.

The bad news is that by the time we woke up on thi morning, the apple tree was back down on its side again, and this time I saw what looks like possible fresh splitting near the base. Ugh. Although the wind couldn’t have been all that strong last night since our makeshift stake and prop method for the tangelo tree (slighly warped pole from bird feeder plus large plastic bag) seems to be holding just fine.

Richard’s parents and his little sister came up for the Scottish Games this afternoon, and I convinced his sister to play scarf model for me (mainly so I don’t have to do it myself) and dragged her outside into 90 degree weather and wrapped her in a coat and scarf and told her to look cold. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find somewhere to pose a knitted winter item outside where it might actually look wintery, when it is 90 degrees outside and the trees are all still leafy and green?

The Scottish Games this year were kind of tired and small. We’d heard rumors that the person in charge of organizing the music kind of dropped the ball, but it looks like they weren’t the only one who flubbed up. There were only about half as many booths from clans there, and only about half as many vendors, and even the band we ended up listening to had only about half the amount of energy (or even talent) as what we’re accustomed to seeing. I hope this is just a fluke and that next year’s Games are back to their former strength, but it was a bit disappointing.

We met up with my parents for dinner at an Italian place in Davis, since they had a play this later evening and that way they were closer to where they needed to be. Richard and I did not renew our season tickets for the musical theater this year, mainly because we both needed a break, but also because this season they are scheduled to do Oliver again, and I am quite frankly still traumatized by the last time they did Oliver (the main character attempted to make up for the fact that he could not sing by increasing his volume and thus, his painful off-key-ness. It was…well, I still cannot speak of it without cringing). My mom and dad are slowly starting to eat out again, so that they can work out how to find ways for my dad to meet his dietary restrictions when he goes back on the road for work. Dinner was fun and noisy and involved a lot of laughing which is usually the case when our families get together, and it was nice to see my dad looking much more like his normal self.

The good news is that I did manage to get my self-designed knitting item completely finished and bound off – twice, in fact (I bound it off last night but then ripped out the ends and tacked on another foot of length Saturday morning), which means that the total time it took to knit falls quite comfortably in the requirements for projects that Knitty is looking for. Not, mind you, that this is any guarentee in the remotest possibility that they will actually decide to publish my design, since I suspect that they likely get swamped with designs from hundreds of other hopeful knitters come submission deadline week, but I am currently doing my best to maintain my optimism, and at the very least, this made me actually *do* the darn thing, if nothing else.

The bad news is that by the time we woke up on thi morning, the apple tree was back down on its side again, and this time I saw what looks like possible fresh splitting near the base. Ugh. Although the wind couldn’t have been all that strong last night since our makeshift stake and prop method for the tangelo tree (slighly warped pole from bird feeder plus large plastic bag) seems to be holding just fine.

Richard’s parents and his little sister came up for the Scottish Games this afternoon, and I convinced his sister to play scarf model for me (mainly so I don’t have to do it myself) and dragged her outside into 90 degree weather and wrapped her in a coat and scarf and told her to look cold. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find somewhere to pose a knitted winter item outside where it might actually look wintery, when it is 90 degrees outside and the trees are all still leafy and green?

The Scottish Games this year were kind of tired and small. We’d heard rumors that the person in charge of organizing the music kind of dropped the ball, but it looks like they weren’t the only one who flubbed up. There were only about half as many booths from clans there, and only about half as many vendors, and even the band we ended up listening to had only about half the amount of energy (or even talent) as what we’re accustomed to seeing. I hope this is just a fluke and that next year’s Games are back to their former strength, but it was a bit disappointing.

We met up with my parents for dinner at an Italian place in Davis, since they had a play this later evening and that way they were closer to where they needed to be. Richard and I did not renew our season tickets for the musical theater this year, mainly because we both needed a break, but also because this season they are scheduled to do Oliver again, and I am quite frankly still traumatized by the last time they did Oliver (the main character attempted to make up for the fact that he could not sing by increasing his volume and thus, his painful off-key-ness. It was…well, I still cannot speak of it without cringing). My mom and dad are slowly starting to eat out again, so that they can work out how to find ways for my dad to meet his dietary restrictions when he goes back on the road for work. Dinner was fun and noisy and involved a lot of laughing which is usually the case when our families get together, and it was nice to see my dad looking much more like his normal self.

The wind woke me up at 3:30 this morning and I lay in bed for the next two and a half hours until the alarm finally went off, unable to sleep. It was so loud, so intense outside, and I kept getting up to check on things, random thumps and crashes and bumps. It was almost a relief when the alarm finally went off at 6am, because by then the sun had started to rise and I could finally look outside and see what had transpired during the night.

Today was garbage day in our part of town. Garbage cans and garbage were strewn everywhere. The cans themselves, some still full of bags of trash, had been blown into little groupings. Later in the day, I saw our next door neighbor heading off to rescue his can; he laughed and noted we’d better go fetch ours from the garbage can nest as well.

Driving to the bakery for breakfast, the streets were littered with garbage and greenery. Whole branches of huge trees were scattered here and there on lawns and sidewalks and streets. Heavy basketball hoop stands, their bottoms filled with cement, lay on their sides.

The traffic getting to work was horrible; it took me nearly twice as long as usual to get there, and I saw ambulances passing by on the highway shoulder, going both directions. I never saw an accident on the way to work, but on the way home I heard that the freeway had been temporarily blocked due to a fallen tree.

I got to work and discovered that the office had no power. My boss was already there, and we were the only two who would have been there anyway. He’d drained his laptop battery on the plane coming home last night so couldn’t get anything productive done if he stayed, and without access to the company network, I couldn’t do anything useful at all. So eventually we both gave up and left – him to find a coffee shop or bookstore with a wireless network and an electrical outlet, and me to go home to chart out the final draft of my pattern-in-progress and then finally, to sit down and knit. I did check my work email a few times during the day, but there was nothing in it to worry about. There were power outages at Richard’s office too, although he’s been working from home all week so he wasn’t so lucky as me, to get the unexpected free day.

This evening, when we came home from dinner I peered outside to check on our trees, since a few had been getting dangerously buffeted by the wind and I was worried about them. Turns out it wasn’t just the trees we should have been worried about. Two entire sections of fence between us and our neighbors have come down, both squarely on top of the poor little tangelo tree. I knocked on their door but no one was home, and so Richard and I heaved the fence chunks off the tree and stacked them carefully on the nearest flat, dry surface. The tangelo tree is still young enough that it is mostly just green branches, not old enough to have developed anything resembling a trunk, so I grabbed the only thing I could find that resembled a plant stake (the pole from an old bird feeder that fell apart a few years back and slammed that into the ground and then tied the tree to the pole with a plastic bag. I didn’t want to use string because that would dig into the bark, so the plastic bag seemed like the only possible option for a temporary fix.

The tangelo tree wasn’t the only victim of the wind and the fence. The apple tree had also fallen completely over to one side, and was smashing the pomegranate tree. After nearly five years this apple tree has finally started to produce not only flowers, but actual fruit, just this summer – fruit that we could not eat, of course, because the worms got to every single one of the tiny little apples, but it was a promising start, and now it is entirely possible that it has been damaged enough that it might die. I am frustrated by this because it is one thing to be patient and wait for several years once; it is another to face the possibility that we may very well have to go through another five years of waiting before we get any apples of our own.

We called the hardware store to see how late they were open, but there was no answer, so next I called my parents to see if maybe they might have something we could borrow to stake up the tree, and amazingly, they still had the poles that had been pounded in place to hold up their trees, which are old enough and massive enough that not even this kind of crazy wind storm can take them down. So we drove off to my parents’ house, expecting to have to dig some poles out of the ground, but it turned out my dad was able to just break them off at the base, and so back we came home, to hammer two poles as far into the ground as we could, and then scrounge up a few more plastic bags to hoist the tree back upright. I am not enitrely sure that our makeshift system will hold – the tree still tilts slightly toward the pomegranate tree – but at least it is no longer lying on *top* of the pomegranate tree, and so I am crossing my fingers that this will at least keep it up through the night. Tomorrow morning we’ll call the gardeners and see what they recommend, and also likely hit thehardware store to get some sturdier poles. The fence will just have to wait until the neighbors come home, so we can figure out the best way to get it fixed.

While we were out there, trying to rescue the trees, I noticed that the wind has had one good side effect. The pomegranate tree has been blown completely clean of all the spiderwebs, and I could see just how many pomegranates it actually has. I am in awe. There are more pomegranates on there than I had realized, and some of them are massive in size, and some of them are starting to darken from yellow to red. So I am crossing my fingers and hoping that despite the wind and the birds and the worms and everything else that has attacked our trees and prevented us from getting anything more than one single, solitary white peach this entire growing season, the pomegranates might just pull through and make up for all the rest. Assuming, of course, that the apple tree stays up and the rest of the fence doesn’t come crashing down and put us out of fruit possibilities for the rest of the year.

I have, over the past year or two, developed this nasty habit of letting this journal go – not because I don’t have anything to write about, but because I feel that I have to catch up; to write that one missing entry before I do all the others that have come since then, and then of course, weeks pass and I feel more and more guilty that I am letting it just sit here with nothing, all because I cannot get one damn entry written to let the backlog out.

The current reason for not having updated is that I still have yet to upload the pictures from DragonCon – mainly because I know that a lot of them are going to require some work (my spiffy new camera doesn’t like taking pictures indoors so much; something about the lighting) so they’re not just dark blobs, and I really wanted to link to the pictures when I wrote up my DragonCon recap entry. But that’s not happening any time soon for a number of reasons (not the least of which is that I am currently trying to write up, and knit, a pattern to submit for actual publication) so I need to stop waiting and just write, because otherwise the words in my head just go away. And I am tired of letting that happen.

First of all, a long overdue update on my dad. He is doing so very much better, especially now that he is out of the hospital and back home. He was discharged from the acute rehabilitation clinic after only two weeks and sent home to continue physical therapy on an outpatient basis. He’s walking with a cane, but it seems like that is going to be only temporary, and he’s had a chance to play both piano and organ and know that when it comes to his music, he’s going to be fine. We are all perusing recipes and finding ways to make things with no added salt and I have decided that this can just be one more part of my own determination to find ways for Richard and I to eat a healthier diet.

DragonCon was fun. A lot of fun. Quite possibly the most fun time I have ever had at DragonCon. We stayed in the Hilton, which meant we had to do a lot more hiking back and forth (since the bulk of the panels and events took place in the Marriott and the Hyatt). But this also meant that we had a nice quiet room in a hotel that was not (unlike the Marriott and the Hyatt) completely full of Con attendees, and thus we could both get at least a little sleep. We got to see Ellen Muth, who played George on Dead Like Me, and a whole host of cast members from Battlestar Gallactica (the new one), and we went to a ton of panels, and we stayed up very, very late listening to silly sci fi/fantasy spoof music, or watching hysterical mockumentaries about gamers, and we watched the parade (Richard’s first time watching the parade, actually) and had fun checking out all the wild costumes, and met an online friend of Richard’s who turned out to be a very cool graphic novelist, and we ate mediocre, over-priced sushi and bought t-shirts with snarky sayings on the front and overall, it was awesome.

Since we returned it’s been back to the usual, mostly, with extra stuff here and there to keep us on our toes. I was really determined to not be in choir this year at all but I am feeling so guilty about bailing on the only other tenor that I have decided to at least stick it out through the end of the calendar year before fleeing (we’ll see if my steely resolve lasts). Checkers has now decided to live full-time in the computer room and we rigged up a little ‘cave’ for her in the bookshelves above the file server and I have decided that if it makes her happy to be a one-room kitty, well who am I to try to convince her otherwise. I got to go with a bunch of other knitters to listen to, and meet one of my favorite blog reads (and authors), the Yarn Harlot, and it was very cool. Richard is giddy about getting to go see Neil Gaiman in Berkely in a few weeks and we just found out that Terry Pratchett is going to be coming to a bookstore only an hour or two away in October and we are both also very giddy about that. The weather’s starting to cool down enough to make us all think that maybe autumn is finally here, and even though I know damn well that just when we start to relax and enjoy the cooler weather, it will turn on us and resume being unbearably hot and nasty out just in time for Halloween, I am still pretending that maybe this year things will be different and the summer heat truly has gone away for good.

Since yesterday was his first day in rehab, we all figured we would wait until the afternoon to go visit my dad, to give him a chance to settle in to his new routine. It worked out well, because I have had this weird thing on my arm that looked kind of like a strange and miniature volcano, and when I finally called the advice nurse about it yesterday she thought it sounded like I’d been chomped by something, and told me I should have it looked at. My lucky little sister got to go with me to the hospital, where the doctor poked at my arm and said that it might be a bug bite or it might be some kind of bizarre wound reaction, and either way, I ought to keep an eye on it. So he wrote me up a prescription for what turned out to be massive horsepills of antibiotics. Lucky me.

I worked feverishly on the lace stole that was supposed to be done last weekend (ha) and my little sister whipped up some banana bread and a white peach crisp that I was far too tempted to just insist we eat ourselves, and we went through the usual laughing phone calls with my mom, accumulating a list of stuff she needed us to pick up at my parents’ house and bring to the hospital. And then Richard and my sister and I all piled into the car and drove off to see how he was doing, and the very best thing to see was him in his regular clothes again, having finally gotten rid of that oh-so-stylish hospital gown.

This morning it was hard to drive my sister to the airport and hug her goodbye. I am so very glad that she came down and stayed with us because it made it easier to bear all of this with her here. And I know how much it meant to my mom to have someone else at the hospital with her to handle all the scares and worst case scenarios and news that the doctors kept bringing in.

It seems impossible that this all started barely over a week ago, and even more impossible that my dad could have progressed so quickly from lying like death in his hospital bed hooked up to too many machines and IV’s to count, to being able to scoot around in a wheelchair and, even more amazing, even stand on his own. There is still so much work ahead for him and for my mom and for my whole family to adjust to all of this – figuring out a new diet and doing some temporary reconfiguring to my parents’ house so however he comes home – if it’s a with a wheelchair or a walker or a cane – he will be able to have as much freedom of movement as possible until he gets better. But I feel like there is hope, and that finally, my dad is starting to see that there is hope too, and that will somehow make the next few weeks or months or however long it takes feel less like the forever that the last week has been.

I went to the hospital on Wednesday night and got to see my dad actually sitting up for a little bit – a definite improvement over the past few days. What was even better was finding out that he’d improved so much they were transferring him out of ICU and sending him off to Telemetry. They also sent him off for an MRI, which confirmed the fact that his carotid arteries are dangerously constricted, so the doctors are beginning to discuss how (and when) they can treat that so it doesn’t get any worse.

Thursday night I did not get to the hospital at all. I needed allergy shots, and I knew that by the time i got done with those and turned around to come back to Sacramento, it would be time to turn right back around and head home. So instead I went home after the shots and called my mom and my little sister, who were at the hospital most of the day, and told them to call me when they were heading out, and that they were to come to my house for dinnner so they wouldn’t have to have yet another meal of hospital food, and instead of visiting my dad, I made what is quite possibly the best lasagna I have made so far. I used whole wheat noodles, which don’t get so mushy when they’re cooked, and I chopped up a zucchini and a yellow squash and half a white onion to stir into the cheese mixture as a filling, and added in a few cloves of garlic, minced, to give it some pep, and oh, was it good.

Yesterday my boss and I were eying the clock and debating whether we could just leave a little earlier than we might normally leave, when my cell phone rang, and it was my mom, calling to tell me that my dad as doing so well they were ready to discharge him, and that he would be going to an extremely good acute rehab program in Sacramento. So there was my good excuse for leaving work a little early! I zipped off to the hospital and waited while they discussed paperwork and insurance and everything else, and then we followed my dad off to the next phase in his recovery. Later, my little sister and I drove home together and stopped by Baker’s Square for dinner and had a completely unhealthy meal of fried cheese sticks and artichoke dip, followed by pie, because sometimes junk food is the only way to overcome a week full of exhaustion and stress and also pie is a perfect way to celebrate one’s father graduating from ICU to Telemetry to Rehab all in the space of three days.

In the middle of this thing that is going on with my father, the rest of life still must go on. That means going to work (and jumping every time the cell phone rings), and doing laundry, and paying bills, and scooping litter boxes, and dealing with cats who need medical attention too. Yesterday morning I dropped Sebastian off at the vet and then had two reasons for leaping for the phone every time it rang. Since he is nearly 15 years old, going under anesthesia is a risky thing to do, so I was half afraid that the vet would call to tell me that he didn’t make it through the surgery. But despite my worries he came through just fine, although he now has no more teeth at all (before this he was only down to his four front fangs, so it wasn’t like he had a lot left to lose). I picked him up from the vet last night, drove home, deposited the growling, wobbly cat into the upstairs bathroom and shut the door on him so he wouldn’t hurt himself, and then turned around and drove back to Sacramento to go to the hospital, because after Monday’s not-so-good news, I needed to see him and reassure myself that he was doing better.

And yes, he is doing better. They’ve got both an occupational and a physical therapist visiting him now, both of whom were able to push him to a little more progress with his right side. Now that he is coming out of the drug-induced fog he was in all weekend, he stays awake a little longer and can carry on actual conversations. And today when I arrived I discovered that he is doing so well that he finally could be transferred out of ICU. So as of this evening he’s been moved to a more ‘regular’ hosptail room; even better, they’ve removed all but one of his needles and tubes. He looks less like a Borg and more like a normal person.

I have decided that all of the crazy roller coaster of the last few days has all been to prove to us just how lucky my dad really is. Bcause of the stroke, they did an ultrasound on his carotid arteries on Tuesday, and followed that up with an MRI this afternoon, and discovered that they are both full of plaque, and the left one is seriously, almost dangerously, constricted. Basically that stroke could have happened at any time and it is only a *very* lucky coincidence that it happened now, and was mild enough that he’s going to recover, but serious enough that they ran these tests. So now we know that the problem is there and they can treat it, eventually, somehow. I catch myself thinking about what *could* have happened – because it sounds like the stroke was inevitable, and likely sooner rather than later – and it is really hard to stop myself from going down that self-torturing mental path.

So instead I am focusing on the mundane things of life. Emptying and reloading the dishwasher. Feeding and medicating an extremely pissed off (and now toothless) cat. Figuring out a way to finally get a good night’s sleep, now that one more hurdle has been jumped and we are all one step further down this (very long) path until we can put this whole thing behind us and (oh, please) never have to go through this again.