January update

January was, as always, an iffy month.  Fluctuating winter doldrums from missing my Sunday mornings on the trails and waking up to continued darkness each morning.  Slacking mental capacities thanks to years of scholastic winter breaks conditioning me to be a meat head for a month.  Heavy caseloads at work, where each time I sit to write notes during lunch or at the end of the day I end up staring at the screen for ten minutes while my body's alternator tries to jump start my brain.  (Insert co-workers: "Staring at it won't make it come easier."  Also, orthopedic and other scheduled surgeries come to a lull depending on time of year and various holidays.  Oncology units, on the other hand, never take breaks, especially non-surgical and thus more medically acute patients.  And with their fluctuating mental status and needs for assistance x2 people for basic mobility, your days become filled with lots of and lots of squats.  When you lay in bed and try to get comfortable - that is when you find out if you had good body mechanics or not.) 

Between those moments were, thankfully, plenty of anti-January things.

Getting the ever present kitteh things out of the way, Merus's last visit to the vet that yielded more extractions has been an absolute dream ever since.  I pushed for an x-ray, and we finally found the root of the problem (pun not intended).  She is now just over 3 weeks post-op, meaning the long acting pain shot has worn off and we are now left with the evidence of whether it worked or not - and it has.  She yawns with her mouth wide open instead of stifled half way, she has no qualms over food textures, she and her sister get along as siblings should (snuggling at times and an even distribution of who initiates play fights).

The teeth:

 
Nathan now calls her Snaggle Tooth.  

And at some point this happened:

Sadie has taken to jumping to the tops of doors:

 
Bad Cat is in bad need of a cat jungle gym, but we're not going to pay for something like that, especially when it would take up half of our measly living room.  We've had the fortune of watching her miss a few times.  At this point I no longer help her down in hopes that she realizes the predicament she creates.  (I am pretending that cats have object permanence and that Sadie actually has a conscience.  Highly unlikely, but whatever.)

Moving along, I got a haircut.  The only picture I have at this point is from my phone, hence the blur:

The first three episodes of Northern Exposure came through Nathan's store, so he snatched them up.  Always nice to have non-cat entertainment in the evenings to make us feel more like normal people and less like crazy cat people.

We've discovered Rummikub thanks to Molly and Brian, who joined us for Christmas Eve dinner and have had us over a few times now for game nights mixed with football nights.  Brian is also a Patriots fan, so we're going to play more Rummikub while watching the Superbowl since all our teams and our backup teams are done. 

While I've been stuck on the roads for a while on my Sunday runs, the cold temperatures (especially this last week) mean the few others I encounter along the way are out there for similar reasons.  It's so nice to exchange genuine smiles and greetings with others in the community.  That's part of what makes the Palisades so dear to my heart.

Nathan also came across a slew of cds at work.  The most notable has been Tom Lehrer.  I didn't know what to make of him at first, but then I learned he taught mathematics and we heard his more nerdy and/or politically sly songs.  Here are two nerdy gems that are also re-posted by others on YouTube:

Lastly, we took the opportunity yesterday to go on a winter day hike.  A forecast of mixed precipitation meant downgrading from the Catskills to the Hudson Highlands, though we still had a wonderful time.  Even with a double slide out.  That story, though, will be for another post coming shortly.