Latest on the cats is they still haven’t conquered their fear of the flap. I am holding it for them and letting it brush their backside as they go through. I am harboring a trio of retards.

Brunswick, my orange tabby, will push open our wooden door to stalk geckos in the entryway when I leave the house in the morning to get the paper from the driveway. But the flap is rocket science.

We were going to have Thanksgiving dinner and invite some people but Ed’s doctor has scheduled a procedure requiring anesthesia on the day before Thanksgiving. Recovery will certainly interfere with the holiday so we won’t be entertaining.

Meanwhile, just as I was enjoying a pain free back, I had a visual nightmare and squirreled my way around the apparition to get away from it. The move apparently caused a major glitch in my lower back that was so bad I couldn’t get back to sleep. After an hour of struggling, I took a Tylenol with codeine. Luckily I didn't wake Ed to tell him about the “danger” (he hates when I do that). Sometimes the apparition is accompanied by a certainty that I'm about to die and it's only polite to let Ed know and say goodbye before “the end”. This impulse is guided by the fact that when I have such a nightmare the "reality" of it hangs on, sometimes for a full minute until, staring into the middle distance, I come to my senses. After a number of irate exchanges with Ed in the past, I have, even in my confusion, trained myself to let him be. And that is why I am still here to write about it.

The pill has worn off but the pain isn't as bad. I am nonplussed that I am so vulnerable these days. Or, more to the point, pissed off.

Yesterday Ed and I drove to a Fort Myers mall to Macy’s and bought an on-sale Martha Stewart bed-in-a-bag and sheets with a high thread count. The colors are, of course, a mixture of gray and teal and will blend in nicely with our walls. And, no, it’s not too much teal. I’d love to be a mermaid and live in a seagreen ocean.

We stopped for deli sandwiches and I was looking forward to a rare "normal" lunch compared to the grapes and gerbil food I often have. But I had to clean kitty litter off the floor because Chewy stands on the edge of the pan and pushes off lately, dumping most of the contents. It was a big job. I took the occasion to totally clean both pans.

And last night, I was sitting at the computer and smelling really pungent kitty poop (the pans are just around the corner). But when I got up I saw that Chewy, lounging on the desk, had dumped residual wet poop on a letter. I got wet toilet wipes and cleaned him off to a great deal of growling and annoyance. Poor kitty. He can't help it. Poor me, too, now that I think of it. Yes, I tossed the letter.

xx, Teal