Another Diabetic

Today we took our cat, Allie, to the vet. She had been drinking and urinating quite a bit lately. She also looked like she was losing weight. When I cleaned the litter box, it was mostly urine, not poop.

It turns out she is diabetic and will need shots twice a day. We started this evening. Though we did this before, she presents more problems. She doesn't like any particular food which our other cat, Fluffy, adored. When he knew he was going to get his wet food, he just sat for the needle and then jumped for his dinner. Not so Allie.

Right now, we have to give her one unit of insulin two times a day. Eventually, it will be two units each time. My major concern is that in a week, Lisa will be going up to PA to be with our youngest as she has an operation. I will have to take care of Allie for about three days.

It's not that I haven't done it - I did it with Fluffy about 20 years ago. But I was 20 years younger.

Anyhow, that's the way today went.

Reading Challenges for This Year

I am a slow reader. And I like to read more than one book at a time. This presents a problem for this year.

The book club I belong to - Books & Brews - has selected several books for this year which are over 400 pages long. For me, that is a reading challenge of the nth degree. 

To add to that challenge, I had already decided to to take on at least one concentrated area of study for the year - Climate Change and Global Warming. I've already begun to work on my reading list.

The realities are that I have only three books left in the book club this year that are fiction, two of which are very large. That means the rest - six - are nonfiction and three of those are substantial in size.

What does this all mean? Well, for starters, it means I will be spending most of my time reading books that pertain to the book club except for those that I can legitimately think will apply to climate change. We'll see.

I've begun. The first four books are:

• Wine & War - it's about theFrench saving its wine during WW2 from the Germans. So far, it's been an interesting read.
• Life After Life - Though it's not due to be discussed until May, it is a very large fiction and complicated since it goes back and forth in time.
• The Little Ice Age - about the severe cold weather changes from 1300-1850.
• Pale Rider - about the Spanish Influenza of 1918-19.

More about my plan later.

Book Club Returns

The book club I am a member of meets for the first time this coming Tuesday. It's called Books & Brews because we meet in the Brew Ridge Taps pub in Lexington. This will be our third year. We began with 8 people and now have 19. Along the way, we added a few and dropped one or two. We're probably at the right size now.

This month's book is "Dead Wake" by Erik Larson. He is a favorite author since we have already read two other of his books.

One of the problems of meeting at the pub is the seating. It's difficult to get everyone seated around the tables so that we can hear easily. We're fighting for hearing volume with everything else going on in the pub. If the normal 12-14 show up, then it isn't too bad and we can work around things.

This year I have two books I am leading the discussion on and three other persons are as well. That leaves only three other persons to present books since we only meet monthly except for December. The breakout is seven nonfiction and four fiction. These were chosen from a list of 13 fiction and 10 nonfiction. Go figure.

More on the club later...

Welcome - Do We Really Mean it?

On my morning walk today, I again spied several small flags and other signs in front of neighbors' homes that said variations of "Welcome". It got me thinking - do they really mean it? What if I went up to the door, knocked, and when someone came to the door, asked them if I could come in and get to know each other better.

You can see our previous home had a pottery figurine with such sign hanging from its mouth in the right center of the picture. I know I didn't, and still don't, want folks to just drop by. I expect it is the same with most others. 

A New Start

Well, it's late at night, almost 11pm, and I need to go to bed, but I said I was going to write in my blog and I am; even if it is only a few sentences.

I finished another Inspector Rutledge mystery today and have begun yet another; only three more to go before the latest one comes out in early February. Though I thoroughly enjoy them, I think that this will be the last time I read the entire series. Three times is enough. Even though I really don't remember the last four at all.  Well, almost not all. 

I need to spend time reading my book club selections. Our first meeting of the year is next week. We are discussing "Dead Wake" by Erik Larson. It's actually a re-read for me. I read it about 2-3 years ago. It's about the sinking of the Lusitania. I'm looking forward to the discussion. We've had one of Larson's books each year.