Daily Update, September 16, 2023

    On Saturday, I got a call from the veterinarian's office before dinner. Val is eating again and doing better in general after a rougher start. They hope he'll be ready to come home Monday. That's such a relief, but somehow, it's dawning on me now that he was worse than I realized. Now it's hard not to worry that things won't go as smoothly as hoped. {smile}

   I ate breakfast and dinner with Mom and read to her before dinner. I started with scripture and thoughts about it first. I continued with more from her niece's long family Christmas letter from 2020 next. Then I continued by showing her the first several pages in _the Picture Book of Vintage Vogue_, showing her pictures of old Vogue magazine covers, mostly from the early 1900's. I just read the month and year, though it gives a day, too, and Vogue, and a few other things on each cover. She seemed to wake up for it, and enjoyed the pictures, too. After that, I read a few poems and two short stories from _365 Bedtime Stories and Rhymes_. I finished with _Old Mr Bear_, the September 15th story from _366 Stories for Bedtime: A Tale for Every Day of the Year_. Old Mr Bear was hobbling along with his cane, dabbing a cut above his eye, and muttering about walking into a branch. He went to Mrs Hedgehog's house, where she bathed his cut and gave him some tea when he squeezed his head through her window. As he shuffled home, he decided to give her some honey. {Smile}

   I did my walking exercises right before my salsa dancing warmup. Since I didn't have to take care of Val in between the salsa dancing sets, I did my head exercises, and my arm resistance exercises between the sets. Yes, I did the less structured set, too, for over 20 minutes of salsa dancing. then I was tired enough, I didn't manage my arm swinging exercises, leg exercises, or arm weight training exercises, but this is much better than the day before. {Smile}

   I read articles and comics in the morning and hopped into City of Heroes: Homecoming for some paperwork and solo play. Then I took a break to clean myself up and hopped back into City of Heroes: Homecoming around midafternoon. I found Kitten teamed with two of their friends, and Perogies and I managed to join them, though that took a little doing at first. We ran several missions together, before both of Kitten's friends decided they were tired and left. I think Perogies left, too, when I noticed it was close to time to read to Mom and pointed it out. Kitten stayed through some paperwork I did before actually leaving to read to Mom. {Smile}

   After dinner, I hopped back into City of Heroes: Homecoming, and found Kitten. We teamed up and finished the low-level story arc from last night. I noticed two of my favorites were that level too and got ready to start one when Kitten complained that they wanted to develop the new character that's a new type for us all, but we were never available at the same time. (Well, when we are, we've gotten busy with something else, like teaming with Kitten's friends.) So, I switched to my character, and got ready to run Kitten's missions to help them catch up. Then Perogies came in, complaining he couldn't sleep, and joined us. We ran a few missions, almost catching Kitten up to where we were before I had to break to do my exercises and salsa dancing. I did more paperwork in City of Heroes: Homecoming around and after the exercises, along with writing this up. {Smile}