Daily Update, October 17, 2023

  I got a series of texts about Val's condition from the veterinarian. On one hand, some things sound promising. On the other, he sounds like a much sicker kitty than I realized. I have spells of feeling terribly guilty for not doing more sooner, though the worst signs developed over the weekend. I learned the next day that he's considered critical. {resigned look}

   On Tuesday, I realized I hadn't gotten an email or phone call from the gal who organizes the once-a-month meetings. So, I emailed and called her, asking about transportation. She emailed back that she hadn't gotten my earlier email, and could I take Uber down? So I contacted Uber, and a nice chatty driver came and took me down. Thankfully, there was no confusion on Uber's part about where it was this time. {Smile}

   The meeting was in full swing when I got there. They were primarily concerned with signing up for alerts with Civil Defense. Apparently Civil Defense is inclined to overdo it, especially with the traffic closures. But you sign up for things individually... so just don't take them all. {smile}

   We then moved to the lunch room, where we had lunch. Then the leader was able to take me home after cleaning up, and after dropping off a fellow who waits in town for a friend to take him home, since they live a fair ways away. 

   On Tuesday I ate dinner with Mom and read to her before that. I started with scripture and thoughts about it, first yesterday's, then todays, so I have caught up from the day I missed. Then I continued with some from a long family Christmas letter from her niece from 2022. Next, I read the next few pages of _Memories 1950's_. After that, I read her a few poems from _365 Bedtime Stories and Rhymes_. Last, I finished with two stories from _366 Stories for Bedtime: A Tale for Every Day of the Year_. First, I read "Winter Flowers," the 16th of October's story. It says that people say there are no flowers in winter, then says they will tell how they have them anyway. They tell of collecting violets, primroses, and forget-me-nots in spring, and pressing them between sheets of paper in books. In summer, they collect poppies and a few ears of corn. In autumn, they find dried grasses and pretty colored leaves to press. By winter, the flowers are ready to be made into pictures. Last, I read "Blue Mushrooms!" the 17th of October's story. Sally found an odd group of mushrooms in a field: three were blue- two of them with spots - and the third was purple. She picked one and stared at it. Then she decided it must be poisonous and threw it away. An imp appeared, scolding her furiously for throwing away his best chair. She ran to fetch it, but when she replanted it, the imp had disappeared. {Smile}

   I walked around a bit down at the meeting, and I did both my warm-up salsa dancing and my less structured salsa dancing for over 20 minutes of salsa dancing tonight, but I didn't get any of my other exercises done. I've just been so tired... I suspect that's primarily stress because of Val. {faint smile}

   I read comics when I got home from the meeting. Then, after cleaning myself up, I hopped into City of Heroes: Homecoming. There, I found Perogies, Meroa, qworty, and Azurette. Perogies was eager to team, and Meroa was happy to join us shortly. Qworty wanted to finish what he was doing first, so he joined later. Azurette was too busy working on stuff to join us. I got the character I was working on the previous night. I hope he's close to working through the content I want him to finish before I let him go up in level. We ran several missions, with qworty joining us partway through. That got us up to time to read to Mom. {smile}

   After dinner, I checked some comics, and found one that I'd pretty much given up on has finally started its second season. It's called "Lady Knight," and has been on hiatus for over a year and a half. Then I hopped into City of Heroes: Homecoming again. I found qworty and Meroa happy to team up with me. We did a few more missions on the same character I played that afternoon. Near the end, Paradox said they wanted to join after doing a bunch of paperwork. I started to accept, then realized the time was late. They dashed in and joined just as the mission we were doing ended, but I thought I had time for one more mission. That was longer than usual and ran us right up to time to salsa dance. I was tired to do a bunch of exercises anyway; I'm just relieved I managed to do all my salsa dancing. I said goodnight to Nox on the chat server... well, we talked a bit earlier on the chat server, but still. I did talk with Paradox and Kitten there. {smile}