Octobered

Kitty Chemo Update:

After two weeks of chemo during which she hardly ate anything and continued to lose weight, Dave took Saba to the vet again yesterday. She was dehydrated and running a slight fever, so the vet gave her subcutaneous fluids and an antibiotic and did more blood tests. By the afternoon, she had perked up a tiny bit, but by the evening, she was feeling much much better and she started eating again. I have no idea what it was exactly that brought her around, but whatever it was, I am very glad!

Etc.:

Allergies are making everyone crazy. I'm not nearly as congested as I get in the spring, but I am sneezing more often and I am just wiped out, energy-wise. That's what fall allergies mean to me, just a complete sapping of my energy.

We have continued to hold ourselves to our exercise and other goals, each earning the other's rewards. This week, Dave is getting a small sound mixer (I think) and I am getting a small, portable clothes dryer. (We normally dry our clothes on drying racks outside when it's nice, but in the winter, they will freeze overnight outside and our casita is so tiny that drying them inside becomes cumbersome. This small portable dryer will dry a load of clothes in about 90 minutes and it assembles and disassembles for fairly compact storage.)

Since one of our goals is to eat in more often, I've been cooking. We ate our way through a huge pot of homemade vegetarian green chile stew last week, including using it as a sauce for cheese enchiladas. (Just thinking about those is making me hungry!) We've also been eating a lot of breakfast cereal--which I don't normally eat because it is just not A Meal to The Brain--because suddenly it is a useful thing to have for those midnight snack cravings. 

I increased my daily exercise time by ten minutes, so now I'm up to half an hour five days a week, which is more than I have exercised in years. I will stay there for a few weeks, then up it by another ten minutes. 

Despite the increase in exercise, I haven't been sleeping well. I got about two and a half hours of sleep yesterday (last night was slightly better and I got about four or five hours total)...

I don't know what point I was going to make about that, but it was probably a good one.

Turns out that my aunt was in the hospital yesterday (she should be released today). I don't know what it is about October, but it is always a harrowing month in my family.