Just Some Monday Things

Well, little Gray Kitty is home from the emergency vet--again. He went in on Friday night/Saturday morning because he was blocked up again and we got to pick him up today. We brought him home even though the vet suggested that we let him stay another night, but I thought it would be a good idea to have him come home and have some normalcy in his life. He's on so many meds that we can't let him go outdoors which is frustrating for him, but that's just the way it's going to be for now. Part of that frustration is that he goes to the bathroom outside and when he's not allowed outside, I think he holds it in and is uncomfortable. Anyway, if I need to take him back to the vet in an hour, fine, I'll do it. But at least he got to come home for a little while and de-stress from being in the 24-hour, constantly stimulating environment at the hospital.

Of course, Saba hates that he's back. (I think she thought she was free of him once and for all this last time.) She's a bully and tries to lay claim to all the spaces in our little casita and she hisses and spits at him constantly. It's pretty pathetic, but she's a leopard whose spots are probably not going to change any time soon. It's hard to reason with a cat like that, not that I'd even try at this point.

In other good news: My vertigo is almost completely gone. I'm still doing the exercises each day just because, hoping it doesn't come back.

In more neutral news: I've had a plateau week with the diet. Partly it's because I'm a stress eater and between Gray Kitty and vertigo, there's been plenty of stress. Partly it's that with the vertigo, I haven't wanted to go to the gym and work out. (We're going tomorrow for the first time in ten days.)

Good news: I heard from one of my old Tokyo co-workers from The Kaisha. He's an Aussie originally but now lives in London with his Japanese wife. He wrote to wish me a happy new year and to suggest a book and to ask about the election news from the US, which he says leads the news in London almost every night. Isn't that awful? I like to think that Newt and Mittens are America's little dirty secrets, but no, apparently they're making us look pitiful on an international scale, Newt probably more than Mittens. That's just my opinion, of course.

Let's see what else?

I watched a documentary last night called Protagonist from a filmmaker, Jessica Yu, whose work I think is amazing. She did another documentary I love called In the Realm of the Unreal about the artist Henry Darger (whose work we subsequently went to see at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in New York City the last time we were there). She's just awesome at what she does.

I also watched Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey, which had me in tears the whole time. I have to keep reminding myself when I start to tear up at any kind of movie or television show that these are actors paid to manipulate my emotions. That helps me either reign it in or decide to go ahead and let go and embrace the (potentially) cathartic effects. With Downton Abbey, I just go ahead and sob my way though it.

I've also been reading a lot. I got on an autobiography jag and Kindled a bunch of stuff, including the autobiographies of the actresses who played Nellie Olson and Laura Ingalls on the Little House on the Prairie television show. Both are very interesting, but I especially like the Nellie actress (Alison Arngrim) bio. She's pretty funny and describes with great humor what it was like to play a well-known television villain. (She was once pushed down by some school girls who wanted to get back at her for something she had done to Laura on TV.) The other interesting tidbits I gleaned from the bios had to do with Michael Landon, who apparently was very, very short and wore super high lifts in his boots and never wore underwear and drank constantly. (What more could you ask from a father figure?)

Ah, it's late now. I'm supposed to stay up tonight to monitor Gray Kitty's urine output. A worthy job if I ever held one.