General catching up

I haven't been writing much in the past month. Summer turning to fall, then to winter has depressed me. The dim, gray light of overcast days makes me sleepy and then I don't sleep well at night. All part of getting older, I suppose. But I don't have to like it!

Tomorrow, I'll be in surgery again for a short procedure. The battery on my pacemaker is getting low and needs to be replaced. Actually, Nurse Holly told me that they will just pull the old thing (pacemaker, defibrillator and generator) out and replace it with a brand new one. They leave the leads in place since they have scarred into the tissue around my heart. I get to keep the old one so I can look at it and know what that thing in my chest looks like. Another nugget of knowledge from Nurse Holly was that if one of the leads (wires connecting the device to the heart) goes bad, they don't pull it. Instead, the surgeon runs another lead. Pulling the bad lead out might damage the heart.






Sammi, our neighborhood cat, has returned. He jumped into the drive this morning as I was leaving. I tried to coax him into the garage so I could dry and feed him. But he preferred to run around in the rain. His owner has finally put a collar around his neck. There is no ID or rabies tag on the collar, but all the neighbors know and feed that cat. He is affectionate and very "Helpful" when Fran and I are gardening in summer. Alas, he is also an excellent hunter, He has caught and eaten two birds that I know of and has chased the lizards all over our rocky slope garden. Last summer, he caught a ground squirrel but let it go after playing with it for a few seconds. I suspect that he has taken a toll on the local rabbits as well.

Fran and I are about to depart for Christmas. Our grandchildren live in New Mexico. We'll go there next week, then drive up to Telluride, Colorado to watch a hockey game played by both kids. It will be the first time we have visited Telluride in winter. We'll have Christmas in New Mexico, then head down to Phoenix, Arizona to watch hockey tournaments that the kids will play. These "holiday hockey tournaments" have become a staple in our family. I'm not sure how we'll spend the holidays when both have grown too old for the leagues that sponsor them. I suspect we'll find something to do. There lots of jigsaw puzzles around our daughter's and, of course, there is always televised football and hockey.

So here's wishing all of you a wonderful set of holidays and hoping for the best new year that can be.