poor cat

Smartie did not have a great day today. Not his worst, for sure, but it's been quite a while since he horked at all and today he did it twice. Plus, I managed to run out of fresh turkey for him, so he's really pissed at me. Oh, well.

Wednesday is the day he goes in for another round of radiation therapy. I find myself tensing up thinking about it, again, which I know I shouldn't do, but it creeps up on me, what can I say? I mean the thinking ahead part, which is not living in the now, which I really try to do, but at which I think I fail miserably a good deal of the time. Okay, most of the time.

So now. What's going on right now? I'm listening to the sleet hitting the air conditioner and the fire escape and trying not to worry about what if I have to go out tomorrow in snowy, slushy, icy conditions. Because I really, really hate that. I'm also hoping that it's all gone by Wednesday.

Yeah, back to now. Now I'm drinking a cup of red bush tea, which I wouldn't have known about except for Alexander McCall Smith's books, starting with the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. They take place in Botswana and a friend of mine thinks they're racist, because the language he uses is fairly simple and the people depicted as possibly a little slow or at least naive. But I think, one, that the Botswanans may in fact talk like that, for all we know (and they may in some ways be more "naive" with respect to our culture, but then Westerners may well be quite naive if we found ourselves there). And, two, I really think they were written as young adult novels. If you read the second one in the series, it's much more obvious and the rest of them just seem to confirm this suspicion. I mean, they're billed as mysteries, but you never read such mild mysteries in your life.

Meanwhile, I actually finished the acrostic puzzle! It was quite a PIA, but I did it! It's really not very good, of course, but I'm still shocked I managed to get all the letters accounted for. I'm going to tackle another one this week, after I put in all the clues--I guess I'm really not "finished" until I do that.

Well, the cat wants some milk, so I'm going to go warm some up (for me) and get his small saucerful, too.