Here's your token Zoe photo for the day showing exactly why we decided to give the steroids a try.

A few more days of sunbeam bathing were worth the risk. Hard to believe that we originally had an appointment to have her put to sleep this afternoon. It's amazing the difference just a couple days can make.

You know when the gaggles of teenagers start showing up at your door, it's time to turn off the light and finish up those peanut butter cups yourself! :-)

We decided that, rather than hole up with the lights off wallowing in self pity, we're going to hand out candy tonight. I just ran over to the store to buy some. Hopefully, I will refrain from eating it all myself. Guh. Felt good to get out of the house for a little bit at least.

Are you dressing up for Halloween tonight? Did you decorate? Carve a pumpkin? Care to share your photos? I'd love to see some! Send them to me at halloween@moosworld.com

EDIT: I opened one of the mini bags of M&M's and there were only two, yes TWO, M&M's in it. What the frell? How cheap is that?

EDIT: The Random MooCam is up front and will be capturing any trick-or-treaters at our house tonight.

Click the image to check it out.

Happy Halloween, fishies. Did everyone watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! on CBS last night?

It's not quite noon yet, but, so far, today has been a good day. The Prednisone (steroids) that Zoe is taking seems to be helping a lot. She's been up and about quite a bit today, which delights me to no end. Mr Moo and I joked this morning that she's been faking this whole thing just so we'd pamper and pay extra attention to her. Oh, if only that were true. Unfortunately, kitties don't fake seizures and we know it's just a matter of time before she crashes again. We have no doubt she's burned up eight of her nine lives by now. In the meantime, we'll enjoy every second of this revival and try not to think about what lies ahead.

In other non-Zoe news (is there such a thing anymore?), I was supposed to begin physical therapy for the edema in my leg on Monday. I was thinking about canceling when the PT office called me instead. My therapist was out sick and they were going to re-schedule me with someone else. I told them not to bother since it wasn't a good day anyway. I was planning to go as scheduled yesterday, but the same thing happened. Since my therapist doesn't work Wednesdays, today's appointment has gone out the window as well. I'm scheduled to go tomorrow at 1:00, but we'll see what happens with that. I seriously considered putting the entire thing off for a couple weeks. However, that would put me in the middle of Thanksgiving preparations with my leg wrapped. Probably not the best idea. If my therapist continues to cancel and we can't even get started until the middle of next week, I may just put the whole thing off completely until after Thanksgiving is over.

It's been a relatively good day in the Moo House today. The steroids we started giving Zoe yesterday seem to be working a little. She is walking around a bit more, seems steadier on her feet and her appetite is up, too. She's still not drinking nearly enough (aka at all), so we're still supplementing with the sub-cutaneous fluids in the evenings.

It's a crisp sunny day in Portland today and both Josie and Zoe have been enjoying the sunbeams. Here's a pic of Zoe I took about an hour ago.

When I see how happy she seems lying there, I'm glad we decided to give the steroids a chance to give her some more time.

This is the scene underneath my desk pretty much all of the time now:

Zoe, Josie, the Superfriends blanket and the space heater. It's really cute until I have to do some actual work and realize there's no room for my feet. Guess that's the price Momma has to pay.

When I got home from picking up Zoe's steroids from the vet's today, I caught Josie holding Zoe's hand.

I realize that she probably stretched and that's where her arm happened to end up, but I'm sticking with the story that she was comforting her sister. Regardless, it made me burst into tears. Doesn't take much lately.

Exhaustion finally caught up with me and I slept very late this morning. When I did finally get up, I was surprised to see Mr Moo here in the office. Apparently, he had overslept and didn't have time to take a shower and get into work before he had to call into a meeting, so he worked from home all morning. Unfortunately, this meant the phone was tied up the whole time. Argh! As soon as he was finished, I called the vet to see if Zoe's latest results were back. They were and the results were just as we expected. The CBC showed nothing out of the ordinary. Since there doesn't seem to be any other explanation, the fall back answer is some sort of cancer/brain tumor. After I told her about the seizure like episodes Zoe had on Saturday, she said, "Yeah, that definitely indicates a brain tumor of some kind." She said the next step would be to take her to a neurologist for an MRI ($1200 - ouch!) to determine exactly what, if any, treatment would be warranted. Knowing how traumatized Zoe gets from going to these appointments and given her age, I said there's absolutely no way we would put her through all of those tests and possibly surgery, especially since she would probably end up no better off than she is right now. It's just not worth putting her through all that. The vet completely agreed.

We discussed the euthanasia and even penciled in a time for it on Wednesday. Right before we got off the phone, the doctor suggested one last ditch effort we could try. She said if it is indeed a tumor and it is causing all of these problems due to inflammation, it could respond to steroid treatment. Normally, they are very hesitant to suggest steroids unless they know for sure what the problem is. However, since we've already decided against any further diagnostic testing because of how stressful it is for Zoe and we're ready to put her to sleep, the vet is willing to give it a go if we are. It is not meant to be a cure. The best we can hope for is an improvement in her mobility and maybe a few more weeks with her.

Mr Moo and I discussed it a bit and were still having trouble deciding if it would be in Zoe's best interest to try it (there are some potentially nasty side effects) or if we would only be doing it for selfish reasons. I finally suggested that we check the weather report and let the forecast decide for us. If there were a few more sunny days in the immediate future, we would try it. I explained to him that if she could spend her last days lying on her favorite chair in the sunshine and her nights on the fuzzy blankie under Momma's desk with the heater blowing on her, she would be happy. Lo and behold, there is sun in the forecast, so we're going to give it a shot.

Like I said, we're not expecting a miracle cure. She is going to die from this. The questions are just when, how (naturally or euthanasia), and how comfortable can we make her final days.

I took these this afternoon. It was nice to see Josie taking care of and sleeping with her sister.

It's a new dawn. It's a new day. And, unfortunately, I have no new news. Zoe is about the same as last night. She's very weak, virtually unable to walk, and quite disoriented and confused. I offered her some canned food this morning, which she sniffed, but didn't eat. Not a good sign. It looks like she did managed to get into the litterbox for a pee-pee sometime during the night. That's a tiny bit of good news, but not the miraculous recovery I was hoping for. I expect I will be spending most of today lying on the floor or bed with her and telling her how much her momma loves her in between bouts of crying. You know things are really bad when my Red Sox are imminently about the win the World Series for the second time in four years and I totally don't care.

Things are very, very bleak for Zoe right now. I was up most of the night with her. She grew increasingly weak as the night wore on to the point where she couldn't take more than a step or two and she would just sit there staring off into space. By morning, she seemed a bit more alert, but she was still very weak and unsteady on her feet. After a scheduled meeting with our financial planner, we took her to the vet's office once again. After a bunch of tests, nothing seems too out of the ordinary and we still don't have a definitive answer as to what is going on with her. Her kidney values are a little high, but not alarming. Her blood pressure is a bit low as is her red blood cell count. I guess it's just a combination of all of these little things adding up to give her problems.

While were there, we did notice a marked decrease in her motor skills. She started having a really hard time walking and her pupils got huge. The vet checked her out a bit more and agreed that there was some neurological element to all of this. She said it was unlikely that it was a stroke since there was a small but somewhat quick recovery afterwards. She was even hesitant to call it a seizure. We know better now, but I'll get to that in a minute.

They took some extra blood to run a full CBC panel over the weekend (results will be in on Monday) and gave her a whole bunch more sub-cutaneous fluids. We were sent home with a can of highly nutritious kitten food and liquid vitamins to see if that will help perk her up some more. Other than that, it's just a waiting game to see what happens next.

Upon arriving home, we got her out of her carrier and tried to get her to eat a little bit. When Mr Moo set her down by the food dish, we both immediately noticed something was wrong with her. The lights were on, but no one was home. She sort of half laid down and extended her arms straight out in front of her. I said her name, but she didn't react at all. She just laid there very stiffly for about 20 seconds. Then, just as quick as it started, it was over and she was back. You could see it in her eyes when she checked back in. She was still very wobbly, but was suddenly feeling and acting better. So much so, she tore right into her food and ate about half the can of kitten food.

When she finished eating, I carried her upstairs so she could lie down to rest for a while. As I was setting her down in her favorite chair, she had another episode. She became stiff as a board, her pupils dilated and I could just tell she wasn't home anymore. Again, it lasted about 20 seconds then poof! She was back and acting normal again. Personally, I've never had an animal that has had seizures before. I'm far from an expert on the matter. However, there really isn't any other explanation for what has happened. Mr Moo said these are nothing like the seizures he's seen (he had a cat as a child that had pretty severe ones), but, like me, he's no expert either.

At this point, she's resting (I think) comfortably on her blankie in the other room. We're going to keep a very close eye on her for the next 24 hours. If these episodes continue and/or increase, we'll be taking her to the 24 hour emergency animal hospital for more care. I want to hope that she'll get better, but it's really not looking good right now.

EDIT: Zoe has continued to deteriorate. She's pretty much unable to walk at this point and is having longer and longer periods where she's not lucid. Short of a miraculous recovery in the next 24-48 hours, we've pretty much decided that we will be asking the vet to come over on Monday afternoon to put her down.

Just when things were looking up... Zoe is relapsing again. She's so unstable on her feet right now that she can hardly walk. She'll eat food if I give it to her and she'll drink if I put her in front of the water dish. However, she won't go to them on her own. Since her appetite and thirst seem fine, I'm really starting to suspect she's had some sort of episode like a seizure or a stroke. She's incredibly lethargic, her balance is completely shot and I've got no other explanation for it.

Mr Moo is currently asleep on the couch, but I think I'm going to wake him in a few more minutes so we can give Zoe some sub-Q fluids to see if that helps at all. If she's still like this in the morning after getting fluids, we'll be taking her right back to the vet's office again.

EDIT: We got Zoe up from her nap and made her walk around a little. She seemed a bit better and more stable on her feet so we've decided to hold off on the fluids for now. Unless she gets noticeably worse in the next hour or so, we're going to wait and see how she's doing in the morning.

We bought pumpkins tonight! Squeee! I'm way behind schedule with the autumn decorating this year since we were out of town at the beginning of the month, then Mr Moo (my pumpkin lifting muscle man) went off to Israel right after. We have them now though and I will spend tomorrow afternoon getting them washed and put outside.

Since I had plenty of room and the perfect spot on my pack for them, I decided to buy collectible pins from all of the major sites we visited in South Dakota.

The only place we went that I wasn't able to find a pin for was Spearfish Canyon. Since it's a general area and not a specific site or attraction, they don't make pins for it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of these now that we're home, but I had fun looking for them while we were on the trip. Maybe I'll hang a long strip of wide ribbon somewhere and attach them to that. Here's what I got:

Top row (L-R): Badlands National Park, 2007 Buffalo Roundup, Custer State Park, Harney Peak Summit
Bottom row (L-R): Devil's Tower National Monument, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Crazy Horse Memorial

I'm looking forward to adding to my collection on our next trip, which is looking likely to be the parks of southern Utah.

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Cathe Friedrich's Low Max

I'm on target to not lose an ounce this week. Sigh. I'm definitely not going to lose anything if I don't work out, so I'm keeping at it. Hating every second of it, but I'm doing it!

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 114

Click here for the entry form.

Late as usual. My bad. Enjoy!

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 113


Click here for the entry form.

Round 113 is still open. Good luck!

And we have a winner! Well, technically, it's a loser. In the past 12 hours or so, I've given Josie two Clavamox (antibiotics) tablets and she has promptly thrown up like a drunken sailor both times. Needless to say, we are done with these pills. The call has been placed to the vet to find out what Plan B is going to be. Hopefully, they will have something that's a little easier on her tummy.

Zoe Princess.

After a long hard afternoon at the vet.

We had all sorts of fun at the vet's office this afternoon. ((heavy on the sarcasm)) He was quite disturbed at how nasty Josie's upper lip is looking (it's calloused and starting to get infected). Originally, he was going to send me home with a topical ointment to apply for a few days. After he saw her, he took the ointment right back and said, "Oh, this isn't going to do anything." She is now on cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant, and Clavamox, an antibiotic. I gave her one of the cyclosporine tablets while we were there and that went down fine. I just attempted giving her one of the antibiotics and within about two minutes, she blew major chunks all over her bed. Joy. If she throws up like that again tomorrow, we'll be calling the doctor yet again and trying something else.

Zoe did reasonably well at the office for a change. He gave her a physical and said he didn't see/feel anything out of the ordinary and was pleased to see that her weight is still climbing (she weighs 7lbs 12oz now). They took an x-ray and, amazingly, there was no litter in her gut. Everything looked clear. At this point, the only thing we can figure is that my in-laws spoiled her by feeding her soft food every day while we were away and she doesn't want to eat her kibble anymore. Since she's super model skinny these days, it doesn't take much of her not eating to send her into a tailspin. She definitely was dehydrated so she got sub-cutaneous fluids. Mr Moo actually did the procedure on her once the tech showed us how. We now have all of the supplies to do it here at home if she starts to act sickly again in the future. For now, aside from the giant pocket of fluid currently floating around in her arm somewhere, she seems to be doing much better. She's much more alert and is eating fairly well. If she would just do a poo and drink some water on her own, I'd be completely happy.

And, once again, everyone in the Moo House appears to be on the road to recovery. Phew!

Zoe seems to be doing a lot better this morning. She's still not great, but she's improving. What troubles me most is that, while she still has her appetite, she still doesn't seem to want to drink any water. We've been giving her as much as we can via syringe over the past couple days, but it's nowhere near enough and it's very difficult. We (Mr Moo included) have an appointment with the vet this afternoon. We're going to learn how to do sub-Q fluids, which I think will help this whole situation and future episodes, if they happen. I also want an x-ray taken to see if her gut is filled with cat litter again. If it is, I think we've pinpointed the culprit. We can't switch cat litters, so I'm not sure if there is anything we can do about it besides just watching her like a hawk to make sure she's not getting it stuck on her paws and licking it off. Should be a fun afternoon. Not.

Zoe is sick again. :-( She slept all day long yesterday. We don't think she ate or drank anything until we brought her downstairs and practically pushed her nose into her food. When she walked, she was very wobbly. Needless to say, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night for worrying. I force fed her a jar of chicken baby food this morning, which went down okay, and she seems a bit more stable on her feet. I will be keeping a very close eye on her today and tomorrow. We are not going through what we went through a few months ago again.

Silly birthday card I received from Mr Moo's aunt and uncle this year.

Inside reads: Hope you like pies.

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Cathe Friedrich's Low Max

"Outer thigh! Drop squat! Pendulum!" Man, I hate this woman. Yes, she helps me burn calories, but I do so want to choke her when I'm done working out.

Anyhoo, this week's weight change: -1 lb. I know I should be happy about losing a pound, but I'm at the same weight I was at two months ago. Up a pound. Down a pound. Around and around we go. I'm trying very hard to not get completely frustrated, say "to hell with this whole thing!" and eat an entire box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. About the only thing stopping me is I know how disgusted with myself I would feel afterwards.

Height: 5' 2"

Current Weight: 116
Current BMI: 21.2 (normal)

Highest Weight: 167 (January 14, 2006)
Highest BMI: 30.5 (obese)

Goal Weight: 110
Goal BMI: 20.1

Pounds Lost: 51
Pounds To Go: 6

Added a new DVD to the collection tonight.

Mr Moo's dad picked it up for us earlier this week. I was thinking about turning in early to lie in bed and watch it. However, given how shattered I feel at the moment, I think it would end up being about 10 minutes of watching and the rest of it would be sleeping. Although, sleeping doesn't sound like a bad plan right now.

According to the itinerary, Mr Moo's plane should be touching down at PDX in less than 30 minutes. I haven't checked the website to see if it's actually on time or not. I'm always afraid to look in case it's been delayed for hours and hours.

EDIT: I checked. It has been delayed. By eight whole minutes. Heh.

When Mr Moo and I go hiking, this is what I see pretty much all of the time:

Mr Moo's back. Since I stop to take pictures approximately every other second, I always end up miles behind him. We joke that it's the mandatory 20 paces I have to remain behind His Highness.

You might recall that Mr Moo accidentally left his GPS unit on the train when we visited NYC last year. Oops. Bye-bye, GPS unit. We wanted to replace it before we left for South Dakota since we knew we'd be doing some backcountry hiking. After doing his homework, Mr Moo decided to get each of us one. This is what we got:

Rino 530 on the left for him and Rino 120 on the right for me. One of the nicest things about these two units is that they each have a two-way radio. We can use them like walkie-talkies. It was a nice change not having to scream "STOP! WAIT FOR ME!" every time he got too far ahead of me. I could just press the call button to beep him and ask him nicely. Granted, he still doesn't ever come back for me, but at least I didn't end up lost in the wilderness alone.

I spent a good portion of today answering the approximate 300 emails and journal comments that were sitting in my inbox. Phew! I'm pooped! I want to apologize for totally flooding some people's inboxes with replies. You know who you are. Some of the emails were over two months old. I've really got to get better about responding in a more timely manner rather than just letting them sit for an age. Do you answer all of your emails right away or do you let them accumulate, too?

While we were away on vacation, we had an unexpected visitor to the back patio.

Having a skunk out there is not a big surprise. He comes to visit us quite often. The shocker is that this photo was taken at 1:00 in the afternoon. What the heck was he doing in our yard in the middle of the day?

Do you keep a box of baking soda in the refrigerator to absorb odors?

Aight. 'Fess up. Who left these turds on my desk?

I know it was one of you!

I really wanted to try to stick to my meal plan as much as possible while we were away on vacation. We also didn't want to spend a billion dollars eating out every single meal either. In order to do so, we planned to buy groceries and make as many of our own meals as possible. Our dilemma was how to keep things cold since most of the places we were staying at didn't have refrigerators. A quick online search provided us with the perfect solution.

A soft-sided collapsible travel cooler. It claims to keep ice for over 24 hours and it rolls up to fit inside a suitcase. For just a few bucks more, we even had our name and address embroidered on the outside (blurred out in the photo). I didn't hold out much hope for it when the box arrived looking like this though.

Yikes! Fortunately, it was completely undamaged. We got the 48 pack size, which is nearly the same size as a regular hard-sided cooler.

It worked great! We loaded it up with ice about every other day and it was like having a small fridge with us. We were able to keep milk, yogurt, cold cuts and other perishables with us the whole time. It's definitely something we will be bringing with us when we travel in the future.

Since I'm still in the process of losing weight, I've put off buying any new clothes until I reach my goal weight. This means, however, that I only had about one pair of pants and three shirts I could wear. This did not bode well for our trip, so a-shopping we did go before we left on vacation.

Aside from the few items on the far left for Mr Moo, the rest is mine. A lot of it was bought specifically with hiking in mind, but everything is usable for everyday wear, too. I got (roughly from left to right):

- fleece vest
- Columbia Sportswear Opal Storm jacket
- several long sleeve fitted shirts for layering
- two thermal tops
- two pairs of hiking pants (these and these)
- a pair of chinos
- two mock-layer sweaters
- suit jacket with matching pants
- several pairs of jeans (some of which are going back because I don't love them)
- two trousers (one of which is going back because they just don't fit well enough)

All in all, not a bad haul. The best (and most surprising) part of the whole shopping trip - everything I bought is a size 4. Squeee! And even some of those were a little large on me. That means, since I started my weight loss program, I've dropped 14 sizes. The largest size I ever bought was a 16, but, let's face it, I was barely fitting into those and should have gone up another size.

So, this is a good start on my new wardrobe. I've got a few good basic pieces now. One of my rewards for hitting goal (aside from eating an entire loaf of Italian bread and a plate of pasta bigger than my head) will be another shopping trip for some more clothes to flush this out. I'm missing at least one basic all-purpose dress, skirts of any kind and some sweaters. I'm not sure what size I will be once I drop these last few pounds though. Some of the things I bought in size 4 are already a bit big and I didn't see much, if anything, in the way of size 2. I'll have to wait and see what happens.

On our way to South Dakota for vacation, we had a layover in Denver. While we were there, the gate agent announced that they were looking for people to voluntarily be bumped from the flight. Apparently, there were some military personnel coming back from the Middle East and trying to get home to Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City. Since ours was the last flight of the day, they really wanted to get these service people on the flight. I sent Mr Moo to the desk to see what the plan was. In exchange for giving up our seats, they were offering to put us in a hotel for the night, give us food vouchers for dinner and breakfast, put us on the first flight the following morning, and give each of us a free round-trip ticket anywhere in the lower 48. We'd be in Rapid City before 10am the following morning. Our original plan was to fly to Rapid City that night, go straight to a hotel and go right to sleep. Since the new plan had us there before we'd probably even be up and checked out of the hotel with the original plan, and we'd end up with one night's lodging paid for (we called to make sure we wouldn't get charge a late cancellation fee), and we'd get a couple meals comped, and we'd get two free airline tickets, we decided to go for it.

We told the gate agent and surrendered our boarding passes. She instructed us to go to the customer service desk back on the main concourse to get our new flight information, vouchers, etc. On our way there, I started wondering what was going on with our luggage. Mr Moo assured me that they aren't allowed to fly bags without the passengers on board, so they would get pulled. Just to make sure, I asked the rep when we arrived at the service desk. Lo and behold, the rules have changed. They can fly bags without the passengers and since our bags were already on board, they were going without us that night and would meet us in Rapid City in the morning. Wish someone had mentioned that before we agreed to be bumped. Wish someone had reminded me to pack a toothbrush and spare pair of underwear in my carry-on. Oops.

Fortunately, United Airlines actually has complimentary toiletry bags available just for this reason.

Not too bad for a freebie. We picked one up on our way to the hotel shuttle, wore our underwear inside out the next day, were in Rapid City without issue bright and early the next morning, and, in my opinion, made out like bandits on this deal. Two free airline tickets. Where to next?

I woke up with a screaming headache this morning. All I want to do right now is go back to bed. However, I'm worried if I sleep the morning away, I'll have trouble sleeping tonight and end up reverting right back to vampire hours. I've been doing really well with getting to bed around midnight and up around 0800. Heck, I was getting up at 0630 without an alarm clock while we were on vacation. I don't want to blow the streak I'm on, but if the jackhammering gremlins inside my head don't move on soon, I'm going back to bed.

Just finished chatting online with Mr Moo. He made it to Israel safely and survived his first day of work today. He is very, VERY tired right now though since he only managed about 4 broken hours of sleep last night due to prepping for meetings he had today. Hopefully, he'll get more sleep tonight. Poor baby needs it. Only five more days until he's home again.

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Gilad Janklowicz's Arms of Steel & Crunch Step - Fat Blaster

I did two workouts today. That's three days in a row I've worked out. Why don't I feel better about it? I wonder if Mr Moo being gone has got me in more of a funk than I thought.

I can't even remember the last time I did an official weigh-in. Three weeks ago? Gimme a sec while I look it up... There we go. It was three weeks ago. Weight change since then: +1 lbs. That's really not bad considering how poorly I ate while on vacation and at the beginning of this week. It would have been very easy to have come home from our trip +10 lbs, so I'll take the +1.

Height: 5' 2"

Current Weight: 117
Current BMI: 21.4 (normal)

Highest Weight: 167 (January 14, 2006)
Highest BMI: 30.5 (obese)

Goal Weight: 110
Goal BMI: 20.1

Pounds Lost: 50
Pounds To Go: 7

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Cathe Friedrich's Low Impact Step

Another day, another workout. I was <this> close to talking myself out of it, but then I remembered how much crap food I've eaten this week. Onto the step I went!

My sister and I promised each other that, between yesterday and today, we'd each get at least one workout done. I've worked out both days, but I'm still waiting to hear whether or not she got hers done. One thing we neglected to do was to determine any consequences if we failed. I've been trying to think of some, but I'm coming up with nothing. Any ideas, oh smart people of the intarweb?

For anyone who wants/needs to know, Mr Moo is leaving for yet another business trip to Israel later today. After being with him 24 hours per day for almost two weeks while on vacation, not seeing him at all for an entire week is going to be quite the change. Please pray/cross your fingers/whatever it is that you do that he gets there and back home again next week safely.

EDIT: Aaaaaand, he's gone. Party starts in an hour. Who's coming?

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Cathe Friedrich's Low Max & Stability Ball Abdominal Workout

Wow. It's been a long while since I last worked out. Close to, if not over, a month now. ((hangs head in shame)) Granted, I hiked about 500 miles while we were on vacation, but it's not quite the same. I really want to just get to my goal weight once and for all. I'm tired of stressing over it. Fortunately, even though I ate like a horse while we were away, I didn't really gain anything, so I'm picking up where I left off before vacation. I want to be at goal by Thanksgiving, which is in six weeks. Six pounds in six weeks. It's do-able.

I'm a bit behind schedule on this one since we were on vacation when the month changed.

From this year's Chick-fil-A calendar, The Good, The Bad and The Hairy:

Blackened Bart
After a campfire flare-up done CHARRED his whole dadburn face, the masked Bartholemoo Winchestershire instantly became known as Blackened Bart. Portrayed in spaghetti 'n meatball Westerns (like "A Fistful o' Flank Steak" and "True Gristle") as a heartless bunslinger, Bart was rightly quite tame - unless provoked by non-chicken-lovers. Here, Bart HAMBUSHES the weekly steak sauce shipment. Bart often drove deliveries like this here into a crevasse (that thar's French for "big honkin' ditch").

I visited the dentist yesterday to get my teeth cleaned. Since I hadn't been to the office in six months, I was curious to see if anyone would notice my weight loss. Of course, everyone I encountered, aside from the dentist himself, was a new employee. I know the hygienists move on frequently, but even the receptionist was new. Wonder what happened there. Anyhoo, after my cleaning, the dentist popped in to do a final check. His first words to me? "Did you get cheek implants?" While it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, at least he did notice I looked different. I guess that's a good thing.

Speaking of their new receptionist, I'm not sure how long she's going to last. She seemed a bit dippy to me. When I walked in, I immediately told her my name so she could get my file out.

Her: Do you have an appointment?
Moo: Yes, at 2:00.
Her: And your name is?
Moo: (says it again)

I took a seat. A minute or two later, a gentleman walked in and another one approached the desk on his way out. Since she was busy with the one leaving, the new guy took a seat as well. As soon as she finished up with the exiting patient, she turned to me again.

Her: Hi. Do you have an appointment?
Moo: Yes, we just went through this, remember?
Her: Oh, I thought I just saw someone come in.
Moo: You did. He's sitting right there. (points to guy sitting five feet away from me)

Will be interesting to see if she's still there when I go for my next cleaning in six months.

We had a new visitor to our backyard while we were away on vacation - an opossum. Isn't he cute?

Yesterday, I discovered that my local grocery store has McIntosh apples in stock again. SQUEEE! What is your favorite type of apple?

Turns out I was worried about nothing for my physical therapy appointment this afternoon. My therapist didn't actually do anything today except take detailed measurements of my legs and explain to me what is to come. My actual therapy starts the week of October 28. I have appointments scheduled every weekday for two weeks then. My therapist will do the massage to help "retrain" my lymphatic system to drain properly, then she will bandage my leg up to my thigh before sending me home each day. I have to wear the bandages for at least 23 hours per day for the two weeks. I'm to wait until just before I have to leave for the appointments before even taking a shower just to minimize the time my leg will be unwrapped. I'm going to be squeezed like a tube of toothpaste. As soon as my leg is back to normal size, I will be able to stop wrapping it and begin wearing a regular compression stocking from there on out. Yup, she said I will have to wear one for the rest of my life. Joy. On a brighter note, after examining my legs, she said she is very hopeful that the swelling will go down quickly and relatively easily. Let's hope she knows what she's talking about.

I have my first Lymphatic Drainage Massage physical therapy appointment this afternoon. As you may or may not recall, I have some edema (swelling) in my left leg. It's not painful, hindering my ability to walk, or anything like that. It's just my fat leg. My biggest issue with it is that I can't get my favorite pair of tall boots on any longer. The vascular specialist, however, is troubled by the fact that it is pretty much exclusive to my left leg and it is getting quite noticeably larger than my right. Since wearing compression stockings, elevating the foot of the bed and lying on the couch with my feet up for hours on end didn't help at all, we're going to try physical therapy to see if we can squeeze the excess fluid out. It sounds painful and I'm not really looking forward to it, but, if there's a chance it will help, I'm all for trying it.

Did I mention we had a fantastic time in South Dakota?

The buffalo were exceptionally awesome. We did some backcountry hiking in the Badlands and came across a whole bunch of lone bulls as well as a large herd. It was super exciting and terrifying all at the same time.

After a delayed flight, a missed connection, a re-route through SFO, and an extra flight, we made it home from our vacation to South Dakota very late last night. Since we had been up since 0530 Mountain Time and Mr Moo had to get up early for work this morning, we pretty much just dropped all our bags on the floor and went straight to bed. Now that I've managed to sort the wheat from the chaff in the 2000+ emails I received while away, today is going to be a fun-filled day of unpacking, sorting through stuff, and lots and lots of laundry.