... each to gridlore, it_aint_easy, and figmo, for a grand total of three hippos, three birdies, and six ewes!!!!!! Have a glorious one!!

The front door is open; the house is cooling off. It'll be heading toward cold by the time we go to bed.

The flower_cat has been spending the afternoon making 8 jars of peach butter; they still have to cool off, then get boiled again. I helped with the stirring. Colleen's mom was a terrible cook, but she knew how to can fruit, and taught her daughter well. Yum.

I've spent most of the evening working on the massive directory reorganization I've described here. It's a project fraught with minor pitfalls -- it's easy to assume, as I did, that two directories called Doc in different parts of the tree are the same, when they're not even closely related. I'll probably finish over the weekend.

Last night I was up at 4:30am worrying about whether Alaska Airlines would be able to accommodate the flower_cat's inability to handle the stairs to get on and off the plane in San Jose, which doesn't have jetways at that end of the old terminal. All it would have taken was a couple of clicks to find their page on mobility and wheelchair assistance, but a web browser isn't the first thing I think of when lying in bed awake at some ridiculous hour. Not sure why not, though, except for the excess blood in my caffeine stream.

All the worry and tension pretty much disappeared when I got back from my walk and finally looked it up.

That doesn't explain why I was up at 4:30 again this morning. Not much tension; just bits of Quiet Victories running through my head.

Guess I'll just be thankful for the bit of extra time on the days when I have it, and try not to worry too much about whether it's an actual change in my sleep habits. Because worrying about that might... Hmmm.

If I wake up after 4am, especially if there's something on my mind (and there's always something to worry about), I'm unlikely to get back to sleep.

I really wish that this meant that I can get by on less than 5 hours' sleep all the time. I don't think it means that; I'll probably be dozing at my desk all afternoon, and crash early.

Grumble. I could use the extra time.

The big health news here is that the infection on flower_cat's right leg appears to be treatable: she's been on Keflex since last week (which didn't seem to be helping much) and was given an injection of something else yesterday that does seem to be helping. A lot, and quickly. Yay!

It's entirely possible that the night sweats she'd been having the last couple of weeks were due to fever rather than a continuation of menopause (done that -- several years ago). She's been sleeping much better the last few nights. I appreciate that, too.

On the other side of the bed, so to speak, I appear to have finally fought my weight back down to where it was two weeks ago :-(, but my knees aren't helping. I've had to scale my walking speed back to an easy amble, and skip the hills. Grump. At least I'm walking.

Fighting the weight down mainly consisted of sticking to a low-carb diet: two eggs for breakfast, beef jerky and nuts for lunch. A couple of prunes to fill in the corners at lunchtime, and a sheet of nori (yummy, crunchy, and zero calories) for the occasional snack at work. No snack when I get home, or after dinner. Tiresome, but I like the results, and I'm not losing weight when I'm not feeling hungry.