Today Mother is 83 years old and we started the morning off with a CAT scan with IV contrast, after drinking a lot of  the pre-test Crystal Lite mixture just before the scan and 16 ounces of water before that. Did I say we? Oh, I did . . . well . . . Mother did the drinking and since her stomach has not been feeling at all well, it was a bit of a long process, with her lying in an examination room with a vomit pan beside her.

Oh, before we left, while I was upstairs changing clothes,  I heard Sydney barking plaintively and thought he was in the back vestibule, although he sounded closer than that. He was; he had followed Alison two floors below into the bunker (where the cat is) and didn’t make it out before she left and put the gate up. He was trapped with Tiffany, the cat from, well, Mother’s. When I got down there, his little nose was up against the gate like a doomed prisoner.

Mother is sleeping on the porch now, after having watched Angela’s Ashes and I am on the other sofa with traumatized Sydney. We have the electric firestove on and a Macintosh and Peach Yankee Candle burning. And I am drinking a cure: you know, Diet Coke mixed with Coke and sipped after two aspirin.