The Return of the Prodigal

We had not seen our little gray kitty friend LGK (also known as Stryker) in a number of weeks, so last weekend, I finally wrote an email note to his mom, who lives just a few houses away, sending our best regards and asking if our little buddy was okay. 

When I got home from our backpacking trip on Wednesday night, there was an email response from her waiting: Yes, LGK was fine; perhaps he just hadn't made it our way in a little while. 

I wrote back and thanked her and wished her well. And then look who turned up on our front porch on Friday morning! It was almost as though she had whispered something in his ear. :-) Hello, LGK. So nice to see you again! In this photo: my husband offers welcoming ear-skritches.

In other news, temperatures here have fallen, and there was ice on the windows of the car parked outside on Friday morning. We brought the tomato plants and the osteospermum and the tuberose up under the garage overhang for the night on Thursday overnight, and they were fine. 

The frost did NOT take the Mexican sunflowers, for which we are grateful. They have been such a great late-season bloomer (and boon) for the pollinators.

There are so many things to do around the house, as it starts to get colder: get out the better, thicker sheets and blankets; take out the air conditioners; move in a few little heaters; vacuum some things; put some stuff away. Does it ever really end?

And I have to share this little story. Remember my annual doctor appointment last Friday? How I worried and stewed in advance, and then everything went way much better than fine? Yeah, that one. Well, there's even one more bit of icing on that cake!

I had been bitten by some ticks this year while hiking. Four, to be exact. Many of them were reportedly infested with bad stuff, according to the Tick Lab in eastern PA, where I sent them. 

The big question is: were they attached long enough for any of the bad stuff to seep into and infect ME? So my doctor-lady wrote out an order for an immediate tick-borne disease blood test. Which I dutifully took to the blood lab next door, right after my appointment, and got my blood drawn. 

I still had orders for more blood tests, which I planned to do later. You know, the FASTING kind, where you starve and are miserable for an entire evening, so in the morning you can race into town and get your blood tested before you are allowed to eat or drink anything at all. Yeah, that kind.

I received an email from my doctor on Thursday afternoon which confused me. Here is how it read: "Below are the results of your most recent labs, and overall everything looks great. Your fasting glucose was just a couple points high, but nothing concerning. Your tick-borne illness testing is negative as well. Thanks! - Jess."

Well, I wrote back asking her WHAT other blood tests, as I thought I was waiting to do the fasting ones later on. She wrote back to me on Friday morning, clarifying that - YES - the blood lab had already taken all of the blood they needed and they DID ALL OF THE TESTS WITHOUT ME EVEN SUFFERING AND STARVING!!!! 

In fact, better yet, I didn't even KNOW about it. That was the least stressful fasting (but not fasting) blood test I've ever had. Hooray! It was like not even studying for the final, getting to challenge the exam, and then acing it!

In retrospect, thank goodness I saved the $5 Burger King bag as my treat for AFTER the doctor visit, and not BEFORE it, or the tests would not have gone so swimmingly. So there! I'm done with blood draws! (Still have to schedule the mammogram; it's on my list for next week.) Whew!

My soundtrack song for this photo of LGK finally coming back to visit us is the Oak Ridge Boys, with the Y'All Come Back Saloon.