This evening, I went back to volunteering at the food pantry after months away, nursing the arthritic hip. I climbed on my bicycle, pedaled three blocks, locked up my bike and limped to the pantry room. My neighbors in the tiny town laughed and seemed happy to see me. We sorted donated canned goods, pastas, baking ingredients, breads and baby foods, placed them on labeled shelves, cleaned up sticky messes and stacked bins in a closet. After an hour, I pedaled three blocks, locked up my bike and limped into our house, where I gleefully cha-cha-cha’d and collapsed in a happy heap on the couch. Yay! ZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ snort zzzzzzzz.

Sweetpea, fuzzball extraordinaire, lounges beside me on the couch. You can still plainly see spots where the vet shaved rings into her fur at her neck and above her front paws, giving her a poodly appearance. She likes to snuggle up next to me and drift off to Dreamland, paws twitching. More than once, Sweetpea’s snoring caused us to stop what we were doing to track down an odd, buzzy hiss. We haven’t heard Sweetpea snore since she came home from the hospital. She’s lost a few pounds and sleeps lightly. We understand. She’s still traumatized, but she wants to hold hands. I will take that.