It is generally true that you have to give a little to get a little. It always seems to work whenever I try it, anyway. Even if it doesn't produce desired results in the immediate transaction, banking a little good karma makes the times easier when you are in a needy rut where all you seem to do is take. I'm in that rut now, needing a lot of extra accommodations, and I feel guilty about it. But I'm always looking for ways I can give back, to keep some semblance of balance in my relationships. That might
be why I knocked myself out making dinners for the Wednesday game group for so long, investing in cosmic storage of good will, not knowing then how soon I would be in a position to hope others can take over and feed me while I'm down this spring. I also need the games we play to be local, at my house or next door. That's the battle we are facing now. One member is in Boulder, and he loved to host at his apartment building. But the rest of us live elsewhere, most in our town. It's a lot more of a logistical nightmare to get us all there, waiting at the locked gate to be let in to start the game (and the host is almost always late). I volunteered to make tomorrow's game down at his place, but as a forfeit of sorts, because I'm about to insist on months of them at my house or at T's. We just can't keep up with a young night owl when some of our group has to commute an hour into Denver each way, and some of us are about to be in another medical fight for our lives (okay, that's just me). We may have to have some sort of intervention tomorrow, about why exactly short commutes and early bedtimes will be the law for a while.
We have a lot of little old ladies needing extra accommodations right now. I'm not just referring to myself (I'm neither little nor old in this context). Elsa the dog has never fully recovered from her pancreatitis last year. She got super skinny just a few months after Bump did the exact same thing (although his was a pancreatic tumor, and it was fatal). We have tried to keep her calorie intake up, but her body is old now and doesn't want to be as chubby as she was most of her life. We had a huge Costco run today, and have stocked up on wet dog food. She hasn't had nearly enough of that in her day, mostly because she always ate so fast she wouldn't have tasted anything anyway. Now we're so interested in keeping her around and comfortable, we don't care how fast it goes down.
Rabbit is in the same boat. She's light as a feather and her bones seem close to the surface and fragile now. I bought her a vitamin paste in a tube from Petco. I wasn't sure she would like it, but it took her no time at all to recognize the sound of a plastic cap snapping in place. I put a dab of this stuff on the back of my knuckle for her to consume, so the one time I was applying hand lotion instead, she came flying out of nowhere and got a noseful of mandarin orange argan oil lotion. Whoops.
While we were playing mah jongg tonight, I got a video of my grandkittens staging a protest. Little old lady Smacky is officially toothless now, and I don't mean like the dragon in the animated movies. She has nothing left to chew crunchies with, so she's on wet food now. She still lives with Harvey's mother and a couple of the babies (two were officially "adopted" yet they haven't gone home with their human yet because she hasn't gotten a place where pets are allowed). Harvey's siblings threw a giant fit that Smacky was getting canned food while they were locked outside of the room where she ate. I was told that they continued to fuss for hours. The absolute injustice of it was written on their faces, and it was the cutest, funniest thing I've seen all week, and that's saying a lot because I have spent a week discussing with Harvey how cruel it is that he should be inside now that it is officially spring. I wonder whether the California siblings ever calmed down.
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