I had high hopes that Harvey would remember Sheba. After all, Sheba was his Nana Dog. There are pictures of him as a tiny white kitten, curled up next to her, making her super nervous. (Everything makes Sheba nervous. She makes herself nervous, when she takes time to be self-aware.) When my daughter and grand-dog arrived this morning, we had been out in the hot tub, with the cats roaming the yard. Jackie forgot who Sheba was when she first saw her, and Jack ran back into the house to hide. Then she remembered and calmed down. Alfred was chill, as was Rabbit. Athena avoided conflict, which was fine with all of us. But Harvey, who should have remembered, poofed as big as a short-haired boy can, and was quite edgy for the first hour or two. Even when my daughter carried him around, he turned baleful eyes to me, pleading for help. I answered with impatience. "Harvey, you weren't just born in a bathroom, you were born in HER bathroom. Cut it out."
This visit is promising to be a good one. My daughter is here to help me out, and she has great ideas for making an impact long after she leaves. She's been planning for weeks on making meals that we can freeze, so that as I come out of the bad weeks of the next two infusions, all I have to do is throw something in the microwave. We're going to follow the guidelines on how to make food appetizing for chemo patients, like making it less spicy (much less), more acidic (lemon is good), and full of easy proteins. We are also talking about doing some painting together, and revising our tradition of watching some of the Harry Potter movies together. I had recently watched the fourth movie, Goblet of Fire, and so now we need to choose which direction to go from there. Do we go with the dark later movies, where they are wrapped up in the long battle against evil, or do we escape the angst and stick to the early ones aimed at a younger audience? I'm leaning toward the happy kid ones.
I'm not used to sleeping with a dog in my bed. It's been a long-standing rule of mine, no dogs on the furniture. Yet here I am, letting Sheba come bounding into my room, rolling around on the end of my bed at will. I feel a little bad for Elsa that she was never given that opportunity, but to be fair, Sheba weighs less than Jackie the cat. Sheba is going to be surprised when she finds out Grandma kicks and gets up a lot during the night. She might give up on me and go back to sleeping on the floor in my daughter's room. I'm curious to see how this goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment