When I first joined Twitter, with the idea that I'd use it to promote this blog (spoiler: I didn't), I mostly followed comedians, actors, and people I actually know in person. Then a few years later, the world freaked out and I did too, and I followed a ton of politicians, pundits, and journalists. Then that freaked me out even more, so I started following cat and dog accounts, and now I'm much happier. I've cheered when the city council didn't move a community garden in some town in England where I've never been, but several stray cats are cared for by the local gardeners. I've offered support when a cat from Warwick University campus got hit by a car, and had very similar injuries to my dog Speed Bump, and I promised that he healed and led a long, glorious life of climbing mountains. I've shared silly Thoughts of Dog that cheered me up on days I really needed it. (And thanks to that account, I have developed a lingering fascination with the Skittle under the fridge, just like the dog. I wonder whatever happened to it.) I keep adding new accounts to follow, and healing emotionally with every pretty cat and dog picture.
Today, all the English cat accounts I follow (of which there are many, and I don't quite know how I ended up with all of them) started tagging their photos with Black Cat Appreciation Day. I thought, hey, I have a couple of those. I tried to get new pictures of Jackie and Athena to tweet out, and every single time I snuck up on them with a camera, they caught me and moved. I managed to get one picture of the two of them, and Jackie was trying to blur herself like a photo of Bigfoot. She always does. Still, I will share it, because it was the best I could do.
Some of the chemo sickness has already started, a little early this time. Yesterday, I ate compulsively, with what I think was a side effect of the oral steroids I had to take. I just couldn't throw enough food in my face hole, all day. I regretted it overnight, when the heartburn was worse than I can remember it for decades, even counting in the previous cycles over the summer. My daughter left me a bottle of store-brand tums, and I have been chewing them up at night. By around two this afternoon, I realized I skipped eating altogether, and I tried to get a little something in me. Peaches and cottage cheese went down okay, but nothing else was possible. Late tonight, I tried to eat some Hippeas (chickpea cheetoes) and ice cream, and they just brought back the heartburn. I expect to eat nothing or next to it tomorrow through Wednesday. I feel a little better now that the Neulasta is off of my arm, and I've started to wonder if having that little catheter in me for 26 hours is so irritating in the same way that my one attempt at acupuncture was. (Doc later told me that my extreme discomfort and anxiety was because lupus doesn't play nice with acupuncture, and I should never try it again.) I'm still dreading tomorrow's onset of the digestive distress, and wondering whether it will wait until night time, as we've talked about going up to Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow. That might be best left until a couple weeks from now, when I'm picking up steam, not losing it.
It's late now. Maybe I could go back to Twitter one last time, to check in on all those adorable cats and dogs, to put myself to sleep with happy thoughts. I'm going to need lots of those over the next four or five days.
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