Oh, my. Can you believe it's December already? Hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. We certainly did. I am always so grateful to my friend for gathering folks at her home. This year, we were asked to bring the mashed potatoes, so I pulled Anthony Bourdain's recipe. Talk about heart clogging. It calls for 6 sticks of butter for 4 pounds of potatoes, which are riced and not whipped with a mixer. Talk about decadent and creamy! Thankfully, a very small portion of these was enough for me.

Like every year, hubby took off for upstate PA on Friday at 0-dark-30 to go hunting with his cousin. I was worried this year because of predictions for heavy snow up that way. But he said he didn't see a single flake until he was within a few miles of his cousin's lake house. Good thing because the last couple of miles is a private road that is not plowed by the county.

My worries about Teddy continue. His ultrasound showed no signs of cancer and his organs looked good. His kidneys are a little large for a cat of his size, but the vet said that was probably just an inherited feature, as they look healthy. But, and this is a big but, he started coughing a few days after the ultrasound and now she's afraid it might be a sign of a heart problem. For now, we're watching him closely and checking his respiration rate every now and then. If resting respiration goes above 35 breaths per minute, we are to get him to the vet or to the veterinary ER if our vet is not open.

Honestly, I so want a window of time when I'm not dealing with house issues, family sickness, my own health problems, or pet health problems. But I'm just trying to stay in today and not let myself worry about what might coming down the pike.

I know I mentioned that I was thinking about looking into having my radiation done at a Hopkins facility rather than the one at Maryland Oncology Hemotology because they are just too understaffed. Thankfully, the staff at my Primary Care office called and (their words) browbeat the staff down there to get me an appointment on December 13. In the meantime, I finally heard from MOH and they said I could wait until January to start treatment. So I've booked the appointments there since they fill up so fast, but I'll cancel them in a heartbeat if I feel I'd be more comfortable having it done at the Hopkins facility. My PCP told me that since Johns Hopkins is a teaching and research facility, they will likely have the most up-to-date equipment and more staff to operate it.

Sheesh, it's great that your Dexa scan showed some areas of improvement and some that are stable. I'm a little fearful myself of fosamax because my aunt was one of those people who had serious side effects from that med. I know that the day may come, however, that I'll need some type of bone conserving drug and that there are others. A friend of mine whose Mom had severe osteoporosis and who has a mild form already herself is taking some type of shot that is given once or twice year, and she has had no problems with it. We're lucky to have help that the generations before us did not have. And we're lucky that we started getting active before problems set in. Once these darned treatments are over, I plan to add more weight-lifting to my regime, too.

Well, it's 10 a.m. now and I have a friend coming over to chat at 10:30. So I'd better close and go get some more coffee on and pull out the tea kettle. Looking forward to hearing from everyone.