After all the tick nonsense, the blood test for Lyme disease came back negative, as did the tick, and so it’s quite likely there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me.  I have the nice new doctor, and she also sent me for routine blood tests, the results of which we discussed by phone.  She said my white and red blood platelet count was good, iron and B 12 levels are okay, very low cholesterol, no sign of diabetes, good kidney and liver function, so she said to continue doing whatever I’m doing.

You know what a mistake that is, don’t you?  We had the phone appointment a few days ago and I’ve probably gained five pounds with the thought that the doctor TOLD me this is okay to do.  I simply have to stop going through the drive-thru at Dairy Queen for a chocolate-dipped cone.

Genes could have something to do with it, as you’ll recall mom ate a hundred pounds of fruitcake a year while I was in the fruitcake business.  At 97 she’s puttering around her house, watering her plants, eating dozens of Ritter Sport chocolate bars a week, and happily filling in her rest time with CNN and MSNBC, glass of wine in hand.

Calvin went home to his mom’s ranch in Falkland for a week, and while there found a little orange tabby kitten that needed a home so asked me if he could bring him here.  I said sure, but just know George will beat the tar out of that cat if he sees it on his property, but Calvin said he’s going to try to keep Felix as an indoor cat.

I was telling Calvin about my two white cats, Simone and Claudette who I had when I was 20 and had an apartment on Hemlock Street in Vancouver.  It was an ivy-covered old brick building, and those cats would go outside the window and walk along the narrow ledge, even though we were on the second floor. 

Hemlock Street was a feeder onto the Granville Street bridge, so people would barrel past the building at tremendous speeds.  When I first told my dear old gramma my boyfriend gave me two kittens for my birthday her reply in German was “throw them right out the window onto the street.” This is very funny because two years later these cats moved into my gramma and grampa’s house in Osoyoos, and were pampered pets. 

For some reason I treated the cats like dogs so I recall taking them down to Kits beach with my deaf boyfriend Bob and we’d hang out with other deaf people, and must’ve made quite a scene with the two white cats.  They were good cats as they just kind of stayed nearby, but now I imagine them running straight onto a busy road.  As we get older, we get more timid.

And more lazy, as I just called Gilles the nice gardener to come and prune a bunch of stuff for me.  In this heat I can haul the hoses around and water, but that’s my limit.  The tomatoes, cucumbers and yellow zucchini are all starting to produce, I have a lot of figs but not sure if they’ll ripen in time, and a bumper crop of hardy kiwi.

I’ve pitted a few pounds of cherries, cooked them, then added Kirsch brandy so that I can make Black Forest cake.  I’m determined to conquer the Genoise sponge.  More health food, perhaps?