Princesses--Little Girl and Female Cat

This little doll is my granddaughter. She loves princesses, loves to play princess AND loves her cat. This most tolerant of all cats has (somewhat) willingly played along with the princess theme--as you can see. Lovely, precious granddaughter called to me the afternoon of this picture: "Grandma, come look at Daph! See! She's a princess!"

And, indeed she was--and is. Lovely princess-cat, or is that cat princess? (Then there's that "Queen" title I almost forgot about) Whichever, Daph has the softest coat of fur you can imagine and, as you can see, she's a beautiful calico. My daughter--mother of the lovely girl child pictured above--said they picked this particular cat at the animal shelter because she reminded her of the cat our family had when she was a lovely, young girl herself. I remember that cat, Cali, treating my daughter as if she were one of her kittens. (I never figured out why since my daughter could, of course pick Cali up and well, you know the size difference in humans and cats being what it is and all). Nonetheless, Cali would call my daughter to follow her with the same maternal cry (and patience, I might add) she gave her own baby kittens when she wanted them to follow her. And, she'd also attack any dog that wandered into the yard if my daughter was outside. (The same dog could come eat out of Cali's food bowl otherwise without any trouble--but let my daughter be in the yard! Dog was on notice, at the least, or under attack!)

Daph has treated precious granddaughter in an even more motherly fashion. I remember my daughter telling me multiple times that if her little one (during her early baby days) was wailing for whatever reason--like not wanting her diaper changed--Daph would go into super-defence mode, meow pitifully, and exert all possible energy to come to her aid. The cat's obvious intent was to protect the baby as if her life were endangered!

Animals are most entertaining and comforting to those of us who've been blessed to have them for companions. Here's to Daph! She's been to the vet earlier today and is suffering with an infection. Get better soon, sweet cat! You've been a great blessing to the family who loves you.

You need to get your head examined, or I've lost my mind somewhere

Something weird has happened. Seriously. Yesterday I had an MRI and an MRA of, yes, my head. (A friend told me she's also had her head examined, too.) Well, before I got into the huge machine that makes an enormous amount of noise (I think the inventors of said machine should have THEIR heads examined) I asked the tech guy to explain how it worked. He chuckled and asked, "So, how much time do you have?" My response: "Just give me the Reader's Digest version."

This was basically it: "Our bodies are mostly made up of water molecules."
"Yeah, I said. And water molecules are pretty cool with the way they have an electrical charge." "Right. Well, the magnets in the machine " this part I forget exactly ... send an electrically charged beam or something and it RESONATES somehow with the water particles (read: molecules) and give an image they can record.
"So, the clicking noise (horrendous noise the first time I experienced this procedure) is the machine switching the magnets polarity back and forth?"
"Yes, for the ... " contrast ... or something or the other.

Well, that was kind of what I expected, but I didn't know about the water thing. Water molecules are pretty awesome--the properties they have with the oxygen having, I think, a negative charge and the 2 hydrogen molecules having positive charges . . . if they didn't have those properties, plants couldn't get water up from their roots and the sugar they produce in their leaves down to the roots or other parts of the plant. It amazed me to learn these things when I took biology a few years ago. Anyway, science has always intrigued me.

So, back to the huge machine. With all the magnetic polarity switching back and forth, I think I lost part of the electrical functioning of my brain. Seriously. I visited with, ate dinner with, and saw a movie with my oldest daughter after having the MRI and man! I've had trouble remembering things and getting my words all messed up as they try to come out of my mouth, or out of my fingers onto the keyboard trying to type this post. You could ask her. We laughed a lot, but it was obvious something was different! You have no idea how many huge typos I've had to try to fix as I've gone along. I mean, I'm not the world's greatest typist by far, but gee whiz! This has been extraordinarily difficult today! Not to mention that my usual poor spelling has just zeroed out as well. So if you find errors in this post, its not my faoult! It's the MRI monster that sucked stuff out of my brain yesterday. I promise that's the problem.

I hope I can recover! I need all the positive brain activity I can find--recover--improve--use, whatever. Getting old is hard enough on a person's brain. This is totally unfair. I'm complaining to my neurologist next Tuesday when I see him again.

Ooooooooooooh. Maybe I should wait until AFTER he gives me his diagnosis. Hmmmmmmm. But, seriously. It's been a real trial to try to talk and/or type coherently. (IS that a word? The right word? I hope so.)

Say a prayer, okay?