“It was almost a normal Sunday,” said Tanja at close of day. That is high praise from someone who truly values a good ol’ normal Sunday.

We are feeling really fond of our friends and family, near and far. We have been so lifted up and cared for and it seems, over and over, that just as spirits flag or energy fails, there will be a text, or a letter, or a visit, or a meal that sets us up again. Thanks don’t really cover it. But thanks:)

We have an 8am PT appointment tomorrow and a list of questions for that unsuspecting therapist.

And I remembered why Tanja brought up Jill Bolte Taylor back in those first days. She said, out of nowhere, “We should write a book about my recovery, like that lady Jill Bolte Taylor did.“

“Okay.”

“What’d she call it? It had a funny name.”

“My Stroke of Insight.”

“That’s right. We can call ours ‘Some Nerve.’”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“With my ideas and your typing skills,” she said, “we’ll be unstoppable.”

That sort of talk from someone who couldn’t lift her hands from the bed seemed almost like hubris. But Tanja was fearless out of the gate. It’s only been recently that the bravado has faltered, as if she can finally consider all the things that might have been.

Tonight there erupted from the side yard this terrible yowling mixed with an unidentifiable keening noise that rose and quavered and made my heart stop. I happened to be in the chicken coop and burst out expecting to see a cat in the dripping jaws of a yellow eyed coyote. The yard was black but something shot off to my right and hit the back fence before passing into the neighbor’s yard.

Tanja was at the window.

“Did you hear that?” She said.

“I did.”

I searched around the yard, found nothing, came in and counted the cats. Two of three.

We kind of expect bad things to happen these days. It feels so possible for anything to go wrong. It’s not logical. But I bet we’ll feel that way for a while.

The cat, however, when he sauntered in after twenty long minutes, seemed to share none of our fatalism, and was embarrassed by our expressions of joy.

It’s 39 on the Collar Countdown.

Sorry bout the ads: https://youtu.be/sRhTeaa_B98