On the seventh day of my unemployment.

May 2022. This is a post from the beginning of the pandemic. It’s been sitting in my draft folder for more than two years now. I am publishing it without revising, so please excuse its first-draft form.

I’ve just finished with a Zoom meeting with the Librarians of Librarian Book Group. This is my second Zoom meeting in two days as we successfully had Writer’s Group yesterday. Plus, tonight I helped Matt and his family play an online bar-trivia type game.

Being an introvert, I’m not yet feeling the feeling of missing interacting with people, but I’m sure it will come. And it’s fun to get to see people, even if the screens are kind of at weird angle sometimes, or the picture freezes.

It reminds me of Before Midnight, with the younger couple who met and have a long-distance relationship and video chat a lot. You can see what Jessie and Celeste lost by not having that connection.

I’m still feeling thankful that we have so many electronic resources. And hopefully the internet upgrade we have scheduled for Wednesday will improve things even more on this front.

In cat news, I’ve decided to have the rapidly growing lump on Sentinel’s neck removed. It was thumbnail sized in October, and has more than doubled. I’ve got one more paycheck coming and I guess it’s better to spend a chunk of change now rather than having to take action in June when there is no money coming it. He has surgery tomorrow. Poor thing. He’s going to hate it, plus I’m not sure how the cone will work as the cone would be on his neck.

Last Days for Sentinel’s Lump (aka the “ewww, gross! post)

Sentinel has had a growing lump on the side of his neck since last fall. I had it biopsied a few months ago when it wasn’t nearly this size and it came back as not cancerous, so I left it, hoping it would stay small.

But it got a lot bigger. It also, much to the vet’s interest, was a two parter, with one dark black part and another lighter part.

I’ve got one more paycheck coming from my soon-to-be-over job and a big chunk of it is going toward taking this sucker off of the cat. I think it will be money well spent.

I had to get a special dispensation because of the quarantine. The vet’s office was only doing essential surgeries.

Update from the future. The lump was removed, biopsied to find again it was not cancerous, and has not (seven months later) made a reappearance. It was money well spent.