Groundhog Syndrome?

Is it Spring yet? Can I come out of the hole I've been hunkering down in for the last quarter of a year, consuming mass amounts of carbohydrates?

I've been having this internal conversation lately, about whether I should continue to blog or not. It certainly is more creative than playing Vampire Wars in Facebook, but let's not poke that bear quite yet. I kind of felt that I was becoming stale in what I was posting, that it ran in a cyclical format. Post about my life, my kids, the cats, drinking on a Sunday, and the ubiquitous photo -op post when all words had dried up and blown away. These are all things I am interested in, but are they things worth writing about, and more saliently, self-publishing? I don't have the kind of egocentric personality to think, unquestioningly, "Why yes, they are! Who doesn't want to read about ME?" Rather, I shrink inwardly, thinking of the exposed, winter-white underbelly I'm exposing. Granted, my ego is unrealistic enough to have thought, at the outset of blogging, that I would become a famous celebrity blogger, doing talk shows, writing a book, and somehow transcending the mundane.

Yeah, not so much, and most of the time that's okay with me. I don't really want to be accountable to thousands of readers, who are going to take issue with me every time I take a stance on something. There is less pressure in knowing that virtually no one will read this, but it does raise the question of why do it at all, and I don't really have an answer for that right now, because I'm waffling as it is.

I'm disappointed with myself, and a little angry as well. I start projects only to never finish them, and the biggest unfinished project I have is Who Am I? At 47 years old you would think I'd have that answer, but nope - nopety, nope - I'm clueless. I'd like to be able to place the blame elsewhere, but ultimately it's all on my head.

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It's been a busy period, despite the self-imposed hibernation: I took in another stray cat I found wandering the streets during a snow storm. I thought she might be terminally ill, with something horribly contagious like Leukemia or FIV, but upon observing her I discovered she couldn't chew the dry food that the neighbors had left out for her. she would bolt it whole and then vomit it back up, which was causing her to dehydrate and slowly starve. I took her in, fed her soft food, and kept an eye on her. She was covered in fleas, even in January, so I bathed her. The water ran so red I thought I had opened a wound on her body somewhere, but it was only from the flea castings. When I took her down to see Doc after about two weeks, she was stable but still fragile. He told me that she had suffered a broken pelvis and jaw, and was anemic from the flea infestation, but other than that was healthy and disease-free. And that is how Miss Willow came to be among the chosen few here at the Temple of Bast.

But wait, there's more: I discovered on Monday that Pooh Bear, named for his prodigious eating habits, had an abcess on the side of his face. I cleaned it, dosed him with Amoxicillan and put him in solitary to rest. When I checked on him later I discovered he had another abcess a little further down his neck. Apparently he was bitten by one of the feral and intact males who roam our neighborhood. Luckily, he has had his shots, and I am an old hand at abcesses, so two days later, he's looking much better.

On the family front, my son, The Professor, came down with Strep for the very first time, at 12 and a half. It was the damnedest thing I've ever seen. He came home from school on a Friday, complaining of a sore throat and a headache. Saturday morning I looked in his mouth and there were the tell-tale pustules on his tonsils. We decided to wait and go to his regular doctor on Monday, since I don't trust the doc-in-the-box and he wasn't that severe, symptomatically speaking. Sunday morning, his throat had less white lesions, but it still hurt a bit. By Monday morning he had a clear throat, albeit a bit red and puffy. I took him to the doctor, he tested positive for Strep and he started his antibiotics. He's fine now, but I wonder: would he have recovered from the strep without any antibiotics? I've never seen anyone come down with Strep and two days later, be on the mend, but it sure looked like that was the case with him. I just wish I could bounce back like that!