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Here are the photos!

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And we also have a new kitten Molly!

Molly

My neighbor Ron saved me. We were talking “over the fence” the other day and I mentioned that I’d been taken down by bad muscle spams in my back. It turns out that along the way of his medical training, he also picked up a chiropractor license. He said he’d stop by later.

I was thinking he’d “crack my back” with an adjustment. Nope. He asked some questions, tested out my range of movement, and then brought out a strange looking instrument.

It looked like a cross between a door jam and a syringe. He said that dentists used to use them to crack teeth (maybe they still do?). The door-jam part could “aim” the slight jarring jolt it gave to a fairly precise location. You could adjust the strength of the jolt by twisting the thing…. wow, this is a really bad description. I need some vocabulary – hold on…

Ok, it’s variably called a Chiropractors’ reflex gun, tapper, muscle activator, adjuster, impact tool, or chiropractors’ adjustment tool (CAT). Evidently, it can release a force of up to 32 pounds to a very localized area. It belongs to the genre of “thrust adjustment” devices (I will resist the impulse to make a bad joke, I will resist…). He tapped a few spots on my back, tested my range again, tapped a few more spots.

And guess what? The pain subsided quite a bit, and I immediately had more range of movement.

I’m unclear about how this thing works, something about muscles firing and impulses and “resetting” muscle groups. I haven’t been able to find much on the theory, except for some verbiage about muscles that have gotten out of balance. Clearly I’ll have to do a little more research on this. It looks like you can get one of these for something like $150-200. I’ll be looking on EBay, etc. It really made a difference. Or maybe I’ll just use a hammer (grin).

I undid a lot of the good because I had to ready the house for Ben’s birthday party – including the cleaning, lugging supplies, doing decorations (including the helium balloons), moving a table outside, etc. I’m pretty creaky today after doing all that yesterday from 7-2.

If Ron hadn’t rescued me, I honestly don’t know how I could possibly have pulled it off. My back was slowly improving, but I was still waking up unable to turn my head to the left, unable to sit for any length of time without stiffening up, unable to move around much without spikes of pain, the whole thing.

I would have felt awful if Ben’s birthday party didn’t come off as planned because of Mommy’s back pain.

Now if only I could get a good massage…

Our sweet little cat Zoom has been missing for five days now.

Zoom was abandoned in the park that borders our property about a year ago. He adopted us.

He’s very shy, but he trusts us. When I go out on the deck with my morning cuppa java, he is usually waiting for me. He greets me with chirps and miraows and mutterings, and once I settle down and have my first sip he jumps into my lap and snuggles in.

We’ve gotten very attached.

I put flyers up around the neighborhood last night, and sent an email to the neighborhood list.

There have been multiple sightings of two/three coyotes in the neighborhood, and other cats have gone missing. Concerned, I once tried to take him indoors, but he climbed the walls. He is an outdoor cat.

When my stepson brought his dog Evie over – a pitbull (a very sweet and intelligent pitbull, but a pitbull nonetheless) – he zoomed up a tree immediately. Got himself down too. I was hoping that he would zoom out of danger.

My deepest fear at this point isn’t even that he is dead, but that he’s just injured and can’t find his way back home. I know that he’d be back if he could get here. I’ve searched the woods out back and across the street – nothing.

My hope is fading.

They didn’t have a grey and white kitty, so this is as close as I get to our kitty Zoom. Zoomie here will play with the cursor. Click the “more” button to get a treat for him – hold it close and he’ll take a wee bite at a time. Click on him and hold to pet him. If you have speakers on, you’ll hear him purr. Very cute little blog toy.

Hee-hee.

The real Zoom adopted us – I think he was a kitten tossout in the park. He is the sweetest cat I’ve ever known. He chirps and mutters to me, and asks permission to jump in my lap by touching my shin very gently with his paw and blinking at me.

I haven’t been able to get a good photo of him yet. He’s always on the move, hunting and exploring and zooming around. He’s very very shy of anyone except the three of us.

There is a big dark grey cat that terrorizes him a bit, but the opposum leaves him alone.

Your Ideal Pet is a Cat

You’re both aloof, introverted, and moody. And your friends secretly wish that you were declawed!

Fair enough (grin)