Tuesday, April 2

It was after 3 a.m. before I fell asleep last night. I couldn't keep from worrying about our cat that was up in a tree. Though it wasn't freezing last night, it was uncomfortably cool, and I hated that the little guy had to spend the night up there. At least one time during the night, Hubbie got up to go check on him, but there was just no coaxing him down, so there was nothing we could do but wait til morning and try to enlist someone's help in rescuing him.

Hubbie had set the clock for 6:30, so he could go out and maybe coax the cat down in daylight, in case he was just afraid to climb down in the dark. But no dice, the cat was glued to that tree. So Hubbie began calling around to see if there was anyone with climbing equipment who could come help get the cat down.

The first person he called touched base with our electric company, where a supervisor said one of their trucks was nearby, and the worker could stop by and get the cat down. Well, time drug on to noon, and no one showed up. So Hubbie called a neighbor to get information about the location of a tree service business in our neighborhood, and then he went to the buisness to ask for help. The owner of the business, who also has cats, and who has had to extricate his own animals from trees, was very willing to come get our cat down.

He arrived within a few minutes, and presently, he'd climbed up and brought the very exhausted, frightened cat down. I whisked him into the house, where I thought he'd make a beeline to his water and food dish. Instead, he spent time wobbling around trying to stretch his atrophied muscles after spending about 36 hours clinging to a small tree limb. Soon, he nestled in Hubbie's chair, where he slept through the afternoon and into the evening.

It was awfully hard for me to get up at 6:30 this morning, after not falling asleep until 3 a.m., but I rolled out, because I needed to get ready for an 8:45 doctor appointment. I was due for a fasting lab test, so water was my breakfast this morning.

At the clinic, I sat in the waiting room while nearly a dozen people came and were immediately called back. Finally, I was escorted to the exam room. I didn't like my weigh-in, and my BP was a bit higher this morning, due to several things...lack of sleep, worry, forgetting to take my water pill yesterday, and eating a meal a bit higher in salt (ham) Easter Sunday and Monday night.

Since it was around 10 a.m. by the time I got back home, I was plenty ready for breakfast. So I fixed myself scrambled egg substitute, which I had with the remaining hot cross bun that Sis brought when she came to visit, along with a glass of orange juice, and a couple of cups of coffee.

Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house around that time. Shortly afterward, the kitchen stove repairman came and determined that the trouble with the oven was the bottom element, which was broken in half. He'll bring a new element tomorrow. Hubbie felt a little foolish that he didn't notice that the element was broken...when he checked it, he was unable to see that anything was wrong with it. Maybe, although it wasn't working, it split apart after he checked it.
The bottom element quit some time ago, splitting apart that time, too, but Hubbie saw the problem, bought a new element, and changed it himself. He would have done the same thing this time, if he'd spotted the problem.

Before lunch, Mother and I put a pot of beans on to simmer. Mother diced the veggies...onions, carrots, and banana peppers...and cubed leftover ham, and I seasoned the beans with no-salt seasoning, pepper, and paprika, and added a can of chicken broth, and a can of beef broth.

I let the beans simmer until time for Mother and me to meet a 3 p.m. haircut appointment. In the meantime, Mother worked on her jigsaw puzzle, and I uploaded snapshots of the cat rescue to my social network page, completed a monthly report for the Literacy Council (the last one, unless I choose to tutor another student), answered e-mail correspondence, and read the local newspaper.

Around 2:30, Mother and I went to the beauty shop. Br-r-r, it had turned sharply cooler outside, and it was dizzling rain. I was so very glad our cat was safe and sound indoors. It made me teary-eyed to think he might have still been stuck in that tree.

Back home, it was time to think about supper. The beans had cooked before we left for our appointment, so they only needed to be heated a bit. Mother mixed a box of cornbread mix, which Hubbie took to Mother's house to bake in her oven. I put a dish of the remaining scalloped potatoes in the microwave, and searched out a package of boiled cabbage from the freezer to be heated.

While everyhing heated, we watched "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown," that I'd recorded on DVR. Supper was very good. Afterward, Hubbie accompanied Mother to her house, and then we watched a 2006 movie we borrowed from the public library..."Invincible," a sports film based on the story of Vince Papale, a 30-year-old bartender from Philadelphia, who beat the odds to play with NFL's Philadelphia Eagles in 1976.