Fifth Birthday

Today my cats turned five years old and during that time they have given me immense pleasure, love and amusement.  They are very different:  Parsifal is outgoing and extremely curious while Poppy, who seems to be quiet and retiring actually holds the upper hand.  Parsifal has been thoroughly cowed by her although it doesn't stop him trying to gain the upper hand from her.

At the moment they are both on a diet as their ribs are disappearing.  They nagged at me for a couple of days but now seem to be taking it in their stride which makes for a much more peaceful household.

I have ben trying to get back to writing up my alternative Family History  -  named The Slush Fund  -  and am having difficulties.  I thought at first that Microsoft's new App, Notepad Classic, was going to work for me but alas.  However, the original Notepad seems to have settled in and appears as one of the options for 'Open With'.  The main problem is that I cannot separate the folders.  I have two folders, one for the text and one for the pictures.  I am unable to find a way of separating the folders from My Documents which insists on appearing on the left side with all its files.  I am not sure what will happen if I save it to a flash drive and send it to my brother  -  will he be able to read everything on my Desktop?

I'll finish formatting the files and see what happens when I open them in a computer which is not tied to The Cloud  -  at least into my part of The Cloud.  I don't want my brother to know which Yoga DVDs I do on which days.

I had coffee this afternoon with a very old acquaintance whom I first met when my Ex volunteered me for some doorknocking and later when her mother-in-law was admitted into the hospital where I worked and where I apparently cured her varicose ulcer.  She now has a friend with what sounds like an ulcer and hoped, since it doesn't seem to be healing, that I could give some guidance.  I recommended compression stockings which are almost obligatory in such cases and which no-one had mentioned in this case.  I also told her about the very old treatment which is zinc bandages plus compression stockings.

I cured ulcers on both legs of one patient who had suffered from them for years and which she scratched because they itched.  The zinc bandages, suggested to me by the hospital pharmacist, had a two-fold benefit  -  soothing the itch and creating a barrier to the scratching.  Once they were healed is was just a matter of ensuring that she wore TED stockings.

A good friend of mine is going for surgery tomorrow morning and I am very concerned for her.  The original diagnosis was an inoperable tumour of the brain  -  so inaccessible that even a biopsy would cause a great deal of collateral damage but she has been seeing a neurosurgeon and perhaps he will be able to work a miracle  -  or perhaps he intends to take a biopsy so that the tumour can be treated with chemo or radiotherapy.  I can only hope since there is no deity in whom I can trust to perform a miracle.