Time off

This is the last week of my summer schedule, and to complicate things, I had to put my old kitty, Cleo, to sleep over the weekend.  She had been struggling for the better part of the past year with some kind of progressive paralysis, and she was finally getting to the point where she could no longer eat.  I tried syringe feeding her for a few weeks, but even that -- which she liked at first -- became problematic when her immune system could no longer keep up with her body's demands, such as an infection in her mouth from a broken tooth.

I don't want to write the entire story more than once, so you can read about Cleo's final illness and passing over on Cleo's old blog, the one I created for her back when she had fatty liver disease.

Caring for Cleo has been part of what kept me so busy all summer long, but now that she is gone, I don't know what to do with the extra time her loss gives me.  I had hoped that she would make it through the summer so I could spend more time with her once my schedule settled down, but that wasn't to be.  I've let my clients know and asked for some extra time with a couple of deadlines, plus no new assignments (or at least not with any short-turnaround deadlines) for a few days or a week, and I'm taking tomorrow off from my nanny job.  I'm so grateful right now for my work -- an employer that can give me a day or two off when needed, and freelancing that allows me to set my own hours for the most part.

So between taking some time off to recover from losing Cleo, and this being the final week of my summer schedule, I'll be MIA for just a little while longer.