After my last entry (an unconscionably long time ago), a thoughtful reader suggested that my listing Votrient and luck as what's kept me going was incomplete: Mohamed should definitely have been included.  And who can argue with that?  His first task every morning for literally more than a thousand times is to give me an injection in the stomach.  Three times a day I disappear into a deep sleep--not exactly a fun person to be around.  When it's time to eat, I just sit like a lump on the couch, waiting to be served.  When I wake from my third crash (6-7 p.m.), I often think we should go out for dinner, but it's cold and dark and windy, and it's just so much easier to send Mohamed for take-out.  Without Mohamed I have no idea what these last 3½ years would have been like. 

Last Thursday we drove to Kansas City for Mohamed's electronic fingerprinting at the Department of Homeland Security.  The drive both ways was horrible--winds gusting to 48 mph with a cold, hard rain on the way in.  By the time we drove back, the rain had changed to sleet, hail, and then driving snow.  The workers at the Department, even those who ran the security screening, were almost theatrically friendly.  The waiting room looked like a miniature UN with people speaking Slavic, African, and East Asian languages, many in their native dress.  The fingerprinting itself took about ten minutes, a long drive for such a short transaction.  The next step is the interview, which will take place at the same facility.  Everything should be in order; we've been together for seven years, two of them long distance.  All the financial documents are complete, and we have wonderful letters of support.  But it's hard not to worry that the differences in age, culture, and religion might make us the object of extra scrutiny.  We can check the progress of the application online, but until the interview, nothing changes there.

It's 7º here at the moment with new snow on the ground and more on the way.  Other than the endless winter as a downer, Kimber hasn't been herself.  She has a problem with her left rear leg and yelps when she has to stand or climb stairs.  She's generally lethargic and doesn't have much appetite, though since she'd gained eight pounds since her last visit to the vet, she's going a diet.  She has what we had assumed was a fatty tumor, but before we took her to the vet, I  had begun to imagine that it was cancerous and that because of my tardiness in having her examined it had spread to the leg.  But the vet seemed unconcerned.  The fatty tumor is just that.  He thinks her discomfort is just a matter of age and being overweight.  He gave her an anti-inflammatory.  If I were convinced, I'd be relieved.  But she's still lying upstairs, unable or unwilling to come down.  She hasn't gone out, and her breakfast remains uneaten.  Once outside, she runs around as usual and goes up and down the stairs to the balcony where she can keep an eye on the neighborhood without any seeming problems.  Maybe it's time to see if I can entice her to venture out.