So, Tiger

 

So, Tiger.

Tiger was limping. I didn’t see any obvious wound, he was getting around, albeit slowly, and we thought he’d get over it. We got through the weekend and the Monday holiday and Tuesday, Tiger was on my desk purring, for no apparent reason, and quivering.

          “Mike, I think Tiger’s in pain,” I said to my handsome silver-haired fox.

          I heard a long time ago that purring can be a sign of pain. Just to check and make sure I remembered correctly, I asked Copilot, my AI buddy. I was right. They believe purring is a method of self-soothing and the frequency cats purr at is known to promote bone healing, tissue repair, and pain relief. Some experts believe cats instinctively purr to help their bodies recover from injury or illness.

          I called the vet. “I think Tiger has a broken leg,” I left in a message. This vet office, this place of business, rarely answers the phone. They want you to leave a message and they’ll call you back, usually within two hours.

          “Why?” I asked them once.

          “Otherwise the girls are busy answering the phone all day and not getting any work done,” was the explanation I got.

          Personally, I think that’s bull. I’ve been sitting in the waiting room and maybe the phone rings one time. Every other vet or place of business in the area answers their phones unless they’re busy helping a customer, then it’ll go to voicemail.

          As much as it rankles me, I left a message. About forty minutes later they called back. “We can see him as an emergency as soon as you can get here,” she said.

          An emergency visit is an up charge and I didn’t care. No one wants to see their beloved pets in pain.

          The verdict?

          Tiger has an ACL rupture, patellar luxation (dislocating kneecap), and likely a torn meniscus. Surgery is recommended at a cost of four to seven thousand dollars. Without it he’ll have a limp, will never be able to jump as high again, and’ll develop arthritis.

          “I don’t care if he has a limp,” I told the vet. “Let’s just control his pain.”

          I don’t know how they feel about that, but this I know. We could spend all that money on Tiger and he could get hit in the road the next day. Maybe not literally the next day but you understand what I’m sayin’.

          “How did he hurt his leg?” is a question we’d all like the answer to. Unfortunately, Tiger isn’t talking. A guess? He was likely mid-jump and caught his foot. The force of the jump and a twist will do it.

“Strict rest is crucial to make sure he doesn’t re-injure it,” the vet said. “And here’s a sample of Cosequin. It’ll help slow the progression of arthritis,” she said.

Tiger likes the Cosequin Tidbits supplement so I’ll consider keeping him on that for the rest of his life, and for the gabapetin, I mix it in a small amount of tuna and he gobbles it right down.

          Tiger put up with being confined for exactly one day. Then he raised such a ruckus, yowling and pulling at the sides of the wire cat condo, that I let him out for the afternoon. At bedtime I gave him his second daily dose of gabapentin and put him in the condo.

          Tiger started meowing almost right away. I figured he’d settle down. An hour later I let him out, otherwise no one would’ve gotten any sleep. He followed me into the bedroom, flopped down on the floor, and he was still there in the morning.

          I can’t stop him from jumping, but he seems to have adjusted to the bad leg. He can manage a jump onto the kitchen chair pretty easily, then he gets on the table, walks across a bridge I made for him with a TV tray table, and onto my desk. Sometimes, though, he’ll ask. He’ll reach up and claw the seat of my desk chair. I’ll turn, pick him up, and put him on the desk. He eats a few mouthfuls of food, gets a drink, and lies down on my desk.

          I do kennel him some. All of the cat litter boxes are up high. Otherwise the dogs think it’s a treat box, and I worry Tiger can’t get to one. Cats don’t seem to eliminate more than a few times a day, and our cats mostly go outside. I rarely have to scoop a box. When Tiger heads for the door, or if we’re on the patio, the bridge to get over the dog-run fence, I put him in the kennel until I hear him use his box. So far it’s working okay for us.

 I only have one picture from our trip to the vet’s.

Speaking of owies...

          Mike’s fingers are healing well. His nail beds are dark so it remains to be seen if he’ll lose the fingernails.

          His eye is getting less red and there really hasn’t been any other change. After he gets the oil removed is when we’ll know how much vision he gets back.

          He has some pre-cancerous spots on his face that’s he’s putting meds on. That’s why they’re so red.     

         

          I spent hours this week filling out a survey.

          A couple of weeks ago I filled out a survey online. They sent me two dollars when they sent the papers asking us to fill it out. It didn’t take very long and afterward they gave us a fifty-dollar Amazon gift card.

          Cool! We buy lots of stuff from Amazon so there won’t be any problem spending that.

          “Since you filled out this survey,” they said, “you’ll get another one in the mail. This one has a five-dollar bill inside so be sure to open it. After you complete it, we’ll send you a seventy-five-dollar Amazon gift card.”

          Way cool!

          Holy cow! I couldn’t believe the size of the booklet! A hundred and twenty-four pages! Each page had several questions and multiple choice answers. They were picky about how you marked it, too. They wanted an X in the tiny little boxes and they wanted said X to be inside the box — no sloppy, out-of-the box Xs!

          It took me days to complete!

          “What is that, like six cents an hour?” my much-adored older sister asked when I was telling her about it.

          I laughed. "Yeah, probably. But it’s important. It lets companies know what we like and what we’re buying and our opinion on some things.”

          The survey was much more than what products we buy and how often we buy them and where we buy them and what day of the week we buy them and what time of day we do our shopping. They were interested in every aspect of our life.

How much TV we watch, and it listed TV stations and names of shows. Whether we stream, how we stream, what time of day we watch TV.

I could skip whole pages on baby products.

And I could skip whole pages pertaining to sports. We don’t watch many sports in this house.

“We watched the Superbowl,” I reminded Mike.

“Only because you wanted to watch the commercials,” he said.

“I’ve seen you watch the Olympics sometimes — and golf.”

“Only because I was channel surfing and stopped for a few minutes.”

About the only thing Mike really likes to watch is car racing and there was a page on that.

There were many pages on alcohol. What we drink, what time of day we drink, where we drink, how often we drink. Easy peasy, we don’t drink. I could skip like five pages there.

They wanted to know our political views, what party we belong to, when we vote. They wanted to know what we thought about the economy.

What vehicles we own. Are we thinking of buying a new one in the next two years. What kind would we buy.

“We’re boring,” I told Patti.

I know what I’m going to buy with the Amazon gift card.

“What?” I know you’re curious.

I’m going to get a Pet Vac, a Life Vac for dogs.

“Why?” you ask.

I worry about Raini. Every night we sit in the recliner, watch TV, and have our evening treats. For me it’s always air-popped pop corn. I have a bowl sprinkled with parmesan cheese and popcorn salt, my favorite.

“I thought you put cheese balls in there, too,” you say.

I do sometimes, and I love it that way, it’s just more calories and those I don’t need!

Raini and Bondi get a triple flavor kabob, a dog biscuit, and a piece of flavored rawhide. Every night  — well, maybe not every night— I watch Raini as she tries to cough up a piece that was too big for her to swallow.

 “Stop giving them to her,” you say.

That’s a valid point. Chewing the rawhide keeps their teeth clean and our dogs have clean teeth, so it works. It keeps them busy for a long time. And, lastly, they like it. I know! I know! That’s not a good reason. But so far she’s always been able to get it up.

Does the Heimlich work for dogs, too?

But it’s not just the rawhides.

Bondi loves these squeakies!

I mean she’s crazy for them! She expects one every time we come home from the store and enjoys digging all the groceries out until she finds them. I’ll either let her tear one off the card for herself or I’ll give her one. The rest I put on the counter. If I don’t give her a bag to dig through, she knows she’s getting one from the counter and she’ll stand there and stare up at the exact spot where I keep them. Sometimes, out of the blue she’ll ask for an extra one. Sometimes I give it to her, sometimes I don’t.

The first thing she does is makes it squeak — a lot! Then she’ll push it around the floor (and sometimes under the fridge where I have to get it out for her). She’ll scratch up the rug in the pantry and bury it, digs it back out and pushes it into the other room with her nose. She likes to pull the dog beds from the kennels and buries it. Then she digs it up and buries it again. Digs it up, buries it, over and over. She does this so many times that I’ll find the dog bed drug the whole way out in the other room!

She’s crazy for them — until she gets the squeaker out. Then the only thing they’re good for is to play fetch.

The one problem with these things is Raini loves them, too. She always lets Bondi have it first but sooner or later she’ll get it and chews on it just like bubble gum. When they’re coated with saliva they get slippery. These are what I worry most about. I worry it’ll slip into her throat and she won’t be able to get it out. It’s never happened, but...

Does the Heimlich work for dogs, too?

They paid me a hundred twenty dollars to tell them I buy store brand groceries, have pets, watch too much TV—but not sports, and don’t drink. That’s more than enough money to buy a Pet Vac.

“Peg, why haven’t you bought one already?”

Boy, you guys are tough! I have thought about it—many times in fact. I just never got around to it. But now I’m not going to put it off anymore! I’m gonna get one!

Speaking of pets...

Someone left me a gift. It’s remarkable only because it’s been a long time since they’ve brought me one.

We went grocery shopping this week and I found a couple of photos to take.

“They have a cannon in their yard,” I told Mike and I almost missed the shot.

One of the antique shops had an old wooden ladder on display on the sidewalk.

“How much are they asking for that?” Mike asked.

The wind was blowing the price tag around in circles and getting a picture of the price was a multi-shot effort. I zoomed in. “Eighty-five-bucks,” I told him. “See. People pay big money for old ladders to use in craft projects.”

          Coming across our little creek I spot a Great Blue Heron. Mike stopped and backed up so I could get the picture. He’s a good husband.

          Speaking of birds...

          I watched a little hummingbird sit on the edge of the jelly feeder. He didn’t stay there long enough for me to get a picture but here he is on a branch near his feeder.

          I’d gotten several packages of strawberries. The store had them at buy two, get three free. I don’t know how they can do that. I used Miss Rosie’s recipe for a sugar-free dessert. Strawberries and sugar-free Jell-O and a little corn starch. She puts it in a pie crust and it’s really yummy. Mike doesn’t want the crust so I put it in a bowl. I picked the bowl up to put it in the fridge and heard splat! I thought I’d overfilled the bowl and some came out from under the lid. Then I heard splat-splat-splatter! And this, my loves, is how you know you have a crack in the bottom of your plasticware.

          “How did that happen?” you wonder.

          I freeze in these bowls and sometimes push on the bottom of the bowls to get the frozen whatever to release. I didn’t know I’d cracked it — but I do now!

          I guess I can plant flowers in it, I thought. Nah. I threw it away.

          Mike’s been mowing with his new mower. He really likes it because it has a big mower deck and gets the mowing done faster. It’s also heavy and has bald tires. I’ve had to pull him out several times, all in the same day. “You need to use the other mower,” I scolded.

          He ordered new tires.

          My climbing vine is blooming so pretty this year. I’d only gotten one or two flowers at a time before, but this is its third year and there’s flowers all up and down the vine.

          I was telling my Miss Rosie how pretty it was.

          “What’s it called?” she asked.

          I couldn’t remember the name so I took a picture with Google Lens.

          Surprise!

          “It’s a clematis,” I told her. I thought I’d bought bougainvillea.

          Something else that’s blooming is my rhubarb. Actually, in rhubarb it’s called bolting. It’ll do that if it feels crowded and since it’s in a raised bed, he feels crowded. I want to transplant him before next year and maybe I’ll even harvest some.

          A spent dandelion with raindrops.

          The only thing I have left are road pictures from two weeks ago. Let’s get some of those out of the way, shall we?

          I kept seeing trees with upright cones of flowers. We didn’t stop but I asked AI.

          “The upright cone-shape cluster of flowers are called candles and it’s a Horse Chestnut tree,” he said.

          Now we both know.

          I took several pictures of the cows as we passed by.

          I laughed when I saw the face of one cow framed between the trees.

          “CLOSED UNTIL OPEN,” the sign reads. That tells me everything I need to know.

          The pond in front of the hospital. I talked about the geese there a couple of weeks ago.

          As many times as we’ve been to the hospital over the years, I never noticed the speed limit sign.

          “That car has our name on the plate,” I said. It’s true if you drop the U in Luby.

          The car next to it had a specialty plate.

          That reminded me of the song from the 80s by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It had a catchy beat but the words were so suggestive that it was banned in many places and restricted in others. That made it an even bigger hit. People want what they can’t have.

Even here in the U.S. MTV refused to show the original music video and they had to make a second, tamer version, which is still racy and made me blush. It’s on You Tube.

I will admit that I never knew the lyrics to the song beyond the hook — Relax, don’t do it — until today.

          These bikes, all alone on an empty corner, no houses in sight, looked like they were ditched. Stolen? I wondered.

          The smaller bird was driving the larger bird away, swooping down and dive bombing him.

          A cute little egg shack.

          Oh gosh! A line of traffic as far as the eye can see. I sure was glad we were going in the other direction. It’s the only road through Wysox to the Veterans Bridge and into Towanda.

          Speaking of bridges...

          The Rainbow Bridge that connects us to Wyalusing is set to open next week, a full month ahead of schedule!

 

          And that gets us to the bottom of the missed-photos file as well as the bottom of this week’s edition of Peggy’s Jibber-Jabber!

          Until next time, let’s call this one done!

Done!

One and Only

  

          It’s Monday. Today is Monday. I posted the one and only story I wrote this weekend although I do have more — and tons more photos, too, including twenty-two I ran out of room for last week. Friday flew by with a morning of shopping and in the afternoon I did get a start on downloading my cameras and resizing the photos. Then I got a headache and went to the recliner for some movie time with my handsome mountain man. Saturday I realized I hadn’t finished the photos, so I did that. Then I wrote Mike’s owie story.

“I’m glad it wasn’t more serious,” one of my peeps said.

That’s for sure! It could’ve ended up with broken fingers or, heaven forbid, even lost fingertips. As it is, he thinks he’ll lose the nails on both those fingers.

“Poor Mike,” someone else said.

And that’s for sure, too! First his eye and now his fingers.

“How is his eye?” you ask.

Getting better every day. The red is starting to go away.

Sunday came and the day started as most Sunday’s do for us. I showered, fed the cats (yes, before my coffee even. They’re not a bit spoiled.), made coffee, tapped out a love note, had breakfast, and got ready for Sunday School and church. After our regular service, with a very hopeful and comforting message by Pastor Jay, we had a business meeting.

“I could use a little hope and comfort in my life. What was it about?” you say.

 In a nutshell, Pastor Jay shared a Memorial Day message that not only is it a time of national remembrance, but also a moment to reflect on God’s final victory and the comfort He offers His people. God will ultimately wipe away every tear.

None of us know how God will do that.

Knowing what happens after we die, knowing where our loved ones who reject our Lord and Savior go after the final judgment, how can we not cry?

And not only just that, but sometimes we cry over the guilt, and shame, and deep remorse we feel over the things we’ve done in our life before we invited Jesus into our hearts and began to live for Him.

I was visiting that world this week. And I prayed. “Please Lord, fill my heart with so much of You that there’s no room left for anything else.”

 Pastor Jay’s message seemed like he wrote it just for me. He gave me hope and reminded me to trust God’s promises.

After church we had a business meeting, so that kept us there a little longer. We get home, I change clothes, make lunch, made a couple of phone calls, and talked way too long.

But the icing on the cake...

Just as I’m settling in to write, Tiger tries to jump up on my desk, sinks his claws into the rags under my jar of watercolor rinse water, it can’t support his weight and starts to slip, he makes a mad grab for something else, finds my mouse pad, and everything goes over on top of him.

Aye-yi-yi!

Water everywhere!

I dried Tiger off and cleaned up the mess.

Sigh!

No! Wait. It was more like sighhhhhhhh...

So much for one day — more than I could process — and it was all swirling around in my head and pounding at the walls of my mind. I was getting a headache. Time had completely slipped away and suddenly I had only an hour and a half until I needed to leave for Sunday night movie night at the church. I decided the recliner was the best place to decompress and watch whatever movie Mike was watching.

And that my loves is why you got just one story instead of all my jibber-jabber.

 

Tiger.

He does like to lay on my desk.

A few days ago, when I got out of bed and fed the cats, Tiger, sleeping in his bed on the chair by the table, didn’t come to breakfast. I figured he’d be up to pester me when I sat down at my computer.

He didn’t.

He stayed in the same spot all day.

That was weird.

The next day was when I realized that he has a hurt leg. He’s limping.

“Should we take him to the vet?” I asked Mike.

“No. He’ll get better.”

Animals do tend to get better on their own, as long as they’re eating and drinking and eliminating. And Tiger was — is.

A hurt leg is why he missed the jump up onto my desk and pulled the water over. I would normally dump the water when I was done painting for the day, but Tiger started treating it as his own personal watering station. He’s got his own food dish on my desk so why not water, too? It’s a tall jar so I keep it full, fresh, and clean for him.

The experience of getting soaked must’ve stayed with him because today he got my attention and I lifted him to the desktop where I took this picture.

Speaking of watercolors...

I did this cute mouse in my practice book. I was just putting the finishing touches on it when it was time to make my morning love call to Miss Rosie.

“Ernie was so kind to give us some of her homemade potato salad. Is there something I could make for her in return?” I asked.

“She has so many dietary restrictions, it would be better if you painted her a little thank you card or something like that instead,” Miss Rosie suggested.

I thought about that as I was finishing up my practice. “I bee thankful,” came to mind as I was outlining the bee. I took the page from my practice book and made it into a card. I hope she doesn’t mind that. I simply didn’t want to paint it again. Well, it might be more accurate to say that I didn’t want to draw it out again.

“I didn’t know I was making it for Ernie when I started it,” I told Miss Rosie.

The next day I painted this.

“I drew out some flowers and pots and painted it. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of practicing,” I shared in my morning love note.

“Peg, you should think of it as something fun to do and not practice,” my handsome older brother replied.

I don’t find drawing fun, just something that has to be done before I can get to the joy of painting. Do what you have to do so you can do what you want to do.

The next morning, as I was browsing through my file of drawing ideas, this one comes up. It looked easy and I could satisfy my need to paint fairly quickly. I flipped the page of my practice book and it’s the start of a new chapter.

The Bereavement.

I don’t normally even notice the words on the pages I’m painting on. Do you think there’s any significance between what I chose to paint and the chapter title?

I learned a new bird this week! My beautiful Jody told me she was watching the Baltimore Orioles and the Orchard Orioles at her feeder.

Orchard Orioles? What’s an Orchard Oriole? I Googled it and discovered they are very much like the Baltimore Orioles only a slightly different color. Maybe I’ve always had these birds coming to my feeder and just assumed they were Baltimores. I have noticed that some of Orioles were much brighter than others. This one is a female Orchard whereas the males are a deeper rusty orange, similar to the Baltimores.

Thank you for the education, my friend.

Let’s end with some road pictures.

Someone lost their barn.

Dame’s Rocket. Four petals. Wild phlox has five.

We were pulling in the driveway and Mike says, “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That R.”

He said R and I thought he misspoke. “I don’t see it.” I was looking for a bar.

“Right there!”

I unbuckled my seat belt, got up on a knee and was looking in the ditch for a bar. “I still can’t see it.”

Mike put the car in reverse, backed up a little, opened his door, and pointed. “Right there on the bank.”

My gaze left the ditch and looked up the bank. There it was. An R just like he said.

The rain brought an R up out of the dirt where Mike was working on the bank.

“Where’d that come from?” he wondered.

“There used to be a trucking company in here,” I reminded him. “That’s probably the R from FORD.”

Let’s call this one done!

Ow! Ow! Ow!

 

The highlight of the week, the thing that stands out most this week, is my handsome mountain man getting hurt.

          “What happened?!” I know you wanna know.

          Mike’s new front end-mower. When it was delivered, it was delivered with the snowblower attached. Mike went down to the barn to take off the blower and put the mower on.

          My phone rang. “Can you come down and help me?” Mike asked. “I can’t get the mower on by myself.”

          I went down to the barn.

“It has a quick disconnect,” Mike said. “You get on that side and I’ll get on this side and let’s see if we can line it up.”

We tried to line things up, and there are two openings on the backside of the mower deck, but no matter what we did there was no way things would line up to hook up. After about ten minutes, I stopped to look things over. The snowblower and broom have a bracket for the disconnect to slide into.

I got down and looked under the mower. Even if we lined it up so the disconnect slide into one of the openings, the blades would hit it. “There’s no way you can use the quick disconnect with the mower. There’s no place for it to go. It has to come off.”

Without knowing how the quick disconnect is attached, it looked like it couldn’t be removed.

          “Maybe we have the wrong mower deck?” I questioned.

          A quick call to the dealer assured us it was the correct mower.

          Like Poppy used to say, “If all else fails, read the directions.”

          “Where’s the book?” I asked.

          That required a trip back up to the house, but back up to the house we went. We found the booklet on the quick disconnect and once we saw how it was installed, it was easy enough to get off.

          But—

          We still had a problem. We couldn’t get the arms to come up high enough to line up with the pins.

          “Do you think they had to lower the mower deck?” I asked. That’s just me trying to figure out a solution to the problem. Mike should’ve said, “Peg, that doesn’t make any sense. If we can’t raise the arms the mower will always be too low.” Yeah. That’s what he should’ve said. Hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it. With hindsight you get to skip all the rigamarole it took to reach the final answer — and sometimes that would’ve been a whole lot less painful!

          The wheels on the back of the mower had pins holding them. Mike got down on his hands and knees and pulled the pin on one side. The mower dropped down. The added pressure or twist made the other side more stubborn. Mike used something to knock the pin out and as soon as it cleared, the wheel flipped out, the mower deck dropped down with a thud and I hear a quiet, “OwOwOwOwOwOw,” from Mike. He didn’t yell, he didn’t cuss. Somehow that was more frightening.

          It only took me a second to grasp the situation. His fingers were pinched between the sharp steel edge of the mower deck and the hard, cold, concrete floor.

          “Then Peg said, ‘Wait a minute while I run up to the house and get my camera.’” That’s Mike’s version of the story. He likes to put his own spin on things, don’cha know. In some worlds that does happen. People are more intent on taking a video then in helping.

          I looked around and grabbed the first thing my eyes landed on, wedged it under the mower, and lifted it up enough that Mike could get his fingers out. I don’t know now what it was that I used. A hammer? A wrench? I was only focused on getting it off him.

          “It’s gonna bleed,” Mike says getting up off the floor.

          (Mixing tenses always makes my editor’s left eye twitch.)

          Mike’s long legs took him halfway to the house before I could say, “Let me see.” He was right, it not only was going to bleed, it was bleeding.

I hurried ahead of him to open doors and I was halfway to the bathroom when I realized Mike wasn’t behind me anymore.

“Where did he go?” you ask.

          The kitchen sink.

          “I think I dripped blood on the carpet,” he said putting his hand over the sink.

          Now I did think about taking a picture. “Can I take a picture?” I asked.

          Mike has long since resigned himself to living with a writer who documents the events in her life with photographs. Even hurting as much as he must’ve been hurting, he allowed me to be me. “Hurry up,” he said.

          It would take too long to track down my camera. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and took a picture.

         Then I cleaned the dishrag and breakfast dishes from the bottom of the sink and turned the water on. The stream was too hard and it hurt his tender fingers. I quickly adjusted the flow.

          “Get some Band-Aids,” Mike said even as I was on my way.

          Because I didn’t take any picture to remind me of the timeline, I’m not sure when we went back down to work on the mower problem some more. But this I do know. At some point I was looking and saw blocks that were keeping the arms from raising high enough to attach the mower.

          Aye-yi-yi.

          I took the blocks out and the arms went up. From there it wasn’t all that hard to get the mower hooked up. But now we have a different problem.

          “What now?” you ask.

          Now the hydraulics don’t work. They worked before. Mike had to raise the snowblower to take it off the trailer and put it in the barn.

          Anxious to try the new mower, Mike mowed with it anyway. It cut the grass too short so he didn’t mow very long.

          We made a trip to the Kubota dealer and Mike was able to talk to a mechanic. They couldn’t figure out what the problem may be so we have a mechanic coming on Tuesday morning to look at it.

          I took another picture of Mike’s fingers a couple of days later when we were changing his Band-Aids.

          I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to tell you again. When I see — or even think about — someone getting hurt, I get a zap in my knees. It feels like a quick jolt of electricity.

There’s a name for this kind of thing: somatic empathy, or a vicarious pain response. My body reacts physically, suddenly, and sharply when I see, imagine, or even anticipate someone else getting hurt.

          I don’t know when it first started happening to me, but I do know why it happens. I’m empathetic. I care. Deeply care. I’m not alone in this. Other people experience it, too, but they might feel it in different places — hands, stomach, chest — but for me, my knees are where my body keeps that wiring.

          The whole way from the barn to the house — washing Mike’s wound, getting it bandaged — my knees were having a meltdown. I’ve never before had such a long session of knee zapping and it was getting pretty uncomfortable for me, although I’m sure it pales in comparison to what Mike was feeling.

          And that’s the big news of the week.