T.M.I.?

Sunrise this morning

Over the weekend, I had the - what's the opposite of pleasure? - the OPPORTUNITY to prep my body for one of the dreaded rites of passage associated with turning 50: the colonoscopy. While I appreciate the fact that I'm alive in middle age, and the fact that I have health care available to me, the preparation for this particular test did not feel like Health Care. It felt like torturing my insides. But I endured it with as little complaint as possible, thinking of people like Carrie Maniscalco , and Katie, who have withstood real suffering. This was a pin-prick, compared to what they have endured.

But I must say, when you've spent the past 2 months cleaning up your pantry and your system, trying to eat whole, healthy foods (with the exception of the road-trip junk-food junket), the food and liquids prescribed for "prepping" just don't taste or feel good or healthy in any way. The bottle of artificially-sweetened, syrupy, carbonated baking soda & I-don't-know-what, the Gatorade, the jello, the soda pop, the broth, the Miralax - oh, my body did not like them Sam-I-am in any way. So much sodium, so much sweetener - I am deeply relieved that THAT is finished. I think we could do better at inventing a regimen that was more healthful.

And they are all telling the truth when they say that the test is NOTHING compared with the prep-day before it. The test itself is easy - you get to sleep through it! However, when they say you ought to have one every 10 years, I am thinking, "You'll have to catch me first..."

Before torturing my insides, we took a drive to Bremerton and walked around the waterfront. Then we walked around Poulsbo, saw our nephew and his 3 kids, and visited Gregg's parents. The highlight of the weekend was going to see "Social Network" - the facebook movie; we both enjoyed it. And the funniest thing that happened was due to one of Liger's little idiosyncrasies.

Our big, dominant, white dog-cat, Latte, destroyed the fabric on what once was our beautiful white sofa, quite a while ago. He has used both corners of the back as scratching posts (though we have plenty of trees and scratching toys for the cats to use, instead). We don't like this, and we always stop him, and scold him for it, but he's done the damage anyway.

Liger, our sweet, docile gray tabby, has never indulged in this behavior - until lately, when he wants to go outdoors. He recently began to walk up to the couch (or worse, to one of my grandmother's velvet-covered chairs) and to sharpen his claws on it. When we tell him to stop, he runs to the door, as if he was simply trying to get our attention so that he could go outside. About a week ago when this happened, Gregg said to Liger, "HEY! Don't do that! If you want to go out, find another way to let us know."

Well, this weekend, Liger found the way.

He walked up to Gregg, who was sitting on the couch, and sharpened his claws on Gregg's pant leg. Gregg said, "HEY! What are you doing that for?" and Liger went immediately to the door. The next day, Liger did the same thing to Gregg's leg, and Gregg responded the same way. I started laughing. "He's doing what you told him to do - he stopped scratching on the couch, and found another way to let you know he wants to go out. And it's working!" We just trained the cat not to scratch on the couch...or did he train us?