writing and memory

I'm reading torah tonight (unusual) and tomorrow morning (not unusual). Part of the latter package is giving a short d'var torah (torah commentary), so for the last few days I kicked some ideas around in my brain and last night I wrote a draft. (I'm still on my written-text kick rather than speaking from notes.)

This morning in the shower I made a structural change, jetisoning about a third of it. During the morning commute I composed the new part and figured out the transitions. I drive to work, so this was (obviously, I hope) a mental exercise. When I got to work I spent five minutes writing down the revisions.

For all that I seem to have the mental buffer space for this sort of exercise, and for all that I'm told this is unusual, I still sometimes marvel at my inability to remember less-complex information.

(I do sometimes think about getting a PDA so I can record things easily while not at my computer, though I note that that wouldn't have made a differnece in this particular case.)

giving a cat a pill (revised)

1. Order medicine in capsule form specifically so you can open the capsules and mix the powder into attractive food.

2. Observe that cat is totally uninterested in attractive food.

3. Place cat on counter (at convenient height), get cat into a hold (looping pinky through collar as an anchor), gently press jaws open, and attempt to insert pill.

4. Retrieve pill from counter.

5. Repeat 3 more forcefully. Insert pill and quickly press jaws shut.

6. Retrieve pill from space between cat's gum and lip and try again.

7. After several variations on this theme, get pill solidly into cat's mouth. Hold jaws shut while massaging throat to get cat to swallow.

8. Observe cat swallow. Remove hand from mouth and retrieve soggy pill (with small puncture, leaking powder) from counter a few nannoseconds later.

9. Repeat 7, waiting a really long time and observing multiple swallows.

10. Remove hand and observe half of pill in cat's mouth. Replace hand in an attempt to get the cat to swallow some of the powder.

11. After cat wriggles free, clean up spilled powder from counter and hope enough got into cat to do some good.

That was this morning and tonight he ate some food (with the next dose in it), so that's a good sign. The apparent fever he had this morning seems to be gone, which might be related. (I don't think the antibiotic would have done that all on its own, so that's just lucky timing, I expect.)