Straydog UPDATE posted THURSDAY 10/9/03 at ~9:05 p.m. CT

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

THURSDAY OCTOBER 9 2003

The newsletters are not all in the mail yet

     We still have between 500 and 1,000 stuffed envelopes to seal. Ofelia came again today and she and I worked from 9:00 a.m. till almost four o'clock this afternoon filling two of those big plastic post office baskets with finished mailers. We also got all the rest of them stuffed and ready for Randy Hopkins (our overnight man) to seal tonight. Whatever Randy doesn't finish I'll finish in the morning--certainly by the four-thirty post office deadline tomorrow afternoon. Then I'll get back to work on all the things I've had to put off in order to get the newsletter out.

Overcast, gray day with intermittent rain

     We were short one employee, whose baby was sick, and another employee had to go home because the baby's grandmother (who was caring for the child) had gotten sick, and she didn't want to give whatever illness she had to the her grandbaby. The remaining members of the crew had to work extra hard to get everything done and give the dogs the attention they are used to and deserve. If we had been at full strength, we probably would have gotten the balance of the newsletters in the mail, because we would have been able to pull at least one of the crew inside to help Ofelia and me.

Julie's new glucose level machine is working great

     We check Julie's blood sugar right before her scheduled meal and insulin injections, and if her sugar is low, we skip the shot. Then we check her blood again every few hours, and repeat the process starting right before her next scheduled meal and insulin injection. So far this machine is giving us a great deal of comfort allowing us to opt to forgo the injection when her blood sugar is low.