I've experienced a change of pace as of late.  The pain continues to come and go in spurts, so I find myself in a constant struggle to either control it or ignore it.

Perhaps there's been a change in weather – living in the Southwest, sometimes it's difficult to tell exactly when "summer" ends and "fall" (if we even have one) begins.  But a cool breeze has about recently.

I find myself lounging by the patio door, soaking up the sun's heat.  My pets have noticed my preferred spot of choice, moving my water bowl next to my kitchen mat.

I'm not much in the mood to complain this week.  I'm having too much fun lying here.

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As summer begins and the weather gets hot (the American Southwest will do that, you know), my two-legged pets have been all complaints, frantically scrambling from one air-conditioned building to the next -- as if too much time under the sun will melt them to the ground.

I do not mind the warm weather.  No, I rather enjoy it.  Perhaps it's the wonderful sense of lethargy that overcomes me.  Perhaps it's the fact that much of my perpetual nagging knee pain temporarily subsides.

Whatever the cause, I feel contented.  Just laying here, taking an occasional sip of water, and watching the beautiful blue sky above.

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I knew it would rain.

When you have had osteoarthritis as long as me, you know that feeling:  hours, even days before the storm clouds roll in, that creeping phantom of misery -- that horrible pain starts crawling through your joints.  You feel slightly out of breath, nauseous.  Walking around (waddling is more like it) feels like knives and daggers are attacking you from all directions.

I do not know why it rains.  Staring confusedly at my two-legged pets has never elicited an explanation.  (Just a shrug of the shoulders when it's bathroom time -- hey, you'd be hesitant to go, too, if a there were a downpour over your toilet.)

But I do know that I am in for a world of hurt when it does rain.

Oh the nagging aches ... be grateful, my human friends, that you can distract yourselves with reading, talking, and pain medications.

Me?  I get to lie in my reserved chair all day.  That is, of course, only when I can manage to hop up into it.

I am thinking today may be an occasion for napping on the cool, kitchen floor.

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It is getting colder outside.  As of late, I have noticed a particular dryness during my morning constitutionals.

Wincing, waddling and veritable wheezing ensues.  My osteoarthritic knees seem embedded with knives and daggers.

Pain.

It has been foremost on my mind.  In fact, it has consumed my mind.  I can focus on nothing else.  Desperately I try to remember a time in which I led a relaxed, medicine-free, pain-free life ... (how lucky are those who do!) ... yet it seems this disease has overtaken even the recesses of my memory.

With pain comes its cousin, Sadness.  Even a member of the noble family of Canine cannot escape its weight bearing down.

My two-legged, arthritis-free pets have noticed.  I feel it in the way they gingerly pet me, hear it in their increasingly-cautious tones.

But I have not figured out how to respond.  Not yet.  For the moment, I feel lost.  Trapped, even.

The pain.

The sadness.