Ellie had oral surgery yesterday

Ellie Cat had six teeth removed yesterday. Her mouth was a mess. She was out of it all day yesterday. She woke up long enough to throw up twice. Her only desire was to be on the hot back porch but we kept her indoors near us and her food & water. She seems to be back to her senses this morning. We haven't gotten her to eat or drink anything much today. I suspect she probably visited her water fountain last night but food is not interesting or too painful for her. She got two types of pain meds this morning, per the vet's instructions. The first one, Meloxicam, went down easy. The second med, Gabapentin, made her foam at the mouth.

sweet things in the malstrom

 I dreamed I was at some sort of geeky meeting. Chris was hosting it at his home, which was large, so it might have been SciFi of some sort. We were heading out and a huge storm was brewing on an otherwise sunny clear day. I could see patches of dark, round clouds in the sky of deep blue. I was in a van with some younger women driving, reminding them to pull over preferably down hill if it got too bad to drive.  The clouds opened up with tornado warning wind and rain by the time we were driving through a downtown section and I looked out the side window and thought “that flower looks like icing” which, in fact, it was. There were long white tables and fantastic baked items set up for some sort of party. There were cakes in the 3D form of cartoon characters with perfectly spherical heads. There were beautiful elaborately iced flower cookies. There were pastries in the shape of animals... and it was all about to be blown away... all of that bakery artistry wasted, so we paused in the street, opened the doors and I saved a bunch of things that were about to be ruined, pulling them into the vehicle and placing them into any any bags we had to stabilize them for the ride. Then, we kept going through the storm. 

Another UTI?

 I have UTI symptoms again this morning. I decided to take one of the leftover Nitrofurantoin capsules I had from the last UTI before they switched me to Ciprofloxacin. I hope these leftover antibiotics are enough to knock it out this early in the infection. I'm also wondering what is causing this and if this is just the last infection was not completely clear when they took me off antibiotics last time. 

twisting around in circles

I miss having a real job using the skills I spent years learning, which are useless now. It's been two years since I had my last freelance temp gig and now I'm paying too much to keep software on hand that I do not have a use for other than personal entertainment. I'm losing what I know about a dead industry.

Jump to today. Out of the blue, I got two phone calls from what I truly believe is another work scam. A woman with an accent too thick to understand phoned about a print production job in Winston-Salem. I don't think there is any company that fits the description of what she said this job is about there. After agreeing that, yes, I was interested in any work I could get at any price that used my skills, I got a couple of emails and another phone call & voice mail from a man with an equally heavy accent that went on about something about work for a temp gig at low pay doing something related to printing. Again, I could hardly make out what he was saying. I'll play along until it gets too weird.

MonsterMustDie has a cousin who wants me to make some banner ads for him in a "New York Times" style that I'll have to investigate before I get back to him on it. He's asking how much advertising work I'm doing now. Well, I'm not doing anything now but I can make something look good even if I can't guarantee I can send people to his site. This would be a free favor, anyway. I'll do it but I'm dreading it because I expect him to be over-critical of anything I do. Not what I need when my self esteem is at an all-time low.

I can't touch any of this until Wednesday anyway, since I work closing shift at the dress shop tomorrow. MonsterMustDie works in the morning so he won't be available to help me deal with any of this. All of these things will have to wait a day for me to get back to them. I'll do what I have time for before going into the shop.

Dysfunction

MonsterMustDie was out all day, hunting for dead people's stuff, with a small but very specific list of provisions to pick up. He got every last thing wrong, to extent that I think he did it on purpose. That, and he seems to have intentionally omitted the main thing we needed, which was paper towels. He is quite capable of passive aggressive behavior when he thinks I ask too much. This is not fair, considering that I alone paid $550 to a tree service last week to trim some branches hitting our roof and clean our gutters. The gutters were overflowing and causing damage to the woodwork outside the house. That still needs to be replaced as soon as I can find someone to do the work, since I am not a carpenter. 

I woke up this morning to find the thermostat set at 65 degrees. That's too cold even for me in the morning. I turned it back up to the usual Summer temp of 72 degrees (70 if I'm actively cooking) and asked about the temperature. MonsterMustDie said he had not touched the AC. Maybe it was bumped down and forgotten about last night. He was also hyper-sensitive to sound and light this morning. I turned down the volume on the TV, which is always up too high in the morning. I turned overhead lights back off - we don't really need them anyway with window light in the Summer. 

All this also makes me wonder if he sneaks in drinking when he's out of town and/or I'm at work at night. 

I've got other things to deal with. All of the Alexa devices, including the DVD player which had color settings that seemed to be RG but no B and high contrast, have been wonky this week in ways that I have only partially worked through and reset. Most of it was fixed with updates and rebooting to reset everything easily. The Alexa in the bedroom, which I often use as my alarm or reminder, is still not functioning properly - mostly not listening to me. 

Lastly, my earbuds are not functioning correctly but I think that's entirely my fault from falling asleep most nights listening to podcasts on them, which is very annoying because the earbuds are also the main way I listen to music. The left bud/speaker is not playing music. I know it's still on because now and then it plays a system sound occasionally, with no prompting. I wonder if I changed something by sleeping on it. Or maybe that battery is going kaput, which seems unlikely because they are still too new. 

The UTI I had last month finally cleared after three rounds of antibiotics. No idea what brought it on other than generally bad habits on my part, mentioned earlier. The important thing is I feel good now. I'll be working a 4-hour shift at the dress shop this morning. The rest of the day will possibly be spent pacing in circles around the house.