life in the void

I've been lonely and crazy-bored ever since moving to North Carolina. Constant twittering existential angst is my normal mode and I have not grown to enjoy the silence. Most days, I mourn the dead brain cells and atrophed creative mind I used to have. I am lucky enough to have made friends with two very lovely people who live just 19 miles away in Greensboro. She is an artist and her husband is an engineer. They interface very well with us but now this quarantine life has stopped most of our contact with them. We've pushed the envelope a couple of times and, at a safe distance, gotten together with them in our backyard to hang out and chat by a fire and show them MonsterMustDie's latest home project, a Japanese garden.

Most people I know are in Atlanta, working remotely or in reduced hours. I am completely without work or activities now. All of the things I wanted to have time to do - ceramics and studio classes, repairs and renovations on the kitchen and bathrooms of this house, require places and services that are not available now. My brain is not made for online courses where I have no interaction with other human beings to keep me alert. Sleep is weird these days. Most nights I can't go to bed until after midnight and dreams are usually vivid collages of mundane things I do all day. Sometime I dream of people who are dead. Sometimes I dream of ideas for movies or other projects that I can't make alone. Cooking is frustrating when we don't eat the same things. I give MonsterMustDie has priority use of the TV to avoid conflict and we don't like the same shows usually. He spends his evenings watching nothing other than Japanese animation and old SciFi that he's seen dozens of times. I like some of that but I can't stand seeing the same thing all the time. He fills his days between the new garden project, selling antiques online (the only income in the house now), and far too much time on Facebook getting angrier at the world outside.

I spend most of my days cleaning house, making odd lists, shopping online, and trying to stay out of the way.

The highlight of today for me was lunch. I had a bit of salmon with a honey mustard sauce and a nice arrugula salad.

food friends holidays

Monday, May 4th, was the StarWars May the Fourth Be With You geek holiday. Because MonsterMustDie was busy with his online shops most of the day, we did not spend the entire day on a StarWars marathon. Instead, we ended our day by watching the final movie The Rise Of Skywalker.
I had tried to schedule an online conversation with a couple of friends for the early evening but no one showed up, explaining last minute errands or simply being in a very bad head-space.
For dinner, I made orzo + feta + spinach with sliced cherry tomatoes on top and a lemon juice & olive oil dressing. 

Tuesday, May 5th, I wanted to have the Atlanta tradition of dinner from an Irish Pub (we got to Mexican restaurants on Saint Patrick's Day) but the only local pub here did not have their act together for ordering pickup online. I could not even find a complete menu posted anywhere for them so I took a look at DoorDash and found the Mexican restaurant closest to us was taking orders for delivery.
While we waited for dinner, MonsterMustDie prepared a margarita for me and both of us joined in on a Zoom meetup for the Art+Tech group. This was the first of the formerly monthly meetings we had online and I'm happy with the small success of it. We can do better next time but we had enough people participating for a good conversation.

Tonight, we've scheduled a different conversation with friends in Atlanta online that I hope works out. Now, we always have the question of what format to choose, which depends on the length of the meeting, the technical ability of participants, and who aligns themselves with what services or platforms.

waiting for the end of the world

I'm actually trying to postpone the end of the world as long as possible, rather than tapping my foot waiting for everything to explode into a thermonuclear fireball, because I don't feel like I'm anywhere near the end of my own personal possibility.

With all these weeks in quarantine and unemployed, I hoped I would have learned a new skill online or made a lot of art or at least organized my office. I did make my office a bit more compact and the pile of paperwork on my desk is now mostly gone and put away where it belongs. I am completely uninspired to work on art to the point that I don't see any stupid object around that I want to dryly sketch or have any idea I can think of a way to clearly illustrate. I really don't feel free to create anything here because my office is the only place I can do anything personal and it feels like an empty cell. Working outside of the house was my only, sad, escape from this place. The person I live with does not even eat the same type of food that I do most of the time.

I don't know why I haven't decided what online courses I can try yet. I look at so many and they seem to be an attempt, for me, to work for someone else who is never going to hire anyone over 45 or 50 and it'll just be another skill I never use and is just left to atrophy in my brain. But learning something would be a constructive activity, hopefully as satisfying as playing online games with this old iMac.

Just before going into isolation, I lost my job when the company I worked at decided to let everyone go at once. I haven't been able to successfully file for unemployment and there is no way to get through to the State online or by phone.

So here I wait, in my office, looking into what my friends in other places are doing via social media on my phone or computer.

My computer has decided to stop allowing me to do any keyboard shortcuts like COPY and PASTE now. All commands now only work if I go up to the menu bar to activate them, so there is something wrong with my keyboard settings and I am trying everything I can find online to figure out what went wrong but I have not had any luck fixing the problem yet. The only thing I haven't tried is reloading my entire OS from an old HD backup because that causes problems of its own with lost data and fishing around to replace individual components at times. I don't know what wrecked my keyboard settings other than having my Wacom tablet in use but I haven't found any useful information on resetting from there.


I'm being more negative than I intended. Sorry.


Some things more positive -

We have been doing more yard work. The four planter boxes we have are now planted with seed again. The hill and back yard have been covered with fresh mulch. The front yard is mowed. The three pallets of leftover soft flat stone from the retaining wall that was taken down a couple of years ago are finally gone and that part of the back yard is mulched too. MonsterMustDie finally gave the stones to our next door neighbor's stepfather and the pallets were chopped up and put into the trash bin that should be emptied this morning.

We decided to spend more money to get the CBS channel on TV just to watch Picard and we've been binging that series for the last two nights and it has not disappointed. It's a great series, so far.

I should at least be walking more when the weather is nice like it should be today. I plan to have a nice walk or two today. 

perspective

Here's the thing:
TV shows and old movies are not and never were reality. That's not to say they are unimportant. They have merit because, in portraying the world not as it is but how it could be or could be, they give us something to strive for or to avoid. No one I knew had a family like Leave It To Beaver or The Cosby Show but those families are wonderful ideals that everyone can see as a personal goal. As children, we grew up with these ideal taught to us. The problem is too many people think the past was actually like that. The 50's were not at all like Happy Days. There was segregation, no birth control, very few legal rights for women, McCarthyism and blacklists. There was massive poisoning of the environment with DDT and lead added to gasoline (not because it was the best solution but because the process was patented and there was more money to be made off that) and the list goes on but that's not anything you'll ever know about unless you actually make the effort to research the archives of that time. We grow up and see things from an adult perspective and think the world is worse now because we only have a child's perspective of the past. Daddy never told us everything he did during his military service.

We should be more imaginative and forward-thinking. We should not be mourning a world or people that never existed. We should be evolving into something better rather than wishing we could regress into myth.

pretty good day

Not a bad day yesterday. We filled three small planter boxes with garden soil and replanted the surviving parsley and thyme from last year's garden. MonsterMustDie planted salad greens and watermelon radishes. We need to plant the  tomato & kale seedlings we have before they're too big but he is dragging his feet on building simple fences to fit over the boxes to protect them from cats, squirrels and rabbits. Something got in under the screen I laid on top of the boxes and dug around in the newly planted bed and dug up the parsley plants. I smoothed the soil back over the seeded bed, hoping for the best on what we already stuck in the soil.


I also made what I consider to be a meal of real food - fresh chicken medallions wrapped in bacon and roasted, roasted brussels sprouts, and fingerling potatoes tossed in butter and parsley.



I need to put something together for headers, etc. on a new web page and portfolio for myself.

another UTI

Woke up at 2:30 a.m. with another horrible UTI, probably from the infection I had last month that was never completely cleared, no thanks to my regular doctor's office. MonsterMustDie drove me to the local emergency room for a positive test and thankfully, my insurance was still active so it only cost me $500.00 (I dread to think what something like this will cost with no insurance). Thanks to the kind staff and young Dr. Patel for helping me accurately and quickly. My Walgreens helped with the cost of the antibiotics and now I'm once again on the road to recovery.

This has been a strange sad week. Lost my full-time job last week. 

Planned a trip to Chicago this week with friend to visit her mom. 

Then my sister-in-law's father, who has been ill for a very long time, passed away early Sunday morning. I cancelled the plans for the Chicago trip and started making new plans to drive down to Atlanta for the funeral and MonsterMustDie took his suit to the drycleaners (which he should have done last time he wore it). 

My sister-in-law asked us not to come to the funeral. She just repeated several times how the long drive wasn't worth it and it was going to be a small brief memorial - about 30 minutes.

On the upside, maybe everything does happen for a reason. 

My friend decided to postpone her trip to Chicago to next week so we can go together and she doesn't have to make such a long drive alone. 

It probably would have been much worse if I had come down with this infection while I was away from home. The money I would have spent on travel and flowers and cat-sitter, etc. for the funeral trip was used for medical bills. Looks like the universe has taken care of me again.

such a joyful life

I hate it here. I don't fit in. My hands are tied. I get shut down at everything I try to do.

Once again, I'm unemployed.

The company I've been working at full-time since July 2018 decided to eliminate their entire digital imaging department, outsourcing more and concentrating on marketing instead. They called all of us into a meeting on Friday morning and let us know our jobs were terminated. Effective immediately. They handed us our final paychecks as we left the conference room and all of us were escorted out of the building. The only people I didn't see leaving were Captain Cod and Mr. Drinky. 

Boom. 

I've got no plans or prospects for another job here in High Point. Meanwhile, I'll try to put in more hours at my weekend job at the shop. This leaves my schedule and life even more unpredictable and since I'll have to be available to show up at any time to keep a retail job. I still work every weekend but I will try to get more weekday hours now. 

John is retired now and has no interest in working for someone else again. He'll be 65 on April 28. 

All retail work is part time. I am now immediately uninsured again, probably permanently. 

in memoriam

There are some people I think of every day: 

Those who are gone:
Janet Leigh Parks
J. Paul Harrison
Barry Feltz
Clark Vreeland
My mother, Loretta Perry
My father, James Ray Perry


Those who are still here with me: 
My newly-found biological sisters, Jennifer and Patricia
Jennifer's daughters, whom I've met, Gabrielle and Myka
Sandra Ross
Cindi Sokol

Those I wonder about often: 
Stuart Pennington
Stephanie Kaskel
Gillian Canty

UTI

Two weeks ago,  I woke up in the middle of the night with a horrific UTI. 

On Wednesday,  I was nearly finished with the prescription antibiotics but I still didn't feel right. There was still some burning pain in my bladder.  I decided to try to schedule a recheck. I felt better but there was still some pain. Is that just healing that still needs to happen or is it lingering infection? I don't know. 

I phoned th he doctor's office for a recheck. Told them I had my last med that morning. Oddly enough, they told me to come in that same morning so I went in at 10:30 a.m. Of course,  my urine test was negative. Now, they want to test me for a yeast infection,  like I don't know the difference in symptoms. 

I wish they would recommend a good urologist for me. They won't. They said they'd rather wait until my labs come in. 

The test proved that I don't have to a yeast infection.  Now they want me to try Primarin cream. So they say,  at my age, vaginal dryness can be irritating.  Like that would feel anything like a  UTI.  

I would say an Urgent Care clinic would be easier but I don't know if they have labs on site and they would take a lot longer. The Urgent Care Clinic near me has doctors who are too eager to prescribe painkillers and sedatives but that's the market they're used to here. 

After my office visit,  I stopped into Walgreen's to pick up the Primarin that my doctor was wanted me to try and the pharmacist said nothing had been called in for me. I gave up and went back into work. 

I still don't feel well today. I am very much afraid I will come back down with the same infection this week. 

 

pain and fear

I woke up at 1:00AM Wednesday with a blazing UTI. I kept waking up the rest of the night from the pain. I could not get a new prescription for antibiotics until I had an office visit with a doctor. I was able to get in to see the doctor on call at my OBGYN at 10:30AM that morning. Then after an hour to get my prescription filled, I returned  to work the rest of the day. I went straight to bed after work that day. By Thursday, I stayed up long enough to do some laundry before going to bed and sleeping well.
The idea of getting a UTI on a weekend, when there are no doctors around to prescribe anything, horrifies me. I know I could not possibly work my weekend job on my feet in that much pain. There are emergency clinics but even they have to send tests to labs outside and none of them have late hours. I don't know if they're open on weekends.
This infection came out of the blue. I try to drink a lot of water. I guess I'm still not drinking enough water for this to happen.

nightmares

Yesterday was not good

 I woke up from a dream with a recurring theme of me trying to protect  someone and failing. 

Work was okay. This is a time of long hours.

Got home to Monstermustdie having a very bad day for his functioning memory.  He couldn't remember watching the latest episode of Watchmen with me the night before and insisted on watching it again. He didn't remember one moment of the show as it played.  Then we watched His Dark Materials and he struggled with the actor's name who originally played the cowboy,  calling him Sam Walton, the Sam Neal, and me finally correcting him with Sam Elliott. Monstermustdie always remembers actor's names but not last night. 

Halloween 2019

Horrible weather this year essentially shut down all of our Halloween activities.  There were severe thunderstorms all night. We only had six trick-or-treaters at Casa WereMonster this year. Two people we invited over came by to hang out for a little while. I'm still giving away leftover candy to co-workers. I'll save the party for next year and hope the rubber whoopie cushions survive the time in storage.

We had plenty of treats.

New skeleton in my grandmother's old dress

Charcuterie spread 

Bar cart 

smack in the nose

Yesterday Monstermustdie,  for reasons unknown to me, had the attic door in front of the bathroom open with the ladder up just hanging down. I came out of the bathroom and, looking down like I usually do, walked straight into it. I hit my nose really hard, which resulted in a nose bleed and some swelling. I stayed mad at him the rest of the day for that.

Today, I worked at the dress shop. I was originally scheduled for 10AM to 3:15PM but they asked me to work until closing tonight and, work slut that I am, I said yes.