flat tire - it just blew

Out riding with K when she had a flat tire. As it turns out, there had been a low pressure warning for a while that both she and B had been ignoring.  Oops. 

Fortunately,  B came up quickly and saved us. He put on the spare and switched cars with K. He later got a good deal on two new tires - the one that blew and the one that had been about to go for a while. 

disturbed sleep

I woke up at about 4:00 AM this morning. Tried to be quiet walking into the kitchen to give Ellie Cat a snack and then heard MonsterMustDie walking around in the house. He immediately started making coffee. I suggested it was too early for coffee and he assured me he was not going to be able to go back to sleep, anyway. We both gave up on going back to bed and just stayed up. I was able to go back to bed at 6:00AM and I slept for a couple more hours before getting up at 8:20-ish and staying up for the day. Tonight's dinner was just kinda put together impromptu with what I had in the fridge. I cooked angel hair pasta, pan-roasted chicken, and a salad of bitter greens purchased at the Farmers Market on Saturday topped with leftover dressing from dinner at a Greek restaurant last week. MonsterMustDie took a sleep aid and went to bed around 8:00PM tonight.

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. 

security

They are removing our metal lockers at work this week.  Those who need to a locker will have a clear box with a 4-digit code that expires in 8 hours.  Gonna have to keep everything in my car or in my pocket now.  

so tired

I'm dragging tonight,  working closing shift. My back and legs are tired and I am feeling drowsy.  I didn't sleep well last night.  I had a bad case of restless legs after working closing shift. 

I suspect the UTI and the medication I'm taking for it is wearing me down as well.  Tomorrow is my last dose of antibiotics and I hope the infection is cleared.  

still sick

I'm nearly finished with my first round of antibiotics,  Macrobiotic, and my doctor has sent me a second prescription at my request.  

Maybe  TMI, my first urination of the morning was still brown and cloudy. I've been trying to drink lots of water but obviously I still need to drink more.  My morning dip stick test still came out positive for a UTI. I feel better but I'm still very uncomfortable. 

sick again

I've got another UTI. I woke up with symptoms yesterday morning. The soonest I could see any doctor was 4pm. I was scheduled to work closing shift last night and I realized,  while waiting for a doctor to see me, that there was no way I could work  on my feet while feeling that bad, twitching, burning and trying not to wet my pants; so I called out for the night.  I also took Cystex and drank yarrow tea all day, hoping that it would not ruin test results so I could get a prescription for antibiotics. 

I also realize I've been doing a lot of urinary health no-no's this week:
I took a warm tub bath. 

I've been snacking on gummy bears which, for reasons I do not know, seem to be an irritant. 
I had a few glasses of red wine - one glass a night - this week, another huge irritant. 

the very bad memorial day weekend

The electricity fluttered and the went out for a while Friday. Since then, we've had no internet service. That meant no TV or music either. Lumos ISP could not make a service call until Tuesday. Looks like our modem died.  

Half of the duct work has been taken down in our basement on Sunday so we were hoping for cool weather until we can have a functioning AC again. We had arranged for a friend of the exterminator, who is also a neighbor, to install new ducts on Tuesday. 

Tuesday, we got an new modem and we are finally back online after a holiday weekend with no communications. The modem death was probably a blessing because it forced MonsterMustDie to work on cleaning out the massive hoard he has in the basement so that someone could work down there.

Meanwhile, the person who was supposed to replace the ductwork ended up ghosting us on the project. I spent Wednesday making calls to set up appointments for estimates from the few companies that said they might consider a project as small as replacing ductwork. That's $69 or more a pop just to have have someone show up and look around and 1. decide if it was worth their time to it and 2. give us an estimate for work to be done at an undisclosed date.

Last night, we were saved by our friend Bob who, after owning and modifying multiple homes over the years, had a good bit of experience in that installing ductwork. He came over to the house with tools, went with John Stephens to the nearest building supply store, and the two of them replaced the ducts last night. 

invisible death

 This week, our kitchen and basement are filled with the smell of decaying flesh.

We cleaned the kitchen thoroughly, emptied the trash, checked inside the cabinets, even cleaned the cat dishes. No change. The stench is getting worse. 
When I got home from the shop last night, the entire house reeked of it. I noticed the basement lights were on so I went downstairs to turn them off. When I opened the basement door, the smell hit me. Whatever died in the house - and it is definitely a decaying animal - is somewhere between the floors beneath the kitchen.
I'm going to try to stay out of the house as much as I can today. MonsterMustDie is burning my scented candles and misting air freshener everywhere, so I think he is as motivated as I am to locate and remove whatever the source of this miasma is. Once we're able to do that, we'll need to figure out how to prevent this from happening again.  

In retail adventures, there was a parking lot spook. An ultra-thin guy dressed in black was spinning through the lot on a bicycle all evening after the shops closed. He was still going around when we finally left the shop at 10:15pm.  We were lined up at the door by 10:00pm but the manager on duty was having some sort of complication in back that they weren't talking about so one senior employee stayed back with her after she let the rest of us out together.  

In the store last night, one guy was disrobing and trying on clothes in front of the racks in the men's department. I don't know if anyone tried to stop him but he was quite a topic of conversation - why would anyone do that when we have dressing rooms?  However, I have seen women do the same thing in dresses. 

blowing in

Most of yesterday was spent visiting my closest friend here,, who is recovering from lung surgery.  She's still on pain medication and not able to move much but it is very difficult for her to stay down.  Along with recovering from surgery,  she's got a new puppy that she and her husband brought home last week.