This is my last day of mandatory quarantine as I get over Covid. Feeling better but I have a nagging cough and sore throat that has made it impossible to sleep for long. Also, though my congestion is gone for some reason my sense of smell/taste is messed up (it was fine even when I was all clogged up). I’m so ready for this to be over.
Prays for you.
A side note( check my last post in the July rants) he says he wont be able to financially do the loveseat for a couple more months.
I found out Saturday that one of the people I had over for dinner on Tuesday had just (as in, she tested in the morning and sent texts immediately) tested positive for Covid. The next day a second person from the same group had tested positive. And today I find out that a third person of the 4 tested positive.
I tested negative on Saturday. I’ll probably test again in a day or two just to see what’s going on, but I don’t seem to have any symptoms so maybe I lucked out.
My mom just tested positive. In the last three days she’s been close to almost every member of the family.
On a less contagious note…
Kevin, do you have time to come over and help put together the shoe cabinet?
That was a text I got around midnight. Figured it was probably a scam, but I SO wanted to reply with something like:
You have too many shoes. Give half of them away and then we’ll talk about the cabinet.
A clever friend said I should respond with:
Is this the cabinet you bought to hold the stilettos and the vinyl hip boots?
Since I never opened the text, my notifications keep popping up, thinking that Kevin needs to be prodded to help his … mother-in-law? granny?… with her cabinet (just for shoes?).
Any other good lines, either assuming Kevin’s granny is a real person, or a scammer?
My stomach has decided that it must annex my esophagus and is currently causing much heart burn. I don’t know what I did to anger it. I have tried eating the chalk to appease the acid kings but it does not seem to have worked.
The stomach is an evil organ.
Hope you can find dietary and lifestyle changes (and meds, if the former are ineffective) to fix the problem.
Don’t worry, I have made a lot of those changes already, at least where I can. I already take omeprazole once a day. I’m just frustrated and in pain. For me, stomach problems make me the most miserable.
I’m sorry, I also take omeprazole every day. Between that and swearing off spicy foods forever, I’ve improved. I assume you’ve seen a GI to see if you maybe have a specific food intolerance.
I’ve actually not seen a GI. But I have done barium swallows in the past. I don’t have an ulcer or any weirdness with my esophagus yet. I am not really wanting to see a doctor about this right now because I know they are going to tell me to lose weight. I have lost weight. It did not make the acid reflux better.
Anyway, I think I actually know what I did wrong. Last night, I’m pretty sure my prop-up pillow fell between the bed and the wall. I didn’t connect the dots until just now. Too horizontal makes the tummy mad.
As a fellow sufferer I totally get the pillow thing. That’s legit.
Hopefully if you do see a GI, you have a competent doctor who doesn’t assume that everyone overweight gets constant reflux and that’s the only reason why that would happen.
This is the second time I’ve posted in the SD. Apologies if I mess something up - I’m sure you’ll let me know.
I have cats. I’ve always had cats. My first post was about one of them who died suddenly. (RIP, NORM!) A little over two months ago, my Freddie did too. I comfort myself with remembering that he lived to 17 when he should have died before one. He was a good boy.
Not a week after that, Opus, my Hotblack-Desiato-black cat, went down. And I mean down. In one day he went from fine to very nearly dead. So, off we go to the vet. He had gotten benign growths in the back of his mouth and stopped eating, and his liver and pancreas went crazy. They stabilized him, but after a week there he wasn’t getting better. So, they surgically implanted an esophageal feeding tube and I brought him home, I thought to die. Six weeks I spent sitting on my office floor slowly pushing food through a tube. Improvement was dramatic and he’s now, for all intents and purposes, well. He looks a bit odd, what with shaved legs and shaved neck with a healing hole in it, but that will fix itself. His last vet visit for this was this morning.
But no, we can’t just have this end, oh no. During all this, Opus, the world’s sweetest cat who loves everybody, and whom everyone loves, got it into his head to attack Zoe, my calico female. Not as in playing, but as in trying to kill her. So, I’ve now given her her own room, box, and food, and keep them apart. And he still will occasionally try. No one knows why and the vet and I have tried everything we can think of, but I guess this is his new hobby.
Cats. Gotta love 'em, even though they’ll make you crazy. ARGH
Last week Monday I ordered 3 new phones from Verizon, as part of a promo for upgrading our plans. I specified that two phones be sent to me, and one sent to my daughter in Maryland.
Of course, all 3 phones came to me. After much hemming and hawing, Verizon determined that they couldn’t rectify the situation, but they would give me 25 bucks in credit, which I received.
I then went to the post office, used one of their standard mailing boxes, and mailed the phone to my daughter. Postage was $9.95; insurance brought the cost to $23.75. I thought ‘okay, that works out.’ I mailed it Wednesday afternoon.
Well, it’s been six days, and the phone was last scanned in-transit on Saturday. Now nobody at USPS seems to know where it is. Guess it’s a good thing that I purchased the insurance, which I have to wait another week before I can submit a claim.
Sigh.
Paper towels are not a substitute for toilet paper and neither is a 2lb bag of limes for 2 limes. 
One of those I caught and the other I did not.
A little tip that I learned when my stomach hated me: put a few pillows under the head of your mattress. It gives it a gentle slope and doesn’t slip away.
Or, even better, if your bed allows it, prop the whole head of the bed up about six inches (soup cans or blocks of wood work well - stick them under the legs at the head of the bed) You get to lie flat but your head/throat is elevated.
And if you’re a right-side sleeper, try learning to sleep on your left. That positions the valves in your stomach differently and it’s harder for the acid to go up the esophagus. Instead, it mostly pools because the two exits are higher than the big pouchy area.
I’ve been a right side sleeper all my life, but I started trying to sleep on my left. It took a while to adjust, but I sleep on my left most of the night and the stomach reflux has definitely improved.
Cat didn’t come home this morning. Neighbour saw bobcat take him in the alley around 5:30. Wife keeps catching herself going to check on him.
Pound had named him Willpurr when I adopted him from there years ago. He took an immediate liking to Ms Fluffy, they have always since been a pair. In her pragmatic way she just called him Black kitty, which became his name to us. He was an arrogant but long suffering little soul\ that happily accepted our service and that of his various people on the block.
He lived a good life. Miss you little buddy.
Oh no! Poor black kitty.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
For the latter: As a Nigerian prince, I do not construct furniture.