bits

 Days continue to slip by - this weekend I will be getting two more teeth out, and two more appointments after that, at least, one of them to make a mold and one of them to take out the other teeth and fit the model. *sigh*  It has to be done sometime, though.

 

I am looking at different tech school programs with Esme.  I've shown her some things but I also really don't want to push her.  I know I have strong feelings about her studying a harder physical trade because she is even smaller than I was at her age, and she hasn't had the physical work that I was already used to doing from the farm.  The more physical course would have her learning construction and plumbing techniques with basic electrical wiring.  I showed her another local program that is quite a lot like what my dad did as a robotics engineer.  It has a lot more advanced math and science in it, and working on automated robotics and programming, along with a solid foundation in electrician work.  She still can't believe how many classes there are in it - and it is only a sixteen month course.  Her american graduates class in school was supposed to be already going over these things with her and she hasn't even heard from them about FAFSA or explored any career options.  

 

I wrote about two thousand words towards the other dog book I was formulating in my head.  It is basically how Charlotte came to be adopted here.  I should brush off my dachshund story, as well.  It was stalled at an action scene that was nearly 3/4 to the end and opened up great material for a sequel, but I've just let it sit there.  And I've still not gotten my  cat books to the gallery... will I ever?  They still send me a small check every once in a while for selling the other books and assorted cards/stickers there.

 

Studying Portuguese.  I understand it quite well, but just like Spanish, the French gets a bit in the way of production.  I will probably segue into Catalan again soon.  Got a bale of hay at the co-op and we are going forward with some plans to make a hay crib and see if we can figure out what we want to do for a bigger and better animal shelter outside. 

bits going into Saturday

 It has been two whole weeks plus a bit more and my stomach finally has worked out 'mostly' from that flu.  Ugh - that was a lot.  I had to rebuild my digestion from scratch, and everything had slowed way down.  I read a few articles by other people who said the same thing had happened to them - bad flu, not eating for a few days, violent throwing up and then digestion 'crashed' - which makes for stomach hurting and not wanting to eat again - remedy of lots of water, fiber foods, heavily-ginger spice and walking and a bit of castor oil twice - but it seems to have worked now.  I'm still going to be watching it.

Postal route tomorrow.  We did grocery store this afternoon and it was a complete rat race packed full of people.  I told Esme that it is okay to be anxious in that environment because she knows I get a bunch of tics and a bit angry at all of the people not knowing where to go and standing in gluts in the aisles during that, too.  A lot of things have gotten more expensive, but not everything.  Plus, we bought some things we don't normally buy, like I bought pitas and Mark found another kind of chips etc.  The spice mixture I had been using in our vegetable dishes wasn't available anymore, so I bought two other things - I hope that Esme likes one or both of them.  

When I didn't want to eat for those days we had some leftovers in the fridge that we had to throw out - so we didn't buy more of those sort of 'meal now and three more can be made' things for now.  I'm usually pretty good about using up all of those leftovers for Esme and I but when I was sick I let Mark cook more one-meal things for days on end there.

I finished the Japanese tourist mystery on my Kindle and have two others mysteries that I had saved at times the past few months - I just have to get myself to sit and read.  I had joined a local book club someone I knew invited me to, online, and using books from the library.  But I just couldn't get into that book - tried to speed read a few chapters and still, it didn't grab me.  I still have 'Exit' and 'Tentacles and Teeth' on my bedside table but for reasons I have stalled on both of them.  I did finish 'The Rule of One' and then gave it to Esme to read as well - she said it was an interesting read.  

She needed some help with her math yesterday morning and then when she got to school she said the teacher never even asked for the homework - that is the class she had trouble with and had to retake from last year.  The question she needed help on looked like a syntax trap, and I was hoping the teacher would go over what was actually wanted on it because of that.  But no. 

I completely overslept the other morning, had to have shut off my alarm - Esme was going to the bus when I woke up and I had to put it into overdrive gear to get to work on time.  I'm hoping I've got that figured out - but still don't know how I did it.  I have three alarms at night spaced out and even a backup one!  I guess I was just overtired from that digestion thing and finally could sleep that night. 

 I've been doing Japanese and Greek for some reason, and Lithuanian on Babadum on my phone.  I've been reading a bit more in French but not doing more lessons.   

after-effects of flu

 My digestion did not return to normal after that flu, and not eating much for three days - I've tried the recommended things, water, fiber, walking a mile every night before bed, castor oil again - and it is 'ok' but not normal, and from what I've been told, it will take several months perhaps to get everything back to normal after this type of flu.   A week at a time though was very much /not happy, but not so bad off that some castor oil didn't straighten it back out.  At least I can hope.  I hate the health issues that you can't see and that are not easy to talk to anyone about at the same time.

 I got a large white pattypan squash out of the garden yesterday and chopped it up and used half of it in dinner tonight.  Fiber - those veggies, and banana and oatmeal, brown rice and seaweed and bread with peanut butter and blueberries, pinto beans with tomatoes and ground peanuts - my diet is usually quite high in fiber, but when I was sick I wanted hardly any of it - I was gearing towards milk, and cottage cheese, and soups, butter cookies and crackers and rice pudding.  So, I do have some catchup to do.

Esme started back to school - senior year, one semester, and we have to get all of her college paperwork applied for quite soon.  Not much else, working on Japanese. 

flu

 The summer is almost gone, Esme starts back to school this week.  Last week I went down with the flu, although I struggled through the fevers and the chills and the 'where is my bed' every day when I got home and actually made it to the end of the week without missing work.  I was literally sweating non-stop, and then a few hours later, so cold in the same temperature (87 degrees) that I could not stop my teeth chattering.  I was drinking as much as I could but food was out of the question more and more through Thursday and Friday.  On Friday I was still holding onto the hope that I would make it through the postal route and then rest for a day and a half and be miraculously better.  

 

But, at midnight on Friday I began to throw up, painfully - as I had a mostly empty stomach - and I had to call out of the postal route for Saturday.  Saturday turned out to be a very bad day - there were moments I didn't want to be upright, standing, laying down or anything - I was semi-aquatic taking baths or showers every few hours, and letting the water evaporate on me.  My hair bothered me on my neck, my head felt like the skull was coming apart into pieces, and my sinuses were upset because I had thrown up and anything I tried to eat or drink was immediately met with 'no you're done with that now, really'.  I would try to sleep and be back up in an hour and a half.  The day seemed like four stuck together, and not in a good way.  Sunday was a bit better, although I felt like someone had thrown me around like a rag doll and my muscles and joints hurt.  The spot I fell last month in the yard on my hip was hurting like new.  And vomiting so very hard had messed up my stomach badly, my gut was hurting and I took the rest of that week slowly getting my system back into order.  Castor oil *yuck*, but I think I'm mostly back on track now.  I do not recommend eight year old castor oil - but I was glad that we had a bottle of it, and I need to replace it.  One dose was all it took, but it was very unpleasant.  Take that over the pain though.

 

So I've been catching up on things, went to the feed store, made sure all the bills were paid, and replaced some other things we needed in the house.  My sense of smell during the flu was through the roof - and then after the chills stopped, my sense of hearing was overly sensitive, too.  I was hearing pops and squeals in the car and in appliances etc that I had not heard for a long time.  I even put coolant and oil in the car, and pulled in the dry bean harvest from the garden.  They are pole beans and the beans are a reddish-brown color.  I planted a handful of miscellaneous things this year since I've had such hit and miss planting something specific - and this is the type of bean that has thrived. 

 

Our little goat had a bad time last night, as well.  She is blind, and when she gets too worried she has no idea where she is - as she usually uses a system of counting steps and moving along certain edges to know where she is in the yard.  She ate a bit of watermelon - and that was a bad idea.  I've told Mark sure that looks cute and she likes it, but no, it was quite bad for her.  She got a bit disoriented, as that is basically alcohol for a goat, and she got tangled up in a vine behind the house here.  We went and pulled her in after she didn't come in with the cats for their dinner, as is her habit.  She wants to be involved, even though she doesn't eat cat food.  But she wasn't there, so we had to go find her.  She had gotten herself into a tizzy caught in the vine, and it took several more hours to calm her down and get her to sleep without startling.  She was very tired, and staggering.  She slept leaning on one or the other of us for a while, and then she felt much better and has been walking normally and getting around the yard fine today.  No more watermelon for goats.

 

We took Grandma to town for her groceries.  Mark is making dinner, he has been making dinner for Esme all the past week or so, as I was eating sparingly still and usually strange combinations.  Only last night I made her fish and rice, which is one of the few normal meals I'd eaten, as he had eaten too much of the potato that he cooked the night before and it hadn't been great for him.  I am glad though neither of them seem to have been hit with the flu - and the 'contagious' part of it would have been weeks ago.  I've been reading a book and did some laundry.  Another week, with school bus et al, to begin tomorrow.

 

For languages : I'm doing the highest level French (5th section on Duolingo) and have returned to the beginner Japanese on my phone. 

round stone

 I have the day off - could think of a whole lot of things I should do - but haven't done much of them yet.. except study French and Latvian.  I collected some clothes but didn't wash a load yet.  I looked at food, but didn't cook anything.  I have three books saved, but haven't read them.  I feel that feeling lately of there is just so much physical stuff around me, and I interact with so little of it, but it would be more anxiety to clear it away and once I start I would expect to get somewhere, right?    

 I played a little Minetest Asuna and answered one driving question - no, it isn't fish that the cats eat, it is raw chicken / poultry.  Mostly because I was breaking some grass and accidentally there was a cat there and then I felt like I had to find what food it eats to heal it back up.  I have almost scraped up enough ambition to make some chai tea mix that will last a long time, but still, I haven't done it.  I was using some of the ginger tea for coffee yesterday.

 The chain reaction in my teeth is much better, but that one still hurts some.  When it isn't actively in pain it feels like a drop of ice cold water that is sitting just underneath my cheekbone, but then if I press on it, I feel the pain.  I did two postal routes yesterday, my regular one and then a little auxiliary route that someone else asked me to take up after I got back early.  Mark made a great beef roast with potato and rice.  I harvested a small squash out of our own garden yesterday and cut it up in the freezer.  That could be good cooked with a bit of bacon.

 

 

I did make the tea, and took a picture of the ingredients, and took a picture of the cat, but somehow the first two pictures were nowhere to be found on the card.  I took another picture of the cat, Loki, he hadn't moved too much :)  The tea ingredients are now a non-photogenic homogeneous mixture, so didn't take another picture of that.  With the star anise and cloves and cardamom pods at the beginning, they were pretty.

 

I did sleep in.  I woke from dreams that were like so many round stones heavy in my hand, each one containing only a kernel of reality, exchanging easily round and round - but somehow I couldn't grasp the whole thing without beginning to lose them through my fingers.  One of the themes was looking at clothes with Esme for school, which we did last week, but it was in one of those specifically dreamworld shops that I visit often, although it is my own personal labyrinth / map city that does not exist - but I know very well, and I don't often bring others.  It felt like an alternate timeline.

 I was struggling through tasks but not committed, knowing I would return to my own but had to wade through what was in front of me as long as I was there.  There was some little bit about my stepfather and mother, as well, bits of the underworld etc. as mom has passed long ago and I haven't heard anything more about him in years.  Somebody asked me something about a tiger patterned ottoman in front of a television and we complained that even when you have cable there is nothing on TV - I haven't had 'cable' or watched much television at all in twenty years.  It was a bit confusing.  I like the million miles better, where I am not myself, and the landscape is not eerily familiar, at least that has no real relation to my actual reality.  I do not feel, coming out of those dreams, so much like I am sorting rocks from apples, and confused by the stones that are too round.

I woke up and decided I had slept enough, it was only 7:30.  I sat and did a zen for a little while, then eventually got up and came downstairs - had some coffee, and eventually went out to feed the chickens and put some water on the little garden.  I asked Esme if there was anything she wanted to do, as we rarely have a day off anymore, but she didn't have any suggestions.  Grandma didn't need to go to town.  I can think of a few things I should buy at the store soon, to replace things that are wearing out, but again, 'right now?'  I did make a peanut butter sandwich so that I could take my vitamin and the last antibiotic pill.

Laundry, make tea, cook a good meal, put conditioner in my hair, sweep the floor, clean an area or two, put my clean clothes in order - all sound like good things I should be able to do today.  I could knit, or draw, or other things.  And yet, I sit here and think 'Really, right now?' But then, I got in here and wrote this down.  More zen.  By the time it is time to make supper maybe something will click.

the bits and no godzillas 7 am to 3 pm

 

 

It took a bit longer to bounce back from those two teeth being pulled - as usual, it gets initially better, then it feels worse for a few days, then it starts to get better again.  A tooth nearby that area started really hurting on about day four, and a place they had injected some novacaine in the roof of my mouth felt like it had gotten infected and was a tiny burning fire in my mouth.  Then after another two or three days of that hurting worse than the extraction point, that has started to calm down again.  It has been a long week, and I have been getting tired.  

 

I bought a lot of different vegetables and cut them up for the freezer the day before yesterday, and then bought a few more at a farm stand yesterday and cooked them for dinner.  We found something called a Tuscan cantaloupe at the store and it smelled divine, so we bought it and cut it up and had that with dinner the other night.  Mark noted that the seeds in it were very different than regular cantaloupe, and it was a bit firmer, Old World cantaloupe difference?  I am hoping I am eating enough of the right vitamins to get this healing underway - as I have another extraction appointment next month.

 

Postal route tomorrow, and it is supposed to feel like 105 degrees.  Got Esme's hair cut for school, and set up her classes she might even graduate early.  She even has a class this semester that will help her prepare to apply for aid and get into the tech college she has been looking at.  I have to press her more about her license exam.   

 

I have been stuudying French and Spanish on Duolingo, some Japanese and some Lithuanian/Latvian vocabulary again on Babadum to see how much I remember. 

 

 

Everybody smile, even the dog (Charlotte)! 

Mark reached 328 signs that he had printed

 

He made me a No Godzillas sign for work, based on a meme - but changed the hours because I don't work 8 to 6 pm ;) and since I start at 7 that would leave a whole hour vulnerable to Godzilla attack.