Stink. Stank. Stunk. (Plus furry friends who don't.)

It's been a rough few days on a number of fronts. Not so much work, or things between the two of us, but life has been intervening in all kinds of ways that we weren't expecting and didn't need.

The newest and biggest of these developments is the one I alluded to yesterday. Details are slowly showing up online, and while I still need to be careful about all of the details, I think this much can be shared:

J was a dear, never-met friend- mine for over a decade, Eleanor's more recently but if anything more closely. She and I go back to LiveJournal days; I can't remember how or why who friended who, but there was a connection there. She was a teacher, a musician, a kindred spirit and a furmommy, who moved from California to Australia not long before we "met" to make a new life with a husband. She gained Aussie citizenship but kept her US as well, and she had been going through some major and difficult life situations that we and other friends were listening and supporting her through.

Skipping way way ahead: A few weeks ago, she had a nasty slip and fall and tore her Achilles. Surgery was scheduled and conducted. We saw posts from and about her saying it had gone well.

A very close friend of hers just posted this, which we've known the details of for a day; it explains what happened next, with some identifying details taken out:

Sometime during the morning on October 17th J suffered a heart attack, likely caused by an embolism. While they were able to get her on life support after extraordinary measures by the hospital staff, it was determined on October 18th that J did not have any brain function and her spouse and parents made the joint decision to stop life support. She passed away around 2:30 pm on Monday the 18th (8:30 p.m. on the 17th Pacific). 

Her parents are having difficulty getting to Tasmania. They were supposed to leave yesterday, but Australia is currently back on lockdown and the Australian government has denied their request for an exemption to a 14 day mandatory quarantine in Sydney. They are currently appealing that decision, but that may take some time as well. Even after getting to Sydney, there may not be a way to get to Tasmania, as it is on full lockdown until Monday.

So that's it. A life well lived, about to take turns for the better, taken in a blink of an eye. And Fucking COVID makes it even worse now.

We remain heartbroken. There is nothing we can do except keep her memory alive and share our collective memories with each other.

As someone here just said who knew nothing of this:

I am grateful that I know what love is.  Many don't.  Many others don't know how to express it.  Some take it for granted--or that they will always have enough time left to tell someone.  I don't.  Life can be snuffed out in a minute--and all our plans lost.

Don't take it for granted...please.

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Also, clean your dishwasher.  (We now return you to your regularly scheduled stinks.)

Ours is at least 15 years old. It’s rarely needed service but we’ve never given its innards a good cleaning. In recent weeks, Ludo from Labyrinth kept coming in while I was emptying the thing and going, SMELLLLLL BADDD!

So with everything Eleanor has been doing around here, I decided to tackle the Bog of Eternal Stench at the bottom. I ran it, emptied it, and removed the lower rack, then dug in. The exposed bottom wasn’t TOO bad, but I could tell most of the gathered gloom was inside the trap atop the drain. I tried shopvaccing it out, to little avail. It would need to come off. And of course it was held down by nuts, not screws, and they were smaller than any nut driver I could find.

Eleanor promptly found the right sized one- now labeled for the task- and here’s what I found when I popped it off.




It was almost solid. It may have been sentient. Sorry, Federation, but I killed it. Least I hope I did.

I ran it again, this time empty with a cup of white vinegar,  and promised to do this more often than every 15 years.

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Then there's the stink of dealing with tech. Some simple- yesterday, after the weather cooled, my car's tire gauge went off, simply fixed early this morning with two quarters and some air- some less so.

This computer's been a godsend for me. Particularly because its predecessor has virtually slowed to a crawl on the occasions I've needed to use it.  I showed Eleanor how to do some of our billpaying using this one, guided by a helpful Word document titled In Case I Am Hit By Bus, and I figured she would soon want an upgrade of her just-as-old, just-as-slow machine herself.

She found one online. I of course found a better, cheaper, faster delivered one. Ordered it Sunday night. Funds came right out of our debit card account. But no email confirming shipping or e-delivery of the antivirus program thrown in for 90 dollars off we could both use. Yesterday morning, we found out why:

They canceled the order.

No notice to us. The debit, still "pending" on our account. I called to find out why. Turns out it was for our own protection: that even though the charge was "authorized" for purposes of taking our money, it was not "verified" for purposes of shipment. Also turns out this verification glitch came from when I filled out the payment form on the order page: soon as I typed an R in the "first name" box, the browser popped up and offered to autofill it. Stupidly, I chose an option that had "RC" instead of "Raymond" as my first name.  There also may have been an issue over what name, exactly, is associated with our zip code. Officially, any zip starting with 142 is "Buffalo," but many people, including us, use specific variants like Kenmore, Snyder, Williamsville and West Seneca for their specific five digits, and the mail gets right through.  Computers, not so much.

I talked to the Customer Service Lady and was duly verified. Eleanor's machine could now ship. Only it couldn't, because it had gone out of stock in the time this snafu took.  They found a comparable one, for a little less money and all the same features save one missing one. We said okay. NOW the trouble was that this store's online staff was stretched so thin, CSL was actually taking sales calls from her regular gig in their survey department- and she couldn't access the order platform. She had to forward it to someone else who never got back, and by the time I followed up this morning, Choice Two had also gone out of stock.

At this point, I handed the whole thing back to Eleanor, who found the original item on a site which took her money and promised to ship no later than tomorrow. I'll believe it when the truck driver dumps it on the stoop. 

The ironic thing? This one, I ordered online, but from a store with a local presence and I arranged to pick it up at a brick and mortar location near here.  When I went in to do so? They never even asked to see my ID. "Hi, I'm Ray and you have a laptop for me ::points at it on shelf::"  "Oh, yeah, sure, here ya go."

The one final win from Snafu City?  Before giving up on them, I tried to get today's CSL to sell me the multi-user antivirus for the 30 bucks I'd been quoted on the original canceled order. She said she couldn't. I said there was someone over her head who could.  Several footprints on her scalp later, a supervisor had emailed me a $100 coupon so it wound up being only just over 20 bucks. It's installed on mine, and will be on hers when it gets here.

When, dammit.  Not if. WHEN.

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There have been other tecknickull issues- Microsoft Teams failed me again this afternoon, a bank has utterly fucked up computations on a credit card account, I'm forgetting at least one or two others- but I'll end with some soothers instead of more whining.

Starting with our own brood: whenever I have time and energy before coffee, I try to start the day right by making the bed-



- or at least as much of it as I can manage.  Pepper turned six last week, and Zoey just keeps going and going and going.

We also each took turns with rescues last week.  Last Wednesday, Eleanor was heading out to Sheridan Drive, a very busy state highway, and came across a gorgeous but loose Pittie following a mom and kid down the road.  After some tag-checking and corralling and many sloppy kisses of the back of Eleanor's head, Mr. Stephen came home with us until his furmommy could come get him:



Who's a good boy?!?

Two days later, it was my turn: I was heading out by way of North Forest, also a very busy state highway, and came upon a very pretty but older looking hound wandering about. He offered no resistance when I came up to him, and I helped wrangle Flash home.  No picture, because his mommy came out quickly to herd him. Flash is close to 15 and going senile; he used to follow his daddy all around the golf course he works at and thinks our neighborhood is Pebble Beach for him to roam in.

Also, a good boy.

Finally, a new good girl: friends of mine back to law school days, who walked their aging and sadly passed mutt Jake with us until this winter, finally got the bug again and adopted a new pup from the same city shelter Pepper was rescued at. Meet Natasha:

 

They're loving and caring people and she's lucky to have them. And vice versa.