Thoughts on a side gig

 I have discovered a new way to earn a bit of pin money. It involves clicking the links sent to me by a company whose job is to boost search engine results. Someone pays this company to get Real Humans to click their links on search engine results pages, and if they get enough clicks, the Mysterious Search Engine Algorithms will rank those pages higher.

The company, in turn, uses a browser add=on to register the clicks that we give the links, and pays per click. At the end of the month, they pay directly into PayPal. They are as good as their word. The transaction went through right on the first of this month, my first time being paid by them.

Many of the links being clicked are for businesses. "Personal injury attorney in XYZ City", "Roofers in ABC Town", etc. One particular art studio has been posting individual items of theirs that are for sale. I can see where a company would find it expedient to buy some clicks for their items, so their links will show up in web searches.

Then there are the assignments that I find... intriguing. There are a few names that have been popping up repeatedly, and they are for individual human beings, all rich guys who founded whatever companies they are affiliated with. Their links are leading to sites where glowing articles are written about them, that discuss their philanthropic activities, that describe their various business successes, and so on.

But I noticed something. Interspersed in the search engine results that I am going through, to track down the intended link and click on it, are articles that are... shall we say, not as favorable as the ones we are clicking. Those other headlines discuss bankruptcies, lawsuits, rude things the person has allegedly said or done, and so on.

My educated guess is that the purchaser of these clicks is hoping to make the desirable coverage links be the first things people see when they search on the person's name.

Having said this, I have no idea who is purchasing the clicks. I am aware that there are companies dedicated to cleaning up a person's online brand, and I suspect these individuals are affluent enough to enlist such a company's services.

It's interesting, though, that I have not yet encountered the names of any women taking these steps to enhance their search engine results. Maybe we ladies ought to think in these terms, if we want to be sure that OUR names are the first things people see when they hit up a search engine.

Food for thought.

Roosters

 

Me: (working from home in living room)

Mark: (computing in dining room)

 

Mark: (finds YouTube compilation of crowing roosters)

 

Mark's laptop: COCKADOODLEDOOOO (repeatedly)

 

Me: Are we having fun?

 

Mark: It's crowing roosters!

 

Me: I see! Or rather, I hear!

 

(Rooster video finishes)

 

(silence)

 

Mark: (finds YouTube compilation of cuckoo clocks)

 

Mark's laptop: CUCKOO! (bong) CUCKOO! (bong) (repeatedly)

 

Me: 😳

These Ads Are Killing Me

 Every time I turn around, be it on TV or online, I am encountering another Father's Day ad.

Thank goodness it will only continue for another couple of weeks. The repeated reminders are brutal.

P. S. I did a little date calculating, after discovering that the current version of the Windows 10 calculator has this feature, and discovered that the day on which I was exactly 21,000 days old was also the day of my dad's funeral.

Nip-heads

 

Well, we've got ourselves a couple of nip-head kitties! 😹😹

 

If you follow the page for the kitties Cole and marmalade, you might have seen their post over the weekend where someone sent them a box of their favorite toys, catnip bananas. Pics were included of the kitties enjoying their presents, and a chewy.com link was provided for those of us who would like to give our own kitties these toys.

 

So I took a look at the item, and they are cloth bananas stuffed with primo catnip. I thought, "Sure thing, I bet my guys would love these", and I ordered two.

 

I was surprised when it was delivered today. Darn, Chewy is fast! 😊 We brought the parcel in when I arrived home from work. Then we put it next to the front door because we were bringing some other items in, too.

 

Fast-forward maybe 10 or 15 minutes, when I went to retrieve the parcel from the living room so I could give the cats the toys. Merlin had beaten me to it, and was bunny-kicking the bubble wrap envelope, lol. When I took custody of the envelope, it was also all wet, so he had been licking it to within an inch of its life, as well.

 

I opened the envelope, removed the tags from the two bananas, and gave each kitty a nip banana. WELL! Pandemonium ensued, in the form of grabbing and shaking, licking, biting, bunny kicking, face-rubbing, and more. 

 

Mark hadn't seen them get this bonkers over toys, ever, but I don't think they ever got a toy with THIS much fresh catnip in it. Pretty much every toy for cats is labeled as being infused with catnip, but I must say, that utterly pales in comparison to the effects of a cloth banana filled with nothing BUT catnip.

I have a couple of Very Happy Kitties. I will keep an eye out just to make sure that, if they decide to play Wrestle My Brother while stoned out of their gourds, they don't get overly rambunctious. Otherwise, methinks I can predict how the cats will be entertaining themselves this evening. 😂😂😹😹

I'm not OK. And that's OK.

 We lost my dad a month ago yesterday.

And I am NOT OK. Not even a little bit, some days.

But, you know what? I accept that and I am not holding myself up to the standards of a non-bereaved person.

So when I forget things I would normally remember, when I fail to even think of a solution that might otherwise have occurred to me with little or no effort, guess what? My internal and external lives just had a freaking atom bomb dropped on them, and no, my brain does not work the way it did on April 29, when my dad was still alive.

I'm doing my best, World. But my best today is not my norm, and we both need to take that into account. The people who genuinely love, or at least respect, me will understand, particularly the ones who have dealt with it themselves.

Learning Process

 

The grieving process in the aftermath of losing my dad has given me some surprises, not only in terms of what turns out to be a trigger, but also what is BEING triggered.

Like the fact that the grieving process is not just causing me to miss my dad, but also my dog Baxter who passed 11 months ago. Of all the things that I expected to hit hard, I was not expecting a prior source of grief to suddenly step up and demand to be counted.

All I know is I miss my dad AND I miss my dog.

Checklist

 

Cross these off the to-do list:

Sat with Mom and edited the obituary text - check

 

Emailed document to funeral director - check

 

Chose the menu items for the funeral luncheon and emailed this, plus an estimated head count, to the restaurant - check

 

Took my mom to dinner and actually SAW her eat food - check

 

It is so, so surreal to have gone through that obituary info for my dad. How on earth can we be writing about him in the past tense when we JUST TALKED TO HIM ON THURSDAY? 😢😢😢

 

Thursday night, he was telling my mom all the things he wanted to do when he came home. He was going to work hard in PT and get strong, he was going to plan a family dinner for their 60th wedding anniversary in June, he was going to do a bunch of things. And even so, on Friday morning, he was joining his parents, sister, brother-in-law, and even his childhood dog Patsy (about whom I heard countless stories while growing up... boy, did my dad ever love dogs) up there in Heaven.

 

Pray for my mom. I hurt as much seeing HER in pain as I do over losing my dad. I wish I could help with that part of this process, but that's impossible.

 

Next up: talking to the folks at the cemetery to determine which of the plots in our family's lot are still available. There should be four open spots, but we need to determine which ones those are so we can open the correct one. The last four spots are slated to be for my parents, Mark, and me, but it's a large plot and some of the spots are already in use.

Interesting fact: the plot was originally purchased in 1925 by a relative with the same name as my dad, EXCEPT that he was using the original spelling of our family's name, Gabriele. That got anglicized in later years. So in another few years, we will have had that spot in the cemetery for a century.

The update I was hoping would not be needed

 My dad went into the hospital on April 4, with such severe kidney failure that they had to do dialysis on an emergency basis. His fistula had been put in three days prior, but it takes a couple of months for a fistula in the arm to be mature enough to use.

Eight days later, he had extreme abdominal pain overnight, and it was discovered he had a perforated ulcer. The surgery they had to do on April 11 was complicated, and they basically had to reroute the way his stomach fed into the small intestine. I can tell you from personal experience that when they have to remodel your intestinal tract, it is NOT easy on the patient and the recovery is intense.

A week after that, he was found to have a partially collapsed right lung, and they had to go in with a tube to clear out a big amount of mucus that was clogging things up, so the air could flow properly.

He looked so much better after that procedure, with better color and even an appetite for the first time in forever. His appetite had gone down to nearly zero, and I think part of the problem there was the stomach had to retrain itself to its new method of sending food through to the intestines. It had worked one way for 82 years, so telling it, "Surprise! Now you have to do things THIS way instead" is not an instant process.

Fast-forward to this week. He had improved to the point where medically, his labs and vitals were great. Even without oxygen, his pulse ox was showing as 90 and 92 the last time I was there, which is outstanding for a person with COPD. I think he still he one drain left in, but the other ones were gone. (Drains are a pain in the keister, BTW. Can confirm, bigtime.) He needed a lot of PT because he had gotten so weak, that he couldn't possibly have gone home. He had to get his stamina back, since he could hardly walk, and there is no way he could have handled going up and down stairs at home. So that would have to be handled in PT sessions, as well.

It was not meant to be. He was transferred to a rehab place on Thursday night, one that has a great reputation, as far as I can tell. I have heard nothing but good things about them. But yesterday morning, he was found unresponsive in his room, and efforts to revive him were not successful. It appears that he passed away in his sleep.

Needless to say, we were all shocked. He had been on a really good track toward recovery, and had even been turned down by three different rehabs because they said he was not acute patient. Hey, if three different places tell you that you are too healthy for them to take you on as a patient, that sounds like a good thing, right?

The first full day of walking this earth without my dad on it seems surreal. It is always a hard thing to lose a genuinely good person. We got some of the preliminary plans made last night, with the funeral director. I am glad that process has begun, because my mom was worrying about what it would entail. The more concrete things we can take care of, the less she will need to worry.

My heart breaks for my mom even more than it breaks for me. I know I can battle through my own internal turmoil, but I can't battle through someone else's pain for them. If I could, I would. I hate the fact that she has to do that herself, without her lifelong partner and best friend.

Bereavement is a part of life, I know, but it's one of the parts that suck. I try to count myself lucky that I had such a wonderful dad that I, and everyone who knew him, will miss him dearly. A lot of folks are not so fortunate. But even so, pain is pain and we can't really avoid it. We can only process it and integrate ourselves into the new reality facing us.

Dad

 On Holy Thursday, my dad had a fistula put in his left arm, as his kidneys have deteriorated to the point where dialysis is needed.

However, on Saturday and Sunday, he started having problems breathing. Mark and I took him and my mom to the hospital before we went to Mass. 

He got dialysed via a port in his neck three times this week, and they got a lot of fluid out. He was supposed to get another treatment on Monday. However, overnight on Sunday, he started having excruciating abdominal pain.

Long story less long, they immediately did scans and determined that he had a perforated ulcer. My mom and I went right to the hospital to be with him before emergency surgery. The docs tried to prepare us for some of the most serious things that might have to be done, as they would not know until they went in what amount of surgery they would have to do.

The surgery was still pretty major, but fortunately, a lot of the things they MIGHT have had to do turned out not to be needed. What was needed was something called a GJ procedure. The perforation turned out to be a lot bigger than they were expecting to see, and so the hole that was in the area where the stomach joins the small intestine was not able to be repaired. Instead, they closed off that area of the stomach and joined the stomach to the small intestine in a different place entirely.

He was sedated all of Monday night into Tuesday. They did a dialysis right in the ICU room on Tuesday, after which they removed the breathing tube and the sedation. But he was still about 99% asleep yesterday when my mom and I visited (one at a time, per hospital rules).

Today, they did another in-room dialysis, then moved him from the ICU to a more regular room, albeit with telemetry, on the same floor. He was MUCH better tonight. He was alert and able to hold a conversation.

Things are still pretty serious, given his age and medical history. But everything that has been going on so far has been things that the doctors want to see.

We were thinking, prior to Monday's  emergency, that he might come home from the hospital this week. That, clearly, is not going to happen. First of all, with the nasogastric tube, he is most likely on a "nothing by mouth" restriction for the next few days. I know when they had to remodel my digestive tract a few years ago, I had the NG tube for five days before they did a scan, to make sure everything was moving through the digestive tract and nothing was leaking anywhere. Only then did they take the NG tube out (the next morning, to my great aggravation... I had hoped it would come out the same day the scan determined that things were in working order with no leaks). I will be astonished if his timeline for determining that it's OK to take the tube out is any quicker than that. He's 82, so things don't just heal at warp speed.

In any event, we will greatly appreciate All The Prayers as we keep on keeping on while my dad recuperates. Thanks!

Diamond Hands vs. Paper Hands

After having entertained myself watching the fragment of a share of GME go up and down for a week, I was all set to just keep holding. As long as it kept tap dancing around the same general number, I figured all was well.

But today, the numbers turned doubleplus ungood. It dropped all morning. By lunchtime, I had seen enough. I stepped away from my miniscule experiment.

I basically spent about $2.50/day for a week to amuse myself watching the subreddit WallStreetBets and the stock ticker. Pretty cheap entertainment, if you ask me.

I will keep watching that subreddit. Maybe next time, I can get in on the very beginning of their next project and EARN $2.50 a day. 😀

Woot woot for microinvesting apps, though. Experimenting with pin money is harmless enough.

In other news, this was the first day after my second dCOVID shot. I am starting to feel it. Like last time, all the joints that tend to hurt anyway have been griping nonstop. But this time, some general low-grade all-over body aches joined the party. Fortunately, I have enough remedies in my daily medical regimen (prescription and OTC) to dial the volume on the discomfort WAY down. I also feel like I am getting a sore throat and a cough... not sure if that is on the symptoms list, but I kind of think it is.

I will hydrate a lot and go to bed early.

New Administration, New Year

 In the weeks since my previous post, we witnessed an insurrection on live TV, we FINALLY got a new President, and what do you know? My first doctor's appointment, post-Biden's inauguration, has showed improved blood pressure.

Maybe after I have some time for the four years of DJT-induced tension to subside, I can go back on the same level of BP meds I was on while Obama was in office.

Just saying.

In the meantime, I am amusing myself with a micro-investment made via ideas from that paragon of sensibility on Reddit, the subreddit r/wallstreetbets. 😁 And when I say MICRO-investing, I'm not kidding. Now I am watching my tiny fraction of a share go 📈 and 📉. (There go the blood pressure improvements, lol.) But I shall continue to have💎👐 (diamond hands, as opposed to having paper hands) and hang on for a while.

Or maybe I just have a diamond HEAD, lol. But hey... what have I got to lose but the price I'd normally spend on lunch when I'm working onsite? Where can you get this much drama for under $20? 😂😎