Because of the holiday, no dentist appt until weds. Only one dentist in office today, a morning procedure got complicated & mine will probably end up complicated too. So. Advil seems to make a dent and I've always got the pain meds from surgery if it gets to the point I can't sleep.

And I think Loki needs a tooth pulled too. So the cats have a general checkup appt for next Tuesday. With the vet.

I'm working from home today, but only a half day, and I am totally slacking. Only doing what will make Wednesday easier, really. It would be easier to do all this from the office, frankly, but that is not an option today, so I am taking full of advantage of not even getting dressed (always a difficulty on Mondays Weekdays days that end in y

The city assessed our neighborhood's sidewalks for repair (at homeowner expense, which would be fine *if* the city didn't also require us to use only contractors on their approved list, which is fucking shady as hell [because if the sidewalk is our property, shouldn't we be able to pick the contractor we want? and does that make me a Libertarian? shit]), and the contractor has gotten to our house today and apparently tearing up a sidewalk creates a funky awful smell. It's just concrete. How weird.

Maybe there's something "interesting" under the concrete? [eta causing the smell]

From the perspective of the city, they probably don't want homeowners DIY-ing their sidewalk repairs to save money (or using "my cousin's friend Bob who knows a concrete guy") and risk fucking up something important underground.

An apartment building near me at one point had, um, less experience people hooking up the new gas stoves. One evening, there was an explosion ... in an unoccupied apartment. Took out part of that apartment's wall and a bunch of windows around it, but no injuries.

They switched contractors after that.

My mom's in the ER again. She swallowed a hearing aid battery, thinking it was candy. They're x-raying her to make sure it's not stuck in the esophagus. If not, it should pass through her OK.

She's been to the ER several times this year. She's confined to a wheelchair but sometimes she gets excited and stands up and falls.

Mom is in a nursing home near Madison, which means my sister has to deal with this stuff. I think I'll take my sister out to dinner to thank her.

Mom's memory is bad. She thinks my sister is one of her sisters.

Aw, tommyrot, that's hard.

From the perspective of the city, they probably don't want homeowners DIY-ing their sidewalk repairs to save money (or using "my cousin's friend Bob who knows a concrete guy") and risk fucking up something important underground.

I definitely get that. But people's objections were more along the lines of "This is a ridiculously small list of contractors. There are more licensed bonded contractors out there. This limited list feels shady." If it were a bigger list, even, it would feel less shady. As it is, it feels like these contractors are in City Hall's pocket.

Plus people are annoyed that the city won't fix the goddamn streets, so there are potholes that go to the center of the earth, but they want us to repair the sidewalks. I'm on board with keeping the sidewalks safe, because this neighborhood is promoted as being a walkable community (and it is; I appreciate not tripping over busted sidewalk slabs), but it feels like a poke in the eye when the city drops a repair bill on us out of the blue but then makes the shrug emoji reaction when we ask when the hell the streets are going to be fixed.

tommyrot, that really is hard. Is she in a memory care unit?