![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Little Girl has been on antibiotics a day and a half now, and while she's no longer throwing up or having diarrhea (symptoms that started while she was at the vet on Tuesday) she's still not any happier peeing. She's still confined to the bathroom; it's still very difficult to get in and out of that room to feed and medicate her; her appetite is low; the room is still not usable as a bathroom.
[LJ-CUT TEXT="Here there be whining"]
And I'm still on my own weird-ass diet, which means I spend a stunning (to me) amount of my life on food procurement. I go to the grocery store four times as often as I used to. The dishwasher gets loaded and unloaded roughly every other day. I cook multiple times a week and still get caught short of stuff to eat. Even if eating my cooking were enjoyable, which I assure you it is not, this kind of time expenditure is crippling. In the traditional family model, there's a reason a breadwinner needs a wife.
Home is not where I relax. Work is where I relax. Home is where I do chores, morning and evening: medicate the high-blood-pressure cat, medicate the UTI cat, feed everybody separate prescription diets, clean the bathroom, scoop the litterbox to see if there's any improvement, clean up the food they didn't eat. (The morning routine omits the blood pressure pill.) All of this involves a lot of trips up and down the hallway, because UTI-cat's food and medicine come from the fridge; getting in and out of that bathroom is also becoming more challenging every time, because UTI-cat really wants to be out of there. Then I medicate me, whether shots (morning) or pills (morning and evening and in between). After the morning round I pack up a breakfast and a lunch (hopefully I've got them) and go to work; after the evening round, I heat up dinner (hopefully I've got something that will do). I almost gave up on dinner last night. Sleeping is quite difficult, so I go to bed not long after the chores are done. Then I get up in the morning and do it all again. I'm now out of breakfast food; after today's lunch I'll be out of lunches and dinners as well. The main litterboxes are slipping because I just don't get to them. So morning and evening I go in and out of the house through a room that is just as unpleasant to be in as that bathroom, a twice-daily reminder that I am most definitely not up to snuff.[/LJ-CUT]
I figured the worst of this would be a day or two, but she's not better, and the vet said to start her on pain meds (O joy, another errand to pick that up, and another chore twice a day) and hopefully tomorrow they'll have time to take X-rays for stones (O joy, another errand). You can tell how tired I'm feeling when the news that my cat may have kidney stones evokes only a dull annoyance at another drive to the vet's, not, oh, EMPATHY FOR THE CAT WHO IS IN PAIN. And work (where I can relax) is heating up these days, and I'm quite simply running out of cope.
[LJ-CUT TEXT="edit: ideas, some of them even mine, for improving things"]
Edit: Because I am not comfortable whining without brainstorming, here are some things I could do to improve the situation.
1) Cook a LOT MORE each weekend. Plan for the week. Make sure no cooking will be needed on weeknights.
2) (Thanks for the reminder,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shoutingboy and amywithani!) Figure out a list, even a short list, of restaurants where I can eat. Fresh Choice works. Find more within easy driving distance. Go to them when exhausted or when work has run late.
3) Go home from work for a short time on lunch break. In the middle of the day I am not scrambling with food and meds, and I'm also not exhausted. I don't take lunch breaks when I eat what I brought in; there's no reason I couldn't take a little time and do, say, those other litterboxes.
3) Last-ditch backup plan: Hospitalize UTI-cat. This is expensive and is also quite annoying for the kitty, but at least it is a possible option. Things aren't that bad yet, though.
[LJ-CUT TEXT="Here there be whining"]
And I'm still on my own weird-ass diet, which means I spend a stunning (to me) amount of my life on food procurement. I go to the grocery store four times as often as I used to. The dishwasher gets loaded and unloaded roughly every other day. I cook multiple times a week and still get caught short of stuff to eat. Even if eating my cooking were enjoyable, which I assure you it is not, this kind of time expenditure is crippling. In the traditional family model, there's a reason a breadwinner needs a wife.
Home is not where I relax. Work is where I relax. Home is where I do chores, morning and evening: medicate the high-blood-pressure cat, medicate the UTI cat, feed everybody separate prescription diets, clean the bathroom, scoop the litterbox to see if there's any improvement, clean up the food they didn't eat. (The morning routine omits the blood pressure pill.) All of this involves a lot of trips up and down the hallway, because UTI-cat's food and medicine come from the fridge; getting in and out of that bathroom is also becoming more challenging every time, because UTI-cat really wants to be out of there. Then I medicate me, whether shots (morning) or pills (morning and evening and in between). After the morning round I pack up a breakfast and a lunch (hopefully I've got them) and go to work; after the evening round, I heat up dinner (hopefully I've got something that will do). I almost gave up on dinner last night. Sleeping is quite difficult, so I go to bed not long after the chores are done. Then I get up in the morning and do it all again. I'm now out of breakfast food; after today's lunch I'll be out of lunches and dinners as well. The main litterboxes are slipping because I just don't get to them. So morning and evening I go in and out of the house through a room that is just as unpleasant to be in as that bathroom, a twice-daily reminder that I am most definitely not up to snuff.[/LJ-CUT]
I figured the worst of this would be a day or two, but she's not better, and the vet said to start her on pain meds (O joy, another errand to pick that up, and another chore twice a day) and hopefully tomorrow they'll have time to take X-rays for stones (O joy, another errand). You can tell how tired I'm feeling when the news that my cat may have kidney stones evokes only a dull annoyance at another drive to the vet's, not, oh, EMPATHY FOR THE CAT WHO IS IN PAIN. And work (where I can relax) is heating up these days, and I'm quite simply running out of cope.
[LJ-CUT TEXT="edit: ideas, some of them even mine, for improving things"]
Edit: Because I am not comfortable whining without brainstorming, here are some things I could do to improve the situation.
1) Cook a LOT MORE each weekend. Plan for the week. Make sure no cooking will be needed on weeknights.
2) (Thanks for the reminder,
shoutingboy and amywithani!) Figure out a list, even a short list, of restaurants where I can eat. Fresh Choice works. Find more within easy driving distance. Go to them when exhausted or when work has run late.3) Go home from work for a short time on lunch break. In the middle of the day I am not scrambling with food and meds, and I'm also not exhausted. I don't take lunch breaks when I eat what I brought in; there's no reason I couldn't take a little time and do, say, those other litterboxes.
3) Last-ditch backup plan: Hospitalize UTI-cat. This is expensive and is also quite annoying for the kitty, but at least it is a possible option. Things aren't that bad yet, though.
no subject
Sweet Tomatoes at 7pm sounds lovely! *mwah*!