Hello everyone, and welcome to December. Let's get this vaccine party started.
Tuesday, December 1:
Working from home, day 154.
I receive my first Christmas card of the year from my friend Bethany, an old friend from middle/high school who recently moved back to our hometown in WV from someplace in New York. There are a number of friends I need to meet up with when Daisy and I (eventually) get to go back home for a visit, as well as a lot of family members she didn't get to meet when we were last out there. This includes my early-card-sending friend. She and Daisy are a lot alike in many ways; it appears that for friendships as well as relationships, I always gravitate towards the same types of people.
I have obtained addresses for Daisy's side of the family in Canada, and have already sent two cards to some of them -- the others will be sent this week once I'm on my off days and can have time to actually address them, stamp them, and get them in the mail. I have a friend in Germany who's getting a card too, so there's also that.
The night at work is balls to the wall crazy -- I am down two people (out on medical leave, both of them) and our escalation manager's computer crashes and he can't get back online afterwards. I handle, or otherwise step in on, at least twenty different hot issues, make numerous phone calls, audit the team's workload not once but twice, beat down proverbial doors on two different escalation chains of command, and perform numerous other tasks around the "office" during my eight hour shift. Remarkably, I still get a lunch, I still get off at (roughly) the normal time, and I still get to bed at a reasonable hour.
Only two more days left of the week...
Wednesday, December 2:
Working from home, day 155.
The security camera system and the new Ring doorbell Daisy ordered as part of the Black Friday weekend/Cyber Monday sale both arrive today. She spends a bit of time in the evening installing the camera system and testing it to ensure it's going to work correctly. It does, so, one less thing to worry about there.
The new PS2 isn't perfect; it sometimes has issues reading discs. I don't know if this is a hardware issue or if the disc/laser just needs some cleaning, but it's slightly worrisome. It's also a 20-year-old machine, so really, who knows. I have a lens cleaner I'm going to run through it a few times and see if that helps, but I have to find it first. If it dies, I at least still have the other busted one that still (mostly) works.
I have two members of my team -- the same ones on medical leave right now, who went on medical leave for different reasons -- who have now contracted Covid-19 in addition to their other medical problems. Both are probably out of office indefinitely on medical leave, at least for probably the next week or so, so I'm going to be continually shorthanded until they can return. Both are relatively young folks in their 30s-40s. Both have other medical issues that will be greatly compounded by Covid-19. And there's little I can do to help them other than point them towards our HR rep for medical leave/FMLA paperwork or to their insurance providers if they signed up for the short-term or long-term disability coverage (something I 100% sign up for every single year, because I'd rather be safe than sorry).
Open enrollment at work is online and running, and we're off to the races on it; we've actually been told this year that if we don't change any of our benefits, they all roll over into 2021 with no changes necessary -- those disability benefits, as well as life insurance, is all I get through my workplace. Daisy's job covers our medical insurance as well as FSA accounts for both of us because her insurance is, well, better. For the past few years, it's been better by a lot. She is, however, unaware of any changes that'll be taking place for 2021, as she has not been informed of what the open enrollment plans are for her job or what the timeframe will be for them. I am less than concerned, honestly. It'll happen when it happens.
The night at work goes very slowly and we're left twiddling our thumbs for a lot of it, so we run a text-only D&D game over our chat server. It helps to pass the time significantly.
Thursday, December 3:
Working from home, day 156.
I am not in the proper headspace to work tonight. Truth be told, over the past week or so I've been getting considerably more and more depressed -- basically ever since my Thanksgiving PTO ended and life resumed as per the usual. It seems like the only times I'm ever really happy-ish anymore is when I don't have to work and don't have any responsibilities. When that work and those responsibilities resume, I become morose and withdrawn, stressed about everything, unable to get quality sleep, barely eating anything (and what I do eat is never really that good for me), and that feeling slowly builds and builds over the course of a few days or weeks until it becomes completely crushing. It makes me unhappy. It makes me fight with the wife more. It makes everything much less enjoyable. And it makes me so, so very tired.
I stay pretty quiet throughout the night at work; I don't socialize that much with my coworkers, I don't really interact with anyone I don't have to -- I just quietly focus on my nightly duties and take care of them the best I can. I try to lay down for my lunch hour, to see if the feeling passes any and if a short nap will help reset me, but it does not, and my body won't let me sleep -- something that, as I mentioned, I've been having a lot of problems with as of late anyhow.
Part of it is that we're in the limbo period between holidays, and yet it doesn't feel like the holidays at all. At all. It doesn't feel like Christmas is coming. It just feels like another day on the calendar in a few weeks. I can't get excited for it when it doesn't feel like it's coming. It doesn't feel like it's coming because we've had mostly moderately warm days, I haven't been outside of the house, we don't have a big family Christmas dinner or gathering to look forward to, and I can't go galavanting through stores or malls for Christmas shopping because of Covid-19. We can't even go to the goddamn movies or pick up a pizza. Everything feels so fake, so hollow. It all feels so desperately lonely. We won't do anything for Christmas this year. Presents will be a very muted affair. We'll sit at home just like we do every other goddamned day. I'll play a video game, I'll watch some TV, I'll eat something, I'll fall asleep in my chair. I'm so tired of nothing ever changing for the better. I don't know how much longer I can live without life somewhat returning to normal. I want the vaccine so desperately. I want it for everyone who wants to take it, and for those who don't want to take it, they can get Covid and die for all I care. You best believe that once I get it and it's deemed safe to do so, I am re-joining the world as quickly as possible. I will be getting that pizza. We will be going to the movies and eating in restaurants and shopping in stores.
Except for the whole work-from-home thing -- that I'm perfectly fine with.
In the morning, I talk to the wife for a little bit while I restlessly pace the living room, unable to let myself truly be still, before I decide to go to bed. At that point, I sit upstairs in my chair for two more hours, unable to feel tired enough to sleep, before I finally get up and go to the bedroom -- where I do, eventually, rest.
Friday, December 4:
Day off. Payday.
I am awakened well after dark by the wife climbing into bed with me and the cats. This is her last day of working from home for a while, and she has her socially-distanced "holiday party" tonight -- via a three-hour Zoom call. I find this quaint, because the last thing I ever want to do is spend three hours with my coworkers where they can see me at all times and be forced to interact with them when I'm not getting paid for it. Fuck that noise, man. My time off is my time off. Precisely none of that sounds appealing to me.
Because I knew she had this call, my plans for the evening were to wake up and get some breathing space, some alone time to take a shower, write here, play a game, etc -- generally wake up and force myself to be upright for the evening hours. As such, and because it's payday, I balance the checkbook and place a large, mostly-groceries/household supplies order on Amazon (which, when it's all said and done, I spend $247.67).
The call stretches to four hours. I pay the cable bill. When it begins to near the fifth hour, I go downstairs to see what the hell is going on, as it's nearing 11PM and we haven't even started on dinner yet. Daisy puts it on mute and asks me if I'll make pasta while she tries to find a way to exit the call gracefully, which she does when the pasta is done.
I will also note that the spirit of Christmas is now very alive in our home. Daisy knows I've been depressed and hate the fact that it doesn't feel like Christmas, so she went out into the garage and to the storage upstairs, got nearly every Christmas decoration she could find, and then completely decorated the house with them. We now have a three-foot-tall, light-up pink Christmas flamingo in our front window (I wish I were making that up), multiple strings of lights, multiple nutcrackers, signs, wall-hangings, and other Christmas-related odds-and-ends strewn about the house in a mostly tasteful decorative fashion. I appreciate it, for the most part -- it shows that she really cares about my mental and spiritual well-being, and truth be told, the depression does begin to lessen a bit.
We eat and watch a few episodes of The West Wing. Around 1AM, Daisy is done with being awake (she essentially worked a 15-hour day) and decides she needs to sleep, just as I'm getting my energy for the night. This is uncharacteristic of me as generally on Fridays, I'm pretty lethargic and tired and just want to get some downtime and rest. I come back upstairs and procure the rest of the addresses for the Canadian cards, and I play a computer game to try to wind down. Interestingly enough, I can't. I play a second game, trying to tire myself out. Sleepiness doesn't come. I listen to two (frankly, rather boring) episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience and play on my phone, and I still can't conk out.
Finally, just as I'm beginning to fall asleep around 6am, I hear the wife get up and go to the bathroom. This gives me the impetus I need to get up and to to bed, where the cats are delighted that they can now sleep with me as well, and I summarily become dead to the world.
Saturday, December 5:
Day off.
It is not lost on me that I turn 38 in fifteen days -- two weeks from tomorrow. Nine of those fifteen days, I'll be working; I took a four-day weekend from the 17th to the 20th. This coming week is the only full, business-as-usual week I'll be working for the entirety of the month of December. And, hopefully, the closer we get to Christmas, the quieter it will be on a day-to-day basis at work. I know that a lot of the time, work becomes a ghost town as we get closer to the holidays, and with my depression and stress levels where they are, I really need that to be a trend that continues, as I may go mad if the next nine days I have to spend in the office before I get a little PTO (as well as the longer stretch of PTO I have waiting for me around and after Christmas) are nuts.
I awaken in the afternoon hours, close to 3pm. This is very odd for me for a Saturday. I mean, it's fine, it's not like we have any real plans or anything to really do. We are almost out of all real foods in the house that I eat on a regular basis, so I tell Daisy to ready the grocery delivery orders and get them set to roll wheels, because I have to be able to eat and most of the Amazon stuff isn't arriving until Tuesday/Wednesday. I am out of sandwich/wrap stuff, haven't had chips or other most snacks in the house in days, am down to my last few bags of steamable vegetables, and I'm down to a few cans of soup. What's left? A bunch of foods that are time/labor-intensive to make, which I'm not going to do at 7am when I'm getting off work and I'm exhausted and just want to eat something and go to bed. Some of my normal staples -- rice cakes, tortillas, vegan mayo, etc -- are in the Amazon order that's coming, but again...Tuesday/Wednesday. The "Amazon Pantry" orders take longer to gather and ship. A much larger amount of stuff that I cannot get from Pantry is in the two grocery delivery orders from two different stores that I'm waiting on Daisy to finalize and fire off. This includes refrigerated/frozen items (like cheeses and vegan sandwich slices, etc) as well as fresh produce, almond milk, and other perishables. I'm sure you get the general idea. She wants to finalize the orders in the morning and then set them up to go. I tell her that's fine, but we may end up having to wait an extra day on them if she does that -- depending on the expected delivery load for the day.
In the evening hours, Daisy tells me she wants to hook up her Wii and play it with me.
Daisy's Wii has been in storage, in a dusty box, for over two years. It's an old, old system, almost as old as my PS2. She got it when it was new, so she's had it close to fifteen years now. I'm really surprised it still works, actually. We both have a decent chunk of games for it; there's a handful of them I bought just for me (Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Geometry Wars: Galaxies, and whatever the Super Smash Bros. title was for it), while she has a bunch that are just hers, like the Mario games and a few of the Just Dance games. She bought a converter switch box for the TV so that both the Wii and my PS2 can be hooked up together at the same time, and to switch between them we hit a button on the converter switch. I tell her it's fine, to set it up, and we'll go for it. We've never had it hooked up since we bought the house, so the switch box thing was a good idea.
Except, upon opening it, the switch box doesn't have an AV cable. So we can plug things into it, but we can't plug those things into the TV, because we'd need another cable for that. You know the type of cable -- the red/white/yellow AV composite cable. Both ends male.
"Order one on Amazon," I said. "It's not like it'll be expensive."
"No," she said. "I want to play it tonight. Can we go to the store to get a cable?"
"Sure," I said. "Let me get dressed."
"Best Buy is right up the street and is open until 9."
It was 8:25.
Mind you, we've been socially-distancing the fuck out of ourselves. I've only left the house twice in the past month, and haven't been inside a store in many weeks. I haven't actually been inside of a Best Buy in years -- they're the type of store that became obsolete as soon as Amazon began selling basically every type of electronic device under the sun. Yet, somehow, they still exist, and in decent numbers.
So, I pull on a pair of my fleece judo shorts, zip up a blue hoodie over my Depeche Mode Violator t-shirt, and into the car we go.
"Did you actually check the hours?" I asked. "9pm on a Saturday night in the midst of the holiday season seems like an awfully early time to close down Best Buy. Don't stores still do holiday hours, where they stay open until like midnight?"
"I don't know," she said. "Covid."
Fair point.
"Oh well, if they're closed or if they don't have it, we can just go to Walmart and I guarantee you I'll find one there."
We walk into Best Buy and the guy at the front asks us what we need. I tell him "AV cables," and he points out the section to me. I find the one we need, turn around, and head to the registers. From entry to check out and exit, we are maybe in the store a grand total of three minutes.
It costs four times as much to buy the cable from Best Buy than it would have been on Amazon, but when your wife tells you she needs something right now, that's your cue to step up and be a partner, boys.
With the new cable, we are able to successfully hook up the Wii and PS2 at the same time, and spend about two hours playing the Wii before we eat something, watch more of The West Wing, and then (once again around 1) Daisy goes to bed. I remain up to play a game on my computer and drink an entire bottle of cherry juice; my foot, elbow, and other joints have been sore over the past few days, which tells me I'm in danger of having another gout attack if I don't up my fluid intake and keep inflammation at a minimum as much as I can.
Sunday, December 6:
Working from home, day 157.
I wake up late in the afternoon just in time for the wife to tell me that she'll be back, she's driving to the store to get our parking-lot pickup order (which contains about 85% of the groceries we'll need for the next several weeks; the other 15% will come from Amazon as well as Whole Foods delivery). She returns with an incredibly large cache of foods of all sorts, and makes us fried rice for dinner while I go through my wake-up processes to be functional for the night -- this includes coffee and football and going through the apps on my phone.
When I start work, I find that it is a goddamn ghost town. Two of my agents are still out on medical leave, and a third tells me he's taking PTO an hour before I log on for the night and leaves as soon as I get online. Luckily, the night is really quiet, with less than 15 issues my team needs to work for the entire night, and I spend the hours reading the news, playing on my phone, and generally just being present and awake. It's much like the old days, which is what I was hoping it would be like as we go onward towards Christmas. It is not, however, likely that this sort of quiet will continue for the next three weeks. Today is the 6th; we have a long way to go before the 25th.
I calculate my PTO in the overnight and submit the time for 12/21 as well. Sometime in the next week, or during the first few days of my time off, I'll submit for 12/22 as well (I let my boss know this in advance so he's not taken by surprise) -- so when it's all said and done, I'll be out of the office from the morning of 12/17 forward, returning on 12/29. Twelve days straight, and my longest stretch of vacation time I've taken since 2015 when the wife and I went to Nova Scotia. I'd submit for 12/22 now but I can't; I'm three hours short until the next pay period ends. That time should drop this coming weekend as I have to do payroll a week from tonight, so we'll see.
At the end of my night, the wife wakes up and tells me she's not feeling well (don't worry, it's not Covid) and that she's going to take the day off. I leave work on time and I spend a couple of hours sitting with her on the couch and talking with her, watching a bit of The West Wing, before I'm too tired to move or stay awake and go to bed. Two of the cats join me.
Monday, December 7:
Working from home, day 158.
Pearl Harbor Day.
Payday for the wife.
I awaken in the afternoon in a bit of a shitty mood. I smell. I haven't taken a shower since Friday (not like I have anyone to impress when I never leave the house). So, I do that. I massage a ton of beard balm into the longest beard I've ever grown in my life, I meticulously wash and condition my hair, I scrub down every inch of my tired, achy body with nag-champa-scented soap that I spent far too much money for on Amazon, and I put on my new Mandalorian t-shirt.
That's not a joke, by the way. It is, indeed, the longest beard I've ever grown in my life. I am equal parts "I need to shave this off because it's driving me crazy" and "let's see how long this thing grows." My beard doesn't grow like my hair does, and takes several months to grow out fully and be uniform in its appearance. It's also very hard to manage, uncomfortable, itchy, skin-drying, and makes me feel like a wolfman. Which, as that was my nickname in grad school, I'm sort of okay with, I guess. Daisy has mentioned that she wanted to make me some beard balms for my birthday or Christmas, but truthfully I don't need them -- I still have a few I purchased from my friends' Etsy shop and I don't use the balms or creams every day, just as necessary.
I check my work email, which is not as awful as I expected for a Monday, and as the wife gets paid today, I balance the checkbook so I know what we have available -- I have several bills coming due that will need to be paid with what's in there now as they're due before our next paychecks hit later in the month.
More than anything else, I'm tired. I need to actually refocus and deal with the week ahead of me -- the last full week I'll work this month -- and have time for little else. I have no clue what I'm doing/getting for my parents for Christmas, and have a few other friends and family I need to send small gifts to as well. I also have at least two more cards to address and send, probably more, over this next week or so. I believe I have 7 cards left, total, out of the 50. The cards to Canada and Germany took more than an entire sheet of stamps. I probably put at least one more stamp than necessary on each of them, but I want to make damn sure they get there -- and, of course, I show my support for the USPS.
Tuesday, December 8: Working from home, day 159
Wednesday, December 9: Working from home, day 160
Thursday, December 10: Working from home, day 161
Friday, December 11: Day off
Saturday, December 12: Day off
Sunday, December 13: Working from home, day 162.
I took another break for several days and haven't written here.
The past several days have been a blur. I've not been sleeping well, and when I do sleep, it's usually at the wrong time to do so (it is very hard to regulate my body's sleep cycles) and/or I haven't slept enough.
Over the time away from my blog, the Pfizer vaccine was FDA approved and began distribution in the US. This is the first big step towards getting some normalcy back into the world. Yes, it'll be several months before it's available to everyone. Yes, Christmas will show infections of the virus dramatically spike, mostly because people will think "oh, we've got the vaccine now, so if I get it, I get it" which is not only a really dangerous, erroneous way of looking at it (the vaccine isn't a cure, it's a preventative) but will put so many people at risk of dying of this virus before they have a chance to get the vaccine which could prevent it. It's what we call a series of bad moves.
People also forget that the vaccine is not 100% effective and you can still get Covid-19 after you've had it...it's just that your chances are a lot lower and it's likely to be far less severe if you do get it.
Until it mutates.
But anyway.
I'm a week out from my 38th birthday. I work four days this week and then I'm off for eleven days straight. I did this by modifying my PTO slightly to take the 21st with what I had in the bank, and then canceled the 29th and replaced it with the 22nd. This means that after Wednesday night, I will return to the office on the 28th for a three day week, take the 31st off, and then work 1/1 for holiday coverage. It'll be a short weekend, but eh. I'll not really notice it much after all the time I had off.
I don't have any plans for my birthday. Most years, I do. Last year, I got my Starfleet tattoo on my arm. Next year I plan to get the Rebel Starbird or something else similar on the other arm, but for now, I have zero plans to do anything "special" on my birthday. It's on a Sunday this year, the Chiefs play at 3:25, and I will have been off work for three days by the time my birthday hits. I don't have any special plans, I don't have a special meal I want, and I have no idea what, if anything, Daisy has gotten me for my birthday. It is what it is.
My parents, in their normal demeanor, sent us a present for Christmas -- it's a very pretty bamboo cutting board that was highly expensive and is gorgeous. It's currently sitting in our dining room (which is a wreck) until we can find somewhere to put it. Apparently they've also sent me a box of stuff for my birthday too, which they always do. There's never a huge amount of stuff in it, but it's always sweet and thoughtful.
In turn, I sent them a box of 12 new wine glasses and Batman: Three Jokers for my dad's reading pleasure. Per the shipping report, the glasses arrived today, and the book arrives on Tuesday. It's the smallest amount of things I've gotten them for any holiday in many years, but part of that is because I don't have the means to send extravagant gifts anymore, nor do I have the time to actually search for hours on end for stuff people might really enjoy. My "free time" is severely lessened these days in comparison with previous years, as is my money.
There are a few friends I always send/give something to, even if it's something super-small. I did that this year with a few folks from work, sending a shirt to one of them and some posters and masks to two others. Christmas is a solemn affair this year with few bells and whistles. There are always people who send us things with no need to do so as well -- they do it for the same reason I do it: because they can. They're not looking for anything in return, they're just looking to make someone's day a little brighter, to try to bring happiness. You all know my thoughts on Christmas -- it's really about family, and more so, about the kids. I don't have kids of my own, and all of our nieces and nephews won't see us this year, and we can't gather with family because of the virus, so...it's solemn this year. It's me, Daisy, and the geriatric cats.
I still have three cards to send this year; they will be the last cards sent and will be done sometime this coming week. By this point, about 95% of the cards I've already sent should have been received by their recipients, and by the 21st, 22nd or so I'll post the digital version on Facebook.
Daisy finished her week in the office without incident and will now be working this next week from home. She does not know what days she's going to take around the holidays for PTO. I've told her multiple times my schedule that I'm working and not working, and have told her to make up her mind if and when she's planning to take any time off, because she has to put in that time ASAP. Her office gave her a new laptop and a second, huge monitor for working from home, and because of that and her need to use both, she's spent the majority of this weekend setting up the spare room upstairs -- previously used for storage and not much else -- as her office. That also involves going through all of her boxes and getting rid of a bunch of trash, as well as setting up her bookcase, the linen closet (which she set up a few weeks ago) and getting her work desk ready to go. It is an extremely time-consuming process for her.
We received a snowstorm on Friday night and into Saturday morning; it was our first significant snowstorm of the season, and ushered in the winter for us in Nebraska. We got a little less than four inches of snow, which Daisy and I both spent over an hour clearing off the driveway and sidewalks yesterday -- even though we're not leaving the house anytime soon. Why? Because Omaha has city ordinances, and if you don't shovel your driveway and walks, you get a fine for it. Be advised, especially during a pandemic, such an ordinance is horseshit, but whatever.
Tonight is payroll Sunday, which should be less complicated than usual as I now have four fewer people on my team -- though apparently I'm getting more in the next few days. The latest training class just finished, and we have several new hires hitting the "floor" this week, apparently. They're gonna get to know me for approximately three days before I'm on vacation for the next eleven -- during which time my underlings are going to have to train and/or otherwise deal with them.
I am fully expecting this entire week to be a nightmare and/or for everything that can go wrong to do so, primarily because it's like the fates know when I'm going on vacation and throw everything at me they can before I can do so. Apparently my mere existence and the prospect of me being happy and not working pisses off the heavens above. I expect mass outages, overwhelming workloads, illnesses/absenteeism, bridge calls lasting hours, technical problems with either our systems or our parent company's systems, and/or who knows what else. All of these things always happen all at once during the days leading up to any sort of real lengthy time off for me -- you can almost set your watch to it.
Monday, December 14: Working from home, day 163.
Tuesday, December 15: Working from home, day 164.
As predicted, both nights at work are among the worst I've ever had since transitioning to the work-at-home environment at the end of March.
Wednesday, December 16:
Working from home, day 165.
Final night of work before Christmas vacation.
I am informed in the morning hours before bed that my escalation manager colleague has taken the night off to burn his floating holiday hours, as he won't be able to use them with me out of the office for the next week and a half. I'd previously told him to use them Tuesday night (last night) so he could extend his "weekend," but he did not -- so not having him in tonight is a little surprising but not wholly unexpected, and I can't be mad at him. I mean, I'm gonna be gone as soon as that clock hits 7am, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
I am mostly in good spirits, though part of that is anticipation of the coming time off. Part of it is also anticipation for my birthday and Christmas, which I am also well aware of. Following this logic, I am also quietly aware that the depression that will set in after all of the holidays have passed will likely be crippling, daily-sobbing depression.
I have a hemorrhoid again. It's very mild, but it's there. I'm not a fan, but I'll live. I've been taking fiber pills (psyllium husk) to help it go away, and so far it's working -- albeit slowly. Part of it is because I've been especially sedentary lately, I'm sure. A larger part of it is that I've not been drinking nearly enough water in any way, shape, or form for the past few weeks, and that causes any number of ailments in my rapidly-deteriorating body, from gout attacks to fatigue and everything in between. I just can't force water down my throat when I don't want it. I've tried, I really have, but it's near-impossible for me to force liquids into myself when I'm not thirsty.
The night at work is almost obscenely quiet, which is a good contrast to the previous two nights of hell on wheels. I hang out a little past 7 to make sure everything is wrapped up and where it needs to be, then I set the OOO on my email and phone and get the fuck offline to start my vacation.
Thursday, December 17:
Holiday vacation, day one.
I may have mentioned previously that the wife is working from home this week; this creates an interesting dynamic not only for the remaining days of this week but for the few days next week that she'll actually have to be in the office before Christmas (she took Monday off, but will work after that all the way up to the mid-afternoon of Christmas Eve).
The dynamic is interesting because I'll have a few days with her around and a few days with her not around as we roll into my week-and-a-half off. When Daisy works from home, when I'm working my normal schedule I tend to sleep much later into the evenings than I normally would, comforted by the fact that she's here already and working in her office across the hall or downstairs on her laptop. It means I don't have to worry about the house being taken care of, don't have to worry about her traveling and/or getting home from work safely, etc. I tend to sleep better most of the time when she works from home because of this. Not always, of course, but most of the time.
After getting some food in the morning, I come upstairs even before she's awake and begin doing laundry -- it's the first day of my vacation, I don't have to sleep on a set schedule anymore, and I have energy -- might as well take care of some of the more pressing chores while I have the energy to do so, right? I also fill out the final three Christmas cards, stamp them, and stick them in the mail -- that's right, as of December 17, all of the cards are in the mail and heading for their respective destinations. Many have already arrived, I'm sure, but I'm sure a good chunk of them are still in transit, especially the international ones.
In addition to our cards, we received a weird card from some lady in Ontario (I think) -- it was addressed to people with our same street address, down to the house number, but in Centennial, Colorado. For some reason it got sorted and shuffled into our mail for Omaha and got dropped into our box.
Every year, when I do our own cards, I save one of them as a souvenir (for scrapbooking, safekeeping, as a memento, etc). I have one from every year I've ever made the custom cards and mailed them out -- so there's 5-6 of them at this point, roughly. I did the same this year, and because of that I had a spare envelope. Luckily, the envelope was large enough to stick the entire mismailed card inside.
So, that's what I did. I wrote a nice little note saying "hey, this came to my house accidentally, and we didn't want to send it back to Canada, so we're forwarding it on to you -- Merry Christmas!" or something like that, and re-mailed it -- with a correct zip code (I googled the actual house).
I like to do good deeds. Forwarding a card takes almost no effort from me but it may mean the world to the recipient or to the person who sent it. I believe that if you're a good person and do good deeds for others, good things will happen to you. The universe generally has a way of balancing itself out.
I spend the day sleeping in my chair. It's not an incredibly restful sleep, but it's a cloudy day outside so my room is dark enough. When I awaken in the afternoon hours, the wife informs me that she got a promotion (one that she'd been hoping for since last year) that comes with a decent raise and a $500 end-of-year bonus on her next paycheck. I am excited as hell for her and tell my parents. Even though I instead want to shout it from the rooftops and rub it in a lot of people's faces, I don't -- it's not my news to share and she'll tell who she wants to tell when she wants to share it.
We need to get our medications -- I'm down to my last two pills -- so once she's off work, without even changing my clothes (I'm in a hoodie and a pair of pajama pants) we make the drive to the pharmacy across town to pick them up from the drive-thru. On the way home we also stop at the attached gas station so that I can spend $20 on Mega Millions and Powerball tickets, as both jackpots are up above $300 million -- and if a $20 bill gives me a chance to never have to work again, I'm taking that chance. There are pinball machines and Firebirds I'd like to purchase.
Upon returning home, Daisy makes us a quick dinner of stuffed, baked burritos and we watch an episode of The West Wing before she has to go to bed. I doze off again in my chair for a few hours in the night, and the day ends.
Friday, December 18:
Holiday vacation, day two.
Payday for me.
Awakening early, I balance the checkbook and order $70 of groceries from Amazon Pantry -- just the little things I need for around the house that we can no longer get because we're shopping inside stores as little as possible from now until most everyone can get the vaccine -- and I make sure Daisy gets up on time.
Throughout the next 8-10 hours, I do these things:
- read 15-ish comics cover to cover, trying to catch up a bit
- eat breakfast while watching the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian (I cried; it was beautiful)
- play three games on my computer
- scroll through Facebook and Twitter endlessly to decompress
- do two loads of actual laundry, including folding them and putting them away
- strip the bed and wash/dry all the sheets and blankets
- talk to the wife on the few breaks she has from work
- chat with three friends over messenger
- receive two boxes of Christmas/birthday presents in the mail
- listen to two full episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience
- order four more bottles of my vape juice
- listen to the news on Alexa not once, but twice
- track the packages I've shipped to family and friends for Christmas
- check my work email multiple times (it's a habit that's very hard to break)
I win $4 back on my $10 Mega Millions ticket.
Saturday, December 19:
Holiday vacation, day three.
The wife and I set out to do absolutely nothing unnecessary today, and accomplish that goal in spades -- we spend the day rarely leaving the couch, watching The West Wing and playing games together on her Wii. She makes falafel wraps with vegan cole slaw for dinner, and we continue our West Wing-a-thon until I am so tired I can't stay awake and can't sit on the couch anymore. I come upstairs where I try to play a computer game and find myself falling asleep during it, so I sit down in my chair -- where apparently I eventually pass out again.
We get one single number on my $10 Powerball ticket.
Sunday, December 20:
Holiday vacation, day four.
My 38th birthday.
During any normal year, I'd be doing a post specifically to reflect on my birthday, how I've aged/wizened over the past year, goals I accomplished, etc etc. But 2020 is no normal year, something that this series of posts has made remarkably clear over the multiple months I've been doing them. So instead, this year I thought I'd do something different -- here is the long, incredibly detailed breakdown, sometimes to the minute, of how I spent the 24 hours of my 38th birthday:
12am to 3:15am:
Asleep in my chair.
3:15am to 3:30am:
My first poop of the day. I read issue #4 of the recent Falcon and Winter Soldier miniseries, in case you were curious.
3:35am to 3:49am:
I get my computer up and running, check my email and Facebook, and start this post.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 4
3:50am to 4:58am:
I play Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (which was, ironically, a birthday gift from a friend in 2004ish) on my computer while listening to The Joe Rogan Experience.
5am to 5:14am:
I go out and grab my podcasts from the past month or so, as I've been lax in collecting them. I find out that Joe Rogan has finally gone all Spotify-only and that his RSS feed no longer works, which is sad.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 6
5:17am to 7:50am:
I run a backup of my PC to my portable hard drive. It fails the first time around (this isn't a cause for concern, sometimes the connection drops when I'm moving thousands of files at once. Daisy wakes up.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 15
8:10am:
I crack open a Rockstar Zero Sugar.
8:17am:
The backup is finally finished -- three hours later, to the minute.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 18
8:23am to 8:57am:
I call my mother so she can tell me Happy Birthday and so I can thank her for the box of foods/treats she sent.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 26.
9:15am to 12:15pm:
The wife and I have breakfast and watch Man of Steel on HBO MAX. She gives me my birthday present -- a Sodastream with two canisters of gas and five different flavors to use.
12:20pm to 1:10pm:
I desperately try to fall asleep upstairs so that I don't pass out for the day at 8pm and miss out on the entire evening with the wife. I tell her to wake me by 3pm as the Chiefs/Saints game starts at 3:25.
3:20pm:
The wife wakes me up.
3:50pm:
I actually get up.
4:10pm:
I go downstairs and try to force myself awake more.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 41.
4:10pm to 7:15pm:
I watch the game, spending time with the wife and being flattened by allergies. I can't breathe, I blow my nose 30ish times, and am generally pretty miserable. We call her parents and talk to them for a bit. The game ends, Chiefs win, and I go back upstairs to shower.
7:30pm:
I finish the can of Rockstar Zero Sugar I opened this morning.
Current Facebook Happy Birthday count: 48.
7:35pm:
I actually finally get into the shower.
8:08pm:
I emerge from the bathroom fully clean, teeth brushed, hair slicked back, testosterone gel applied, and beard balmed. I go downstairs.
8:10pm to 11:20pm:
The wife and I play pool on the Wii, eat dinner, and watch The West Wing. By around 11 I'm starting to get really tired, so we mutually call it quits for the night and come upstairs.
11:35pm:
The wife gets in the shower. I sit back down here.
Final Facebook Happy Birthday count: 52.
And so ends my 38th birthday. It was an okay birthday. I've had some amazing ones and I've had some truly awful ones, and this one is in the middle leaning toward the amazing side. I did not do much today. I did not leave the house, I did not go on any adventures, spend money, or get another tattoo -- yet, I am very happy and very satisfied overall.
Monday, December 21:
Holiday vacation, day five.
Winter Solstice.
So now we enter the final countdown towards Christmas, I guess.
The five-day stretch between my birthday and Christmas brings up a lot of memories from my childhood. When I was young, there was always a trip to Pittsburgh in there somewhere to go shopping at one of the two big malls we liked (neither of which are still, well, there at all), Century III Mall or South Hills Village. There would also be a dinner at some point at the Olive Garden, which -- to someone who grew up in rural West Virginia and never had any money -- was really classy and an event in itself. This was a yearly tradition in my household for about fifteen years or so, and we did it until I was well into college.
And now? It doesn't escape my mind that 2021 will be fifteen years since I moved out of West Virginia. Olive Gardens are now plentiful and the food quality has gone way down since I was a kid, and malls still exist (in some places, anyway, including Omaha -- which has a really nice one still), but they aren't what they once were. This layover period between my birthday and Christmas still feels like a magical time, but the magic I feel lessens a bit more every year as I get older. This year, because of Covid-19, it's nearly non-existent.
I sleep off and on until around 11am -- probably the most sleep I've gotten since I was still working last week -- and then get up and go downstairs. Daisy has plans for the day, as she's taken it off. Those plans include picking up some essentials from Trader Joe's (who does not deliver or offer online order/pickup, sadly), Whole Foods, getting her oil changed, and quickly stopping by the parents' to drop off a few things they wanted us to pick up for them and get the birthday present they got for me. It doesn't sound like much, but it is a lot, especially for someone who hasn't left the house in weeks and hasn't gotten any real restful sleep in a while.
I get some food, put on a hoodie and my shoes, grab a mask, and we go about it. The oil change comes first -- normally a fifteen-minute affair, but upon inspection they tell us we really, really need a radiator flush and refill. Daisy looks over to me in the passenger seat (Grease Monkey does it all without you getting out of the car, even -- just pull into the garage, tell them what you want, and they do it) and I shrug and tell her it's probably in our best interest just to do it, as we have the money and why not? This adds another 30 minutes or so to our day as the kid they have doing it is a trainee, and they take the opportunity to teach him how to do it. It finishes without incident, and $185 later, we pull out of the garage.
It is what it is -- I say that a lot, I know, but it's the only car we have and it's our lifeline. I also tell Daisy that the last thing she wants to happen is to have the radiator blow in the middle of a snowstorm when she needs the car to get home from work across town, or something of that nature. We've done the flush once before since we've been married -- it was either before our trip to New Orleans or before our trip back to West Virginia, both of which were in 2017. It was probably overdue. I had it done once on the Monte Carlo when I was still living in Kansas, and for the entire life of that car it was probably the only time it had ever been done, as its previous owners didn't take care of it that well -- I inherited a bunch of maintenance problems on that vehicle that I spent several years slowly fixing up one by one. Probably why it was only $500.
But what I wouldn't give to have that same car back in a heartbeat today.
Anyway.
From there we went to Trader Joe's, making it only the second time I've been physically inside a store of any sort since, well, before Halloween. I think. The days blend together. As expected, both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods were goddamned insane in the days before Christmas, and I voted to stay in the car for Whole Foods because there were just too many people and I was having a hard time mentally being in the same space/presence of the public masses. From both stores I maybe purchased $30 worth of groceries, total; I don't need much to live on, and I have a ton of stuff in the house already that I am slowly eating (when I have an appetite at all, anyway).
We then went over to the parents', where we very cautiously socially distanced ourselves but still sat in their living room with them for a good hour, masks on, just to get some time talking to other living beings who each of us wasn't married to and were not cats. The parents gifted me a very sweet birthday card and a memory foam floormat for the house with pictures of cats all over it. They don't ever have to do anything for me, but they always do something small and cute like this for my birthday. It is very nice and very appreciated as we all get older. I actually find it quite adorable. We also opened our Christmas gifts from Daisy's grandparents (already mailed in from Canada), which was a set of handmade-and-sewn holiday placemats with cardinals on them. I appreciate these gifts just as much, too -- these people aren't going to be around forever and any Christmas could be their last. It really makes me think of not only their mortality, but of my own. Especially during a pandemic, even if we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now with the vaccines hitting wider distribution by the week.
We let the parents know we'd stop by on Christmas for much of the same sort of socially-distanced time together so we could drop off their gifts and pick up our own, and went home.
Daisy insisted that she put away the groceries and that I basically go away, because she needed to clean out the fridge and didn't want me to be in the way. All I'd wanted to do all day was just to decompress and play my video games, so that's what I did -- I went upstairs and played a game here on my computer. During this time I felt myself getting really, really tired again, and didn't know why -- I'd kept myself caffeinated all day, I hadn't been tired upon getting home, and I hadn't eaten anything for dinner yet.
When I came back downstairs 90 minutes later, I felt really off. I couldn't tell whether I was hungry or not, no food really sounded appealing, and I had a general sense of malaise. Daisy made herself a quick pot of homemade vegetable soup for dinner (I don't know if she ate it all or not; I haven't a clue, really) and eventually I made myself some wraps with vegan cheese and soy curls in them so that I could put something on my stomach to make me feel better. This compounded the exhaustion factor and I began feeling worse. Well before 10pm, I told Daisy that I felt bad and couldn't sit on the couch anymore, because I was falling asleep and needed to get upstairs. She was tired and needed to go to bed too, as she had work in the morning in the office (she's there tomorrow and Wednesday for full work days, and Thursday until noon).
I sat down in my chair upstairs and remember nothing else until I woke up at 5am, lights still on and everything.
Tuesday, December 22:
Holiday vacation, day six.
Payday for the wife.
I have not slept in the bed since I've been off work. It's not an active choice, it's more of a "the chair is easy to pass out in and I'm barely sleeping more than 4-5 hours at a time anyhow" sort of choice.
I woke up this morning in intestinal distress, and spent what felt like more time in the bathroom than outside it for the first three hours or so I was awake. When the wife showers in the morning before work, this complicates matters -- I had to basically sprint downstairs this morning while she was showering, or I was otherwise going to shit my pants and there was going to be no way out of doing so. I really do think I have some form of mild IBS, but as it's not every day, and my diet does not change by any real noticeable standards, I don't know what brings it on or why...or when it's going to happen.
The Sodastream, in case you were curious, works really well -- but getting it to do so was a lot of trial and error. It says you have to hit the "carbonate" button 3-5 times...yeah, no, if you want your drink to actually be carbonated and have it be similar fizziness levels of something you'd buy from the store in a bottle or can, you've gotta hit it 6-7 times, minimum, and seal it up quickly once you take it off the nozzle. The carbonation does stay in the drink for a long time, but far less than it would from a commercially-prepared can or bottle of seltzer/soda...so plan to drink your beverage within 6-8 hours or you just wasted your time. Mind you, I also have the lower-end, non-electric Sodastream with manual controls -- the higher-end models may work better, I haven't a clue. I'm pretty happy with what I have, though.
During these next two days -- unless I want to scramble to do it on Christmas Eve -- I need to sit down, take the time, and wrap Daisy's gifts for her while she's at work and in the office. There are only four or five things, and the biggest one (in size as well as monetary value) I told her I am not wrapping at all. It's in its own box and has been sitting in plain sight in my room for the past six months. The others will take maybe half an hour to wrap, if that, and shouldn't be a problem. I also don't have to wrap gifts for the kids this year (thanks, Covid...), and my parents already have their own stuff delivered to them, so all that Daisy has to do is wrap the gifts we got for the parents and, of course, whatever she got for me. I already know two of Daisy's gifts for me -- a bag of pistachios and a book I wanted -- because she sent me a screen shot of the box sitting on our doorstep one night when I was working, asking me to bring it in...and didn't edit out of the screen shot what it actually was. Everything else remains a mystery. The big gift I wanted this year was the Sodastream, and I already have that, so I have no clue of anything else she may or may not have purchased for me -- and I don't have a clue on that for the first time in many years. Generally I have a pretty good idea -- last year I ordered a case for the Nintendo Switch that I knew she would get me whether she tried to be tight-lipped about it or not, and it arrived several days before Christmas. When I was proven right, she was stunned. This year, I don't have any ideas whatsoever. Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be a pleasant surprise.
Around 10am, I go downstairs to make something to eat and to decompress with a movie or somesuch. I end up watching The Happytime Murders, which is surprisingly available on Netflix...and really, it's not bad at all. It's incredibly predictable, but it does have a few laugh-out-loud moments in it and the Muppets (yes, they are Muppets; it's a Henson production, surprisingly) are what make it what it is. A fully-human cast would've made this movie fall flat and feel very, very derivative. Still bored-ish, I started up Sucker Punch, which is only available on Netflix until the end of the year, but only watch 20 or so minutes of it before I decide I should probably do something productive with my day.
Apparently "doing something productive with my day" entails coming back upstairs, loading the washer but not running it yet as I still need to wash what I'm wearing, and -- that's right, you guessed it -- passing out in my chair for a few hours.
When I woke up, I had to hustle a bit to get the garbage and recycling down to the curb before it got too dark for me to be able to see to do so, and I made sure the cats had their food as well. Daisy texted me to let me know she was working late, which a) I'm fine with because it means she gets OT money, b) she is kind and thoughtful enough to tell me, and c) because I still haven't showered or ran the laundry or dishwasher or even did anything remotely helpful around the house today, which makes me sort of feel like an asshole.
I actually do have a lot to do over the next few days in order to feel somewhat accomplished that I've used my time at least mostly wisely over my time off -- up to this point I've done little else other than play video games and read comic books, watch football and The West Wing, listen to Joe Rogan, and sleep in my chair. I have a massive bucket of sensitive mail stuff to shred, I'd like to reorganize the kitchen so we actually have room on the counters, I still have to wrap the gifts, I need to be intimate with the wife, and I promised I'd make dinner at least once this week as I now have the ingredients to make a good, hearty (vegan) goulash.
Wednesday, December 23:
Holiday vacation, day seven.
Festivus.
Day of the 2020 Festivus Snowstorm.
After a legit 60-degree day yesterday, around 10:30 this morning snow started falling ans we were put under a winter storm warning. We are apparently supposed to get 1-2 inches today. 1-2 inches being justification for a winter storm warning is extremely laughable if you grew up in West Virginia like I did.
I started my day of work quite early this morning -- almost as soon as the wife left, I was downstairs unloading and reloading the dishwasher, making sure the cats were well fed and watered, coffee flowing into my veins. But honestly, the around-the-house workload is fairly light. The wife does a remarkable job most of the time of keeping most of the house well taken-care-of, and most of the time the stuff she does is, well, the stuff she does -- meaning not stuff that I generally do or want to do (at least I'm honest).
After weeks of eBay not being helpful and a full two months of the seller being unresponsive, I submitted a dispute claim with my credit card company this week (at Daisy's insistence) for the broken PS2. It could take up to another month for that "investigation," as they call it, to be settled and it may not be settled in my favor, but there's no fault in trying. If it's settled in my favor, at the very least I'll feel vindicated and get a "free" PS2 that mostly works most of the time. If the credit card company rejects it, then I'm not out anything I wasn't out before, and it's not like I didn't get a second PS2 anyway from my executive director doing me a favor.
I told the wife last night that she would return home to the house smelling good and Christmas music playing through the Alexa. True to form, there was incense on, orange oil diffusing, and Christmas music playing softly when she walked in the door. Today I told her that when she gets home, I'm going to cook her dinner while she changes and showers, clean the kitchen after we eat and put away the leftovers, and massage her feet.
I am a good husband. There are times where I'm a bear and I'm a lot to put up with or deal with, and I am well aware of that, but I have no larger or stronger goal than to be a good husband to my wife. It is my sole function. Sometimes, when I'm under a lot of stress from work and lack of sleep and I begin feeling bitter, jaded, or in a spiraling depression, I lose sight of this. When I have the energy, when I can decompress -- and when I have time to do things -- I am reminded that my only real job on the planet is to take care of Daisy as much as I can.
As the day goes on, the snow and wind gets worse. Our giant, heavy trash and recycling cans are blown out into the street and back into our yard, for starters. These cans weigh probably 20 pounds empty and much more when fully loaded down (as they are today). Omaha experiences blizzard conditions. The wife is at work ten miles away on the far side of town with a car that does not go well in snow and ice.
She does make it home safely, and relatively on time. I make the goulash while she showers (it is amazing); here's the recipe for anyone who's interested:
1 box elbow macaroni (or similar pasta, I used pipettes)
1 package Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo (or equivalent)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can diced green chiles
1 jar of storebought spaghetti sauce of your choosing (we used Whole Foods' Tomato Basil)
1 12oz can V8 (I used the low sodium version)
Boil the water for the pasta. Cook the chorizo in a nonstick skillet over medium heat until it's done, while you're waiting for the massive pot of water to boil. Set aside once it's finished cooking.
Cook the pasta. Drain, return to pot. Keep on low/medium heat.
Drain the liquid from the can of beans, dump 'em in.
Dump in the whole can of tomatoes, liquid and all.
Dump in the whole can of chiles, liquid and all.
Crack the can of V8 and dump it all in.
Stir everything at this point so that it's well mixed. When it is, dump in the chorizo. Stir again.
Once that's all mixed, finally, dump in the jar of sauce and stir well, again, making sure everything is thoroughly mixed.
It may have a soupy consistency, and that's okay (and what it's supposed to have) -- the excess liquid will be absorbed by the pasta and beans. Stir occasionally for five-ish minutes or so until the low/medium heat has evenly distributed through the pot.
Turn off heat, use a ladle or what-have-you to scoop into big bowls, and throw some shredded cheese (vegan or otherwise) on top. Serve.
This'll serve 5-6 people, or approximately two fat people with leftovers for another meal.
And y'all didn't think I could cook.
Daisy was impressed. I used to cook for Daisy a lot when we first got together, though that was little more than "hey, let's dump a box of spaghetti into a pot with a can of the cheapest storebought sauce possible" or "let's get some dollar store sandwich buns, Boca burgers, and cut up a potato for fries" -- which thankfully, I have evolved from now. Sort of. I can cook. It's just that the vast majority of everything I used to cook was not vegetarian or vegan, because at the time I wasn't vegetarian and I wasn't married to a vegan. When you live alone in Kansas and you're poor, you get really creative. I used to bake a ton of bread, I used to make savory waffles in my waffle iron (savory meaning I would add soy sauce, worcestershire, garlic/onion powder, and other spices in the batter and I would use the waffles as bread for sandwiches).
Thursday, December 24:
Holiday vacation, day eight.
Christmas Eve.
Daisy goes to work in the morning and works until mid-afternoon. I make some food, watch Dark Phoenix because I haven't seen it yet (it's not horrible, really, but it's not an overall "good" film) and play on the PS2 for a bit. When she comes home, she decompresses some and we have some intimate time together. I shower, she makes food and we have a long conversation, then we eat and I pass out upstairs in my chair. I don't spend a lot of time on the computer otherwise.
Friday, December 25:
Holiday vacation, day nine.
Christmas Day.
I woke up this morning just feeling...I don't know. Sad, I guess, more than any other feeling. For years on end there would be many Christmas Eves where I'd barely sleep, where I'd be so excited for Christmas morning that I would just toss and turn all night or stare at the ceiling in the dark because I couldn't wait for the presents. Last night I couldn't physically stay awake past 11pm or so, and I was nodding out while watching TV with the wife after dinner.
I honestly don't know how late she was awake. I don't know how long she was up wrapping presents or doing what-have-you to prep for today. I never heard any of it. I was in my chair with my phone and I was dead to the world after 11:30ish, and I didn't wake up until 5am.
It is six degrees outside right now. The Weather Channel says it feels like zero. This is the coldest it's been this season thus far -- and also why neither of us shoveled the driveway after Wednesday's light snow. To quote the wife, "fuck that noise." Also, it's Christmas, so nobody cares, and it didn't snow enough to reach the minimum requirement of shoveling for city statutes (I believe that is 3").
This is the third Christmas we've spent in this house. Unlike other years, this year (as mentioned previously) it's a very muted affair. We don't have family in town to spend it with, as we normally do. We will, of course, drop off the presents at the parents' today and engage with them fairly briefly in a socially-distanced setting, but we don't have dozens of gifts for the kids, nor will we be lugging a ton of food over there to prepare for the big family dinner. I have but four presents to give to the wife, one for her father, and then we have two for her parents -- unless somewhere Daisy was hiding more for them.
As it's Christmas now, and as this post won't be going up before the new year, I guess now is the time for the big reveal of what I got for Daisy this year:
1x case of Cocomels Coconut Milk Caramels, Sea Salt flavor
1x case of Peanut Toffee Buzz CLIF bars (her favorite kind)
The "baby Yoda" doll that, this past summer, was everywhere but is now in such high demand that I had to order it months in advance -- you know the one:
...interestingly enough, the one I got was the international version for North America, meaning it was made for sale in Canada and has both English and French on the packaging. This is amusing because Daisy herself, as you probably know, is also Canadian and has dual citizenship.
And, finally, an acoustic guitar.
There's some history behind that one. Daisy's grandfather builds guitars for fun, and has done it for a large chunk of his life. He's built hundreds of them over the years, I'm guessing. Most of them he sells or gives as gifts. All of his kids and most of the grandkids and great-grandkids have gotten guitars from him. I don't think Daisy ever has, and he's now reaching the age where if she hasn't gotten one from him, she likely never will. [EDIT: She has not.] It's sad, but the man is old and won't be here much longer. It's one of the things none of us really want to discuss.
The guitar I got my wife is very basic -- it is not high end or amazing craftsmanship, and that is part of the point -- I did not want it to be. I wanted it to be the most basic guitar possible so that she can make it her own and isn't afraid to get it all marked or dinged up, I want her to be able to paint it and draw designs on it and bang it around. And I want us to play together.
Look, I have two guitars I haven't seriously played in close to twenty years. One is my stratocaster and the other is my Danelectro Convertible Pro, which is an acoustic/electric. My only hope is that in getting this guitar for her, which she can customize and make her own, she'll play with me. It's so lonely playing by myself that I haven't done much other than noodle around a little here and there in a very, very long time.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, around this time of the early morning hours a suicide bomber blew up an RV in Nashville. We'll come back to that later, believe me.
Around 9:30 or so, Daisy finally woke up and we began to make our plans for the day -- I was hungry and wanted coffee and wanted to eat, open presents, and then find out when her parents wanted us to drop by to do the gift exchange, so we could do that on their schedule and not necessarily ours, since we had no real pressing matters or anything to do, to be completely honest about it. My day was going to consist of playing video games and watching whatever football games were available on the television, if any of them were of actual interest to me.
As Daisy began making a crustless (vegan) quiche for us for breakfast, my phone range for a video call over Facebook with...well, pretty much the entire family -- Daisy's sisters and all their kids, the other husbands, the parents, and us.
Before I go further, let me state here that Daisy isn't really on the best of terms, or even really speaking terms with either of her sisters right now. Her relationship with them is strained at best -- stemming from Daisy's resentment that neither of them ever answer her calls when she tries to make outreach to them, and then they never call her back. She sends them messages and texts that they never respond to. Now, mind you, one sister has four kids and is the principal of a private school that she founded, and the other has five kids and lives in Canada, but...They're in contact with the parents on a semi-frequent basis but can't ever seem to acknowledge that Daisy has reached out and continually tries to reach out to them -- almost as if they're actively ignoring her or are otherwise brushing her off. After a certain point it becomes intentional and purposeful.
I used to think (and have asked my wife the question) of whether she thinks that I'm the reason why they're not talking. It may sound stupid -- and I've never been on anything but wonderful terms with her sisters and their husbands, but I am also a godless heathen who's going to hell (make no mistake, Daisy is too in their eyes) and both of these sisters and their families are super religious -- one side Evangelical, the other side Mormon. And I'm pretty sure they know I'm an atheist and have been for 25+ years. Moreover, I'm not exactly quiet about it. I don't throw it in anyone's face (I'm not an "asshole atheist," as some are) but if it comes up in conversation, I will absolutely own it and am legitimately ready to drop some science on anyone who challenges me. I also own, and proudly wear, at least four t-shirts proclaiming my atheism. I even have an atheist baseball cap.
Luckily, any confrontation with any of the family has not happened.
I'm also pretty sure they know that Daisy is not and has not been religious at all in her adult life -- she would say she's more "spiritual" or "open-minded to all thoughts and ideas" if pressed on the subject. The parents, of course, are religious, but aren't zealots. Keep in mind that every year (except this year) Daisy and I attend the Christmas Eve church service with her parents. The Mormon side of the family, at least, is fairly laid back and not pushy, and outside of preparations for our wedding I don't think the subject of religion has ever really come up. The Evangelical side -- when they're in town for the holidays (a very rare occasion now) won't even go to the church service with us, lest the children be accidentally exposed to different ideology.
Religion to me is like someone reading Harry Potter and thinking it's real and that they should base their life around it. It's no less ludicrous. I could go on, but I won't.
"No," Daisy told me. "It's not you."
This was said with the implication that, of course, it wasn't her either, but whatever it was that kept her sisters at arm's length (so to speak) was something with them and not us. Their religion(s) may not play a part in it at all...but I'm betting it's at least part of the reasoning.
Regardless, returning to the present, Daisy has been in very little contact with either of her sisters for months on end. She has put in a lot of effort to reach out to them with little to no reciprocation, and as her husband I can assure you that Daisy does not like being given the silent treatment and does not like being actively ignored. She can also be very stubborn -- more stubborn than I am, in fact, and that's a tremendous feat to pull off -- and will never back down an inch when she knows she's in the right.
So, when all of the family is engaged on a group call on Christmas morning, and when Daisy has stated in the past that she doesn't just want to be a "holiday sister" who gets a phone call out of obligation only, it is...difficult to get her to participate, and is rather awkward as well.
During the call, she called out both her sisters for not responding to her messages or returning her calls, Both were on camera at the time. Both pretended to ignore her. The younger of the two slunk off camera quietly and began filming the kids again. The older of the two very quickly wrapped up the call for all involved about 20 seconds later.
I was stunned. I wouldn't have believed it had I not witnessed it with my own eyes. I wanted to say something, but it's really not my place -- Daisy is a big girl and can fight her own battles, and can fight them as fiercely as she chooses. I don't get it either. I don't understand why they're acting as they are.
When the call wrapped up, and as we waited for the quiche to bake, we opened our presents. Daisy got me:
A bag of Gardein vegan jerky (it was disappointing, sadly, for both of us)
A massive bag of pistachios
Two books I've wanted for a while
Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2, which I've also wanted for a while, and
A Sega Genesis Mini.
The Sega was of particular surprise to me, as I don't think I'd ever mentioned it aloud to her that I wanted it, and only had it on my Amazon list. It also very quickly become my favorite of all of the "mini" or "classic" systems we have as well, as it has Gunstar Heroes on it, and that game was probably my favorite Genesis game ever.
She did like the guitar quite a bit; she thought my sentiment was very sweet and was appreciative of the gesture.
We rested a bit and ate our breakfasts, and then decided to get dressed and make the quick trek over to the parents' for our planned socially-distanced holiday time with them. We went over there fully masked, staying away from them (but sitting in the living room together) and had a leisurely chat, exchanging gifts. The parents got me a 32GB mp3 player -- also on my Amazon list -- which I did not realize how amazing it was until I got it back home and tooled around with it. It is my largest mp3 player capacity-wise, and has a sixty hour battery life. It also has a built-in speaker, a voice recorder (so I could legitimately start making podcasts with it, if I wanted to, today) and an FM radio tuner. It is super-sleek, lightweight, has a really nice little operating system and very navigable controls, and I was, overall, stunned at what a $40 mp3 player will get you these days. I immediately added a second one to my private purchases list on Amazon because if this thing dies, I will absolutely be replacing it with a new one. The only drawback to it is it's almost the size of my original iPhone (the 5c I had for years). For such a great device though, I can deal with that.
As an aside, I'm not sure y'all can fathom just how big 32GB is when it comes to podcasts. I put a year and a half of Adam Carolla's daily podcasts on there and still have 14-15GB left to spare. It's an insane amount of space.
The parents also got Daisy a cast iron dutch oven -- since she's been loving her cast iron skillet she purchased recently -- that has a lid that doubles as, yes, another cast iron skillet. It's big, heavy, and beautiful, and probably wasn't cheap.
We are at the parents' for a while, and leave around dark. We drive slowly through some (rich) neighborhoods to admire the Christmas lights -- this is something we'd planned to do for days but never had the chance, and then it snowed, and then bam, it was Christmas and we hadn't done it. We filled the car with gas, and then returned home.
When I came upstairs to plug in the new mp3 player and mess around with it, I got a text from my escalation manager colleague at work, letting me know that "some dude set off a bomb in downtown Nashville" and took out one of our parent company's major networking hubs in the area, which took thousands of customers out of service. I hadn't followed any news whatsoever throughout the day, so my response was something along the lines of "damn, that sucks, I hope they can get it fixed fast" and didn't think much else of it. It was Christmas and I was in the middle of my vacation time -- so, while I sympathized with my coworkers in the office working frantically, on a holiday, to help get these customers updated on status and coordinate restoral efforts, I absolutely didn't care about the situation as a whole as it pertained to work. Again, vacation -- again, Christmas. My escalation manager colleague asked if I'd text a few of my folks to ask them if they wanted overtime for the night (which I legit almost laughed at, because Christmas) -- so I did. I got two volunteers, surprisingly, who said they'd login and work, and I thanked them and didn't think much else about it. The wife and I retired to the couch for the evening to enjoy some television and to play Wii together.
Three hours later, my boss texts me asking me to get online and help out if I could. He followed this up by saying he was already online doing so as well, as were a few other managers. It was a Friday and a holiday -- the holiest of holidays -- and my boss doesn't work Fridays anyhow. I knew, at that point, it was serious. It had to be serious for him to ask me -- during my vacation and on Christmas -- to login and work, especially during a time when he wouldn't normally be working himself, either.
I tell Daisy, who had just heard about the bombing as well because I'd told her when I came downstairs, that it was apparently bad enough to where they needed me to get online, and apologized for ruining the last of our Christmas time together. What followed was four hours straight of pandemonium as a team of about eight people worked 200-ish issues directly related to the bombing -- issues nobody could actually do anything on because of the extensive damage to the network hub our customers run through. I spent four hours coordinating and distributing said issues, playing gatekeeper to keep the hordes at bay, while my agents and colleagues did the same.
Stepping back for a moment, I'd been awake since 4am. The wife was exhausted and went to bed around midnight. I'd had no nap, very little caffeine (to that point, anyway) and I was very much trying not to pass out at the desk -- stressed out by the situation and angered that I had to work on not only Christmas, but in the middle of my vacation days that I'd actually put in PTO for (not for Christmas though, I get paid for that anyhow). But I had, as they say, a stiff upper lip about the whole situation. When I'm needed I roll up my sleeves and get to work. I could have just as easily said "I'm not at home, it's Christmas" (which would have worked better in any other year where Covid wasn't a thing) but I always want to give the best impression possible to my leadership that when I'm needed, they can count on me. Part of it is pride, part of it is a sense of duty, and a very large part of it is keeping up my own reputation among my peers as reliable and dependable.
Around two hours in, our director told me that me and my own boss could to back to bed, that it looked like everything was quieting down a bit and that the rest of the crew could roll with it with few problems. I stayed two more hours after that just to make sure of that -- something that probably went unnoticed overall in the grand scheme of things, but again -- duty. Once I was certain that everything could be handled by the others on shift, I logged off, went upstairs, and went to bed with the wife. And so ended my Christmas.
Saturday, December 26: Holiday vacation, day ten
Sunday, December 27: Holiday vacation, day eleven
Monday, December 28: Working from home, day 166
Tuesday, December 29: Working from home, day 167
Wednesday, December 30: Working from home, day 168
Thursday, December 31: Day off -- New Year's Eve
I took a break from writing here. It's not that I was depressed or anything along those lines, it's that most of the days blended together and I didn't have much to say. The remainder of my holiday vacation was spent with the wife as much as possible, but it was also spent in somewhat quiet isolation and solitude. The days at work revolved around the slow, ongoing repairs in the aftermath of the Nashville bombing, which will affect service in the area for a few more days, if not weeks.
New Year's Eve was spent on the couch with the wife as well, eating a nice quiet dinner and finishing Bridgerton on Netflix -- which I very much recommend, but watch it without kids around because there are some graphic sex scenes. We watched the ball drop in Times Square, stayed up another hour (and more) to celebrate the New Year in the central time zone where we are, then Daisy went to bed and I stayed up dicking around on my computer and playing on my phone before going to bed in the morning -- after all, as promised, I would be working New Year's Day....
***
And so ends 2020, this month, and this post. I do plan to continue writing these posts at the bare minimum until a) the wife and I get our vaccines, b) Covid-19 numbers go into a decline and start to fade, and/or c) until social distancing is relaxed and all of us can slowly get back to our normal lives again.
I wish all of you a wonderful, happy new year. It has to be better than 2020, right?
Right?
