The Holidays, Part IV: Searching for Empress

 (Days of work remaining before holiday time off: 13)

It is the last day of November. Any sort of pretenses about it "not yet being the holiday season" ends at midnight tonight, as once December hits, nobody can deny that the holidays are now upon us. November 30th means the end of Pumpkin Spice Season and the beginning of Peppermint Mocha Latte season.

I mean, figuratively anyway.

I neglected to mention in my last entry here that sometime over those many days off, I'd like to take some hours or the majority of a day to focus on my writing. My actual writing, not what I put up here that probably less than ten people read during any given six-month time span. I've been trying to work on the book for years now, and when I have the time to do it, that time is always filled with something else that needs to be done, somewhere else to be, or (more frequently than not) I'm too tired to focus and need sleep. So, doing some writing during that time will likely do me some good.

I have been very tired this week, and really unable to get true quality sleep. It's not that I don't sleep, but I don't really count passing out in my lounge chair half an hour after I get off work in the morning and then sometimes, but not always, moving to the bed later in the day to sleep somewhat fitfully as "quality." I mean I want the sleep of the dead, where I can lie motionless in a dark room with the cats for twelve hours and actually feel somewhat reinvigorated when I awaken -- and that's not something I can ever really do anymore. I might be able to get that, somewhat and occasionally, when I have my time off -- but I can't count on that as a certainty. I can't do it during the work week, and if I do it during a weekend it sacrifices large amounts of time I'd otherwise be spending with Daisy. 

This was not helped by Daisy -- who worked from home today, I might add -- waking me up at noon telling me to call her.

Call her? She was home.

Well, she wasn't. She was at the humane society the second they opened because there was a cat there that she'd fallen in love with. That cat was not a cat I was interested in, but one I thought was cute. She wanted to send me videos. This cat wanted to love her, wanted to sit on her chest and shoulders and lick her lips and up her nose like Hank did when he was a baby (okay, well, he still makes out with Daisy every day, he's a weirdo). 

I...did not approve. 

Look, I have my reasons, we'll get to that in a bit.

Daisy was of the mindset that she was going to come home with this cat whether I approved or not -- she later told me that she hadn't had vibes like this for a cat ever before, with the exception of Hank -- the strongest vibes she'd ever gotten from any cats she'd ever looked at in the humane society.

She was in line to adopt her when the lady in front of her said she wanted to adopt not only that cat, but the one in the cage with her, together. The humane society is first-come, first serve. Daisy was heartbroken. 

I did not have a hand in any of this -- meaning that regardless of whether I gave my approval of not, Daisy still would not have been able to bring that cat home. That's how it goes sometimes in the first-come, first serve system -- it's why we were there waiting in line long before the humane society opened the day that we got Hank, because we knew we wanted him and knew if we were the first people there, we'd very likely get him, and we did. 

And he has a very happy life, as you can see.

But this time just wasn't in the cards for Daisy. There have been a few cats we've missed out on (not that we're particularly really looking at the moment most of the time, with few exceptions -- I'll get to that) because they've either been very swiftly adopted or they've been moved to local PetSmart stores where they've also been very swiftly adopted out same-day. There are a lot of cats in this town and there are also apparently a lot of "cat fans," like ourselves, who hover over the humane society's website and wait for their dream cat(s) to be posted. 

I have long said that I don't want any more cats at the moment -- with one exception. Our next kitten (it must be a kitten, so she can be raised/conditioned properly in our household) as I told Daisy, will be a long-haired, black (or otherwise dark) female, preferably one who will become huge, with a very loving, cuddly, teddy-bear personality who wants all the love, and her name will be Empress. 

I have had this dream for a long time, and I am somewhat particular about all of the details. I don't care if she's black -- I prefer it, of course, but I'd be fine with a tortie or a brown tabby. The two big things for me are long hair, potential for large size, and the proper personality. She can be the most beautiful cat in the world, but if the vibe check isn't there and I don't think she'd get along well with the old farts and Hank, it's a no for me. Not being mean, just being discerning out of concern for her as well as for our current children.

We've had several candidates pop up over the past six months or so, of all different colors and, well, breeds, I guess. There was a very sweet male named Ghost who fit the bill, but he wasn't a little girl. There was a very sweet gray-blue female who liked most attention, but hated the other cats around her in the shelter and wanted to hide -- yeah, I don't need another Sadie, I already have one of those. Daisy herself has seen a few kittens that she thought may or may not make good candidates, but either I didn't feel the vibe looking at them or I had a very strong "that's not my Empress" feeling.

I told Daisy months ago that she didn't have to get me anything for Christmas, but if Empress magically showed up on the website or otherwise we were able to find this elusive cat of my dreams, she could be my present.

Well....

Last week, this cat showed up in the "lost and found" pets section of the website.

She is a long-haired female, approximately 8 weeks old, who was found on the streets as a stray and was brought to the shelter. The shelter will hold onto these cats for a bit to see if anyone claims them before they're spayed/neutered, cleaned up and any medical issues are taken care of (including fleas, parasites, etc) and then they're put into the adoption pool a day or two later once they've recovered. 

Look at that little bow tie!

Ahem.

This little girl was fixed on Wednesday and was not available tonight (we checked -- we actually went to the humane society again once Daisy was off work to see if she was in the holding kennels to get a vibe check). She was not there yet. The expectation was that she'd be put into the holding kennels for viewing on Friday night and likely made available for adoption on Saturday morning once the place opened. 

We absolutely plan to go back tomorrow night to see if she's there. She checks many boxes for me right off the bat. We won't be able to like, touch her or interact with her, likely, but we can view her personality and see if she seems like a good fit -- and then if we have the right vibes, or even a hint of them, we can be there when they open on Saturday morning and make our decisions at that juncture.

I'm so excited.

The Holidays, Part III: The Spirit

So.

I really like this fish.

That's not something I thought I'd say three, four days ago, honestly. As previously mentioned, I am not a "fish person."

Ghost, however, is smart, and he's fun to watch. He's excited to see us, we can lead him to food with our fingers on the glass of the tank, and when he's happy, he's really active and dances for us, puffs out his gills and wiggles at us, and is overall a really cute little guy. If and when he does eventually die, I admit that I will be sad about it -- but who knows, he could live years. Some bettas live a very, very long time. So we'll see. 

Life post-Thanksgiving has returned much to status quo, with both of us going back to work this week and dealing with work in the lead-up to Christmas. My job has been particularly grueling this week, but for some reason the week seems to be moving faster than usual, so I won't/can't really complain about that. The call has already gone out for volunteers to work the four holiday shifts -- Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day. We typically only need a skeleton crew for Christmas Eve and Day as almost nothing happens worldwide for those nights, but it sometimes can be moderately normal around the New Year. 

I work New Year's Day every year as my volunteer holiday day (every manager has to work at least one holiday). I've done this for the better part of a decade now. However, this coming year I'll likely work Memorial Day too as our wedding anniversary is on the opposite end of the week for the first time in many years, and it'll give me a "comp day" (basically a free day off, for working the holiday) at the end of that week when the anniversary is. I told my boss "I plan ahead." 

Statistically speaking, New Year's Day tends to be the easiest holiday to work anyway -- it's not exactly a real "holiday" since it doesn't involve family gatherings, presents, meals, activities, etc. -- and most of the planet either has it off or takes it off. So, it is what it is, I'm not too concerned about it. I've never worked a New Year's Day that wasn't dead quiet. I think last year I spent it reading, glancing up at Teams and my email once every 10-15 minutes, and generally just existing. I can't remember for certain, though. I seem to recall the early morning hours being pretty busy as people started returning from their long holiday vacations. 

People have started receiving their Christmas cards in the mail and have begun letting me know, which I find slightly amusing. I talk a big game on the cards, as you know, but I also back up that game. I'm excited to see who we receive cards from this year as none have arrived yet. Most folks aren't as fanatical about them as I am. 

This year, I'm actually very into the holiday spirit -- something that is truly unlike me. There were many years I hated Christmas and everything it brought with it. This hatred faded over the years once I got married to Daisy, who is an unabashed Christmas fan. Holiday things that once seemed like annoyances or inspired anger in me have now greatly softened as I've gotten older. We've already begun watching Christmas movies. We went to the zoo last week, on the night before Thanksgiving, to walk through all of their light displays:

Yeah, that's me. 

I am excited to drive slowly around neighborhoods and look at lights with Daisy. I look forward to making the house smell like peppermint and cinnamon (two scents I normally despise) and wrapping presents. 

I've roughly planned out most of the holiday time/days I'll be off over the holidays to maximize productivity and get a healthy dose of downtime as well, though I don't know how much I'll get to stick to those plans overall:

• Tuesday, December 19: First day off. Rest and recovery day as I will have worked the night before. This is the day before my birthday, so we may or may not have birthday-related plans when I awaken in the afternoon/evening.
  
  
• Wednesday, December 20: My 41st birthday. I do not have any plans or requests for any activities for my birthday this year. Daisy took it off (and, I believe, took off the 21st too). My original plan was to go see the new Ghostbusters movie, because my birthday was its original release date, but that got pushed back a few months some time ago. I do not want another tattoo this year -- I got the bird in July -- the weather around my birthday is always a toss-up of whether it will be decent enough to do anything outside the house, and I don't really need or expect any real gifts from Daisy or anyone else. Maybe I'll see if Daisy wants to go to Burlington or something and that can be my gift. Maybe there will be a new kitten at the humane society that I'll want. Who knows. As usual, if the weather is good and we're able to leave the house, we'll likely have dinner with the parents as I always want to spend at least some of my birthday with them. 
  
  
• Thursday, December 21: As mentioned, I believe Daisy has the day off but I'm not sure overall -- I will have to consult with her on that to confirm. I plan for the 21st to be as much of a rest day as possible. If Daisy is off, we may go out and do something or we may just sit at home, order pizza or Chinese food, and watch television. It's so rare that she and I just get real downtime together where everything can just stop for a day or two and we can enjoy one another's company without being on a timeframe or me needing to nap to reset my sleep schedule because I have to work the next day, etc.
  
  
• Friday, December 22: The Wrappening begins. I've scheduled this day to be the day where I begin or complete wrapping of Daisy's presents and/or any presents I/we have gotten for her parents in the interim (such as whatever I find if we go to Burlington or other places like that). It's also the last working day before Christmas for Daisy, so it will likely be quite busy for her and we won't interact much throughout the daytime hours because of that. It is the only day aside from the following Tuesday that I know I will be completely home alone and left to my own devices to do whatever needs to be done before the holidays hit.
  
  
• Saturday, December 23: The Wrappening concludes, if it wasn't finished the day prior. December 23 is a "pivot day" of sorts -- it is the last day we can feasibly/reasonably get any last-minute stuff done, such as last-minute presents or food shopping for the holiday dinner(s) and it is the day that all plans for the holiday itself must be finalized by. We'd need to know by this date what the timeframe is for Christmas morning, Christmas dinner, if any family is going to be in town, what we need to bring/do/etc. for the family gathering -- if it will be just us and the parents or if Daisy's sister and family will be in town, etc. I have not yet gotten full confirmation on all of that yet but everything will need to be locked down by end of day on the 23rd. If all of that is already taken care of by this point, great -- then I'm going to see if I can get Daisy to sit down long enough on the 23rd to wrap whatever she's gotten for me as well as for the parents, so that she's not doing it many hours into the night on Christmas Eve at the very last minute like most every other year and losing sleep because of it. 
  
  
• Sunday, December 24: Christmas Eve. It is a Sunday, none of us have to work, and unless the weather is horrible or one or both of the parents (or us) are sick, there should be nothing stopping us this year from going to the afternoon Christmas Eve church services -- the only church/religion-related activity that I will ever do for anyone, and something that I get genuinely excited for every year. This is usually followed by a snacky, finger-foods like dinner at the parents' that is relaxed and family-focused, and the time is set for when we're expected to return to the parents' the next day for actual Christmas -- whether it will be an early-morning thing (if Daisy's sister and the kids are in town) or if it will be a "whenever, maybe for breakfast, maybe not" or "wake up and come over whenever" thing. Daisy has a tradition that she usually bakes muffins of some sort for breakfast on Christmas and we do that with the parents, but again, there are no concrete plans yet this year. Also, if I have not yet posted the photos of the front and back of this year's Christmas card on Facebook, this is the day I do it by.
  
  
• Monday, December 25: Christmas. Whether it will just be the four of us (me, Daisy, and her parents) or a full-on family gathering this year remains to be seen, but we tend to follow the same beats every year -- I call my parents in the morning, we either open our own presents in the morning or when we return home for the night, we go to the parents' for presents and the holiday meal(s) with Daisy may or may not cook most of either here or there, and then we leave to drive around and listen to Christmas music and look at light displays in the rich neighborhoods before generally arriving home fairly late. Christmas is the culmination of everything the month has been leading up to and we celebrate it until we feel that we're done, usually. 
  
  
• Tuesday, December 26th: My final day off work for the holidays, taken off specifically because I don't want to work on a Tuesday night the day after a holiday weekend -- Tuesdays are generally nightmarish anyhow, and Tuesdays after a holiday weekend when everything goes back to being business as usual are usually doubly so. I also took the day off because I know I will need a day of buffer time and recalibration/sleep reset downtime before I return to work -- a day of peace, a day of rest. Daisy returns to work this day, so it will be a quiet day at home with the cats to basically recuperate and do what I wish as my holiday vacation winds to a close. 

I return to work myself on the 27th for a two-day work week -- the 27th (Wednesday) and 28th (Thursday) before I have another long weekend ahead of me, as I took off New Year's Eve -- the 31st, the following Sunday. I don't think we have any set New Year's Eve plans at this juncture, but generally we spend at least some, if not all, of that with the parents as well -- at least until they're like "we're tired and going to bed" and then we come home and watch the ball drop. 

Once Christmas is over I find myself completely out of the Christmas mood/spirit. Christmas music becomes abhorrent to me, I don't want to look at lights anymore, shopping (generally) becomes the devil, etc. It's like a light switch for me, and the day after Christmas almost always feels like I'm coming up for air after being submerged underwater for two months. With that, though, also comes a deep sense of seasonal affective disorder -- basically a low-lying depression that blankets me and everything I do until the winter ends, because cold and snow and nothing else to look forward to for four months. Some years it hits harder than others. 

So those are the rough plans, anyway. We'll see what happens. 

The Holidays, Part II

 It is the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I can officially now say these things:

1. All Christmas cards have been mailed. The last batch went out today. Recipients should begin receiving them within the next day or two (well, maybe a bit longer for those folks in Canada, but because of the travel time there, I made sure all the Canadians' cards went out first). 
2. All of my parents' Christmas presents have arrived at their home in NC as of this afternoon, so we're done there.
3. We have finished Christmas shopping for Daisy's parents. Well, Daisy finished up last night, I believe; we shouldn't need anything else for them at this point, but I'm sure over the course of the next month we'll pick up some little incidental "stocking stuffer"-like items for them.
4. Daisy says she also got two more things for me last night, which means she should likely be done for me at this juncture as well, or very close. I've told her I don't really need anything because what I got her is more for both of us than it is just for her, and that's completely true.
5. With Daisy, her parents, my parents, and (hopefully) me taken care of, we should be almost entirely done with Christmas shopping for the year before we even hit December, which is -- frankly -- wild. Yes, I usually finish shopping very early, but Daisy does not. 

I did not really partake much of any of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday stuff. For Cyber Monday I didn't even bother to look for or at anything. I did an Amazon order over the weekend that included some of my normal purchases (like bottled/canned seltzer water, coconut water, cat food for the Orange Lad™, etc) and some of those things were marked as Black Friday deals, but at most I saved maybe 20% on some of them simply because of the timeframe in which they were ordered -- they were things I would've gotten anyway, sale or otherwise. Last week, well before Thanksgiving, I ordered a new robe -- at 44% off, but that was a lightning deal and I don't exactly count that as Black Friday shopping. 

It's quite comfy, by the way. The robe, I mean.

Daisy will be very happy with what she gets this year for Christmas. It's not likely something she'd ever expect due to the price of it, but it does carry on a tradition we've occasionally had for the better part of the decade-plus we've been together at this point. It's a very expensive carrying-on of that tradition, but eh, as I purchased these items months ago, they're all paid for/paid off at this point already. I'll give the full rundown here once Christmas has passed, but even sharing this information now, I'm not concerned about it since she reads this site so rarely that she likely won't even see this writing until well after Christmas. 

There are two small items that I purchased which could kind of be classified as extraneous or Black Friday things -- I snapped up a VHS head cleaner for my ancient VCR to get it as usable as possible, and a plug-and-play video card that will plug into the back of it and run directly into my PC, so that I can record/transfer old VHS tapes to digital video files via the computer. Daisy has a ton of old family videos that I've wanted to do this for, for many years, and I have some old tapes I've kept from my teenage/college years as well (my Dad texted me a few weeks ago and said he found a giant box of them under my bed in the house in WV, and now I have a wildly renewed interest in them and finding out what they are/getting them, as they're likely gems of nostalgia). 

Anyway, here's hoping the old VCR still works after having been unhooked and boxed up for over a decade. The transfer equipment (which cost me less than $20 total) arrives on Friday, and the first two tapes I'm going to test it with are some pretty heavy material -- two tapes I made on September 11 and September 12/13, 2001 -- six hours each of just straight news coverage from the evening and overnight hours on those days, where I just stuck tapes into the VCR and hit record, and let them run. I knew I would want to archive a lot of that coverage for the future, and well, 22 years later, here we are. If you weren't alive during those days (hi, kids!) it's hard to describe the sheer amount of panic and mass hysteria that was running rampant in the media for about a week or so nonstop, and I knew it would be a fascinating snippet of history that I'd want to document.

So, there's that. We'll see what happens. The biggest variable is whether the VCR will work correctly or not, because...well...it would be supremely difficult to get a "new" one that actually functions well in 2023. If it does work well, it's likely only a matter of time at this point until its components fail. Tapes degrade over time as well, and I'm not looking for 1080p audio/video, just a way to preserve the stuff I have.

For those of you wondering, no, I don't think I have any commercially-purchased movies or TV shows or anything like that on VHS anymore. Most of them I got rid of or sold half a decade ago or more, and I flat out tossed probably 100 tapes or more when we last visited my parents and I cleaned out my bedroom there (that hurts to think about now, but it is what it is). It's possible I may come across one or two still hidden in boxes from time to time, but at this juncture I really haven't saved anything I didn't outright need to save. It may be worth my time to scour through my boxes of items (something I've been meaning to do anyhow) to see what I have left, or to check out yard sales and pawn shops to see if I can get some tapes for pennies on the dollar, seeing as pretty much nobody really wants them anymore. I'm pretty sure I did save my original Star Wars Trilogy collection somewhere, from the re-released tapes in the mid-90s that were digitally remastered but not the special editions. Do I know where they are now? Fuck no. Such is life in 2023.

Anyway.

Ghost, our fish, seems to be doing pretty well. He scared me last night as he seemed very lethargic and did not want to move or swim around, hiding himself beside or behind the tank filter -- but this morning when Daisy came downstairs he got very active, swam around and danced for us, ate some food, etc. He did the same for me this afternoon when I went downstairs as well. So, I guess he's okay and just dramatic. An emofish™ of sorts. 

Or he was sleeping most of the night, since most living creatures sleep at night, and bettas don't have eyelids.

Whatever works, I suppose. Point is, he's still alive and seems to be doing fine, so Daisy obviously did everything correctly when she set up his tank for him. 

I returned to work last night for my first post-Thanksgiving shift, and it was one of the quietest nights I've ever worked in that place this year. I do not expect that to continue for long as we move through the end of November and into December. This is coupled with the fact that tonight begins the full moon, and full moons mean absolutely idiotic/crazy customers to deal with on a bell curve that builds up, where the top of the bell is "peak idiocy" that will slowly once again wane as the full moon moves into its next phase.

You think I'm kidding or being superstitious. I'm not. People go insane during full moons. Ask anyone who's ever worked in retail. What I do is not retail, but trust me when I tell you that it gets nuts on my side too. I haven't worked in retail since 2010. In 2025, it'll be fun to celebrate my 15-year-anniversary of being retail-free. 

Anyway.

I do have some somewhat tragic news here that I need to cover, briefly, as to not be remiss and gloss over it -- my Dad's mother died last week. 

Now mind you, my "Dad" is not my father, he's the man who raised me who my mother has been with for over 30 years now (I have no living grandparents; throughout the entirety of my life I only ever had one alive while I was, and she was my grandmother who died in 2018). Still, as a teenager and into my college years I had many family dinners and holiday gatherings at Dad's family homestead in Pennsylvania, and the woman was always wonderful to me -- though admittedly I never really had one on one time with her and we weren't like, buddy-buddy or anything. Would I classify her as a grandmother-like figure to me? Sort of, but not closely. I estimate that the last time I saw her would have been around 2003-2004 at the latest, as once all of the kids in the family (including myself and my "siblings") grew up, the holiday dinner gatherings where all of us were there together became less and less frequent -- all of the kids grew up, went off to college, got married, had kids of their own, etc -- and the house was very small for everyone to be crammed into it even in the 90s before any of us kids did that. But, I have some very fond memories of those family gatherings that she and her now-also-deceased husband, the patriarch of the family that my Dad is named after, presided over. 

She died the weekend before Thanksgiving, in her sleep, at home -- just the way she wanted to go. She was 95, and had been in rather poor health for the last several months. I talked to my Dad via phone shortly before her passing, as he'd just gone back up to WV/PA to help take care of her in her last days, knowing full well he'd likely have to return again within a few weeks -- he was correct in that. Because of the holiday, her funeral was done quickly before Thanksgiving with the gathered family there, and I believe my Dad has since returned to North Carolina. My mother stayed in North Carolina to take care of the animals, and told me they'd have their own Thanksgiving dinner once he returned. 

What I did not mention to any of them was that I'd already made out and stamped/addressed the family Christmas card and it did indeed get mailed out with the rest of them this year. However, it's addressed to the entire family, not the dead woman in question, so I'm going to assume that's mostly okay and not in poor taste. Dad has two sisters with kids, both of the sisters slightly younger than he (he's 73), and their kids are both older and younger than me, most of them now with their own families as well -- so I've always sent a card to "the [surname] family" as a blanket greeting for all of them. If I sent individual cards to everyone it would balloon my card budget like crazy. Most of them, again, haven't seen me in 20 years or more and we're not really what I'd call "in touch" on any sort of regular basis. Hell, a good chunk of them -- including the sons, daughters, wives, and husbands of the "kids" of the family that I was part of growing up in the 90s and 2000s there -- I've never met because they weren't in the picture 20 years ago.

As an aside, I really wish I had the budget every year (and the addresses) to send cards to all of my extended family and friends who are far, far away from me. Most of my father's side of the family never gets anything because I either don't have their addresses or I'd need to get 100 more cards to cover them. My oldest sister (actual sister) and her family get cards because I was able to successfully reconnect with her once she became an adult, got married, and had two children of her own, but I think that's it really. There's about 20-25 friends from college I'd send cards to as well, if only I knew where they were and if they were still alive, and probably a similar number from high school too. I know many people whose day would be immeasurably brightened by receiving a card from Daisy and myself, and I have no clue where they live, if they are still alive, or (sometimes) if they'd really remember me. That includes several of my middle school/high school teachers, multiple college professors, and many friends and colleagues from grad school. Plus, of course, former coworkers too from various jobs. I have a small handful of this year's cards left, but I don't want to put out a "hey, give me your address" post on Facebook to the public because I would inevitably get many more requests than I could possibly reasonably fulfill. 

I may do it anyway -- I have a box of cards, unopened and purchased on clearance from Walmart -- in the event that I ran out in previous years and would need spares.

Anyway, onward. 

The Holidays, Part I

 So, we have now passed Thanksgiving and are officially into the Christmas season. 

To commemorate this, today -- November 25 -- Omaha got its first snowfall of the year. It came late this year, and coated everything in a layer of thick, fluffy whiteness that is still coming down hard as I write this. I remarked to Daisy that at least this year the weather waited until an appropriate time to snow -- after Thanksgiving. If it snows before Thanksgiving, I call bullshit, but anytime after Thanksgiving until early March or so, well, that's reasonable. 

We were lucky here in Omaha, where there's maybe an inch on the ground and in the grass. In Kansas, where I used to live (as many of you know or remember), they got almost a foot of snow -- 11 inches on the ground in the town next to where I used to live -- by 6pm. 

Of course, even the small amount we got will all melt off within a day or two -- temperatures are supposed to hit the 40s and maybe even the 50s later this week. Omaha is expected to have a "mild winter," so the predictors say. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

Thanksgiving was a rather muted and quiet affair, which is exactly what I/we wanted. For the first time in many years, I did not watch the parade, nor did I watch a single second of football. I took off the Wednesday night beforehand and slept for the vast majority of it, not even waking up before around 9am on Thanksgiving Day. Daisy's mother had let us know in advance that she was making a roast vegetable/roast chickpeas recipe that Daisy had actually sent her, involving squash, red onions, brussels sprouts, and a lime cilantro creamy dressing. Dad, of course, had gotten a small bird which he'd cooked/carved in advance and he was the only one who ate any of it. Daisy baked a blueberry pie for dessert, and Mom made her famous "Snickers Salad" for me because I'd specifically requested it (there's still a decent-sized tub of it in our fridge downstairs that I took home). It was just the four of us and the parents' cats, which honestly is my favorite way to celebrate the holidays. 

After dinner, we finalized the next trip to Nova Scotia. In 2024 it will be in late August/early September as expected, and the plane tickets are already booked. We are flying in and out of Bangor as expected as well. We'll need to figure out the rental car and lodging arrangements, but honestly with it being so far out we could likely wait until after the new year to worry about that, if necessary. If nothing else, the trip gives me something to look forward to for the next ten months while I build up my PTO again.

I have taken off December 19 (Tuesday) through December 26 (the following Tuesday) to give myself eight days in a row off during the holidays -- including my birthday, December 20. It took a few months to build up that PTO with the express purpose of using it for the Christmas season. I also took off New Year's Eve, which is a Sunday this year (so I only had to put in two hours of PTO for it). I will work New Year's Day as per the usual, as it's the one holiday I almost always work every single year. 

I will always take Super Bowl Sunday off (no matter who's playing), and I will have to save up some time to visit my parents in the spring -- whenever we plan that -- but otherwise, almost all of the PTO I save this year will go directly to the Nova Scotia trip. I need 13 pay periods to come and go before I'd have the full time I need to go to Nova Scotia -- which is, well, half the year. The other half of the year's PTO can be used for pretty much anything I need, including the trip to my parents' in the spring and next year's holiday season. So, I should be good, honestly. And that isn't counting if I get a bump-up in my PTO accrual once I hit my 10-year anniversary in August (which wouldn't really matter anyhow as I would hit it about four days before we leave for Canada). I don't know if I get a further bump in that or not, honestly. 

If not or if I don't have enough when that trip rolls around, as I told Daisy, I'm salaried, so I can either take it without pay or my boss can, well, deal with it because he's never really seemed to care much about PTO anyhow, and it is what it is. 

Anyway, that's done, and starting tomorrow, I have seventeen working days before I hit the Christmas vacation time -- and you best believe that I'll be counting down every single one of them. Likely, they will all be terrible and/or will move as slow as mud through a spaghetti strainer. 

This morning, after Daisy woke up (and after it was already snowing), she said she had a surprise for me -- though it wasn't really a surprise, because she didn't think I'd want to do it given the snow, but...about three miles from our house, a new Big Lots store had opened.

Big Lots has always been a huge holiday tradition for me. I don't really know why, honestly. It's one of those stores where I always went when I was growing up, well into my college years, a few times a year but always around the holidays because they always had so much stuff. It's a tradition I carried with me when I moved to the midwest and one that Daisy and I partook in multiple times over the course of our marriage, always getting tons of neat things -- decor, movies/CDs, food/snacks, etc -- every time we went there. However, Big Lots took a big hit during the pandemic, already being a discount/overstock store as it is, and the last one I knew of that existed in Omaha closed down about a year and a half ago with no publicity or fanfare -- one day we drove by it and it was just gone, sign letters removed from the building and everything. The building sat vacant for a year or so before it became a Ross Dress for Less.

Which, I mean, don't get me wrong -- we really like Ross -- but it's not Big Lots.

I was bereft; I was very sad and upset when it closed. To me it was the end of an era and another part of my younger years that would just become fond memories, never to be experienced again. It was like losing K-Mart all over again (don't get me started on K-Mart, I am still bitter).

So I guess Daisy shouldn't have been surprised this morning when I said "It's not snowing that hard, let's go."

"I'll get dressed and grab a piece of leftover pizza for the car and we can go," she said. 

And so we were off, over the forest and through the woods, to Big Lots' house we goooo...

I will say that the new store was fairly impressive in size -- larger than most others I've been in, but...I don't know, it was sort of depressing. Instead of there being massive, endless racks of CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays, there was just one small rack, like it was there as an afterthought, and most of what was on there was on there for a reason -- it wasn't anything anyone would want. The stuff that someone would want was very available/streamable on most streaming services. The holiday gift sets section was on point, as were some of the sales, but the snacks and other foods were also lacking, housewares were meh, their toy section was atrociously bad, and their prices in general didn't seem to be any better (and sometimes worse) than places like Walmart or Target. I'm glad Big Lots still exists in Omaha, but I left that store very disappointed overall. Don't get me wrong, we still got $100 of stuff, but still -- it lacked a bit of the magic that made it truly great when I was younger.

Maybe the 90s and early 2000s were just better, or maybe I'm slowly becoming a jaded old man more and more by the year. Perhaps it's both.

In the same shopping plaza as the new Big Lots was a Marshall's, a PetSmart, and (ironically) a Ross Dress for Less. Daisy wanted to go to Ross just to look around, and we did end up having more luck there finding stuff we actually needed/wanted -- we got a few Christmas presents, some decor for the house, and I got a new pair of sweatpants that are nice and look very comfortable. Ross doesn't generally carry a lot of "fat guy" clothing -- even less than Burlington does these days -- but they're good for plus-sized women like my lovely wife. I don't think she actually found anything today other than some socks, though. Usually at the very least I can find some underwear there (not that I need any at the moment), but nope. Still, sweatpants. 

We needed more clay litter for the pan upstairs that the Orange Lad™ uses, so before we went back home we went to the PetSmart too -- as they actually carry the litter we use and we can't order it online (I guess it's one of their store brands, and there's like three PetSmart stores here in town, so we don't mind just picking it up in person). 

And that's when she saw it. 

As I was trying to lead Daisy back to the cat litter area (and past the three very cute kittens they had there ready to adopt), she stopped dead in her tracks in front of one of the aisles, and motioned for me to come back and join her. 

"He stared at me," Daisy said, "and told me with his look that if I didn't rescue him, he was going to die in this store."

I turned and saw that she was looking at the rack of betta fish, little bowls stacked neatly on top of one another, and she was indeed looking into the eyes of a little white one. Plain white, nothing special about him by his looks -- actually quite small and sad-looking compared to the other multicolored, fancy-tailed fish surrounding him on all sides. Per his classification, he was an "exotic" betta, and his coloring was called "platinum."

His name is Ghost, and he is now our newest pet.

Daisy spared no expense on a five-gallon tank, neon gravel, the octopus decoration above, a fake plant,  water conditioner, premium betta food, and a tank warmer for this little fish.

To be fair, he is adorable and seemed very happy once we were able to slowly introduce him into his new home. His big heated tank, with a light in it as well, sits on our kitchen counter in the middle of all of the action -- so to speak. 

I'm not a fish guy. I've never been a fish guy. I like visiting the aquarium and I like seeing them in pet stores, but I've never been a fish fan, really. I have only ever owned one fish, and really only half-owned one at that -- his name was Spike and he was an angelfish. My ex had gotten him along with several other fish (all of which he ate, killed, or killed and then ate) in a ten-gallon tank, and he lived for about a year and a half or so before he went belly-up when he got sick or too cold or who knows what. That's been the extent of my fish ownership experience. 

Anyway, Ghost seems to enjoy his new home just fine. I told Daisy that if he dies, we can just get another one, or some other fish in general, since we now have the tank setup. It's high enough off the floor that none of the old fart cats will ever know it exists, and while Hank seemed to be mildly interested in looking at it from the floor, I seriously doubt he'll ever get up on the counter and stare at the fish inside it. The tank is so heavy that his little orange ass couldn't do anything to it if he tried. 

Also, if he dies, he's a fish. It's not like you can really mourn a fish, right? Scoop him out, plop a new fish in, begin the cycle anew. 

So now we have a fish. Ghost, our post-Thanksgiving fish. 

In other news, the first two batches of the year's Christmas cards have been mailed out. I started sending them yesterday with the first batch of about 30, and then today with the second batch of about 25. The final batch, with the remaining 20-25 or so, will go out on Monday. It took me great amounts of self-control to wait until Thanksgiving had ended before I began sending them out, as I'd had them stamped and addressed for almost two weeks now. 

My Christmas shopping is (mostly) done, and I've been done shopping for Daisy since late September. All I have to do is wrap her gifts now -- which I can really do anytime, as I got a new roll of wrapping paper for just that purpose this afternoon. I shipped my parents their gifts this past week, before Thanksgiving for the most part. For Daisy's parents I don't know what we'll do -- generally I get them each something small and inconsequential and then she gets the rest of the things for them, whatever those things may be. 

More to come. 

Cometh the Fall, Part IV: The Wrap-Up

Autumn is a busy time, and yes, there are still things I've not covered in this admittedly long-winded series of entries here. So, let's get right down to it and finish the story, so that we can then move on into the holiday season.

When I started this series nearly a month ago now, we were at the time prepping for the wedding of one of Daisy's friends and co-workers. I begrudgingly agreed to attend this wedding (it is not a secret that I absolutely loathe the bride -- the only friend of Daisy's who I outright dislike), but I wasn't going to attend it for her, it was to spend the time with Daisy and enjoy a weekend getaway together. The wedding was at a resort in rural Missouri, roughly four hours away or so, and the room we'd booked for that night was not cheap (and, I believe, non-refundable) so once we'd booked it, we were locked in.

The wedding was scheduled for November 3 -- a Friday, at like 4pm. That meant Daisy would not only need to work less than a half-day, but I would need to take off the night beforehand so that I could sleep/change around my sleep schedule and be awake, packed with my overnight essentials and wedding outfit, and ready to hit the road no later than noon. We'd planned to arrive, check in (if there was time), immediately attend the wedding and reception, possibly do a ghost tour -- the resort has a reputation for being quite haunted -- and then sleep, turn around and come home on Saturday morning/afternoon. So, about a month in advance, I put in the PTO for the night off, and dreaded the upcoming trip. 

I will say that when Daisy and I travel together and when we go on adventures of our own accord, it is almost always an absolute blast, and I look forward to it with excitement. When we're traveling on someone else's schedule for someone else's benefit, it's almost always maddening and/or excruciating because most of that travel and the timeframes involved are out of our control. Daisy being on the go from 7am to likely 11pm or midnight at the earliest -- with no real stopping whatsoever and a four-hour drive in the middle of that -- would be very hard on her. Likewise, for me to change around my sleeping schedule on a dime and attempt to make myself look and act presentable in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable situation would be hard on me as well. I told Daisy that I did not want to go, but I wanted to go at the same time so that she and I could get good quality time together and get out of Nebraska on an adventure for two days -- but it was clear that I was, shall we say, less than enthused overall.

Shortly before Halloween -- the week leading up to the wedding -- Daisy began getting sick. It had all the earmarks of Covid, which neither of us ever wanted to get again after how awful it was in February when we'd had it. Over the course of a few days, she got worse and worse; she was in and out of fevers, sore throat, couldn't breathe, headaches, etc. She then found out that one of the people she (and the bride of the wedding) works closely with in the office did test positive for Covid and had been at work, essentially spreading it around.

Daisy tested herself at least twice -- negative each time. I tested myself as well, because I also hadn't felt that great, and also tested negative. Daisy began feeling worse and worse as the week progressed. My own symptoms I chalked up to allergies or the equivalent of "sympathy pains," and I was overall fine. 

By the time we'd reached the night I'd taken off work, Daisy was so ill that she wasn't sure we were going to be able to go to the wedding. She'd been working from home due to her off-and-on fever and was frankly miserable. I, meanwhile, had everything packed and ready to roll, and was just waiting for the yes or no from her -- I'd already taken the night off work anyway, so whether we went or not, I still had a free day there. I told her I'd do whatever she wanted to do -- if she wanted to try we could try, and if she wanted to see if the reservation could be canceled or essentially gifted to some of her other coworkers who were going so she could stay home and rest, I was okay with that too. By this point it really didn't matter to me because I was mainly focused on how Daisy felt -- my own thoughts were inconsequential to the overall situation. When we went to bed the night before the wedding day, it was all still up in the air. 

Until 4am.

4am is when Daisy awoke so sick that she decided yes, she would cancel the reservations and that we would not go. What followed was an entire day of doctor's appointments to see if anyone could see what was wrong with her (results: inconclusive). During the first one, since I was there with her, I was able to successfully schedule my next blood draw appointment for January, so that was a small plus.

We spent the weekend letting her slowly recover. The wedding went on without us and her coworkers sent us videos of the ceremony, and it was nice. We went to the bride's apartment (because, of course, she and her new husband were out of town at the wedding) and made sure her two cats were fed and taken care of, even with Daisy being as sick as she was.

The happy ending to all of this? Daisy spoke with the resort management and they agreed to change the reservation date from the wedding day to our own anniversary in the spring -- our ten year anniversary -- so that we could have a nice little getaway then. It cost a bit of money to change it, but we also have those plans now fully locked in and ready to go.

Daisy eventually recovered, slowly -- it took close to two full weeks for her to feel really somewhat normal again. She did not apparently have Covid and it didn't appear to be the flu, but a really nasty cold or other nondescript virus of some sort that took her down. Throughout it all, I remained mostly okay and still am mostly okay. The night I took off before the wedding, giving me an extra day off for my weekend? It was spent in quiet leisure, giving me a bit of much-needed downtime after a horrific previous few weeks at work.

Anyway. moving onward.

With the wedding no longer something to worry about, we shifted our focus to the future and what was coming up for us both professionally and personally. Daisy has long been wanting to plan our next trip to Nova Scotia and to see if we could book plane tickets now as far in advance as possible while they are still affordable. I had no problem with this plan -- it seems that from now until her grandmother eventually dies, we're going to try to make a trip to Nova Scotia once a year -- and maybe/likely even after her passing as well. 

It's not a secret that I too feel the pull of the sea, and that I at this point have a very strong connection to Nova Scotia and to Canada in general. It genuinely feels like my second home, the extended family there love and support us, and it is a magical place to me -- something that the locals in the area would probably be befuddled by as to them, the little towns of less than 500 people probably seem very ordinary and boring to the people who have lived there all their lives, and to them the big city of Omaha would be exciting. One of Daisy's uncles made a joke about gunfire and shootings in Omaha, and I was like "oh, it's only once every few weeks something like that happens there, it's not very often" -- which I said partially as a joke in return as well as...well, it's sort of the truth. This town can be, but isn't often, a rough and tumble place.

Dad had let us know in advance that he did not want to go to Nova Scotia this time around, but Mom did, so we began planning the trip with her (normally we just plan for ourselves, and they plan for their own trips when/if they want to go). Traveling with Mom is something I personally have only done once, but Daisy has done a number of times. Mom is almost 70, handicapped enough to have a windshield placard and needs extra assistance when traveling, and on top of it all, is a Canadian citizen -- not an American citizen, so she is frequently stopped/questioned/screened, etc on every trip. She has been married to an American for almost 50 years, and has lived here in the states as a permanent resident for almost as long, but it always plays hell with her travel crossing the border one way or the other.

Because of this -- and because it is the easiest/smoothest way to get in and out of the country with the least amount of bullshit involved -- I suggested to Daisy that we go the route that has been the easiest for us: flying into Bangor, Maine and then driving up to the border crossing at Houlton into New Brunswick and across into Nova Scotia. The border crossing there is quiet, generally not crazy busy, and once we're in, we're in. The app is no longer needed, you don't need your Covid cards anymore, you just show your passports and you're on your way. 

We also did tracking of time spent compared to flying directly into Halifax -- it's about the same amount of time spent, generally a bit less expensive, and (the best part) there's no customs bullshit at the airports in Toronto or Montreal because we're not flying through them. The downside is it's a lot more time spent in a rental car -- but that's time we have control of, time we can stop for food or for the bathroom or what have you and enjoy. And, as long as the weather is nice, the drive is wonderful. It's peaceful and quiet for the most part, and aside from driving past Moncton there are no real cities to speak of or get in the way of enjoying the Canadian countryside. 

We wanted to set a time of May/June or August/September -- around the holidays of Memorial Day or Labor Day as it gives both Daisy and myself an extra day of vacation that we don't have to put in PTO for. I told both of them that it didn't really matter to me either way, to be honest; either one was fine to me. I've been in Canada during both times of the year and because of their weather cycles those times of the year can either be pleasant and gorgeous or cold, wet, and miserable, and there's not usually an in-between. When we were there in May this year, every morning it was around freezing up until the last few days we were there. When we were there in August/September 2015 they experienced a heat wave where it was almost 90 degrees every day and poured rain and stormed all night every night. When we were there in August 2022 for the funeral of Daisy's grandfather (Mom's father), it was very pleasant most days, but others were cold and rainy/stormy -- including the day of the funeral itself. It's the maritimes, it's Atlantic Canada -- the weather/climate at any point between May and October is going to be a toss-up, basically. Pack accordingly.

Or, I guess you can do what we do and pack lightly because if the weather changes we can always hit up Giant Tiger or Walmart and get a new wardrobe anyway for pennies on the dollar.

Anyway. 

Mom said she was leaning more towards August as the weather tends to still be cold/nasty in May, which I was fine with -- gives me more time to build up PTO, etc. When we go, it generally wipes out any and all PTO I have saved up, as we tend to stay more than a week (it's not worth it to make the trip otherwise, really). With our need to see my parents again sometime in the spring, hopefully, PTO in 2024 is going to be fairly tight for me, so here's hoping I don't get sick or anything like that which would wipe it out early. We'll figure it out as we go, I guess.

The last thing I wanted to mention here before we move on to the holidays this year is our youngest son, Hank -- also known as "the child," "the goblin," "orange lad" (like he's a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes or something) amongst many other names.

He is giant.

Well, I should say, he is becoming giant. Over the past few months he has rapidly grown in size and weight, and finally grew into his mammoth feet. He's probably (estimating here at best) at least eight pounds now and getting bigger. His goblin tendencies have greatly lessened as he's gotten older, though he is still very active and gets hyper sometimes (usually once a day or so) for a good stretch of time. He has fully integrated himself into the dynamic of the other cats in the house and all of them are comfortable with him. He hangs out with us, he sleeps with us, he...ahem...makes out with Daisy every day -- he loves licking her lips and face for long stretches of time -- and he is generally a very sweet, well-adjusted boy. 

He is, however, still a little nut with a wild streak, and will go from purring and loving attention to attacking and biting your hands and/or feet. He does not understand how socks work or that feet are still feet when the nearest human is wearing them. He only barely understands what the word "no" means, he has zero concept at all of what the word "move" means, and is slowly getting used to the concept of "forced love" (which is where, whether he likes it or not or wants it or not, he will be picked up, kissed, and cuddled). He knows when the squirt gun comes out that he's being bad and needs to stop, and he about halfway knows his name. He likes to attack/chase/halfway bully Sadie because she's old and frail and won't fight him back or play with him like Pete will. Other than a sniff/lick or occasional "I'm going to sleep here next to you" interaction with Maggie, he leaves Maggie alone. 

But he really is a sweet little bugger. 

We now have hundreds of pictures and videos of him, and he's proving to be one of the best decisions we've ever made. I wouldn't trade that decision for anything. He even features on the backside of the Christmas card this year, a spot usually reserved for a cute photo of Sadie or Maggie. This year will be his first Christmas, as we calculated his birthday to be sometime around May 1st. To celebrate, I've already purchased a tiny Santa hat and scarf for him.

 It's been a year of firsts for this little dude, and every day with him is an adventure.

He also frequently likes to sleep like this.

Orange cat behavior.

Anyway, that wraps up our series of posts for the fall. Onward we must go, into the holiday season...

Cometh the Fall, Part III: A Facsimile of Power

I covered the Christmas cards in my last note here, as well as taking the time off around the holidays -- but I haven't actually covered the events that led up to all of that, nor have I mentioned our actual plans for the holiday times -- so I wanted to backtrack a bit to fill in some gaps.

I'll start by saying the past few weeks at work have been brutal. October and November are always at least somewhat hectic, but these past few weeks have been, at times, downright hellish. Part of it is that we're training a new support team based out of Mexico, part of it is that this is the time of year where our clients experience a lot of planned maintenance outages, part of it is that it's "peak ordering season" when new services get turned on and old ones get turned off or transferred, and...part of it is personnel-based. 

Let me explain.

My director (read: my direct boss) has been out of the office a lot over the past month or two. He is currently expecting his first child in March with his wife he married over the summer, and he is quite active in the gaming community, so there are always events that he attends/hosts/travels for. There is but one night a week where his coverage overlaps with our other director -- that night is Monday. Any other nights of the week when he's out of the office, planned or unplanned, if that other director is not there covering for him (a rarity), I become the program director for the entirety of operations between 10pm and 7am.

That's a good thing, right? You might be saying. You've wanted to be a director for years and at this juncture it's one of the largest reasons you're still working there. Time to prove yourself, right?

Well, yes and no. 

Look, I've soaked up paycheck at my current job for almost a full decade. In that time I've been promoted twice (technically, three times) and have received four raises -- two of which have been substantial. I make around $17k more per year there now, roughly, than when I started in 2014. I am still grossly underpaid for what I'm worth and for what I do for that program, and most of the people who work under me have stated time and again that if that place didn't have me, everything would absolutely go to hell very quickly. On occasion, I've been able to get the people far above me on the paygrade ladder to admit the same thing. I don't want to sound arrogant about it nor do I want to overstate my contributions to the program, but I'm very close to reaching that point in the job where I -- with my knowledge base, experience, people skills, and reputation with both local and corporate leadership -- will soon be irreplaceable if they want the program to continue running as it currently does.

That puts me next in line, honestly, for the next time a higher leadership position opens up. The other director of our program has gone into high school teaching, trying to juggle both his current position doing that with his position as director over the weekend shifts, and my own director has become so jaded and fed up with the program that he's outright told me he's not going to sell his soul to it anymore. With the upcoming birth of his child, he's likely not going to stick around much longer, as he can't be a devoted father doing all of the father-things when he gets calls at 3am for dumb bullshit or has to work 14-16 hour shifts because someone on the dayshift -- hours before either he or I would start work for the night -- fucked something up so badly that C-level executives get involved. Someone has to be left holding the proverbial bag, and at the moment, most of the time that someone is him.

Yeah, I'd be sick of that too. 

So, again, I wouldn't be surprised if you're asking well okay, Brandon, why the fuck would you want that?

I don't, at least not that level of bullshit. I've worked for multiple directors at my job -- with my boss just being the latest in a decent-sized string of them -- and at my level of experience I now know how, and when, to put my foot down without it being trampled over. Most of the time. Far be it from me to tell other people how to do the job, but it's all about setting boundaries, resetting expectations, and knowing -- vocalizing when necessary -- what your responsibility is and what it is not. Some people are really good at that and others are really, really bad at it. Some folks are good at the technicalities and fail miserably on the personnel issues, and vice versa. Some folks can't say no or delegate tasks, believing everything is on them to personally own and accomplish. I've mentioned all of this here before. 

Yeah, I'm not one of those people; I know and understand my duties and responsibilities and what they encompass and what they don't. I see the bigger picture on things, I handle personnel issues with grace and class, and I have no problem instructing, delegating, or outright dictating what needs to be done and how/when it needs to happen, and I know how to do it without being a condescending dick. This is just who I am as a person. People think you need some sort of innate "leadership qualities" to be a good leader or to manage people -- you don't, you just need a brain and need to be able to use it. 

That all being said, my boss is not a bad guy. He does handle quite a bit and is decent at most aspects of his job. I've known him as long as I've worked there and I encouraged him to apply for the director position when it became available, because at the time he was absolutely the most qualified to lead the program. But I can also see what it's done to him over the course of the past five years he's been doing it. I don't fault him for it; I think he's done a fairly admirable job -- again, most of the time -- with the situation he's in. He has indeed failed in his endeavors many times and has made many egregious mistakes over the years, made the wrong call, said or done the wrong thing, or has otherwise shirked a responsibility (or many) that he absolutely should not have. And that tends to be what people remember.

I remember my former executive director, many years ago, telling me that one of the reasons he knew I was good at my job was because rarely did he ever see anything of mine cross his desk -- because he knew I was on top of it and handling it. But, similarly, again, he rarely saw anything of mine cross his desk because nobody ever said anything good or bad about my work ethic.

I told him, at the time, that if anyone had any problems with my work he would absolutely know, and the fact that he rarely heard anything good about what I did sounded like a lack of appreciation and gratitude from the parties involved whose proverbial asses I'd saved from the fire.

Or something along those lines, I'm paraphrasing. I may have said those exact words -- that executive director was the kind of guy you could be blunt with as long as he knew and respected you.

That is, however, a microcosm of the work culture in that place -- never get appreciated for all of the good one does, always be remembered sourly for anything one screws up. It's one of the many toxic things about the work environment in which I am employed. 

I will say that the gratitude and appreciation has increased immensely over the past few years, and it's likely increased tenfold from most levels of leadership since we've become work-at-home employees. I have been told that I am like the "Big Papa" (their words, not mine) of the team because I'm like the overnight team's father figure. My primary team lead, as an aside, is very much the "team mom." Yes, I know, the positions and dynamics are confusing. However, in that role that I frequently fulfill, I am generally the first person people come to talk to when they're experiencing problems or aren't getting along with (to put it mildly) their management, other agents, or the daytime/evening teams. Sometimes this is fine, and other times it puts a burden on me that I do not want. 

But Brandon, you may be saying, probably more than once now, you are there in that role, in that position, to do exactly that. You want to become a director? Knowing how to handle stuff like this is part of it. And you'd be right, and I do. But that doesn't mean I have to really enjoy it.

About two weeks ago, one of the agents under another manager came to me to report that she was basically being bullied by her boss. Her boss is my peer, so I can't really "coach" him directly. She described scenarios when she would ask other people for help -- namely me -- instead of dealing with him, and he would blow up at her about it and basically treat her like trash because she should have been coming to him first with any issues, as he's her manager -- not me, not anyone else. 

You know, I do see his point. I do. Do I agree with his actions? No, of course not.

As managers we're there to help anyone on any of the teams when necessary. We oversee, we manage, we assist and we lead. I don't care who comes to me for help because it matters not -- if I can assist, I am going to do so. I'm never going to refuse to help a struggling agent just because they don't report to me. I'm sure at times my own agents have gone to the manager in question for assistance when I've been busy or when I've not been in the office, and I am completely unaffected by that. Honestly I'm glad they ask for help when they need it instead of being prideful, keeping to themselves, and screwing something up.

Anyway, this agent described to me several different specific scenarios where her manager had blown up at her for asking for help -- even if she'd asked him personally -- but mainly when she had come to me for advice or assistance. 

"You just explain things better and in a way I can understand," she told me, via phone. "You have patience, you don't treat me like I'm stupid."

To be fair, this agent is not the best agent on the team but she is far, far from the worst. And even the worst ones I don't treat like they're stupid -- I treat them like people, because everyone has different learning speeds and skillsets, and what may be easy for someone else to memorize or process isn't that easy for them. Our agents come from all walks of life -- for some it may be their first actual job. For others, they may have worked in office or technical roles for their entire careers and this job is just another one of those. I don't expect everyone to know everything or learn everything -- I've been there almost a decade and I still learn new things every single day, almost without fail.

"Does he flip out on you when you ask [the team leads, other managers, or anyone else] for help?" I asked.

"No," she said, "just you."

"Okay, so it's his ego, then," I said. 

Mind you, her manager is my peer, as I said. I've always had what I'd describe as a good daily working relationship with him. We've never had any real disagreements, if he's ever said anything about me on the side or behind my back I've never heard about it, and most importantly, he himself never brought any of this up with me. Aside from a one-off conversation here or there from months or possibly years ago now, he's never been like "if my agents come to you and I'm here, direct them to me and I'll help" -- which is fine, well within his right, and I completely understand that.

And to be honest, there have been times over the years where I have done so, or my team leads have done so, especially if/when we're swamped or engaged on other escalations. There have also been times where all of us -- not just me -- have reported coaching points to him for his agents, including the one who was coming to me for help. This is pretty standard across the board -- my team isn't perfect either, and I get a fair amount of coaching point requests from other managers over the course of any given year (I estimate about 4-6 per year overall, generally -- it's not a lot). There are times I've sent that many to other managers in this place over the span of a week, so I think 4-6 per year isn't bad. 

She went on to explain that his treatment of her made her apprehensive to ask anyone about anything, especially me, and that she didn't want to even take questions to him for fear that he'd use it as ammunition to get her fired (she's been written up several times for other things and has been on the edge of that cliff for a while). And that is primarily where my anger point was laid bare. That was not okay. None of it was okay, really, but when your employee actively fears you and avoids you? That's a huge problem.

Given my position and my level of authority in leadership, when something like this is brought to me I have the responsibility to report it up to my own leadership myself, if not directly to HR -- and to offer that option to the reporting agent herself as well. I've received directives on this in the past -- and the last time someone brought an issue like this to me, the offending party was very quickly fired. It seems to be the only real way to very quickly fire someone in our place of employment. 

However, due to remarkably poor timing on the part of this agent (not her fault, of course) the night she brought this to me:

1. My director was out of office on an extended vacation
2. Our executive director was out of office on extended business travel out of the country
3. Our secondary director would not return to the office for two more days
4. Our secondary executive director had just had a new baby with his wife and was on his last real working day before he'd go on paternity leave. 

This left me as the only actual person in any sort of management power in the place for several days on end. And it wasn't even real power, it was fake power -- a facsimile of power that would go away once the real leaders came back. And of course, that bothered me to a certain extent, but I was the acting director on shift and titled as such during this time, so it was my job to do something. 

I laid out a plan with the agent where I would discuss it with my direct boss, then she could discuss it with him as she liked, or one or both of us could take it directly to HR. She shied away from the HR option as she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize her job (despite the fact that I assured her it wouldn't), and she also relayed that it had taken a lot for her to even bring it to me. I told her I understood that, but it didn't negate my duties to take it up the chain. She thanked me, I told her I would let her know what I found out, and the discussion ended. 

I sat on it for a day -- I didn't really have much of a choice. She had brought this to me at 6am -- an hour before I'm off shift -- at a time when nobody else above me was available to discuss and wouldn't be until the next night. The next night, when I saw that our secondary executive director was around and available, I brought it to his attention and told him the entire story (well, a Reader's Digest version of it, to be fair) and asked for his advice on it -- whether she needed to take it directly to HR, if I did, or if now that I'd run it up the flagpole, it would be dealt with at a higher paygrade than I am.  I was informed that all options were viable ones, but primarily now that I'd taken it higher up, it would be dealt with and was essentially out of my hands. I was instructed to document the entire story in a detailed, very lengthy email to both executive directors as well as my own (which I did) and they'd take care of it. I made sure the email had been read and acknowledged after I sent it, and when we returned to the office after the weekend I made sure to let the agent know all the actions I'd taken on it and to reassure her it would be dealt with.

And then I never heard anything else. Whether they "dealt with" the problem or not behind the scenes, I don't know. I haven't noticed any changes in the mood or dynamic of the overall team, my working relationship with the manager in question seems normal, and I never got an update from anyone above me whether it had been discussed and handled. Truthfully, it's not my business if it has been or not -- on the record I have done my duty -- but it would really, really bother me if it just got swept under the proverbial rug in order to not make any waves, because I've seen that sort of thing happen far too often in that place. 

So, there's that. And that's just one of many extra things I've been dealing with at work this month in addition to all of my other daily duties and tasks. Granted, it's much easier to do it all from the comfort of my own home, but it doesn't mean it's not stressful overall.

Next time -- we'll cover everything else happening in our lives....

Cometh the Fall, Part II

 When we last left our intrepid heroes...

There's a lot that happens from month to month in this place. "This place" meaning Earth, but also meaning my life and everything that revolves around it.

Wow, that sounds excessively narcissistic. Let's try that again.

There's a lot that happens from month to month around this house and in our lives. So, little things here and there sometimes get missed. Before I sit down here and write, I generally make a short list of things I want to cover in a rough chronological order, and then I cover each one fairly methodically. I don't write here much anymore (there are legit very few people who even care to read my musings anymore) so for those who do actually feel the need to occasionally catch up on my life, I want to provide some actual info and substance to them.

As an aside, and to be fair -- I'm not as great a writer anymore as I once was. One of my friends told me a few months ago something to the effect of that everyone's life has boring bits, and yes, she was correct. For me it feels like the opposite of that, though -- it feels like my life is generally one big boring bit, with smaller, more interesting bits scattered throughout here and there. I am not really an interesting person. Part of that is my personality and part of that is by conscious design -- if I am "less interesting" than others, more people will leave me alone. All of it as a whole, however, has seriously affected my writing abilities over the years -- and it has absolutely affected my motivation to continue writing almost anything, anywhere.

Daisy thinks that I'm headed towards another depressive episode. I haven't had one, not seriously, anyway, in about four years or so. Initially, I didn't think I was -- I've been more at ease with myself, content and stable in my moods and feelings than I've ever been in my adult life over the past few years. Now, however, I'm not so sure anymore. Depressives often talk about creeping thoughts, the kind that linger at the back of your brain for a long time that gradually become louder and more intrusive. And, I do have those. Depressives may have a "triggering event" that causes them to spiral, or it could be a slow buildup over time that eventually spills over the edge of the proverbial bucket. 

I've heard all sorts of theories on what causes depression or depressive episodes, or ways to stave them off -- vitamin deficiencies, lack of quality sleep and exercise, and stress are usually cited as causes. I'm not sure how much stock I put into any of those things. Sure. Maybe. Who knows for sure, really -- I don't know how deficient I am in any of those things, but generally I'm probably more deficient than most. I can, for sure, tell you that I am heavily affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder, which for years I thought was quack doctors making something new up to sell more pills:

Okay, sure. Whatever. I definitely have this.

Most days of the week I do not feel depressed at all -- in fact, I generally feel pretty great. I've got a wonderful wife, four loving cats, a stable job that I don't have to leave the house for, and a family -- both on my side as well as Daisy's side -- who truly love me and care about how I'm doing.

And then the headaches started.

For the record, I almost never get headaches. I had a giant bottle of Advil that sat on my desk from about 2017 to 2022, before it got down low enough to where I needed to purchase more -- and I just dumped the remainder (about 30 pills or so) of the old bottle into the new one. When I'm sick or injured and needed to cut the pain or lower a fever, that's when I took the ibuprofen. Daisy took far more of it over the years than I did. But for headaches? Rarely. I almost never got a headache for any reason that I couldn't immediately pinpoint, such as lack of sleep or dehydration or sinus issues. 

The headaches started at the beginning of October, and would occasionally be accompanied by dizziness or a distinct and almost total lack of energy. They always happened the same way -- I'd wake up for the day feeling fine, and by about 3-4 hours of being awake, the headache would slowly begin. It would build and build and occasionally be accompanied by light or sound sensitivity, dizziness, and/or the very strong pull/desire to go back to sleep, the inability to will myself to move, or a combination of all these things -- it would ebb and flow whenever I was awake, sometimes a dull annoyance and other times an almost screaming, blinding headache pain which I could not shake. Once I settled down and got ready for bed, it would slowly move off and I'd begin to feel normal, and I would sleep normally -- only to restart the cycle the next day.

I thought it was a migraine, to be honestly -- I do have the occasional migraine, and by "occasional" I mean maybe twice a decade or so. I think I've had one honest, true migraine since Daisy and I have been together, and it was crippling for about 18 hours or so. I've had headaches and I can tell the difference between a normal one and a migraine, or at least I thought I could previously.

Seasonal allergies, maybe? I wasn't sure. Allergy pills didn't touch it or make any difference in symptoms. I was fairly congested a lot, as the seasons were changing and the weather was flip-flopping between 80 degrees (or warmer) and 30 degrees (or colder). I purchased two boxes of Sudafed sinus+pain pills to supplement the allergy pills and they would barely take the edge off. Ibuprofen would take the edge off for a while, but I could absolutely tell every single time when the ibuprofen was starting to wear off, as the headache would ramp up again from quiet to loud.

This continued for days on end. 

And then the nosebleeds started.

This was where I started to get concerned about my actual health. I've long said that I have been given the worst mutant power in the world -- I can tell when the weather is about to change (whether a big storm is about to roll in, or if we're going to get a lot of snow; generally it's the latter) because I will spontaneously get a horrific nosebleed out of the blue, for zero actual reason. You can almost set your watch to it, and I don't even have to do anything to trigger it most of the time -- I'll feel my nose running and surprise, blood! And then it gushes. I've had them start while I've been asleep before, too -- which, if that's not terrifying, I don't know what is. 

But. I am a 40-year-old man. I should not be getting nosebleeds, almost ever. I've never had any nasal trauma and even in my wildest years I never did any of the types of drugs that you'd snort (I always considered that absolutely disgusting, to be honest). 

So, every day, along with the headaches, my nose would randomly gush for a few minutes. Usually I could get it stopped quickly. Some days I couldn't, and it would bleed a lot before I could make it stop. Always from the right nostril, always with the same intensity, and always with a lot of dark red blood. 

Daisy's sister came into town with her boys, and I couldn't go visit them at the parents' house because I was so incapacitated with the headaches and every time I blew my nose, it would bleed for ten minutes or longer. 

How I was able to work all night, every night during this time I don't know. On my lunch hours, when I got them, I would curl up on the couch under a thick blanket and try to nap for an hour, and was almost never able to get any actual sleep.

This process continued for almost two full weeks, and as it neared its end I was almost at the end of my rope. I wasn't under any more stresses than normal, my blood pressure was perfect (it almost always is now, every time I go to the doctor), I hadn't started/stopped any new or old medications or really changed my diet at all, and I was sleeping normally -- in fact, my FitBit recorded record high for me "sleep scores" during some/most of this time. My heart rate was normal, my weight wasn't really any different than the usual, and I was otherwise feeling fine except for the headaches and nosebleeds. So what was it?

I don't know.

Do you know what persistent headaches and nosebleeds are two of the top symptoms of? Brain tumors and/or brain cancer. 

No, this isn't my way of telling you I have a brain tumor. I don't. At least I don't think I do. 

Gradually, over the course of about another week, the headaches and nosebleeds subsided. 

I don't know what was causing the headaches and nosebleeds. Possibly allergies from the seasons changing, possibly a sinus infection, possibly a cold that didn't present any other symptoms -- who knows. I wasn't about to go to the doctor for it. Daisy offered to set me up an appointment, but with everything else going on in our lives and with my other health issues as it is, the last thing I needed on my psyche was something else to worry about that would consume me with anxiety.

I do occasionally get a nosebleed, usually at the onset of a sharp weather/pressure change, but am otherwise back to normal.

And that's a roundabout way of telling you why I don't think I'm as good of a writer as I used to be.

Kidding.

November is, however, NaNoWriMo, which is the stupid acronym-like-thing that academics call National Novel Writing Month, where people who write are supposed to take the month and write a novel. I have tried and failed at this in the past, because I don't know anyone who isn't independently wealthy who can stop what they're doing for a month to write a novel. 

Somewhere I read/heard/etc that Stephen King, in interviews, has said that he can write a good one-to-three pages a day, if he's really in the flow of things. Sometimes less, sometimes a little more. When I started my short story collection a couple of years ago, there were nights when I was really into a particular story and would write twenty or so solid pages -- pages that would require very little, very minimal editing (in my own eyes) upon a re-read. So, does that mean I'm a better writer than King?

No. Hell no.

King has the life I've always wanted -- he's been writing steadily as a career for fifty years, he lives in Maine, and is at the point of his life where he can write as much or as little as he wants because he's not hurting for money, not hurting for time, doesn't have to spend eight to ten hours at a desk working for someone else multiple days per week, and knows that when he writes something people will be clamoring for it and it will always be published, purchased, and read. 

Sure, there was that one time he was run over by a minivan, but small price to pay? You be the judge of that.

I haven't progressed much further at all in my short story collection since I last mentioned it here. I wanted to have it completed, manuscript locked, shopped around, published, and on shelves by the time I turned 40. I turn 41 next month, and of the five stories that will be in it, I have:

    1. One completed story that likely requires some re-editing

    2. One story that's 95% complete and in my own eyes is pretty near final

    3. One story that's about 5% complete

    4. One story that has a large amount of notes and plans, but 0% actually written

    5. One story that I have a title for and nothing else

    6. An image I want to use for the cover -- it was a photo I took myself

    7. A half-written acknowledgements page

    8. A table of contents that may change

    9. A half-written epilogue/essay that I may completely delete.

What I do have aside from the plans for that book are about thirty new story ideas -- concepts I've come across or came up with on the fly that would make wonderful stories, but no concrete plans for how or when I'll write them yet. I'm almost ADHD in my writing tasks -- I'll think something's a great idea, I'll start writing it and eventually become bored with it, and then I'll abandon it for either a short time or indefinitely because I've come up with another idea, and then the process repeats.

I could plan multiple books with the story ideas I have, plot out character arcs and plot out how each story would flow into the next, come up with a title for the collection(s), create a table of contents and plan what I want on the cover and then never actually write anything because that's how my brain works. If I could publish endless lists of ideas and nothing else, I'd be a billionaire. But writing an actual story from start to finish? One that makes sense and has a good flow, one that people will actually want to read? That takes time and energy, both of which I have in very short supply these days. I used to look forward to having some days off in a row -- like around holidays and the like -- because I'd devote a full day (at least) of that time to writing. Generally there are more holidays like this in the fall and winter, so...

Yeah, well, there are always household chores and cleaning to do. I have 140GB of podcasts I haven't yet listened to, some of them going all the way back to 2014 or so. There's always a new game coming out for the PS4 or Switch that I want to play. In the fall months, of course, there's always football -- college or NFL -- that will sap my time. And then, of course, there are the holidays themselves and the events surrounding them -- travel, meal planning for the big days, Christmas shopping, trying not to have a stress-related mental breakdown, Gravy Season™, vet appointments, doctor appointments, holiday parties, and everything else that eats up any bit of free time I once had as an actual functioning adult. 

To those ends I have saved up some PTO and have taken a couple of good swaths of time off around the holidays this year. I took off the day before Thanksgiving, which gives me a four-day weekend, and I took off from December 19 to 26 and the 31st -- which gives me eight straight days off and New Year's Eve off. Now, three of those days are my birthday, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, but still. Daisy has already let me know in advance that she cannot and will not be taking all of those days off with me -- she I think she took my birthday off and that's it -- and I told her that was fine, she didn't have to, it was more so that I could have a breather, a real true break at the end of the year between my birthday and Christmas, with a day overlapping on each side. I usually use those days to relax, sleep in/sleep when I want, order a pizza and watch a movie or two, wrap Christmas presents, and enjoy what I can of the holidays.

In normal fashion, this year I have already finished Christmas shopping for Daisy -- I finished well over a month ago (today, as I write this, is November 12th). I still need to figure out something for my parents and her parents, but that's about it. I'm not doing gifts for everyone at work this year, as I have done several years in the past -- I don't really have the spare money and now that student loans have started again (I made my first payment on them this past week), I have another bill to worry about every month.

The Christmas cards were designed and ordered in September -- the week after we returned from visiting my parents in NC -- and were delivered shortly thereafter. I spent several hours over the past two weekends -- in the overnights -- filling envelopes, stamping them, and putting our return address stickers on all of them, then individually addressing them and readying them to go out. They are now complete, and ready to stick in mailboxes, around the week of/week after Thanksgiving. 

This year's batch of special stamps -- because I always order a few new books/sheets of stamps every year for the cards, and I drum up excitement about it on social media -- include the new Ruth Bader Ginsburg stamps, but also some mainstays like the STEM education stamps, endangered species, Star Wars Droids, American muscle cars, and the new run of James Webb Telescope stamps. There's even a few normal American flag forever stamps thrown in for good measure, primarily because I found half a book of them from like, 2012 buried in my stack of address labels from many Christmases gone by. This year's international/global stamps (because not only do we send cards to Daisy's family in Canada, but I have some friends in other countries too -- like Brazil and Germany) are poinsettias and what appears to be chrysanthemums. I come well prepared.

There are 70 Christmas cards this year. I've addressed 65 of them to send. I always order a few extras in the event that someone new joins the list or if one of them gets damaged, or if any get returned due to an outdated address (happens with at least 1-2 cards a year, because people neglect to provide updated addresses). Most of the cards go to family, friends, or family friends. Some go to Daisy's friends. A large chunk of them go to Canada. Many go to my relatives and Daisy's relatives. Some go to people I haven't actually spoken to in well over a decade, but I guess their address is still the same because I don't get cards "return-to-sender, address unknown" from them. 

I generally send 60-65 cards a year. It's not a cheap or easy undertaking to do so -- this year's cards, plus the stamps purchased for them, was likely around $200 total. It is, by and large, a thankless effort. Daisy thinks it's ridiculous to spend that much on greeting cards, such an old-fashioned and antiquated tradition from before the 21st century. But, she also knows it's important to me and doesn't interfere. Rarely do I even show her the photos I've chosen before I design and print the cards; this year I chose a photo of us from Nova Scotia, from our trip up there in May, for the front -- and a picture of Hank for the back. The cards will always follow that same general format: a picture of us on the front, and a picture of one or more of the cats on the back. Since Hank is the new baby of the household, this year it's him. 

Sometimes the design changes; occasionally I'll design a small postcard-sized card, and sometimes it'll be long and narrow like a business envelope. Sometimes I'll do crinkle cut edges or rounded edges, sometimes I won't. Sometimes I'll spring for the pearlized coating on the card that makes it shimmer like glitter (I did this year) and sometimes I'll apply a subtle filter to the photo to either mute or make the colors pop more (I also did this for this year's cards). Sometimes -- again, like I did this year -- I'll change up colors and shades of the actual cards themselves to something far less traditional than red and green. Also, it's always Happy Holidays and not Merry Christmas because I have many friends who are not Christian -- and neither am I. Some of my closest friends are Jewish, Pagan/Wiccan, or are staunch atheists like myself. 

But it's still a mostly thankless endeavor. While I do have some family and friends who are very excited to see the yearly cards, and send me pictures of them being displayed or hanging off their Christmas trees like ornaments, for the 60-65 cards I send, I get about 20-25 from people in return -- a number that seems to be dwindling more and more by the year. Even the people who send us cards generally send the generic, 20-to-a-box of $5 cards from Walmart. There are about ten people/families who go all out and get the custom cards made like I do. My parents do, a few friends of mine from high school do, and a few members of Daisy's family do -- and that's it.

But that's not why I do it, of course. I don't see the vast majority of these people in any given year. Of the ones I have (very few), I've seen maybe once or twice in the past several years. A good chunk of the people on my card list I've only ever met once, and some of them I've never met in person. The cards are primarily for those people, the faraway friends and family I haven't seen since our wedding, or long before that. People who aren't on social media or who use it very rarely, elderly relatives who likely won't be with us much longer, friends in other countries on other continents. The cards are for them more than anyone else. It's not about trying to elicit a response -- it's about letting people know we still think about them and still care. Either I or Daisy, or both of us, have a close personal connection of some sort with every single person or family on the card list, even if those connections have loosened or otherwise grown apart over the years. I want those people to know yes, we know you are still here, and yes, you are loved.

And, for everyone I'd love to send cards to but don't have addresses for -- because there are a LOT of those folks and frankly, even if I had the addresses for them it would double my card order and cost/postage costs every year -- I post high-quality photos of the front and back of the year's card on  social media on or around Christmas Eve, so that everyone can see. I've probably talked about this before. I thought I'd posted them on here before as well in previous years, but apparently I have not. Maybe I will this year. I haven't decided yet.

Anyway, there's more to come, of course. Stay tuned for Part III.