The Rise of Fall, Part I: The Reverend

 So.

In the time since we've returned from visiting my parents, quite a bit has happened -- as I mentioned previously. I have not had time to sit down and lay it all out yet, primarily because I was trying to tell the story of that trip. 

I should probably start from the beginning, and the beginning takes us back to mid-August or so -- a few weeks before we left.

As you know, I work from home -- I have been working from home since March 2020, the real start of the pandemic. It is something I was born to do (not the job, but the concept of work from home). I am very good at it, my productivity levels have been through the roof since we moved to a work from home platform, and I can actually concentrate and lead better from a remote position without feeling like I'm being too overbearing or micromanaging my employees. Conversely, I don't have a line of employees in a constant stream to my desk asking me stupid questions one after another (we have Teams for that now). 

Plus, as I've also mentioned before -- no dress code at home, I have access to food/drink/vapes, I am surrounded by my cats, I can listen to my podcasts or music, and I can take a nap or play on my PS4 for my lunch hour if I want to. And, big bonus, Daisy is here. Whether she's awake or asleep, she's almost always here in the house with me while I'm working. The only real drawbacks to the current situation are that I have to work downstairs in the living room as our company-issued PCs have to be hardwired into the router (no wifi on them) and there's not really an opportunity for career advancement unless someone above me quits or dies. 

Or gets fired.

In the middle of August, one of our two program directors was removed from our program for, and I will not go into further detail, justified reasons.

It has always been assumed, but of course never guaranteed, that when/if one of those two directors were to move on to proverbial greener pastures, I would be promoted up into the vacated director position. My current boss knows that's the overall plan, my executive director knows and has agreed with me in the past that's the overall plan, and the dayshift teams -- many of whom I've known and worked with since I started in that job ten years ago -- were eagerly awaiting the day I'd take the reins. It's a bit like royalty, like peerage -- Your time has come, my son. YOU must now wear the crown. Etc. I'm sure you get the idea.

My executive director -- the man who interviewed and hired me for my original low-level position  there many years ago, so we go back to the beginning -- let me know the news that said director was no longer with the company and I shit you not, my first immediate question was "so when should I expect my offer letter?"

Look -- I am cocky about very few things. I try not to be overly so. This was something that, after a decade there, I was completely justified in asking -- I mean, given the audience and the history. 

Well, of course, it's not that simple because it never is. I was originally asked if my schedule could change, if I'd mind doing the director shift as a backup. I agreed to this, because of course I'd be thrilled to spend my weekends not sleeping and missing every football game.

In reality I agreed to it simply because my big boss asked me to and because if I hadn't I'd never be considered for the actual position no matter my skill level or tenure. 

So, it was arranged that the following week, I'd take off a couple of normal working days and flip my schedule to cover as Acting Director™ for the weekend teams. Nothing, of course, was set in stone (and wouldn't be, but I'll get to that) but we needed coverage, and needed someone my executive director could trust to handle everything in a skilled, business-professional manner even for things that were highly escalated or involved company executives. I was that person.

For two weeks in a row -- leading right up to us leaving for NC -- I was that director. 

Director shifts are very different than my normal 10pm to 7am overnight shift. For one, it's a four-day week instead of five. For two, my day starts in the 2pm hour...and can end anywhere from 12 to 14 hours later, depending on what's going on that night. For four days straight. And it's 24/7 on-call.

Now, mind you, my job now is technically 24/7 on call, but there's legit no business need for anyone to be calling an overnight manager during the daytime when all of the daytime managers are there. It is very rare I get a call from anyone in my off hours. Occasionally I'll get one on the weekend overnight when I'm off-shift, and won't see it or get the message until the next morning, by which point it's already been dealt with. 

Near the end of those two weeks of my Acting Director™ tenure, I of course made sure my fellow leadership and executive director knew hey, I'm going to be out of state for a few days over Labor Day, so, y'know, someone's going to have to account for that. There was indeed a plan for that -- we do have another director, for one of our offshore sister sites, who could cover when I was going to be out. She was who the corporate overlords wanted to install as the full-time replacement for the position because she already had the title of director, and thus no offer letters or salary changes would need to be put into place -- lateral moves, etc.

This didn't necessarily sit well with me and didn't sit well with my executive director for multiple, and some very obvious, reasons. The biggest problem is that there are a lot of directorial duties this lady cannot contractually do because she's not stateside -- some of our stuff can only be worked/touched by stateside employees. Another factor is that she's been here less than a year and was a recent promotion to director (as I understand) simply to fill the necessary role -- and while from what I've seen of her she's been fine, she doesn't have the decade of experience in leadership in that company that I do. 

As such, I was informed that my role would return to normal once I got back from NC and that she would just fill the vacancy...pretty much indefinitely until the full business case could be made that I needed to be put into that role permanently. There were several discussions had about this process and the implication was made that I likely wouldn't be waiting long, so to speak.

I was, and am, fine with this. Most people likely wouldn't be, and most people would say I was robbed of the position that was, in many ways, rightfully mine. To those people I say patience is a virtue, and when I need it I can exhibit it for as long as necessary.

So I headed off to NC for a week -- after two weeks of high praise for fulfilling that Acting Director™ role really well, and returned to work on my normal schedule to many messages from multiple people telling me how they were upset and upset for me that I hadn't automatically gotten the position. I simply told them it was what it was at the moment, and nothing was set in stone anywhere that I'd heard. What some of them fail to realize (and others just didn't want to realize or admit) was that I can't just be promoted out of the blue without discussion, like King Charles bestowing a knighthood on someone -- the last holder of the position left it (we'll leave it at that) and therefore the position has to be posted, there has to be an application and an interview process for any and all candidates who would be interested, and then the leadership teams would need to make their decision and extend an offer just like any other job within any other company. Everyone who gets promoted there has to go through the same process, even if it's a formality -- I interviewed multiple people for the Team Lead positions under me and everyone got a fair shot even though I knew from the beginning who would be picked for it and who wouldn't be. This sort of thing would be no different. 

That's where stuff stands now, by the way; I am currently in my normal position at work I've held for over eight years, although I will tell you that I am doing the directoring thing this week again as my own boss is out of the office on vacation -- so for this week's shifts of work I'll be working three 12-14-hour days in a row and will be happy to do so. It'll change up some stuff a bit. I like my schedule and role being shaken up a bit here and there, on occasion, and getting to do things differently than I normally would. As long as it's not a constant-change thing. and as long as it doesn't destroy my mental state or ability to sleep, it's a fun endeavor. Plus, and let's be honest here at least a little -- it's a power trip. Yes, there's more responsibility, but I can tell you it feels great to proverbially point at someone and say "You -- you're on this issue tonight, fix it or make it go away."

Kneel before Zod.

Anyway.

So that's fun. That's what's been going on at work for the latter half of the summer. But, summer is over now, and we're into the fall...and there's a lot that's already been happening this fall. 

Fall means cooler temperatures, pumpkin spice, Canadian Thanksgiving, US Thanksgiving, Halloween, Gravy Season, and the headlong run towards the best parts of the year: the holiday season encompassing my birthday, Christmas, and New Year's. 

To those ends I have been going down through everything on my own personal to-do list one by one and have been taking care of them as much as possible; as the list balloons, so does the highlighting on it denoting what I've already taken care of. 

Over the summer -- and I may have mentioned this before earlier -- I have been making tie-dye shirts again. I purchased a lot of various colors of dye and many packs of white t-shirts, and have been doing it as a hobby. Most of them I've kept for myself and/or Daisy, but some I made for my parents for their birthdays and some I made for Daisy's father just because. 

Well, that has now ballooned into me getting three final six-packs of white shirts tomorrow in the mail -- L, XL, and 3X -- and multiple weekends of spending my decompression time, my relaxation time, making shirts for the family as this year's Christmas presents. It is, and I don't want to overstate this, a grand undertaking. The materials aren't that expensive (they're not cheap either, but they're not prohibitively expensive by any means) but the process is very time-intensive and can be a bit messy. Daisy doesn't really wear t-shirts of any sort most of the time, so I'll be doing other stuff for her for Christmas -- but with the rest of the family that will likely be in town for Christmas, I've got eight people to make a few shirts each for...so it takes time, design, planning, making sure I have sizes correct, etc. I'm also doing it for a couple of friends too, so their own sizes and color considerations have to be taken into account. Each batch of shirts has to be rinsed out of the package, then soaked in soda ash-laden water for a while to make them ready to receive color, then carefully dyed, rinsed again and hang-dried, and then finally washed/tumble-dried with a very mild detergent and very mild fabric softener (to make sure they're not going to bleed more color)...then folded carefully and packed away for Christmas. The longest part is the actual dyeing process, as for them to really get good color to set the shirts have to basically marinate for 8+ hours or more. Sometimes longer, sometimes a lot longer. 

I have made approximately fifteen shirts over the weekend in various sizes and colors. I'm getting there, as they say. My goal was to be done with all of them by the beginning of October, and that's (very obviously) not the case. 

It's not a huge secret I'm doing this, so I feel comfortable with writing about it here -- but it is sort of a secret, so I'm not going into great detail about it. I should be done with the vast majority of the work for it by sometime next week. I can make about 3-6 shirts per batch if I'm really cooking along. And it's fulfilling to me -- it's handmade presents, creative presents. I'm great at presents for the close family, but I am terrible at picking stuff for the nieces and nephews and the brothers-and-sisters-in-law. So, universal options like tie-dye things tend to work really well. I also don't know who will be in town for the holidays (I have a decent idea, but nothing confirmed) so if I end up making more than I currently need, well, there we go. 

I also became an ordained minister last week.

No, I'm not kidding. Let me explain.

To make a much longer and more detailed story short, one of our mutual friends wanted to get married this month (October) but did not want to do a huge ceremony -- just something really small and intimate, quick, quiet, etc. She was having trouble finding someone who could officiate the wedding. I told Daisy I would be more than happy to fill out the paperwork and go get ordained by the Universal Life Church and do it myself for her for free, out of the goodness of my heart. Because, honestly, why not? 

Everything is an adventure. I like adventures.

Because of this, I got to have this wildly unhinged conversation with my boss:

Me: So, I'll likely be out of office on Halloween, because I am:

    a. Going to a wedding

    b. will be officiating said wedding

    c. It is [Name]'s wedding.

Boss: Yeah, that tracks. 

So last weekend, I went and filled out the paperwork, got myself ordained, and ordered the hard copy paperwork and ID badges and everything I'd need to perform a wedding ceremony. All together, it was about fifty bucks from start to finish. 

Man, if you'd told me at the beginning of this year that before the end of it I would have blue hair and would be an ordained minister performing a wedding ceremony on Halloween, I would've said you were crazy. But, here we are.

Anyway.

I found out the morning I became ordained that my services were not required and our friend had been able to find an officiant who was willing to do the exact ceremony she wanted and already had knowledge of the process involved (pagan-ish stuff I believe). So, we'll still be going to the wedding, but I won't be performing it...and I'm still a reverend.

Again, not kidding, I guess that's my official title now. The Rev. Brandon [Surname]. I told people at work they can start calling me Reverend anytime they want, but as of yet it hasn't stuck.

I got the hard copy paperwork in the mail a few days ago, and it has a wallet card that proves that yes, I can act as the proverbial hand of God, in addition to a diploma-like certificate to display, a book on different types of ceremonies, a few marriage certificates, and a car placard that I can hang up on the mirror to signify that I'm a member of the clergy. What a wild ride.

In other news, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my iPhone 12 Mini to a new iPhone 16 Pro. It's much larger and much heavier. I just got it today and it's still in the box; I haven't messed with it yet to transfer my stuff over, and likely won't until later tonight or in the morning (depending on when and how I sleep). I love my 12 Mini, and there's really nothing wrong with it except the battery life has greatly diminished over the past nearly four years, but I figured it was time. With the 16 Pro, it's the first time I can say I've owned a current-generation phone -- I've always waited until the new model has come out and then I've gotten the previous one as it's usually the only time it'll be cheaper. For example, I got my 5c when the 5S was the standard, my 7 when the 8 had just been released, and the 12 Mini when the 13 had just come out. I plan to keep the 16 Pro until at least the 20 is released, barring any unforeseen circumstances. I didn't necessarily want something that big, but as they don't make the "Mini" models anymore, it is what it is I suppose. It's more for the battery life and the latest chips/hardware anyway.

The old iPhone 12 Mini I will wipe back to factory settings and ship back to T-Mobile within the next few days, as that's how the device upgrade/turn-in process works. I don't know if I'll do it here from the house or if I'll just take it in to the store and have them process it or have them show me how to do it, etc. Daisy took her previous-model Galaxy into the store and they helped her with it, so we'll see what happens. I don't have any experience with that, honestly. My 5c I owned outright (it's still in its original box in my office up here, behind my lounge chair). With the 7, I ordered it online and had it delivered to the apartment, and then when I upgraded to the 12 Mini I did it right there in the store and they took it from me there when I got the new one set up. So I mean, it's a completely new process for me on how they do it now. 

[Edit: I set it up this evening and it was a pain in the ass to get signed back into everything, but it works and it is very nice. The case doesn't arrive until later this week, so I will have to be really careful with it until then.]

My hair is still blue; I had it the dark "blue panther" for a while, but that has since faded out and it's faded back to its original, more bright/shocking blue. Even that is now fading out and my roots are growing in, so some days it looks more blue than others and some days it looks more seafoam green-ish. I used the color-depositing conditioner for a while and it cemented a more normal, stabilized blue color when I was using it on a regular basis, but for the past few weeks I've just been letting it fade out as much as possible -- I got a color-remover solution to take the rest of it out, and I'm going to make it "blue velvet" (a more violet-hued dark blue) sometime before our friend's wedding. That's likely a couple of weeks off yet, however.

This year's Christmas cards have been designed, ordered, and already delivered.

I know that's likely shocking to you (heavy sarcasm intended) but it was more difficult this year compared to past years. 

Why? Well, for one, we lost Maggie this year. Either Maggie or Sadie would grace the back of the Christmas card almost every year. It was a running tradition (however, one year we used Pete, and last year, Hank). I knew I would have to put some sort of tribute to Maggie on the back of the cards -- but even though Shutterfly (the company I make the cards through) is highly customizable, not everything can be customized. One design I wanted allowed a photo collage, and I liked that a lot but was iffy on the front of the card. Another design allowed the photo placement I wanted on the front but left a lot to desire about the back of the card's design. I liked them both equally for different reasons.

In the end, I did something I've never done before -- I ordered two sets of cards, 30 of each. Some people will get one, some will get the other. The ones that have the photo collage I like Daisy hates, and the one that we both love the front of I'm not a huge fan of the back. It is what it is. Daisy thought the one she disliked, with a photo collage of Maggie on the back, was too -- and I quote -- "DEAD CAT, BE SAD" for her liking. I thought it was a beautiful tribute.

"You can send those cards to your friends and family," she said, "and send the other ones to mine."

I mean, okay. It's really not bad.

The other reason it was more difficult this year than last is that we have acquired two more cats since Christmas last year -- Empress and Mable. Empress we got on December 29 (and her birthday is coming up soon, early November) and Mable we got on April 11. I wanted to make sure they were included on the cards somehow because, I mean, they're important. They're both on the face of the card that Daisy really liked and their names, at least, are on the front of the other one. Do you know how hard it is to put seven names on a Christmas card when you're given a limited allotment of text? It's difficult.

Anyway, it's done, they're here in my possession, and the great mailing begins on Black Friday. I've gotten a new variety of stamps this year, including hippie designs, Dungeons & Dragons, and "Save the Manatee" stamps -- in addition to a new sheet of international stamps for those members of our family in the Great White North. So, I think we'll be fine. As is customary, I'll post both designs on my Facebook on Christmas Eve -- which I think is generally when I post them as by that point, if cards haven't arrived in the mail I can't help it. 

My driver's license, which expires on my birthday this year (so, less than three months from now) has also been renewed online and I'm waiting on that to get here in the mail. I'll have to renew my passport soon as well, if I'd like to be able to visit the aforementioned Great White North again next year (budget permitting). Daisy will have to do the same; they last ten years, and ours were last done in 2015 shortly before our very first trip together to Canada. I don't have any gray hair in that photo, if that tells you how long ago ten years was. The good thing is that now it can all be done online, and you upload your own photo and everything...so...the USA has finally leapt into the 21st century -- a quarter of the way through it. 

We finally got the DNA test results back for Mable -- our youngest child -- that we'd sent out the week we left for Canada. I was pretty shocked:

...that's more of a percentage of Maine Coon than Empress has. And Empress looks FAR more like a Maine Coon than Mable does. The rest was just as wild:

Two different wildly eastern breeds and a decent chunk of exotic.

The Siberian and Ragdoll, along with the small percentage of Norwegian Forest Cat, don't surprise me. But I was not expecting to see anything in there like "more Maine Coon than the actual Maine Coon we have." By almost two percentage points, by the way.

But, as she has grown, she is certainly showing the Maine Coon features -- giant fluffy tail, long and thick fur (but not really a longhair), a sharp/angled face, and giant tufts of hair on and in her ears. She has more than tripled in size since we got her in April, and seems to be getting ever larger by the week. I told Daisy that it is very likely she'll be a giant cat and it's just taking her a while to get there. It took Empress quite a while to get large, and she is now likely the largest (but not the heaviest, that's Hank) cat in the house. She is also still growing.

So that should probably be the end of this entry, as it is getting long. There is, however, more to cover coming up...

Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "Into the Bagel'd Sky"

 The next morning, after making sure all of our laundry was done as necessary and everything that could be stuffed into our baggage had been done so, we said our somewhat-awkward goodbyes and left Oak Island for Wilmington once more. 

On the way to the airport, Daisy wanted to make sure we got bagels for breakfast from a vegan bagel place we'd meant to stop at earlier in the journey but had not gotten the chance to. I love a good bagel, but I saw the trip at the time as a somewhat needless waste of time and money. Daisy, however, is not like me and actually needs to eat more than once a day -- she could not and would not really be able to travel without eating. Me? I'm pretty flexible, I don't really care -- the end goal for me is getting to the destination without becoming a headline on CNN that finishes with "...killing all passengers on board."

The bagel place was insanely out of the way of the airport -- as in, on the other side of Wilmington. And we were on a timeframe, as we would still have to drop the car off, get through security, and then get to the plane. 

I'll also add that throughout all of this -- in fact, most of the trip -- we were both in intestinal distress to one degree or another. Daisy was more afflicted than I was, as she'd been trying to remain mostly gluten-free for months on end as it makes her feel better, but did not really bother trying to do this for a large chunk of the trip. Mind you, if there was a gluten-free option for something she'd go that route, but for a lot of what we ate while traveling...that wasn't really a thing. Finding good vegan food is one thing; finding good vegan and gluten-free food is generally quite another. So, after a certain point of the trip she pretty much just gave up. 

Bagels are decidedly not gluten free unless you go somewhere that specifically makes them as such, usually at a high price premium for it. But, as I'd spent the last several days living off whatever we could get at vegan restaurants, Utz chips, rice cakes, and cheese sandwiches at my parents' place...I wanted something different and a bagel with wild toppings like carrot lox, vegan bacon and/or sausage, and cream cheese sounded magnificent. It sounded like actual sustenance.

That being said -- I didn't need it. I would've been fine without. But the stop was very important for Daisy, and when we travel together I always want to indulge her in doing the things she wants to do and going to the restaurants she wants to visit, too -- it's not just about me. We do enough things that are labeled as more for me than for her. 

It took us over an hour to get to the bagel shop. This was cutting into our time we'd need to drop off the car and get to our flight. It was a miserable, humid, traffic-filled drive through weird-ass streets in Wilmington, through residential neighborhoods and industrial areas, to finally reach a main drag where there was this tiny little bagel shop in a strip mall. 

So we got our bagels -- I'm fairly sure they charged me for the two that I asked for and they only gave me one, but fuck it we were in a hurry and could not spare the time -- and made our way to the airport. We dropped off the car painlessly and we were headed to the security line when it happened.

I felt a low rumble. I felt pressure and pain down south. I had a countdown. Daisy looked at me and knew I was in distress and said "just go."

And I did everything I could to keep it together, in a busy airport on a Tuesday morning, to get to the men's room and into a thankfully open and freshly-cleaned stall before my stomach unleashed its fury for twenty minutes.

It was a terrifying experience. I think I've only ever had to, ahem, use the full facilities in an airport bathroom once before in my entire life. It just wouldn't stop. I had my eye on my watch and was texting Daisy that I was sorry, I couldn't help it, but I also couldn't stop it.

I hadn't even eaten the bagel(s) yet. 

When the bathroom gods had decided I'd had enough and finally let me loose from their grip, I collected myself -- cold sweats, disheveled looks and all, and we made our way through security and to our gate, where we finally could eat our absolutely wonderful bagels in peace. 

The flights home were fine, but long; I seem to recall we got held up/delayed in Chicago and our gates changed a couple of times. I bought fries from a McDonald's kiosk at one point. My phone battery almost died because it does that now if I'm not in constant connection with wifi or an otherwise T-Mobile signal. Daisy read a large chunk of her book. I took anti-diarrheal pills and was blinded by the sun on the plane because we were flying west. Y'know, travel things.

The parents picked us up at the Omaha airport without incident and brought us home to our cats who, of course, were wildly happy to see us after we'd been gone for a few days. I let my parents know we were home, and immediately began doing all of the laundry from the trip. I returned to work the next evening.

So, that's the overall story of our trip to the Carolinas this year. As I write this, it has now been almost a month since we returned home. Life has resumed much as expected, and a LOT has happened since as we head into fall. That stuff, of course, I'll cover in the future here.

Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "Cape Fear'd"

 We were in North Carolina for roughly five days total -- we arrived on a Thursday night and left on the Tuesday morning after Labor Day. I count the night of arrival and the morning of departure as one day because they were basically travel days and not a whole lot of time was spent doing proper vacationing.

On Sunday, Daisy had made plans for us -- the only real plans we'd had for the entire trip, in fact, when it comes to real "event things" we wanted to do while we were there -- we were scheduled to go on a dolphin-watching boat tour off the coast. This tour required you to book tickets in advance, and then drive down to Myrtle Beach to the location to where the boat launched from.

It's a decent hour's drive to Myrtle from where my parents are; it's not an awful drive, but it takes time. And this was Labor Day weekend, to boot. Traffic was nuts, and the dolphin-watching boats were booked solid. Thankfully, Daisy had gotten us our reservations/tickets a few days beforehand. We were told to dress for all weather as the boats went out rain or shine, and of course, if was very likely you'd get wet while on the boat itself, as you'd be out in the ocean for some time and...waves. Splashing. Winds. Etc. 

Well, Sunday turned out to be an incredibly godawful hot day, with clear skies and a lot of blazing sun, and the temperature shot up quickly. I made sure to pack my sun hat with me -- a denim oversized bucket-hat I'd purchased down there last year -- and we slathered ourselves in sunscreen. The dolphin-watching tour was estimated to take about two hours, sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on how many times the boat would need to stop to look at dolphins. Etc. It was a very detailed experience with a full webpage full of notes and suggestions to follow for it.

Now, mind you, this is not the first time Daisy and I have gone on a boat trip for pleasure reasons -- we'd done the Lake Michigan boat tour from the Navy Pier in Chicago a couple of years ago, and earlier in the summer we had of course done the whale-watching tour in Nova Scotia. At this point, both of us know how this game is played. Boats are nothing new for us. And honestly, I wanted to see dolphins up close. The whale tour had left a lot to be desired, such as...the only whales we saw were like 30 yards away. Dolphins are everywhere, especially in the Carolinas, and they tend to travel in giant pods of large numbers.

So we drove down to Myrtle Beach -- not North Myrtle, but Myrtle proper -- and ventured down a number of sketchy looking back roads and side streets to get to the highway that would eventually take us to this port where these boats would launch from. There were so many people there. Daisy and I parked at least 1/4 mile away from the docks/restaurant/launch point and had to hoof it in the sun, get our tickets counted, and then...wait in a line of about 200 people that stretched waaaay back up towards where we parked. 

I don't know what the boats' max capacities were -- there were two of them, the Sea Thunder and the Sea Screamer. Both of them were identical except for paint jobs, and I don't even remember which one we were on. They would disembark on opposite-ish schedules, so as one was coming back in, the other would go out, constantly exchanging great numbers of passengers. We had our pictures taken -- I guess this is a Coast Guard regulation in the event someone goes overboard -- and we were ushered onto the boat we'd been assigned...with, likely, about 50-60 other people. Yeah.

The boat seats were not comfortable. They were smaller than airline seats, by a lot, and were hard plastic, like stadium seats. Daisy and I are larger people, of course, and well...we both had a lot of trouble fitting into them. Daisy had to change her seating a number of times because it was so uncomfortable for her. 

The boat took us out a very long, canal-like passage (with water so brown that it could have been Coca-Cola) and then out of a seawall and we were finally on the open ocean. The skipper gunned it, and we were shooting away from the mainland and into the seas. 

And we saw....nothing.

About fifteen minutes after getting out into the ocean, the boat was approached by a few jet-skiers who told us that they'd seen a pod of about 100 dolphins or so going nuts about a mile from where we were. The skippers were like "okay, that's where we're headed then" and once again gunned it in that direction.

We got there...and we saw nothing.

We went out another few miles and made a big circle...and we saw nothing. Not a single dolphin. Not a single jumping fish or otherwise any signs of life. The coastline was a hazy blur far behind us, many miles away, and...we saw nothing.

The skipper turned the boat around and headed back towards shore. Apparently one of the (many) children on the tour saw a large sea turtle swimming near us. I did not see it. 

An hour later, once we got back into the dock, the skipper let everyone know at that point that none of the tours had seen any dolphins all day, and that everyone who'd been on the trip would get a free voucher that never expired for another trip out to see dolphins -- they could use the voucher tomorrow, next year, or many years down the road, it didn't matter because, again, no expiration. Later, Daisy would confirm with me that she did receive it in her email, so I guess the next time we visit North Carolina we've got a "free" boat trip waiting on us.

By the time we got back to the car, we were both very hot and thirsty, and were hungry.

We had asked the parents that morning if they were planning to go see a friend of my dad, who had a band that was playing in Southport that night. They'd told us they were originally going to go, but had decided they weren't really feeling well enough to do so and were tired, so they didn't want to. That was fine with us; we told them we'd likely get something to eat on the way home then and not to worry about us, and that we'd be home for the evening before dark. 

This to me was a pretty set plan -- as in, not something we would have expected to change. So, Daisy and I searched for some vegan or vegan-ish restaurants in Myrtle Beach, since we were deep in the heart of Myrtle already, and found an Indian/Mediterranean place we wanted to try, got the directions, and drove there.

By the time we were in the parking lot, we'd each gotten multiple missed calls and texts from my mother, saying they'd changed their mind and that they were going to go see the band play, and, could we be home by X time etc?

We could not be. We were well over an hour away from home, and were about to sit down for a meal. Even if we weren't, we would not have made it back home before they left.

We weighed our options. The carry-out/pickup on the restaurant's website advertised 15 minutes or something like that, and the place did not look busy. We figured we could eat, turn around and drive back home and get there eventually, even if we had to drive directly to the location ourselves and meet them there. Or, we could not eat and just turn around -- which wasn't really an option for either of us, we were both starving to the point where we were starting to get ill. 

Either I or Daisy (I can't remember honestly) let them know we were eating and would be down there when we could. Of course, had we known they would be changing their minds and would want to go, we would've come straight home after the dolphin tour, showered, changed our clothes, and we could've looked somewhat presentable. We didn't have that option anymore. My dad responded that they'd leave a spare key for us if we wanted to stop at the house and do all of that stuff before we drove to join them, but I believe Daisy told them that we'd just meet them there.

So we went inside the restaurant, sat down, and got our menus...and it took the servers forty minutes before they even came to take our order. After the order was done, it took another forty minutes to get all of our food -- and they even forgot one of the dishes I'd ordered (we weren't charged for it, so eh). 

We were mixed on the food -- I really liked a lot of the stuff I'd ordered, and Daisy hated most of the stuff she'd ordered. It was also ungodly expensive; the meal was something like $140 total. Was it worth that very high cost for a meal? No. Not at all. But I didn't think it was awful or anything like that. Again, overpriced, but not terrible for me. 

Once the bill was paid, we were back in the Malibu and headed north, out of Myrtle Beach and back up to North Carolina once more. We'd plotted the GPS to the bar's area in Southport -- I just assumed that it would be a normal bar, like a neighborhood bar the same as most of the ones my dad's bands played in as I was growing up.

I was wrong.

Southport has a residential area, and then it has the historic "rich white people" area, and on the outside of that area is the "rich white people bars and restaurants on the water where white people come and eat and drink a lot and listen to white people music" area. Guess where the bar was?

It was a Sunday night on a holiday weekend in Southport, where nobody would have to work the next day because Labor Day. It was also supposed to be the last "nice weather" day for a solid week, as it was supposed to rain and storm from that point forward, including on the holiday. We just wanted to make an appearance as it was important to my parents, be included in something they'd asked us to be included in, etc. 

Well, we tried.

The closest parking to this area was this time easily half a mile away from the venue, on some side streets with public parking next to a historical park/recreation area. Mind you, at this point Daisy and I were tired -- we'd been out all day, I'd been awake since around 6am, we'd already done a ton of walking and being out in the sun, and now we would be walking at least another mile (to the venue and then back, of course) to see my Dad's friend's band play.

Daisy plotted the GPS for walking to the location from where we parked, and we set off. As we approached the bar, it was very apparent which place we were headed to in a crowded on-the-ocean sea of strip-mall like restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops...because it was where the loud music was coming from. 

We were literally 300 or so feet away from the bar when we ran into my parents, walking the opposite way -- having been there and already left.

We were not upset -- my dad's maladies were acting up and it was really bothering him to be upright and to stay there to watch the band, though they had for a few songs. They had kept up appearances, so to speak, just like we were trying to do with them. They went back to their vehicle to go home -- their vehicle which was considerably closer -- and we told them we'd be home eventually, we had to get back to the car and pick up a few small essentials from the local Walmart first (we were both out of bottled water and I was out of sugar-free energy drinks -- the things that kept me going while I was there). 

The walk back to the car was beautiful, because it was literally along the coast. As in, there was a road and a bike path, an eight-foot wide area of sand, and then open ocean. The sun was setting. Most people were beginning to filter out of the bar areas and back to their own vehicles, or were otherwise out for an evening stroll. We took a number of photos of us together, including the one that will be used on this year's Christmas cards (more on this later) and finally got back to the car just as it was getting dark.

We then went to Walmart, which was mostly abandoned for it being an evening on a holiday weekend, and picked up those few essentials we needed. We also found one of the new Beetlejuice Beetlejuice apple Fantas, which we tried and both liked (it remains to this day the only time I've seen one in person in a store), before returning home and winding down the rest of the night.

The next day was Monday -- Labor Day -- and our final full day in North Carolina. My mother told us that Gabriel Brothers -- known colloquially and in most fashions these days as Gabe's -- had opened stores down there. 

I've talked about Gabe's before here, specifically referencing it in my stories about travel back home, as they are based and headquartered in my hometown of Morgantown, WV. They are a discount clothing and department store chain that dates back to the '60s, and was a huge part of my life growing up. They'd always had multiple locations in WV and PA, and a few in Ohio, but generally only in that small part of the tri-state area. Gabe's was my lifeblood growing up and remained so well into adulthood -- I still have clothing and items I purchased from Gabe's decades ago, some still in daily use and some that's traveled with me from location to location, state to state, apartment-to-apartment-to-house for almost my whole life. They were cheap, and because they were a discount store you had to carefully examine items that you purchased to make sure things like zippers worked, pockets weren't but out, stitching was normal, and there weren't holes in it....but as a kid, I was poor. Gabe's was where the poor people shopped in the 80s and 90s because it was cheap. I can't tell you the countless pairs of shoes I got for under $10 that I would wear for years until they fell apart. I can't tell you the number of $3 and $4 band/music/comic book t-shirts I bought there, or the number of $8 jeans and shorts I wore, or how many $6 gaudy Hawaiian shirts I owned in my college years that came directly from that store -- not to mention all of the food, DVDs, CDs, PC games, comic books, novels, greeting cards, cleaning/household/kitchen supplies, sunglasses, bedsheets, underwear, socks, swimming trunks, hoodies, gloves, and coats I got there over the years. It was my go-to store for almost anything I needed right up until I moved out of WV in 2006.

Well, in the past several years the store has expanded -- I know, a brick-and-mortar retail store expanding into new locations in the 2020s? Insane, right? -- and they have now built new locations in multiple states up and down the eastern seaboard and even as far west as Oklahoma and Missouri. One of those states, of course, was North Carolina -- in Wilmington.

I will state that the NC/SC locations were probably greatly influenced by the sheer number of West Virginian transplants who retired down there just like my parents did. My parents are far from being alone as WV natives down there -- there are a lot of people who have bought property in the southern coastal area of NC, including many people from Morgantown. It's somewhat bizarre to drive through Oak Island in the fall and see not one, but multiple WVU flags outside people's homes, or bumper stickers/car decals on vehicles, or people wearing WVU shirts (which we saw plenty of that Saturday we were there since it was gameday). 

Because my mother told us about the one in Wilmington, and because she and I used to have such fun going to Gabe's when I was a kid, we made plans to drive up there that Monday, on Labor Day, and peruse the store. As an aside, Daisy has experienced the magic of a Gabe's store with me before -- she did when we were visiting my parents in 2017, in Morgantown -- though I don't remember if she actually got anything at that juncture. I recall that trip being somewhat disappointing myself, in fact. 

My mother was lukewarm on the idea; she didn't know if she wanted to go, and didn't know if she would. I told her that was fine, we'd love to have her with us if she wanted to come, of course. 

That morning, as expected and predicted, it was pouring rain. Rain like I haven't seen in a long time. Coastal rain is different than inland rain -- if you get enough of it, it floods out streets and culverts, because when you're already at sea level, there's nowhere else for water to go. It floods out sewers, parking lots, and any/all low-lying areas (my parents would experience more of this when, two weeks later, a tropical rainstorm blew in and dumped close to two feet of rain on them in a 24-hour period, and flooded out the community college where my mother worked). It's why all the houses down there are on stilts. 

My mother decided against going with us, but Daisy and I decided to make a go of it anyway. It was the only chance we'd have to do it, and Daisy wanted to hit up the Sealevel Vegan Diner again while we were in Wilmington.

As an aside, and a wide aside at that -- one of my favorite movies of all time was filmed in Wilmington, and it's likely not one you'd ever guess. That movie is the 1986 Stephen King adaptation Maximum Overdrive, based on his short story "Trucks" from his first short story collection Night Shift. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's the movie where a mostly pre-fame Emilio Estevez and a group of people (including Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson) hole up inside a truck stop when machines all over the world come to life and begin attacking humans. If that still doesn't ring a bell, it's the movie with the giant evil Green Goblin-headed semi truck.

Good lord do I love this movie. I urge you to find it and watch it if you never have. It occasionally circulates through one streaming service or another.

Make no mistake, the movie is not great. It has a great premise and a soundtrack by AC/DC, though (it's their compilation album Who Made Who). Well, I did some digging, and found out that the purpose-built truckstop for the movie was built on the opposite side of the river in Wilmington and is now a storage facility of some sort -- we legit drove by the filming location(s) multiple times while we were there. Mind you, the movie was filmed in 1985 and the area is way different now, but I still thought this was wildly fun to find out. 

Anyway.

So we drove up to Gabe's in Wilmington not knowing what we'd find there -- if it would be a small, crappy little store full of disappointing things or a sprawling behemoth of a place. My parents had been there before and said that it was relatively new -- as in, since the pandemic. That gave me hope. We also had to be mindful of what we purchased, as well; we both only had carry-on luggage. I myself had only brought my backpack as my entire goal was to pack lightly. Daisy had only her small suitcase with her, because it's not like we were on a weeks-long trip like we were to and from Canada. Anything we wanted to get we'd have to be able to fit into those bags -- and keep in mind, I'd already purchased a  large, bulky hoodie on this trip.. My dad had told us that he'd be happy to ship a box of stuff to us if necessary, but we didn't want him to have to do that -- especially not while he was fighting off several different ailments. 

The store was a sprawling behemoth of a place -- likely the largest and best/most well-stocked Gabe's I'd ever been inside.

Oh dear. This was a problem.

Throughout the entire time we were in the store -- which was so large that I could not see the other end of it and/or see where Daisy was about 80% of the time we were in there -- it was raining and storming so hard that I could barely hear the store's radio. The power flickered slightly at least once as well. I very quickly lost Daisy in the aisles and rows because there was just so many things I could have walked out of that store with that day. Most of these things, I decided against picking up, and it hurt me not to. I ended up getting a few small items, with the largest of them being a pair of Ecko Chuck-Taylor-style black high-tops with flames painted on them...for $6. New. Do I have any idea when I'll wear them? No, but I needed them. 

Over the course of an hour or two, Daisy found a few things, like some leggings and some vegan candy -- but I will tell you that if we had our large suitcases with us, we both likely would have spent hundreds of dollars in that store. There were so many things we wanted but just didn't have the room for. Gabe's will now be an absolute must-visit stop on all future trips down there to visit my parents. 

Unfortunately, however, the Sealevel Vegan Diner was closed for the holiday.

Upon returning home, my parents seemed...distant? Aloof? I don't know how to really describe it. I'd noticed this as a trend while we were there from the beginning this time around, but had mostly brushed it off because I knew my dad hadn't been feeling great. However, it was never more apparent than on that day -- just...malaise in both of them that I couldn't place. If my kids were visiting me, I'd be excited to see them and spend time with them while they were there. My parents were excited when we booked the trip, but once we actually got there, well...it seemed like a lot of that excitement had been greatly muted. Last year, my mother talked to Daisy for multiple hours on end. I also sat on the porch and hung out with my dad and the dogs for hours on end. This time around it was as if we'd already done that and there was simply nothing left to say, and we were just people in the house.

To be fair, my mother and I did have a very long sit-down conversation with me that was greatly intimate -- about our lives and where we were in them -- within a day or two of us arriving. I got a great sense of fear from her; fear for her own health as well as my dad's, fear of the future, and fear for both of us given our ages, levels of fatness (oh, because you'd best believe that came up again), stations in life, and finances. I assured her that we were fine and are still relatively healthy, neither of us are gaining weight, and that if our finances weren't stable we wouldn't have been able to afford the trip. This seemed to put her mostly at ease, but this was the only conversation of that sort we had during my entire time there, and even it felt really out of place and sort of disconnected. I wasn't sure what to make of it overall.

We understood, at least, that my dad's health was likely overshadowing our visit. He wasn't exactly feeling his best to put it mildly, and the cascade effect of that running down through my mother and to us was part of what made our interactions all seem so very stilted and muted. Not once, not once did either of my parents comment on the fact that both of us had oddly colored hair -- my parents have never seen either of us with dyed hair before. I tried to get them to say something on it, too -- I told them the colors we'd likely try next, gave them the details of what it took to do it and make the colors stay in the hair, etc. Nothing. I don't know if they were both purposely biting their tongues or they just didn't know what to say, or if it didn't faze them at all. When I accidentally dyed their guest towels lavender (because I accidentally washed them with our tie-dyes) my mother didn't care -- she just noted "we never use those towels anyway" when I apologized profusely. Ten years ago she would've lost her mind. 

It was just weird. Like, not pod-people weird, but the entire vibe of our interactions with my parents while we were there was definitely off. Even now, a month later, I can't really put my finger on what it was. I noticed that my mother seemed to be drinking far less than usual, but that alone doesn't seem to explain it in any sort of satisfactory way, so both Daisy and I just rolled with it, I guess. 

Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "Dogged"

 The trip from Omaha to Charlotte was mostly uneventful. I dozed off a few times on the plane. While I do love the adventure aspect of air travel I am not really a fan of the actual process, and I'm sure few are. This is primarily because I am not a small person, and neither is Daisy, and cramming ourselves into these airplane seats is not comfortable for flights longer than an hour or two at most. We make do with what we can, but none of it is particularly comfortable or fun.

Omaha to Charlotte is a somewhat long flight -- I believe it was like two and a half hours. We were, of course, flying halfway across the country. And, as mentioned before, we were flying American Airlines.

Hoo boy.

I learned during this trip that there are two classes of people -- there are people who can afford to fly Delta, which has upped its game tremendously over the course of the past decade or so, and then there are the people who aren't willing to pay double the ticket prices and who have to fly the low-cost airlines with multiple stops and/or multiple layovers. American is fine for what it is; it's likely near the top tier of the lower-cost airlines -- but the people who fly American are definitely a completely different class of people than the ones who fly airlines like Delta. American Airlines customers are definitively more white trash and generally just trashy people as a whole, and this was exhibited on these flights to and from North Carolina. People were rude, they were drunk, they were disgruntled -- it was very noticeable. 

It didn't help that American has zero screens in the back of their plane seats, they offer zero reading materials (not even a SkyMall magazine -- does that even still exist?), and their flight attendants were not only rude for the most part but were not even really attractive people. Does that make sense? I don't know if I've ever been on a set of flights were the flight attendants weren't gorgeous young women or very good looking flamboyant gay men -- at least not until these flights. I'm not trying to be elitist when I say that, but just factual. Is the job of flight attendant not traditionally, stereotypically, performed by some of the most attractive people possible? I'm not judging but rather making a wow observation that apparently this is no longer the case, at least not for American Airlines.

But the plus side is, American Airlines will give you the entire can of soda or juice when the in-flight snack service comes by. Delta and most other airlines will adamantly refuse to do that. I appreciate this, of course. I'm a guy who drinks like 100oz of liquid or more per day, and a little 4oz cup of soda watered down with ice isn't going to cut it if I'm thirsty. 

So, there we were, on long flights with zero screens to occupy us. Like I said, I dozed off for a bit a few times. Daisy read one of Nora McInerny's books that she hadn't yet read before. 

When we got to our gate in Charlotte, we found that our flight into Wilmington had been delayed. By the time we got on it, it had been delayed twice. I believe that they mentioned some sort of nebulous "mechanical issue" and that the planes would need to be swapped out, but honestly I was tired and didn't really pay that close attention. We finally got on it, later than expected, and lifted off towards Wilmington.

I had never flown into Wilmington airport. I expected it to be the equivalent of Morgantown's airport back home -- a small municipal airport with a couple of gates and one little terminal. I mean, Halifax's airport is pretty small and so is Bangor's -- and both of them I'm sure could be far larger than they actually are based on the population in their areas.

Well, Wilmington is apparently a big jumping off point for numerous touristy areas around coastal North Carolina -- it is on the coast itself, of course -- including Oak Island and other tourist towns and beaches, given its proximity. So it was a bit of a larger airport than I was expecting. And we were flying in riiiiiiight before Labor Day weekend, the last big tourism holiday of the summer.

It is not a bad airport. It is indeed somewhat small, but not as small as I expected. It's designed really well, really intuitively, and has some very pretty southern architecture. As we were arriving something like two hours later than expected, we still had to wait in line for the rental car.

We got to the rental car line and there were two people in front of us who were very chatty with the attendants. There was a long line that was forming behind us. I was very tired and irritable, we had already missed our opportunity to go get food somewhere or do any actual grocery shopping before we would get to my parents' house because it was late, and I had not had any nicotine other than the Nicorette mints in about nine hours at this point -- and the mints really don't work that well if you're going to use them for hours upon hours on end. Their effectiveness really begins to wane around hour six or so. I was getting very frustrated and irritated, to the point where I wanted to scream shut up, make with the keys, people have places to be to the customers in line in front of us who were so incessantly chatty. 

This is a failing of mine and I'm working on it, though I do not think I'll ever be able to rid myself of it entirely.

We were given the choice of a Camry or a Malibu for our rental car. I chose the Malibu, as we have had multiple Malibus in the past for rentals and knew how everything worked in them. I wasn't about to choose a Camry that we had no clue how to operate or where the controls were, etc -- new cars are confusing and mostly uncomfortable, as evidenced by the new Hyundai Elantra we rented last summer on our trip to Canada -- a car I never want to sit in again or ever drive.

I don't even remember what color Malibu we got now. That's how inconsequential it was to me for the trip. I believe it was black or a very dark gray. It was a fleet vehicle with Massachusetts plates I believe. Or Connecticut. Or Wisconsin. One of those states. Is it important now? Not at all.

It was already dark by the time we got it out of the rental lot and was only getting darker as we made our way to my parents' house, which was about a...eh, 40, 45-minute drive. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but we were again reminded that North Carolina drivers are fucking crazy, and that North Carolina highways -- even the interstates -- do not have lights on them. So we were driving through the dark, passing by swamps, over bridges and through forests almost completely in pitch-black conditions -- which I hate. 

"How many gators do you think we've unknowingly driven by, just off the side of the road in the swamp?" I asked Daisy.

By the time we arrived, my mother had already gone to bed for the night -- my dad made sure she got up and saw us for a bit before she returned to bed. We were exhausted, and we were immediately accosted by the dogs. 

My parents have three dogs -- two golden retrievers and one shih-tzu. Sofie (yes, spelled with an F) is the oldest and largest golden retriever I've ever seen. She's now 11 or 12, which is ancient for a dog of her size and weight, and when we visited WV in 2017 she had to be close to 200 pounds -- this dog was larger than either of my parents and heavier at that. In her old age since, she has now dropped a lot of weight (she's like 115, 120 now) but is still quite large and is absolutely nuts. She's a dog the size of a small bear -- she will step on you, she will knock you down, she will bark and howl in your face, and if she doesn't get the attention she wants, she will bitch-slap you across the face with her paw, sending your glasses flying across the room. 

Don't ask me how I know about that last one. 

The second golden retriever is a new addition to the household since we were in town last year -- her name is Annie and my mother insisted she be adopted from someplace in WV once her breeding years were over, so they did -- last fall, after we left. Annie is six or seven, and is very nearly the perfect dog. She is very sweet, very intelligent, makes a great guard dog, and is active and playful without being an asshole about it. She is what I would describe as the ideal golden retriever, the dog I wanted when I was growing up. 

Hachi is the shih-tzu, and he is eight or nine at this point -- I can't remember how old. I know that when we were in WV in 2017 he wasn't a puppy, but he also wasn't fully grown either. He is a very sweet, hyper little yappy dog who actually closely resembles the (now long-deceased) shih-tzu we had when I was growing up, Moot. But, unlike Moot, Hachi isn't an asshole. Moot was the biggest asshole dog I've ever known. Hachi is like Moot without the asshole tendencies like growling and biting at you or trying to hump you to dominate you. He's a sweet boy, a lapdog, and he really loves people. He especially seems to love me when I visit. Per my dad, Hachi has girlfriends all up and down the street and all over the island, and is universally loved by everyone.

So, as we arrived, we were basically bowled over by the dogs. And of course, they're loud and unruly, which woke up the parrot, who also became loud and unruly and began screaming, all at like 10pm. Daisy and I were tired, unshowered, had eaten very little (we'd had some food in the airport but that's about it) and just wanted to relax, decompress, and go to bed. 

I don't remember much of the rest of the night; I don't even remember if I showered or not. My mother went back to bed, and dad and I sat on the back porch for a bit so I could vape, then we watched a bit of Picard as the parents had recently acquired Paramount+ and he was just beginning the third (and best) season of the show. I don't remember if I ate anything else. I don't remember if Daisy ate anything else. I was burnt out from traveling the entire way and eventually, I went to sleep with her.

When I woke up the next morning, Friday morning, it was early. My mother is usually up by 7 or so, so she tells me now -- which is a somewhat new thing. The dogs usually get my dad up around the same time, maybe slightly thereafter. But I was up around 5 and could sleep no longer -- the bed in that guest room, which we slept on last year too, is so very hard to sleep on for me, especially as I get older. It really messes with my hips, knees, and shoulders, and the parents keep the house a lot warmer than we keep ours at home, even with the AC. Even though it's my parents' house and therefore my home by extension, I was not about to turn their thermostat down to 67 or 66 -- the temperature we like it at home when it's hot in the summer.

And it is hot in North Carolina. It can be cooling down everywhere else, but in late August/early September, it is very much still summer in North Carolina, and with that comes humidity (I mean, we're on an island there, so there's ocean) and oppressive coastal heat. It was usually already into the low 80s by the time the sun came up in the morning -- I am only guessing there -- and got into the mid 90s by the time the sun was well into the sky. It can be very uncomfortable.

Because it was so early, I got up and made a cup of coffee and tried to get a small sandwich or something to eat without being too loud for the family. The dogs at this point are used to me, and used to us moving around when it's still dark -- Sofie will watch me, acknowledge me and wag her tail a little. Hachi usually sleeps with dad, and Annie usually sleeps on a dog bed next to the bed in the master bedroom.

Oh, there's something else I should mention, lest this story become more confusing without it -- my dad has been sick. He went to the hospital the week before we arrived because he's had pain in his abdominal region stretching down into his groin area. He thought it was a possible kidney stone, a hernia, or a flare up of diverticulitis -- which he has had for some time, but hasn't had any real incidents of note of for many years. When he went to the doctor, he was told it wasn't a hernia and was indeed a diverticulitis flare up, and got some antibiotics for it. He still felt like shit, but the antibiotics helped. Still, he was moving a lot more slowly and in pain, and because of Annie being a nut and running circles around the bedroom when both of them were in bed -- and I am sure because of the pain too -- he had been sleeping on the couch in the living room almost exclusively, for what I assumed to be some length of time. While we were there, he got further results back from his doctor that confirmed that yes, he had multiple kidney stones too -- something that would have been nice to know about previously, of course. 

So, he slept on the couch, which made it a bit difficult for us to move about the house in the night or early morning hours for, well...pretty much any reason. I am not a quiet person, though I try to be as much as possible. Daisy has told me before how loud of a person I really am even when I'm trying to be quiet. And I also cannot see in the dark. The Keurig makes noise when you make coffee. Doors opening and closing make noise. Lights shower light all over the main floor of the house. The refrigerator and microwave make noise. The back porch lights turn on and off with a voice command to the Alexa. I can't stop those things from happening, I can only try to lessen their impact as much as possible. So it was a...very interesting routine I had every morning in trying to not disturb the parents before they naturally got up. I honestly don't know how I didn't wake them. Maybe I did and they didn't say anything.

Anyway.

That day, Daisy wanted to go get some vegan food, and we needed to go to the grocery store to get us some food and other incidentals for a few days. The place Daisy wanted to go was back in Wilmington, a place called the Sealevel Vegan Cafe. I actually think I'd found it some time ago in doing some research of the area -- it had what was apparently voted PETA's best vegan hot dog of 2021, a cornflake-batter coated dog with buffalo sauce and slaw on it. I honestly cannot remember what it was called now, but it was something I'd noted that I wanted to go try while we were down there, so Daisy made it one of the stops we'd make. 

We went there that morning through a classic Carolina torrential rainstorm, a storm that was not really predicted and raged while we were inside. The food was fine. The dog was disappointing, and easily the least favorite thing I ordered (though still good). What was fire was their chickenless chicken sandwich and the made in-house kettle cooked potato chips.

Afterwards, we went to get vegan donuts and beignets at some little mostly-abandoned place downtown, picked up some groceries to last us a few days, and returned home.

There are a lot of things we did on the trip that I have a hazy memory of now, honestly. I was drained the entire time we were there. The bed in our guest room was less than comfortable, as I mentioned, and it felt like I was constantly inflamed while I was there -- allergies were terrible (they were last year too) and all of my joints constantly hurt when there. Ibuprofen and glucosamine were my best friends. I was in a lot of body pain. Daisy seemed to fare mostly okay for the most part, which surprised me. The most enjoyable parts of the trip for me were the times when I was just able to be myself -- the hour or two in the mornings where I could get a quiet cup of coffee on the porch with my vape and a book, and just sink into the chair. Some mornings I got bored and restless doing this and hoped everyone would just wake up and move about the house so I could have some company, and others I was so relaxed I could've fallen asleep on the porch chair -- and may have for a few minutes, briefly, from time to time. 

The next day, Saturday, was the home opener for West Virginia University's football season, versus Penn State. I had been looking forward to watching the game with my parents for weeks, as it would be the first game we'd been able to watch together for many years. Daisy was on board for this and was excited in her own way as well -- she is not a fan of football at all (despite my many years of trying to indoctrinate her into its cult), but as she's told me many times about a great many times, she just loves to see me excited and happy, as that makes her happy too. My parents, of course, are football fans and can, at times, be very passionate about it -- indeed, the first thing I saw when we pulled up to the house a few nights prior was the giant WVU flag I'd sent them for Christmas last year proudly flying off the flagpole on the front porch.

However, that morning was the local craft fair -- which we were interested in going to. The farmer's market we'd been so excited to go to when we were down there had ended for the season a week or two prior, but the craft fair (which was half of the farmer's market anyway, and in the same spot) was going strong and was done on Saturday mornings, apparently. So we'd planned to go to that. We asked my mother if she wanted to join us and she said she would. Dad would not, he was not feeling great and did not want to have to walk around for an hour or two -- which I understood, of course. Craft fairs aren't really his thing anyway. They're not really my thing either, but I know Daisy found several really neat things when we were down there last year, and I know my mother likes them and usually sees people she knows. So, we all piled into our rental car and the three of us went -- marking the first and only time that we've ever driven my mother anywhere for any reason. 

There wasn't really anything there that any of us wanted or were willing to spend the money on, but Daisy did get this really cute picture of us:

Multicolored hair and all. 

Also shows the size difference between me and my (very small) mother -- I am very surprised that I came out of a woman that small:

Like, I'm a big guy, but I'm not like 600 pounds or anything. It seems like my mother gets smaller every year. Her own mother did that too as she got older, and I am slowly shrinking in height as I get older as well. I guess it's a familial trait?

Anyway.

After the craft fair, as we were not there that long, we stopped at one of the "Beach Life" (or whatever it's called) souvenir shops -- which I figured would be a fun excursion to take with my mother in tow. I have not gone shopping with my mother for anything in well over fifteen years at this point, so having her come with us while I got some salt-water taffy and a hoodie, I thought, would be a fun excursion. And it was. She found a dolphin necklace she wanted, and we got it for her (Daisy later told me how she would likely wear it proudly all around everywhere and tell people her son bought it for her while he was in visiting, which warmed my heart). I got a long-sleeved sky-blue shirt and a black hoodie with "save the turtles" on it or something; I thought it was nice and the generic Oak Island hoodie I bought down there last year, from the same shop, was great -- it is warm and comfortable as hell, and it got heavy use last fall and winter -- so this one I expect to get the same amount of wear and use. 

We returned to the house and watched the game -- it did not go well for WVU and I dozed off on the couch for a decent chunk of it. By the time the second half rolled around I had mostly lost interest; I spoke to my oldest aunt on the phone for a decent amount of time when she called, and my mother went to bed early. I don't remember what Daisy and I did; I know we sort of just eventually retired to our room and fell asleep at some point. 

This was how most of the trip went -- get up for the day, have something planned that we do that takes some of the day, return to the house, and then spend the rest of the day at home while everyone winds down. Interspersed with a trip to the beach here and there. 

Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "The Sequel"

(mostly written the morning we left, with some edits made after our return)

 Hi all.

Well, there is a lot to talk about going on in the background, and I alluded to that in my last entry here, but for now, it's time to talk about the trip to visit my parents in NC. I will go back and cover the other stuff when I can, of course.

So as you may or may not know, soon after our return from Canada (during which I zeroed out any and all PTO I had stored), I began making calculations and running some numbers to see whether we could feasibly, somewhat inexpensively, visit my parents in North Carolina this fall. Flights were looked at with varying departure dates, varying departure times, and of course variable prices. I knew and only knew the following:

1. I did not want to leave on a first-AM flight that would require us to be at the airport at like 4am

2. I did want to fly directly into Wilmington instead of Raleigh this time around, to eliminate the 3-4 hours of driving time in the rental car before we were even to the island upon which my parents live; Wilmington is 30ish miles from my parents' house versus 170-180 from Raleigh

3. I did not want to get a departure flight home that wouldn't get us back in Omaha until well after nightfall

4. I did not want non-refundable tickets 

5. I did want trip protection insurance, seat selection pick guarantees, and priority boarding (I paid extra for all of these things -- the priority boarding I added when we checked in for the flight online about 12 hours before leaving)

6. I did not want to check baggage for a five-day trip.

I had some, ahem, points of contention with the wife for that last one.

"[Daisy], all you really need is like three outfits and your swimsuit. And some sandals. My parents have a washer and dryer -- we can wear the same shit more than once, after it's washed of course," I said.

You know that old adage that some people plan and pack for a trip months in advance, and some throw a random smattering of shit into a suitcase the day of, and they marry each other? That's us. Want to guess which one of those two I am?

Okay, just to eliminate the guessing game, I'm the one who had his bag for this trip -- and it was indeed a bag, a sturdy canvas backpack -- packed fully by sometime around the second week of July. In fact, when the power went out and we were in the dark ages again, I had to go to that bag to pull out my iPhone charger to take to the parents' to re-fill my phone's battery.

Daisy is very much of the mindset that she may need to wear multiple outfits every day, because she wants something for all occasions -- in addition to needing every book, vitamin, gummy vitamin, granola bar, cosmetic, her hair dryer, etc. known to man. For a five-day trip.

My bag? Aside from the small essentials like my pills and a few vapes and my phone charger? Three pairs of shorts, four shirts, four pairs of underwear, a spare pair of glasses, and a spare pair of flip-flops. In a small Ziploc I also have Q-tips, my toothbrush/toothpaste, and some sinus/allergy pills. In the front compartment of my bag I have a single stick of deodorant, a single shampoo bar, and a single bar of soap. I also have a small Ziploc filled with our laundry detergent sheets and dryer sheets, so we don't have to worry about Daisy having any sort of allergic reaction to the stuff my parents use. I also included four tie-dyed shirts I made for my parents for their birthday, which was the week prior to our arrival. The real present is us, of course, but the last time I made them tie-dyes they loved them, so I figured that was a fun idea.

Part of packing light for me is because, yes, I will be perfectly fine wearing the same outfits a couple of times -- I'm at home with my parents; I have nobody to impress. Part of it is that I long to travel light, to not have to take a suitcase on a cross-country trip. And, finally, part of it is that there is a 30-pound box of comic books for my Dad, in my backpack, that is taking up a lot of space and weight. Once it is out of there, and once the parents' shirts are out of there...I will have a much lighter bag and much more space for anything I bring back. 

Anyway.

For all of those things in the above requirement list to be fulfilled -- regardless of the stuff about packing -- the round trip tickets for both of us, everything included, was close to $1200. 

It is what it is. Air travel is expensive.

Daisy was not happy with me about this, but I reminded her that there are precious few times left that we'll get to visit my parents when they're both alive, and they are genuinely grateful and excited when we go to see them. Plus, I was booking this trip, and was handling everything for it to my own, very admittedly neurotic, specifications. All Daisy had to do was book the rental car, which she did -- and very inexpensively at that.

Daisy's parents -- more Dad than Mama -- agreed to watch over the children [read: our cats] while we were gone, and I made sure to order them some extra treats and an extra case of food just in the event that we could be better prepared for any unforeseen circumstances. Daisy set up all of the security cameras around the house -- basically, nanny cams for the cats -- so that we could view them while we're gone. I put a hold on the mail, went down my to-do list checklist to make sure I took care of all I could, removed my debit card from my wallet and left my keys here (in the event Dad needed to take the car out of the garage for any reason) and grabbed all of my extra cash so I didn't have to use my travel-approved credit cards for absolutely everything while we were there. We told the parents we would Uber to the airport for the flight, but Dad insisted on driving us over there himself. 

My overall goal for the trip was not to be there for amusements or for destination events -- it is to finally be able to decompress and fucking relax for a few days. I have been wound so tightly and for so long that it's seriously starting to affect my mental health, my stress reactions, and my responses to people and things in my circle around me. On top of it all I have just been so very tired, so exhausted by life and everything bad that's happened this year that I just needed a genuine break; I needed it all to stop. While Canada was very fun and we did a lot of fun things while up there, I did not really see it as a vacation but more of a "family visit obligation." I was so burnt out by the end of it that I wasn't myself, I was but a withered husk of myself in clothes and flip-flops. 

The good thing about visiting my parents is that it can all just stop if we want it to -- we have no social obligations in North Carolina. We have no friends there. We went all the places we were interested in when we were there last year. We have no places we had to go to this year, aside from the grocery store and Walmart to get some essentials. Daisy wanted to go to the beach every day, which was not a hard concept because we're on an island. We also wanted to visit a few vegan restaurants to try what they have, but even that wasn't super-imperative to either of us, really. 

So, the parents picked us up from the house and got us to the airport on the morning of the trip, we got through security quickly and efficiently, and we finally lifted off the ground -- wheels up, jets blasting, toward North Carolina...