Holidays 2024, Part V: Thanksgiving (American This Time)

 Sooooo.

I mentioned in my last entry here that Daisy's sister and their family were supposed to arrive from Denver on Monday. This is how the week was supposed to go:

1. Monday: Family arrives.
2. Tuesday: Daisy does the shopping while I sleep and we likely go visit with the family in the evening before I work (that part was just assumed, not stated).
3. Wednesday: Daisy attends a morning Christmas Pageant play-thing with Mama, her sister, and the boys; I sleep because I worked the night before, then she comes home and begins prepping food.
4. Thursday: Thanksgiving.

That was, anyway, the rough plan.

Here's what actually happened:

1. Monday: Family does not arrive, mentions that they'll push their arrival out until Tuesday evening. Daisy goes to four different stores and spends close to $400 on various ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner.
2. Tuesday: Family does not arrive -- four hours away from Omaha, on the highway in the middle of nowhere in the cold, their large SUV blows a major part and leaves them stranded. They are, luckily, able to get to the nearest town and get a hotel for the night, with a plan to get it looked at in the morning to see what's wrong with it. I do the last possible Walmart+ delivery order to get the last few items we need before dinner on Thursday.
3. Wednesday: Family finds out that the major part the car blew was the alternator -- which is a $1200 fix. Also, sister-in-law believes their second-oldest son may have pneumonia, and with the car being down and him being sick, they waffle on whether they should continue the journey to Omaha or turn back. Eventually, they get it fixed and decide to press on, and arrive in town in the evening/night hours. I re-purple my hair to get it nice and thickly colored for family photos.
4. Thursday: Thanksgiving, which is a story in itself -- I'll get to this below.

It has been a very weird, strange week for me. I have not been able to get nearly as much rest as I would have liked, the foods for Thanksgiving dinner were far more expensive than I thought they would be, and between working the first half of the week, doing chores around the house, and otherwise just existing, I can tell you that it's been far more tiring than I expected. Maybe I'm just getting old. 

Despite all of this, and all of the above mentioned setbacks, I was very excited for the actual holiday. It is one of the very few times of year that I can actually, generally, relax and have time and space to myself. Thanksgivings of the past -- at least since Daisy and I have been married -- have been strongly about family. Usually, one side or the other of the family comes into Omaha and we all feast and the kids watch movies and run around the yard (and usually I fall asleep in a chair at some point like an old man). The last year we had everyone here for Thanksgiving, though, was probably close to a decade ago now, before Daisy's middle sister and family moved from Nebraska to Vancouver, then to Alberta, then to Pennsylvania, and now to Ohio. That side of the family did come to town for Thanksgiving two or three years ago (I can't remember now) as it's been a while. 

Last night, I inexplicably had a lot of energy in the evening and night hours, and since I didn't have to work, I started burning it off by doing chores that desperately needed to be done and by helping Daisy clean and prep the kitchen. I envelope'd the first half of this year's Christmas cards, I did all the laundry that had been waiting for days, I shredded the remainder of my shred box and took a giant bag of shreds downstairs, I vacuumed my upstairs office, I washed and replaced all the blankets on my upstairs chair (the one I like to fall asleep in) as well as on my ottoman, etc. I have to use energy when I have it; if I don't, it goes away never to return.

I ended the night by watching the first half of Interstellar -- which I have never seen before (what a great movie) and by having a 1am dance party to Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan in my room -- judge me if you will -- to try to make my body tired enough to pass out. It's really difficult for me these days to change up my schedule.

I did eventually fall asleep sometime around 2, only to wake up shortly before 6 feeling, as Christopher Titus would say, like a vampire with a paper route. I did not want to be awake; I wanted to sleep more. But, I'd set an alarm to wake me up for the parade anyway, as is tradition/prophecy. So, since I was awake, I called my parents and talked to them for a bit, and while watching the parade (even well after Daisy was awake and had already started meal prep) I finished up the rest of the cards.

I ran into a problem, however -- I ordered 60 cards this year. I did this because usually I have 4-5 left over when I order 70, which feels like a waste of money, and because I know a few people have been deleted from the cards list over the past year or three.

Don't look at me like that -- they've either died, their cards have been returned weeks or months later as return-to-sender, unknown recipient and they haven't responded to my messages or sent me cards themselves with a new return address, or they are people no longer in our lives or social circle(s) for various reasons. I do have to trim down the list every few years.

The problem with doing this is that throughout the course of any given year, I also end up adding people to the card list. This year, since we were able to see multiple folks in Canada I hadn't seen in a couple of years, there were a few I added -- as well as a few more folks along the way. So, when I finished addressing envelopes this morning and as I was getting to the bottom of my list, I had 60 cards and about 66 or 67 people to send cards to.

Dammit.

So, on Thanksgiving morning, with a headache and not nearly enough caffeine in me yet for the day, I went back online to the site I order my cards from and ordered a paltry ten more -- ten more of the more-expensive, pretty cards that Daisy liked more than I did (mainly because she was not a fan of the other design). They arrive by the end of next week, and when they do, I can finally finish The Cardening. 

All of the other ones will begin going out tomorrow and Saturday. 

I know I go into a lot of detail every year about the cards, but they are truly important to me. Good Christmas cards are a lost art; I don't know if the recipients appreciate them as much as I love sending them, but that process always holds a special place in my heart. I get to think about each person, each family, as I hand-address and stamp their individual envelopes. I am thankful for all of them in different ways. 

Of course, there are legit 100 more people I'd like to send cards to, but for a lot of them I don't have their addresses and it would be extremely cost-prohibitive to do so. This year's card order, all inclusive with stamps and everything, was about $250. Some of you will likely think that's absolutely ridiculous, and to an extent I agree with you. I do it because it's important to me -- all of those people are extremely important to me. 

Anyway, I've gotten far off track.

So, for hours on end, Daisy prepped the Thanksgiving dinner. Her contribution was...well, most of it, actually. She did green bean casserole, vegan gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots, stuffing, and a pecan pie. Not to mention that we also provided the vegan turkey (which I would eat, and nobody else would touch -- not even Daisy, as she is gluten-sensitive). 

"Are we the only ones doing dessert?" I asked. 

"No," Daisy replied, "Mama is making not one, but two different cheesecakes, and [Sister] is making something too."

"...so, four full desserts...for a total of ten people. Two of those people are diabetics."

Yeah. Welcome to Thanksgiving in this family, y'all. Strap in. 

I want everyone here to know that I am serious about Thanksgiving -- down to the outfit I wear. I almost always wear some shade of brown, or multiple shades of brown. This is because if I get gravy or any other sort of food on me, it doesn't show up as much on brown as much as it would on black or white. I also make sure I put on a belt that is very adjustable and wear a pair of pants/jeans that is a little looser than normal. The latter is not really a problem anymore; I have lost a substantial amount of weight over the past few years, as you know, and am down to a 42 waist -- maybe even a 40, I dunno -- for the first time since...high school? Something like that. Therefore, all of my 46-waist jeans basically hang off me, and 44s are pretty loose/won't stay up without a good belt. I plan for this when dressing for Thanksgiving. I know I'll be somewhat bloated and definitely heavier after dinner. That looser belt and looser waist will help. 

Make no mistake, Thanksgiving is horrible for my diabetes and for my health in general -- way too many carbs, way too much sodium, and in the desserts definitely too much sugar. But, it is what it is. It's a holiday. I don't eat it every day, I don't overeat in general or make myself sick with food, and I consume large amounts of liquid/water every day. I should be fine, but I'm always careful and always somewhat mindful of what I'm putting into my body, especially as my body these days can be sort of unpredictable. 

Anyway.

The parents requested we do dinner at 1pm -- this was a special request that Dad had made of us weeks ago -- he wanted to do it early and be done with it early, so he could very likely go to bed early in the late afternoon or evening hours. Dad is a lot like me -- I wouldn't call myself a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but on weekends I do flip around my schedule and I want to get everything accomplished as quickly as possible in the day so I can come home and crash out. And, honestly, I expected that of myself too; I like the idea of a big dinner as early as possible in the day -- make it an event and spend the rest of the day slowly digesting it.

That "1pm" dinner got pushed to 1:30, and then 2, before we got to the house...to find nobody ready anyway.

Okay, well...

Look, I know in our family we straddle the lines of being both the closest/most accessible of our generation (read: the favorites) but also the black sheep that the rest of the family -- parents excluded, of course -- likely roll their eyes at. We're the only "non-traditional" family members who aren't super-religious, who have tattoos and wildly-colored hair, who have cats instead of kids and the least expensive house/vehicle possible. We get it. We're not excluded or anything, but there is a different expectation set for us than there is for the rest of the family. For example, they all know Daisy is chronically late to everything and that she thinks time is just a construct that doesn't matter. They all know that I'm not an "outside" person, not a "go do activities with everyone for family fun" person. They know Daisy is the best cook in the family, the most passionate and argumentative person in the family, and they know that I'm not going to bullshit them or really change my personality much at all to interact with them. Point is, we know who we are within the family structure. Daisy might disagree with some of the above, but I'm not wrong.

For the record, they all also know that we're the most reliable and dependable people in the family, and will be the first on the scene when and if they, or the parents, need anything for any reason. 

So getting back to the story, nobody was ready for us despite the fact we were an hour late. Daisy's sister and at least one of the younger boys were on a walk around the neighborhood, our brother-in-law and the other boys were basically lounging around the house, the table hadn't really been set by anyone (there were a few things on it, but not nearly everything) and we entered the house to find the parents -- our old parents -- slaving away in the kitchen to get everything done on time (the stuff they were responsible for, anyway) with no real help. 

Daisy and I immediately dove in; we recruited our oldest nephew to help carry in the foods from the car, I helped set up the table and move stuff from the kitchen to the dining room, repeatedly, we rounded everyone up -- easier said than done, of course -- and we finally sat down to dinner.

Dinner was fine. There was plenty of food for everyone. Nobody was left wanting. Daisy's homemade green bean casserole, complete with vegan cream of mushroom soup and gluten-free french-fried onions, was a hit. My vegan Field Roast "turkey" loaf was as marvelous as it always is. Daisy's famous homemade vegan gravy, her special mashed potatoes, and the boiled carrots were all delightful as per the usual. Mama's rolls were amazing. Nobody wanted for anything. I even got one of the kids to try the vegan turkey loaf (he liked it, but was vocal that it was "different" and "not turkey.")

About an hour after dinner, after all the food had been put away (a joint effort between myself and Daisy for the most part) and the dishes had all been rinsed off and table un-made (a joint effort of all of us), they tore into the desserts. Daisy had made a pecan pie, as mentioned above -- I had tasted the "batter" for it, so to speak, when she had been making it in the morning hours. It was great. Mama had made not one, but two different cheesecakes, and Daisy's sister (I think, I can't remember) had made a pumpkin pie. So, ten people, four desserts. All of them pies.

Two asides here -- for one, a cheesecake isn't a cake, it's a pie.

For two -- I am not and never have been a pie person. Unless it's a pudding pie with a graham cracker or Oreo crust, I am not interested at all. I don't like pie crust, I don't like most pie fillings or types of pie, and in general I am just not a "pie guy."

The entire family -- everyone but me -- are pie people. 

Don't get me wrong -- I do love desserts. But I like cake. I like brownies. I like puddings (like actual pudding, not like bread pudding -- I mean like Jell-O out-of-the-box pudding, Snack Pack-style pudding) and rum balls, peanut butter balls, fruit salads, "salads" in name only, cookies, candies, ice cream, candied fruits, cobblers, etc. But not pie. I would not go as far as to say I hate pie, but I would go as far as to say that if pie is the only dessert option I will not be having a dessert.

It's just who I am as a person; you can feel free to judge me. 

This did not matter in the grand scheme of things anyway as I was very full from dinner and did not want anything anyway. In fact, my stomach wasn't really faring that well with the dinner, and I didn't eat a whole lot, really. I had one plate, and I couldn't even finish Daisy's potatoes. My guts were staging a revolt

I have mentioned here before that I am sure I have some sort of gastrointestinal issues -- I either have IBS or some form of it/variation on a similar condition, and over the course of the past two years or so it has become particularly debilitating at times. Within an hour of a meal on most days, no matter what I eat, I must go running to the bathroom. Now, luckily, I almost never leave the house, so for like 90% of my daily life this is an annoying, but not overall terrible problem.

Except we ate an early dinner and we were expected to be at the parents' for several hours afterwards for family time. 

Shortly after dessert I definitely felt that intensely familiar gut rumble. Additionally, I had some acid reflux -- which I almost never have anymore, but I also had it the night before when we were cleaning up the kitchen so Daisy could do some cooking.  At that time, I took some Tums, which seemed to get rid of it and allow me to sleep normally enough on Wednesday night.

I made a graceful exit from the conversation and proceeded to the bathroom fifteen feet away...where I had to unleash the fury for about twenty minutes straight. In that time I had other family members trying to come use the bathroom no less than four times -- I could not help it, I was in there quietly dying. 

It was well after dark by this point, and we had been there for many hours. Daisy had been upstairs talking to Dad, who also hadn't been feeling well -- he was having arrythmia/heart issues and had very quickly slipped upstairs once dinner had finished. He was fine, but just wasn't feeling great, and asked Daisy to leave so he could read and go to sleep. Mom had also ventured upstairs by this point to make sure everyone was okay.

The kids and our brother-in-law were in the living room, watching The Grinch on one of the streaming platforms -- the new one, with Benedict Cumberbatch -- which is actually a pretty good movie overall, all things considered. I watched it on my own a few years ago one day when I was bored, and it's a fun little film. 

I wasn't paying attention to that though, I was paying attention to the really strange rumble in my guts and the waves of almost crippling nausea I was facing. I texted Daisy, who was still upstairs at this point, and said that I really needed to get home as I did not know the next time I'd have to be stuck in the bathroom. I put on a brave face for the family, but my thoughts were that if I were going to have crippling, screaming shits I'd rather have them in my own house, on my own familiar toilet, instead of at the parents' with the entire family surrounding me.

Daisy, to her credit, was about ready to go anyway, and we immediately left the house like, five minutes after I sent her that text message. I apologized to her; I absolutely would have loved to stick around and spend more time with the family had I been feeling better. I was awake and alert and wasn't tired, despite the fact I'd been awake since 6am.

When we finally got home, after a drive that felt like forever as my stomach was doing flips and flops with every turn and bump on the road, I was able to shed my Thanksgiving clothes and finally use my own bathroom -- but it was not satisfying. It was, ahem, not enough, so to speak. I didn't last much longer. Exhausted and sick, I collapsed into my chair in my office and passed out. And, so, Thanksgiving ended.

But, unfortunately, that's not the whole story.

Holidays 2024, Part IV: Thanksgiving (American This Time), The Lead Up

 Well, now we're into it, aren't we?

As I write this, it is Saturday, November 23. This means we are but five days away from Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving has always been a magical time for me, at least to an extent. It's a deeply nostalgic time more than anything else. There are multiple traditions I've always tried to keep for Thanksgiving, traditions that mostly started when I was a child -- some, of course, I've been more successful at than others:

1. Get up early on Thanksgiving morning and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade™

2. Follow that by watching the dog show

3. Follow that by eating a fuckton of Thanksgiving food

4. Follow that by watching whatever football games are on in the afternoon/evening hours

5. Sleep early and be awake very early in the morning (like, 2am) for Black Friday shopping -- either in person or online.

Over the years, most of these traditions have changed heavily or have gone away completely. Most of the time I don't watch the dog show now and most of the time I also only about halfway pay attention to the parade -- the parade has become too commercial in all of the worst ways. It's no longer about the parade itself with the commentators and balloons and marching bands, but promoting whatever's on Broadway or singers/dancers etc that nobody has heard of and cares even less about -- and that's interspersed with far too many commercials. Like, an obscene amount of commercials. The years where it's most interesting are the years where the weather is really bad, like snowstorm weather or high winds or whipping rain, etc, where the balloons careen into things and/or do property damage. 

Also, it doesn't help that most of the balloons I grew up with are no longer in the parade. I remember seeing Garfield, Snoopy, Spider-Man, Superman, Woody Woodpecker, various iterations of Pikachu, etc when I was a kid. I don't know if any of those balloons are even still flown anymore. If they are, they've been featured in blink-and-you'll-miss-it short segments before they have to go to another commercial or have yet another low-rent singer or Broadway act perform a song nobody has ever heard of. 

As for the dog show, well...when I was a dog person, I really used to enjoy it. My mother still does and still watches it every year as she cooks the Thanksgiving meal. These days I'm generally just bored by it. I have five cats -- dogs no longer interest me for the most part. Cats are the superior pet, and most of them are nowhere near as needy. 

The Thanksgiving food and football traditions are still pretty standard and haven't changed over the years. I don't always get to watch the football -- it depends heavily on where I am and what family is in town, and sometimes even who is playing each other in the games (though that doesn't usually matter that much to me, honestly). 

I do tend to go to sleep earlier than usual these days on Thanksgiving night, but usually because my schedule has been flipped and because I've been awake since the early morning hours. Holidays are hard when you generally work overnights; they tend to sap a lot of your energy, especially if you need a lot of prep time for them beforehand, and they also require just as much downtime and recovery time after them. But, I do remember the days of waking up at like 2am to go to Target, Walmart, Best Buy, and various other stores for Black Friday sales, and being there when the doors opened at 4 or 5 to get deals on things. Those times are way over for me now. I have a mortgage and lots of bills now, and the newest iPhone; there's not a lot of disposable income I can blow on a big-ticket Black Friday purchase. And most of the time now, I don't even pay attention to the sales online -- the last few years of Amazon's Black Friday and Cyber Monday stuff has been abysmal, with absolutely nothing I've wanted or needed. 

I also don't think stores realize that their "sale" items for Black Friday actually have to be on sale. We don't want like $20 off retail price, we want Wish prices, Alibaba prices, Temu prices on stuff. 

But, I digress.

Daisy has said there's one thing and one thing only she's specifically looking for on Black Friday this year, and that's a new food processor for herself/us. But it has to be the right one, of course.

Now, we have a food processor -- Mama, as the first gift she ever gave me for anything for any holiday whatsoever, gifted me a relatively nice food processor in 2012 when Daisy and I had first gotten together. It only got sporadic use for a few years until Daisy and I got married, which was when we started using it more.

Well, after 12 years, while it still works okay, it's not exactly in the best of shape. It's near impossible to fully clean, some of the plastic parts of it are cracked, and Daisy -- who is in the midst of cleaning out and redoing our entire kitchen, including repainting the walls dark purple (like my hair) in the near future -- wants a new one. I'm fine with this, of course. Whatever the wife wants, she gets. Daisy does the vast majority of the cooking in the house anyway; I make dinner for us like once every 6-8 months or so. Liberal estimate. And how much could a new food processor be, anyway? $200 at most? Sure. Go nuts, my lovely wife.

I finished all Christmas shopping for Daisy about a month ago or so. She also let me know she has finished shopping for me, even though there wasn't really anything of substance I asked her for. For some ideas, as according to her I am notoriously difficult to shop for, I sent her a few links on Tiktok for some handheld retro gaming systems, mentioned that as per the usual I would love the new Uncle John's Bathroom Reader book for 2024, and said that if she really wanted to make me happy, she could get me Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department 4-disc anthology collection once it's released at Target on Black Friday (and available online the next day). 

No, I'm not making that last one up, I'm 100% serious. Judge me if you must; that's an objectively great record.

But honestly, I don't really need anything from Daisy for Christmas, or even for my birthday for that matter. There's not really anything I want, and I tried to abide by her wishes this year and not spend a lot of money on her (I succeeded in this) and to get her things she'd enjoy. I also have zero clue what she's gotten me. Daisy has consistently gotten strange gifts for people when left to her own devices. One year she got me this little statuette of what looks like an anthropomorphic ballsack that sits on my desk and stares at me with judging eyes. One year she got her father a gigantic ceramic fish that was talked about for the better part of a decade (remember, we've been together a long time). This year, I truly have no clue what she could have possibly gotten me. I prefer it that way, too. 

My gifts for the family (and some friends), of course, are the tie-dye shirts. I have already boxed up most of them, including some of the ones I will need to mail out to Daisy's sister and family who now live in Ohio (previously they had lived in two different provinces in Canada, and then in Pennsylvania for the past two years). I'll likely send a box of them to my parents too, though I am not sure yet -- they also got several of them when we visited in August. We'll see what happens; I am not exactly happy about shipping costs via USPS right now, but it is what it is. 

We still have a fair amount to do in the leadup to Thanksgiving; for one, we don't have most of the ingredients yet for dinner. Daisy and I will need to go pick up potatoes, carrots, onions, and likely a few other key items in order to make dinner happen for the whole clan on Thursday. And yes, it will be the whole clan -- Daisy's sister, our brother in law, and their four boys arrive in town from Denver on Monday. It was iffy for some time whether they'd be coming in or not. For big family dinners like this, Daisy almost always handles all the vegetables for it, creates the (vegan) gravy and makes the stuffing, Dad handles the turkey, Mama handles rolls and likely at least one type of dessert, and to round it out Daisy usually makes some sort of pie as well. In general, I usually have to do next to nothing in the actual meal prep. I do offer my help and services, but usually am shooed out of the kitchen as soon as I ask. Sometimes I get to peel the carrots. It's complicated is what I'm saying.

Because the family will be in town in two days, we also have a lot to do on the backend for ourselves that we're just not going to have time to do the rest of the week. I work tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday. The family is taking the kids to the zoo on Wednesday (they have free passes that expire at the end of this month). I will not be attending, as, well...I'll be asleep after working all night Tuesday night. I took off Wednesday and the following Sunday to stretch the holiday from a three-day-weekend into a five-day-weekend just to get some more recovery time. 

This also does not stop the normal household errands and chores we have to take care of on a regular basis, nor does it put a pause on Daisy's kitchen renovations; today we're going to attempt to get most of those necessary grocery ingredients for dinner, plus pick up cat litter and wrapping paper, and visit the parents for a bit of quiet time with them before the entire family arrives in town. A lot of this unfortunately cannot wait until next weekend or be parceled out into shorter errands one-at-a-time throughout the week; about the only one that could would be picking up wrapping paper and/or other holiday necessities. However, for the next three days I'm pretty flexible; I'm going to sleep when I can and work on helping Daisy get stuff done when I'm not asleep and not at work. I can be sleep-deprived or a little more stressed than usual on a short week of work. I can sleep all day and all night Wednesday if I need to. 

Holidays 2024, Part III: Four More Years of Darkness

So, I mean, here we are, I guess.

I haven't written about November 5th here yet (or as I will call it moving forward, Black Tuesday) because I could not really put my thoughts down in writing about it. 

Time and again this country has shown its true colors. Time and again this country has failed to stand up and fight for what is morally right, what is logically right, what is truly patriotic and would progress our people in the most rational and levelheaded ways. 

Instead, they choose to rally behind a failed businessman with a spray tan, 34 felonies, multiple rape accusations, a bad comb-over, and former reality television host with dictatorial aspirations.

For a second time. 

That above is, of course, the very short list too. 

You know, after eight years of George W. Bush, when Obama was elected I began to regain hope and pride in my country again. A country that could elect a black man as president, a man who was truly presidential and likely overall the best and most stable president of my lifetime, I thought deserved and even warranted hope.

In 2016 when Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were running for the Democratic nomination, I was thrilled -- two very progressive candidates, both with extensive political experience and with high hopes and big plans on what they could do for this country to propel it forward and make it the most respectable place in the world again -- were vying for my vote.

Then it started to go downhill quickly. The DNC did some rather sneaky shit (look it up if you don't believe me) that basically kicked Sanders out of the running and stopped him from being the nominee, and once Hillary became the nominee I was jaded by the process -- especially once her really inspiring campaigning basically stopped. And all of this happened during the rise of Donald Trump, out of a large sea of potential Republican candidates -- the most unlikely candidate of all of them who was never expected to actually win the GOP nomination. He was the exact antithesis of Clinton, even more so than he would be to his future opposing candidates in the other two elections he'd run in in 2020 and 2024. He became a novelty, a clown, a candidate those who weren't tied to the establishment were like "let's vote for him, how bad could he actually be?"

In the summer of 2015, Daisy and I visited her family in Nova Scotia for the first time. Her grandfather, who was still alive then, had a conversation with me at the dining room table -- just the two of us -- regarding the upcoming election the next year. I told him, and I quote, "he will run, and he will win, because Americans are fucking stupid."

A little over a year later, I was proven right. 

A lot was said during and after the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton was an "unlikeable" or "untrustworthy" candidate. I voted for her not necessarily because I really wanted to, but because I wanted to vote against Donald Trump. I was a big fan of Bernie Sanders, and I believed the party did him dirty.

It made no difference.

In 2020, after a really strong initial campaign, Sanders once again dropped out. I voted for him in the Nebraska state primary, very proudly. By the time the votes were tallied he was already out of the race. In the actual election, of course, I voted for Joe Biden -- I wasn't incredibly enthusiastic about Biden, but he was, again, not Donald Trump. I was thrilled when he won.

And then January 6 happened, and then once Biden took over everything he really tried to do was stonewalled by Republicans, and then the student loan forgiveness stuff I've been waiting for to be pushed through for years got stonewalled and basically shut down, and every time I saw the man in an interview, on television, or during a State of the Union he looked older, more tired, and more defeated.

Then came the disastrous debate (which happened while we were on Prince Edward Island, actually, so I didn't get to see it), and a few weeks later he dropped out in favor of Kamala Harris taking the reins.

I must admit I wasn't a huge Kamala fan in 2020. But, the way she got Democrats to rally around her this summer and fall, the way she was able to unite everyone in the ways that mattered, the fact that she picked a VP candidate in Walz who everyone wanted to be the country's Dad -- all of that gave me some hope. In the days leading up to the election, I was actually really filled with hope, hope that maybe we'd be able to finally have our first female president, maybe we'd be able to pull ourselves up out of the nightmare of three Trump candidacies in a row and say goodbye to the orange goblin forever. 

On election night I was soundly proven wrong, watching state by state by state fall to Trump one after another, all night long, while I only halfway paid attention to work. It was the third election night in a row I would spend at work, but watching the television more than focusing on my tasks. 

Somewhere around 2am or so -- I honestly can't remember when as I had, by this time, entered into what I call a "fugue state of panic" -- it was called for Trump, and never changed. We would, again, be plunging into four years of darkness. None of the numbers made sense to me. None of the statistics were adding up. Nothing that had been a near-certainty was anymore. 

For the past two weeks I've been in a low-level state of shock, I think. I want anyone who is outside the US and reading this to know that no matter how it may look from the outside, most of us do not want a second Trump presidency. Additionally, none of us in that group wanted the first one either. We are a global embarrassment. I am deeply disappointed in the other half of my country, and disgusted by them. This is not the America I want, not the America I want to be proud of -- not the America I grew up in. You can say a lot of things about Reagan and Bush Sr. and Dubya, but none of them were insane. They were respectful, rational human beings who were not assholes, and they were not felons -- all of them were immensely qualified for leadership in many ways.  

The entire system though is problematic. It's dismaying. But, oh well, who knows whether it will even exist in four years? Who knows what rights will be stripped away and what darkness we will face moving forward as we slowly further slide towards a fascist dictatorship.

"But Brandon," you may be saying, "do you really believe things will get that bad?"

I honestly don't know. I can't be certain of anything anymore. And I think that's where this sense of impending doom, this dread, this constant anxiety is coming from -- nothing makes sense anymore. It all feels like a sick joke.

Things I am almost 100% sure of? World War III will start within the next year or two. Prices on everything will rise because of tariffs. Millions of people will lose their jobs. "Political enemies" of the administration will be taken out in not-so-subtle ways. There will be food shortages, supply chain breakdowns, and major infrastructure issues. People will lose their homes. People will lose their healthcare. People will not be able to afford gasoline or prescription drugs to take care of their long-running medical conditions. The state will try to force religion and religious values on everyone for everything. It's going to suck very much to be an American.

For the first time, I have seriously been considering other options for relocation and employment in another country. I know it's weighing heavy on Daisy's mind too. However, we can't really do that and leave her parents behind here. I've floated the idea of doing it just for the next four years -- putting the bulk of our actual stuff in storage and just finding four years' worth of temporary work somewhere -- and then coming back, but that seems even less feasible. Also, it's not like you can just up and leave immediately, with five cats, to live in Europe somewhere -- that is so very much harder than it sounds, and requires a lot of money. 

So what do we do? I honestly don't know. It's really hard for me to shake the feelings of impending doom I have. Daisy feels much the same way. Do we just march on in silent resistance? Do we just detach from everything regarding news and politics for the next four years and bury ourselves in work and hobbies? Do we stand up and fight what we already know is an absolutely losing battle? I have no idea. 

Selling One's Soul

A few weeks ago, one of my friends posted this list on Facebook. I thought it was extremely laughable, as I think most lists like this are. So, as I am prone to do sometimes, let's do a good old fashioned deconstruction!

BY AGE 40 YOU SHOULD BE SMART ENOUGH TO REALIZE THIS:

...For grammar's sake, it should be "these things," but y'know, whatever -- like the internet has ever cared about proper grammar.

1. Someone makes 10x more than you do in a 9-5 job because they have more "leverage" with their work.

Someone makes 10x more than I do in a 9-5 job because they got lucky, slept their way to the top, had better opportunities or privileges growing up (i.e. they weren't born in a backwater state and didn't live on top of a mountain until they were 24), had better ideas than most people, had financial backing from a relative/corporation/angel investor that fell in their lap, or took risks that 95% of others wouldn't take -- again, see the "they got lucky" above. "Leverage" almost never has anything to do with it. Privilege does.

2. Distraction is the greatest killer of success. It stunts and destroys your brain.

Distraction is necessary so that you don't become a fucking zombie or spend your life as an incurable workaholic. Rest and relaxation is indeed important. Downtime is important. Vacations are important. Love, family, and stability are all important. If you don't have any of these things, you'll be a pretty miserable person.

3. You shouldn't take advice from people who are not where you want to be in life.

You shouldn't take advice from almost anyone unless you can directly utilize and either exploit or build upon it to better yourself or your family -- without repercussions or downsides. In general, take any advice with a grain of salt, or an entire shaker.

4. No one is coming to save your problems. Your life's 100% your responsibility.

Well, that's the damnable misery of it, isn't it? And for a lot of people, I cannot think of anything more absolutely, devastatingly depressing. There are people I know who have done everything possible to try to better themselves and their station in life and have gotten absolutely nowhere despite their best efforts and best intentions. There are also people I know who have turned around their entire lives with a simple decision they made one day when they woke up. Point is, not everyone can do that -- it again boils down to luck, opportunity, and privilege, which is 100% outside of most peoples' control.

5. You don't need 100 self-help books, all you need is action and self discipline.

And money. And opportunity. And luck. And privilege. This list was very clearly written by someone who had all of these things. 

6. Unless you went to college to learn a specific skill (ie. doctor, engineer, lawyer), you can make 

more money in the next 90 days just learning sales.

Which is really, really goddamned sad. Because unfortunately, this one is likely correct. But I don't want to sell my soul to sell items or policies, or concepts, or insurance to benefit yet another corporate overlord, not to mention that I don't want to victimize the public or have my entire worth in whatever career I choose be boiled down to numbers or metrics. This may be the most depressing thing on this list. Does anyone really want to do this with their life? Anyone? Are there people out there who are like "I was put on this planet to sell things that people don't need to people with too much money to care?" What a shallow, hollow existence that must be. 

7. No one cares about you. So stop being shy, go out and create your chances.

Okay, all kidding aside, this one I mostly agree with. You'll probably fail, because this world is a miserable and awful place, but go for the gusto. You can at least say you tried.

8. If you find someone smarter than you, work with them, don't compete.

Something I have learned, continually, my entire life is...there will ALWAYS be someone smarter than you. A lot of us "smart people" did not get fully hit with this realization until we went to college. Working with them IS indeed an option. But, if you can find a way to make them work for you -- as in, a way to benefit from being associated with them, or can find a way to make them roll up to you in a command structure in a support capacity...then how smart are they, really? Of course, the other option remains to not compete with them whatsoever, but to best them and/or crush them.

9. Smoking has 0 benefit in your life. This habit will only slow your thinking and lower your focus.

I agree, as a former smoker myself, that it has zero actual benefit and was absolutely detrimental to my health -- but never once did it slow my thinking or lower my focus, or affect my sense of self. Some of the best creative work I've ever done -- writing, art, etc. -- was done while slowly chain-smoking through a pack of cigarettes and drinking a pot of coffee. I'm not endorsing smoking here of course, but I'm saying that it doesn't kill everyone and doesn't affect everyone in a wholly negative fashion.

10. Comfort is the worst addiction and cheap ticket to depression.

Vehemently disagree here. Constant uncomfortability, lack of stability in one's finances/health/love life or learning/career path is your ticket to depression. Constantly fighting to keep what you have and never seeming to break even -- or worse, only breaking even with no progress and an endless cycle of grind with no end in sight...THAT, my friend, is depressing. Let me tell you, I worked hard for many years to get where I am, and that process was depressing as fuck. But, once I could get my finances stabilized, once my career stabilized, and once I married a good woman, you know what happened? About 90% of the things I was previously depressed about went away, as did the actual depression. Comfort is not a ticket to depression; it is, in fact, the opposite. You have to be at least mostly happy to be comfortable. 

11. Don't tell people more than they need to know, respect your privacy.

Unless telling people more than they need to know will somehow benefit you in the long run, this one is mostly true. 

12. Avoid alcohol at all cost. Nothing worse than losing your senses and acting a fool.

Just like everything else, there is a time and a place for alcohol. It is not all the time, but sometimes you need -- truly need -- to just lose your senses and act a fool. Just because you occasionally drink does not automatically deem you an unfit or unwell person. And it also doesn't mean you lose your senses and act a fool when you do drink. People are allowed to be people. So much of this list basically sounds like "by the age of 40, you should know better than to do anything you actually enjoy that makes life worth living."  And I say this as a recovered alcoholic myself -- I stopped drinking in my 20s, and can count on one hand the number of alcoholic drinks of anything I have had in the past decade. But you know what? I'm not going to tell people they can't live their lives and drink if they want to. In fact, if I wanted to keep in the true spirit of this rather spiteful list, I would say "let everyone drink as much as they want -- it will destroy those who can't handle it and weaken the rest so you can conquer them." But I'm also not that big of an asshole. 

13. Keep your standards high and don't settle for something because it's available.

Except there's a point where this has to stop, right? You can't always be like "no, that's not good enough for me" or you will end up a truly miserable person that no one and nothing can satisfy. You have to truly know yourself and know your wants and needs out of life before you can set your standards. Not everything is a competition and there are, indeed, some things you can settle for and be happy with, because if your standards are set too high, you will never achieve them. Also, bonus fact -- some people will never achieve their goals in life even if their standards are moderately low or reasonable. That's just how shit is; that is life. 

14. The family you create is more important than the family you come from.

Look, while I mostly agree with this, it is also just as problematic. I know a lot of people who have created or joined "problematic" families -- whether by choice or by circumstance. This is another one of those situations where you really have to know yourself and who you really are, and who you want to associate yourself with (or be associated with). For example, a lot of my actual family back home in West Virginia are Trump supporters (mostly for all of the wrong reasons)* and because of that, I consider a lot of them toxic and don't really associate with them. But on the same side of that coin, you can also surround yourself with people who you don't believe are toxic or problematic and still be wrong. Choose who you associate with, family or otherwise, very carefully -- because you may find that sometimes it's better to not actually associate with anyone and to forge your own path free of a lot of those tribal connections.

15. Train yourself to take nothing personally to save yourself from 99.99% of mental problems.

But...there are some things that are absolutely meant for you to take personally. Part of living as a sentient being with emotional and actual intelligence is separating what is directed specifically at you from generalities. I'm not a fan of most criticism, constructive or otherwise -- few people are -- but sometimes people need to know, and to be outright told, that they're a fuck up or a fuckin' idiot and it is definitely meant personally. I am not immune to this either. But, to tie this to "99.99% of mental problems" is downright cruel and wrong. That also absolutely reeks of privilege. People don't choose their mental health -- just as an example, I know schizophrenics, depressives, and bipolars across the board, from many walks of life, who would give anything to be mentally well, mentally stable, to not have to worry about their next episode or when they'd start hearing voices again. Their mental health issues did not come from taking everything they were told personally -- that is an absolutely unhinged, uneducated, and able-ist assumption and approach to mental health and is simply wrong. 

*Note: I do not believe that there is any "right" reason to vote for Donald Trump -- but I do understand that there are many voters out there who honestly believe that he is the correct choice to lead this country again for a myriad of factors. I don't have to agree with their reasoning, nor do I have to support it -- and I very much do not. But, I understand their conviction. I understand they feel they are passionate American patriots and that their vote truly will better this country -- and to me, they are entitled to their incorrect opinions. 

That being said, there are people who voted for him for the exact wrong reasons -- things like "well, I don't like anyone who's not white either and want to deport all of the immigrants" or "I don't want a black Indian woman running my country" or "women shouldn't have rights and I can't wait until Trump and Jesus take them away again" or "trans people don't exist, and I don't like them gays neither" or "I want to be able to justify beating and abusing women again like it was in the old days" -- and to those people I say you are on the wrong side of history, and you will learn this soon enough.

Empress's First Birthday

 Nothing of substance in this post, just pictures from Empress's first birthday party (November 3).

She was thrilled. 

Holidays 2024, Part II: Gravy Season

We have yet to make plans for Thanksgiving this year -- we do not yet know if either of Daisy's sisters will be able to make it to town (one of them is on the move constantly, and the other has not yet confirmed with us whether she and the family will hit Omaha for the holiday or not). I have already taken the night before Thanksgiving and the following Sunday off work to stretch it into a five-day weekend for me, as I have the feeling I will need that breathing space regardless of what we do. 

And we are well into that lead-up now, aren't we? After all, Halloween is over now and as of yesterday afternoon (though it probably started in the morning) the local "we play everything" radio station 104.5 has now switched its broadcast to 24/7 Christmas music for the remainder of the year. 

It's too early, y'all. There are still turkeys and gravy to be consumed.

November 1 traditionally is the start of Gravy Season, a holiday season that if I didn't create it myself (I'm still not sure it was all me) I'm sure someone else would have at some point. I've been celebrating it, let's say, for about fifteen years give-or-take. It is a celebration of all things gravy and gravy-related, in a humorous fashion, as a counterpoint to the commercialism of Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Christmas. Honestly, I cannot have been the first person to come up with it -- there's just no way -- but it does seem to have taken off a lot over the past decade or so. Gravy Season runs until December 31st. 

And this year...I'm not exactly "feelin' it," so to speak.

Don't get me wrong, I still find it amusing, but I am just not into the holiday spirit yet. I think the election is weighing heavily on my mind, and I also think that I've been under a very large amount of stress for so long that it's really difficult to shift my mindset into something new and festive/fun at the moment. The weather isn't even really Novemberish yet:

Like, that's September weather, or early October weather at best. It's not the weather we should be having leading up to Thanksgiving. 

I'm not against this, mind you, but still. It doesn't feel like the holidays yet. And I think that's a big part of it. When I have to wear a coat when leaving the house for anything, or when I must wear socks and slippers and pajama pants in the house -- that's when I think it'll feel like the holidays are upon us.

Or when it snows for the first time.

Last year, it waited until after Thanksgiving to snow -- it was almost perfectly timed, actually. Thanksgiving last year was November 23. Our first snow was November 25. That snow sort of ushered in the real holiday season and got me into the mood for it. 

This year, Thanksgiving is late -- it's the 28th, which is almost the latest day it can actually be (y'know, because calendars). There's a non-zero chance we'll have snow before Thanksgiving Day, as we've had snow here in Omaha in early October before. I don't care about snow that much anymore; I don't have to be out in it most of the time for any real reason, and as long as my internet works and the power doesn't go out...fuck it, I'm fine here inside my warm house with the wife and the cats with a fridge and pantry full of food.

My Christmas shopping is essentially done; Daisy is getting what she asked for, and I've made tie-dyes for basically everyone else I'd send gifts to. I have to get a few little things for my parents still, and we'll likely pick up a few things for Daisy's parents here and there (we've already been doing this, off and on), but otherwise I've mostly finished. I have no real regrets, and I've stayed budget-conscious where possible. 

As I've also mentioned before, the Christmas cards are done. They were designed, ordered, delivered, and are awaiting Black Friday to begin being sent out -- with several sheets of new stamps to be used for them, too.

But the holiday spirit? I'm not feelin' it yet. And I don't know when or if it's going to come. 

I did get confirmation from Daisy this morning that yes, I can go ahead and do tie-dyes for the rest of the family -- her sister, our brother-in-law, and all five of their kids -- because yes, they will appreciate them. So I am not done yet, not by a long shot. That means I ordered several more packs of shirts this morning and a few more dye sets. My hopes are that I can be done, and I mean fully done, by Thanksgiving. Any leftover shirts I'll box away for following holidays such as birthdays and the like. Or maybe I'll give some out to some random folks or other friends for Christmas this year; I mean, I do have the shipping boxes already. I am guessing this will be part of the last real "Christmas shopping" I'll have to do for anyone. 

I've swapped out my wardrobes for the most part -- I moved the lighter shirts to the back and moved the sweaters, hoodies, and jacket-like shirts to the front. I have stored the vast majority of my shorts for the winter. I have put away all of my sandals except for the pair I'm wearing. Daisy has cleaned out the last of the garden and has performed her final harvest from it. I'm already getting push notifications from my Walmart app on the phone for early Black Friday deals. And, of course, the fall allergies have arrived for both of us -- they arrived weeks ago. 

My sleep schedules are very off and/or are somewhat haphazard -- I have not been sleeping that well during the daytime hours, and when I get to the weekend (the times where I don't have to sleep on a schedule because of work) it feels like anything goes for my body and I absolutely can pass out at any time for a long stretch of hours, usually in my chair. In the past 24 hours, I've slept almost 10 of them across two different sessions. I'll have to take another nap this afternoon/evening before I work tonight, too -- I can't stay up for a full 24+ hours anymore despite how hard I try sometimes. My body will absolutely no longer allow that. 

Holidays 2024, Part I: Sweet Demonic Ceremonies

 So, here we are.

In my life, the holidays start with Halloween and end with New Year's Day.

October 31: Halloween

November 1: The Start of Gravy Season

November 5: Election Day (maybe the last one the US will ever have)

November 28: Thanksgiving

December 20: My birthday

December 24: Christmas Eve

December 25: Christmas Day

December 31: New Year's Eve and the last day of Gravy Season

January 1: New Year's Day

And then four months of midwest snow, cold, and depressing darkness.

I told Daisy this afternoon that we really need to enjoy this next two weeks or so because they may be the last two weeks we really get to live in a free country. 

I've not made it a secret that I am not a Trump supporter. I am very concerned about what will happen in this country after the election on the 5th and way more concerned what will happen regardless of the vote outcome in January, when whoever is elected takes the reins. Because, no matter what, it will not be without controversy. It will also likely not be without violence and bloodshed. Halloween may be the last actual "holiday" we have in this country that seems normal if the less-informed, less-educated masses elect Trump again.

There's a lot of ballot initiatives, at least here in Nebraska, that need to pass too. One of them is medical marijuana, because of course Nebraska is 20+ years behind most of the rest of the country and are just now getting that on the ballot. Another one basically codifies Roe v. Wade again here in Nebraska. Still another one votes down public money being used for private schools (ahem, there's a reason private schools are private, and let's keep it that way please) along with various other tax initiatives and the like.

I could get into a long list of political stuff here but I won't; I'm sick to death of it myself and just want the brown woman instead of the orange man in the White House, so that my country doesn't collapse or descend into anarchy or civil war. Anything else is ancillary. 

This week, Daisy (finally) set up the Nintendo Switch I got her last year for Christmas and began actually using it.

Mind you, Daisy is not normally a huge fan of any sort of video games; she has a handful from her childhood with a SNES that she holds fond, nostalgic memories of, and that's about it. However, for the past three days she has been glued to the Switch and the games I got her for it whenever we've had any downtime whatsoever. This, honestly, I am happy about -- it's why I got it for her. I have my own Switch (a Switch Lite) that I keep upstairs in my office and play occasionally, but I wanted her to be able to sort of re-live her childhood again, the joy of getting a new game system and a bunch of games. She is a good wife, a wonderful wife, and she deserves to be able to detach from the world and dive into a game just like anyone else does. 

I have been very exhausted as of late and my body isn't really treating me well. I am pretty sure I have IBS -- irritable bowel syndrome -- and trust me when I tell you I am not a fan. It is not fun, it is not pleasant. It is painful and somewhat debilitating at times. My appetite has almost disappeared, and I'm sure I've lost some weight over the past two weeks or so. 

I'm sure part of it is likely the Trulicity regulating my body again as I'm once again getting my system used to it, but it was never this difficult before. I have but one month of it left before I will have to see my PCP for more bloodwork -- likely sometime in December -- before he'll refill it or any of my other meds again. I'm really just taking the way I feel day by day at this point; some days I'll feel just fine and others I will feel terrible -- low energy, strong nausea, every joint aching or in some sort of pain, and then there's the IBS on top of that. I'd like to chalk some of it up to allergies, especially the nausea and joint aches of it all -- from the seasons changing, etc. I somehow doubt, however, that's the overall causes of everything. It feels like my body is breaking down sometimes, like an old car with 300,000 miles -- the engine is tired, the transmission is slow and slipping (with discolored fluid) and the gas tank is full of sand and varnish. 

And some days I'll wake up and feel like a million bucks, with no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. 

Through it all, I am constantly tired -- I haven't been sleeping that well. I do sleep, of course, but it's usually in 5-6 hour spurts here and there throughout the work week. I like to nap on my lunch hours when I can, and on Thursday night I overslept my alarm by almost a full hour -- which has never happened before. I'm now terrified I'm going to go to lunch one night and wake up at 8am to numerous calls and messages asking what happened to me. That's generally a fire-able offense, and I really really need my job right now. 

I think part of it is that this year has just worn me down in so many ways, and at this juncture it's really catching up to me. I'm usually pretty unfazed and pretty unbothered, but 2024 has been quite brutal, as I've covered here before earlier this year -- and that's just the stuff that I've actually written about. There is a lot more I've kept very private for various reasons.

So, with all of this in mind, we attended a friend's Goth Wedding™ on Halloween a couple of days ago.

I've talked about this before here and I've also mentioned that I am not particularly a huge fan of attending weddings or funerals -- both tend to be highly emotional events and both tend to affect others a lot, but me not so much. When people get married, they get married. When people die, they die. I don't tend to cry for either one. 

This wedding, however, was important -- because as small as it was, both Daisy and I were heavily involved. Our mutual friend getting married we both worked with and have been friends with for over a decade. Daisy took her engagement photos for her, and would be taking the wedding photos. I became an ordained minister in the event that I would need to perform the ceremony. I didn't need to, but still.

And, for the record, I'm all for nontraditional weddings. The last wedding before this one we attended was -- and I'm not kidding here -- a Harry Potter-themed wedding, where all the guests were encouraged to dress in their own house colors, wear costumes if they so chose, etc. The minister was dressed as Dumbledore. It was...interesting. 

When I learned that the theme of this Halloween wedding would be...well, for lack of a better term, Halloween themed, I got excited. I originally assumed costume wedding again, but apparently that wasn't to be the case -- just gothic-themed, in nature (a wooded park). The bride and groom would both be dressed in black -- that told me all I really needed to know.

I made sure I cleared by wardrobe (via the wife) with the bride -- black jacket, black pants, my Misfits t-shirt, my new Chuck Taylor-style sneakers with flames on them, and freshly-dyed blue/purple hair. All of that was immediately approved. Daisy ended up wearing a black dress and a dark yellow cardigan with Wednesday Addams-style flat dress shoes and spiderweb fishnets. She also put a lot of purple in her hair (I keep trying to get her to just purple all of her hair, but she adamantly refuses to do so). 

And so, we arrived in Iowa -- a large, sprawling park on top of a mountain (yes, a mountain...in Iowa) with a huge scenic overlook that looked back towards Omaha. It was a near-perfect setting for the wedding. We found that we were two of but eight people there -- the bride and groom, the bride's sister and mother, the officiant, Daisy and the bride's former boss (another mutual close friend of ours)...and us.

It was a sweet little demonic ceremony -- and I do mean that literally -- ghosts, ghouls, creatures, and blood/bodies were all mentioned in the ceremony and the vows, and it was a traditional hand-fasting Celtic/Pagan affair, complete with drinking of port wine and cords and everything one would expect. I filmed the entire ceremony on Daisy's phone, and Daisy had her very nice, expensive camera taking many, many photos of the event -- before, during, and after. Daisy will edit these photos and will provide them to the couple, along with the video, at some later date. 

After the wedding, it was a quick cleanup for the folks there and then we were gone -- nobody would've had any clue whatsoever that a wedding had taken place in said park. It was a really sweet, cute experience. Daisy and I went to Target on the way home to pick up a few necessities, and we were back in our house for the night shortly after it got dark. 

Yesterday -- since I'd taken Halloween off work for the wedding -- I was well-rested and actually awake in the daylight hours on a Friday for once. We'd decided to make it a "date day" because we actually both had time off and were both awake and energetic for once. So, we went thrifting around town and found three beautiful kitchen chairs for our table, for $8 each -- and we then went and had a late lunch at Crystal Jade, our favorite local Chinese place. We ended the day by visiting with the parents for a bit and then picking up cat litter at PetSmart, and I passed out in my chair shortly after it got dark and slept all night long.

I've been knocking stuff off my to-do list as much as possible, one task after another. I can now say that I am completely done with all of the tie-dye for Christmas, and have separated and boxed up all of the shirts I've made for gifting them. Two boxes of them were in fact mailed out to faraway folks yesterday morning, just to get those off the docket too.

However.

I had enough for the parents, Daisy's sister and her husband, and their four boys (plus the two friends I mailed shirts to, mentioned above). I do not have enough for Daisy's other sister, her husband, and their entire family of five kids if they choose to come into town for Christmas or if Daisy wants to send them a box of shirts and have that be their presents this year. To do that, I'd absolutely have to get more shirts and more dyes; I have a few "spare" shirts I made in a few different colors and sizes, but absolutely not enough for a family of seven people. 

I could do it in a weekend and it would be a somewhat inexpensive endeavor to do so, but I need to consult with Daisy and/or the extended family to know if they're going to be in town for or around Christmas (still very much up in the air, even though Mama tells me it's likely not going to happen) and see if Daisy actually wants me to put in the effort of doing that or if she wants to just order and ship them something else. We have 53 days until Christmas as I am writing this, so we have some time, but it's not an incredible amount of time.

Just when I thought I was done, right?