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?
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