Holidays 2024, Part XII: Christmas Eve

 Well hello again, everyone.

Christmas Eve is upon us once again, and I know I have not written here in a while, so let's backtrack a bit over what's transpired during the past few days, from the minor to the more significant:

• Mable is becoming much more of a "daddy's girl," and now that I've been off work for a few days, she has decided that her favorite place to be is in my upstairs office with me -- regardless of whether Pete is in there with me or not. If she is closed out of my office, she will sit at the door and trill/cry loudly until I let her in. 
• We had a pair of guys come look at our downstairs toilet again, as we feared there was something wrong with the trap or wax ring at the base. Nope. Plumbers thought it was all fine, told us to use the downstairs sink every day so that trap didn't dry out, and to put cleaning tablets in the back of the tank of the toilet, deuces folks. Okay. 
• All of my gifts -- all of them that I will be gifting tomorrow -- have now been wrapped. This took multiple hours over a few sessions. 
• I accidentally drank a dose of NyQuil instead of DayQuil on Sunday and slept for over 13 hours.
• We visited Modern Love -- the premier vegan restaurant of Omaha -- one last time for a date day meal yesterday. They are closing on the 29th, permanently. 
• Sadie is, thankfully, still alive.
• We need to sit down with Mable sometime today and get Santa hat-and-scarf photos taken of her for "baby's first Christmas," etc. Because, of course, it's her first Christmas.
• It is still up in the air at present time (no pun intended) whether we'll be doing the traditional Christmas Eve church service with the parents.
• We've still yet to finalize Christmas morning plans, whether we'll be getting up and running over to the parents' early or if we'll be going over later. 
• And, finally, I did get to celebrate my 42nd birthday.

That last one I would usually unpack in its own post, but this year I did not. Honestly, I haven't really had the energy to sit here and write for long stretches of time as much as I would like to -- every day there's been another task to complete, and when there's not, my body and mind have basically been in shutdown mode. Meaning -- I just want to sit in my chair and nap off and on, play a game on my phone or on one of my handheld devices, listen to podcasts, read a little, and not do anything I don't have to. I've been so tired for months on end and this week has allowed me a little downtime to where I can actually get some meaningful decompression...and it's been bookended by holidays so I still have something to look forward to and/or care about in the interim.

To those ends, early in the week last week we finalized plans for my birthday -- I told Daisy I wanted to go mail my box to my parents -- it contained half of their Christmas gifts, the other half were shipped to them via Amazon -- and then go to the mall (Westroads Mall, one of two remaining malls in Omaha) to walk around and take in the Christmas shopping environment, decorations, people, commerce, etc. I then wanted to go to Burlington, as this is generally the absolute best time of year to get stuff at Burlington and when I can generally find all sorts of stuff in my size. After that, we'd go to the local grocery store and pick up the remaining ingredients necessary for my birthday dinner of poutine (fries, a protein of some sort for the side, and string cheese to cut into chunks for the curds). 

I thought this was a pretty solid plan -- just some fun little things to do that wouldn't put pressure on me to have a good time or else, and to just see where the day's adventures took us. 

I wanted to leave the house a little after 9 -- the mall opened at 10, and I wanted to be some of the first people there so we could get a good parking spot and wouldn't be fighting through throngs of people.  Plus, we had to mail my parents their box first. Yeah, it was a Friday morning, and I assumed it would likely be a lot of folks' last day at work before they took the entirety of this week off. I was mostly correct in that, of course, but we'll get to that.

Daisy didn't roll out of bed until after 9, and we didn't leave the house before 10:30 or so. The post office where we mail stuff from is two miles away, inside the local Hy-Vee grocery store. It's really fast and convenient and generally I have zero trouble. It was $26 to mail my parents their box (standard flat-rate shipping) and we picked up a few small items there as well, including taco shells for our Christmas-with-the-parents taco night dinner (this was Daisy's choice, but I'm 100% good with it). 

From there, we went to the mall -- getting there around 11 or so, to find it crawling with people but not completely overrun. It took a bit to find a parking spot rather close to the building -- my birthday was the coldest day for the remainder of 2024, with a high of like 26 degrees and whipping wind -- and we were inside. 

Westroads Mall is a really nice, fancy mall. It's easily in the top ten malls I've ever been to (#1 is some way rich-people mall in Denver that has a Tesla dealership inside it, amongst many other things). And, ten years ago when I first moved to Omaha, it was even nicer than it is now. It was the only mall I'd seen in many years that still had a Suncoast movie store in it well into the 21st century, for example. It's giant, its stores are giant, its food court is awesome, and it is all around a great mall. 

However.

It has probably been five or six years since I've been inside Westroads for longer than half an hour or so. And, in that time, brick-and-mortar commerce has drastically changed. For one, we had a worldwide Covid pandemic, and for two, I can't remember the last time I actually bought a Christmas gift for anyone in a store in-person -- it's all been online for me. Everything this year that I got for Daisy was purchased online. The stuff I got for her parents, my parents, all online. So, I couldn't remember how the mall was really laid out, and the holiday decorations and people everywhere really didn't help much -- or help Daisy much, honestly, she who had been there far more recently than I had been. 

But, it has a TikTok Shop in it.

No, I'm not kidding.

In case you're wondering, it's full of cheap Chinese knock-off bullshit.

The mall has changed quite a bit. Gone are most of the stores we would've been excited to visit -- for Daisy, that means Lane Bryant and Torrid are now gone from the mall. Sephora, where she's gotten some stuff in the past, also appeared to be missing (though I admittedly did not look too closely). For me, sadly, Suncoast is now gone -- I don't know when it disappeared.

[EDIT -- Google tells me 2022.]

In addition to Suncoast being gone, the bulk candy shop is now gone, Auntie Anne's pretzels have been reduced to a small kiosk in the middle of the mall and they only sell three different pretzels, Old Navy was still there and still large, but only carried winter clothing and mostly nothing above an XL, and we took a cursory glance inside Hot Topic but didn't even bother to go inside Spencer's Gifts or Gamestop. Of course, all of the other stores I loved at Christmas time while growing up are long gone and have been for a very long time -- National Record Mart, FYE, Waldenbooks, Kay-Bee Toys, Radio Shack, etc. Can't even get a damn Orange Julius anymore whilst shopping, or a pretzel and nachos from Hot Sam.

Overall it was a bust. Daisy got a little bag of ducks from Five Below -- which has a presence within the mall there now, so figure that one out -- but we got nothing else. I still had fun and it still put me in the Christmas spirit. I made sure Daisy knew that, so that she would not think I was disappointed -- because I wasn't. A bonus to all of this is that we ran into my friend Adam while in the mall, and I got to introduce him to Daisy for the first time. 

The excursion through the mall took about 90 minutes, roughly, and we walked almost two miles. So if nothing else, it was good exercise. 

Our next stop was Burlington -- but we chose the Burlington across town, because the one we usually go to, Daisy had been to earlier in the week to get me a really nice plaid fleece hoodie for one of my birthday presents, and she said it was literally the only nice thing in the store -- the rest of the store looked terrible and rundown and picked over. Undeterred by that, I asked if we could just go to the other one, because my luck with Burlington at this time of year is rarely bad.

Well, this time it was bad.

There were a couple of things in the Burlington we went to that I was moderately interested in, but nothing that jumped out at me that I needed. I am looking for a new coat (I'll get to this in a bit below) and I just can't find one anywhere in my size or the style in which I want without spending $200 or more, which I'm not fucking doing. I would've bought a shirt or two, or a pair of pants or two, but I just didn't need them. I didn't even bother to look at shoes, their housewares/kitchen sections were piss poor, and we purchased nothing. I was shocked. Burlington is usually amazing this time of year. This year it was not. And apparently the other one we normally go to wasn't either, so says Daisy.

So let's recap -- the only thing I'd been truly successful at, at all, during my 42nd birthday was mailing a box of presents to my parents. 

Daisy asked if I'd wanted to do anything else, and I said nah, let's just get the poutine stuff and go do the dinner with the parents. So, that's what we did. We got the groceries, including a few extra things for the Christmas tacos, and went to the parents -- where we had poutine and cake for dessert. I ended up feeling very ill shortly after dinner and had to hit the bathroom multiple times before we even came home...where I again hit the bathroom multiple times. No, not the surf and turf. Just digestive issues because my body is an asshole. 

So what did I get for my birthday? Here's the list:

• An entire tray of homemade, amazing, Little Debbie-style Christmas Tree cakes from Daisy
• A new, blue-and-green plaid patterned shirt jacket ("shacket") hoodie from Daisy
• An Anbernic handheld game device, from Daisy, that I'd apparently had on my Amazon wishlist and had no clue I'd put it on there
• A box of various snacks from my parents, along with a shirt that says REAL MEN LOVE CATS in giant block letters 
• Three pairs of Duluth Trading Co. "Buck Naked" underwear from Daisy's parents
• A hand-sewn passport wallet case from Mama

I was overall very happy with my birthday, even with the intestinal distress at the end of it. Once we got home, after that had passed, I passed out in the chair in my office and slept like the dead for multiple hours, far into the night. 

The Anbernic handheld game device Daisy got me worked for about ten minutes, and then worked about 20% of the time I tried it before it completely froze up and died on me; it's a known/fairly common issue with those devices, and we're returning it so Daisy can get her money back. There are various, very intricate and/or downright stupid things you have to do to fix one of those devices -- which I am not doing -- and I told Daisy "fuck it, let's return it and you can get your money back for it." So, we'll be doing that at some point over the next few days.

Returns have been a big thing over the course of the past week or so; of the four other handheld gaming devices I bought from the TikTok Shop since Black Friday, two of them were defective as well -- one of them had a broken internal LCD display, with a big broken line down the middle of it, and the other (like the Anbernic) worked once or twice before it would never boot up again past the OS loading screen, and if it did try to get past that screen, it would throw an insane number of errors and would reboot over and over with no change. 

Daisy already returned the broken-screened one earlier this week. I'll return the one that doesn't boot myself over the next few days...along with the "5XL US size" peacoat I ordered that would not actually fit most small-to-medium/normal-sized adults. It also arrived on my birthday. Judging from the size of that, I immediately went in and canceled the order for the wine-red one that had still not shipped yet, because I'm not going to be burned twice and have to return yet another item I would've waited on for over a month. 

Needless to say, it's been frustrating. Ironically, all of the gifts I ordered for Daisy for Christmas, as well as the numerous band t-shirts I've ordered from the TikTok Shop, all arrived without incident and were as described and/or as expected. My adventures with the TikTok Shop are done at this point, though; I need to find a way to burn a $39 store credit I have on there in my account, and I'm sure I'll find something I want, but otherwise I have no need to ever even open their storefront again after that.

[EDIT: I did this a few minutes ago; I got a Star Trek hoodie and a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt to kill off that credit.]

So, anyway, back to the present.

Today is Christmas Eve. Daisy has spent the morning wrapping gifts -- not just for me, but for the parents too -- and we are waiting to see if we're going to do the 4pm family church service with the parents. Mama isn't doing too great this morning, but has told us that could change in a matter of hours. We're in a holding pattern at the moment to find out whether it's something we're doing, as the answer one way or the other will determine when we shower and go over to the parents (and of course, it will determine what we're wearing for the day). Daisy and I spared no expense on "finger foods Christmas Eve" where we're planning to do a lot of cheese and crackers and snacky things for dinner/evening with the parents. If we don't go to church, that'll take place earlier in the day and I'll wear sweatpants and loafers because fuck it, it's just the four of us. So, we'll see what happens. I'm pretty easygoing either way.

I'd like to be able to come home this evening and watch a Christmas movie with Daisy, but it's going to require a lot of energy to stay awake that long. My body woke me up around 4am, and my goal is to stay awake all day and all evening, with no naps, just powered by caffeine and excitement for Christmas. I've always had trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve ever since I was a boy; I vividly remember many Christmas Eves that I would just lay awake staring at the ceiling, maybe occasionally dozing off for 20, 40 minutes at a time, just waiting for it to be an "appropriate time" to get up and move about the house in the morning. This did not and has not changed, really, as an adult. 

The exception to this was when I lived alone for a couple of years; I didn't really have any reason to get up early on Christmas morning. Why would I? It's not like I had any plans, presents to give, or presents to open. It was just another day on the calendar for those years. One year I basically completely slept through Christmas (I believe this was 2011) and was happy when it was over. 

The year after that I was up early as well -- it was the last Christmas I spent in West Virginia and I was visiting my parents. I made them a bunch of tie-dyes (so this trend really hasn't changed much) and the weather was so awful that we didn't go anywhere.

The first Christmas I ever spent up here in Omaha with Daisy, before we were married, I was awake at 5am. We were at her parents' house and her sister, our brother-in-law, and (at the time) one kid were there too. I had been to the parents' numerous times, but I'd never been up and about in the house before when everyone had been sleeping. So I crept downstairs, made coffee, played around on my laptop for awhile (this was a time before I had a smartphone) and chain-smoked several cigarettes in the cold on their snow-covered back porch before people started waking up for the day. 

Once we were married and in the apartment together, this didn't change much. I was always thrilled for Christmas with the family as it was something I hadn't really experienced on a regular basis in a very long time. We'd always try to get over there early in the morning when the family was in town, or they'd have breakfast and start unwrapping gifts without us (good luck trying to get young kids to wait until their aunt and uncle arrive from across town). I loved just sitting there and taking it all in, watching the kids tear into things that we'd gotten them and the parents had gotten them, every once in a while opening a gift of our own. There's something about that experience, seeing the joy and the happiness in the kids' eyes, that was magical for me.

I know I've said it here before, but Christmas is really about the kids and about family. I don't need the pomp and circumstance; I certainly don't need the presents. It's about spending time with those who are most dear to you. Some years, in the dark years, that was the cats. In the many years since, that's been Daisy, the cats, her parents, and her family -- whoever is in town during said year for the holidays. Sometimes we attend the church service, sometimes we don't. Sometimes the weather sucks, sometimes it's gorgeous and we could wear shorts and t-shirts if we wanted to (one year it was like 75 degrees on Christmas, which was wild). Some Christmases are better than others. Some Christmases aren't fun at all, and are more exhausting than celebratory. 

This year, it's another quiet Christmas with just us and the parents -- all of the other family are off in faraway lands doing faraway things, so we're just doing The Omaha Christmas™ as a small, muted, quiet affair with the parents. And you know what? I'm okay with that. It has been a very long, very stressful and tiring year, and this will be a good way to just be merry and relax.

Holidays 2024, Part XI: Excitement

 Days until 42nd birthday: 5

Days until Christmas: 10

Days until holiday PTO starts: 4 

After being awake for approximately nine hours, during which I was doing all manner of chores and fulfilling household responsibilities, I crashed out in my chair for several hours. I was then awake for a few short hours in the afternoon before crashing out again and sleeping until 4am, followed by four more hours awake, then another four hours of sleep.

My sleep schedule is fucked, everyone. I don't even know anymore. I will need to drink some strong coffee tonight to reset myself for the last four days I'll be working before the holidays.

Because, yes, we are now in the home stretch -- the last few days of work, the last few days before my birthday, and ten days until Christmas. It will all go much faster than we all think. 

I still have a lot to do, of course. Even though I was done shopping for Daisy in October, the TikTok shop swayed me on a number of items, and I'm waiting on them to arrive. I'd like to wrap all of Daisy's gifts at once if possible; it's going to be a long process simply because there are many little things that will need to be individually wrapped. At this juncture, it's going to be a hail mary on whether all of the stuff gets here before Christmas.

Even the stuff I've gotten for myself off the TikTok shop has taken a very long time; the wine red peacoat, for example, is heavily delayed -- it's possible it won't even get here before late January. I've extended it once (if an order doesn't ship within ten days of purchase, you can either cancel the order or say "yes, I still want it" and it'll push it out another month before automatic cancellation). I've gotten a handful of things really quickly, though -- like within 2-3 days after ordering. The rest is taking forever. It's likely going to be a crapshoot if most or all of it arrives before Christmas, given shipping delays and the overall busy-ness of holiday mail. 

By the way, as far as I know, Canada Post is still on strike, so I'm guessing our family up there will not get their cards before Christmas. They likely won't get them for 2-3 weeks after the strike ends, as it is much slower up there to get cards (or anything) than it is down here. I've gotten a few cards from friends and family this year already, but as you know it's diminishing returns every year. Last year I got 24 cards in return -- this year I have, at this juncture, received four. I'm sure outgoing mail from Canada is affected too, because why wouldn't it be? So that's likely cutting into the reception count.

Overall, I am getting excited -- getting into the Christmas Spirit™ as it were -- as we inch closer to the holidays. Because I am so ready for them. I am so ready to experience a little joy, a little stress-free time with the wife and the family. My birthday I could really give or take, but the lead up to Christmas? Magical.

To those ends, I've got four more days at work and wow will I be checked out during that time. I am already mostly mentally checked out as it is. I am, as they say, over it -- and if I had the PTO I would've put in for this week as well. I should actually plan that better for next year -- just save up as much PTO as possible and take the 15th through the 30th off or something like that, just to be done with it. I mean, if I'm still working there next year at this time, anyway. Given the way they've been terming folks and yanking others to other line groups and teams, who knows. Over it.

Five days out, plans for my birthday are still murky and up in the air. I've floated several ideas to Daisy but I'm not even really that enthusiastic about most of them. I thought Dave & Buster's could be fun to do on a Friday morning when they first open, when there's nobody there -- but it's still likely to be very loud in there and also an expensive trip. I don't want or need another tattoo right now either. Because I'm having occasional intestinal distress that may or may not be caused by Trulicity, I don't necessarily want to go out to eat -- if we do that, I'd rather just get pizza delivered by our favorite mom & pop local shop, and even that I'm not incredibly enthused over at this juncture. There are absolutely zero movies in theaters I want to see right now. Indoor miniature golf, which we did on our anniversary because we thought it would be fun, was a major letdown. 

However, there are a few ideas that I thought might be interesting or fun. 

I told Daisy we could go get her hair cut and make an event of it if she wants -- I would enjoy that just as much as she would. She has said she wants to cut it short -- like really short, and I'm okay with that if she wants to do that. I'm just letting mine grow out for the winter and will keep re-coloring it blue and/or purple until the weather gets warm enough to where I don't freeze when I go outside with short hair. She didn't really seem into this idea that much.

Another thought was to go to JCPenney and get goofy glamour shots done of the two of us -- which I would love and have wanted to do for a long time, but...it is very expensive ($150 bare minimum) and the timing isn't great -- ideally I'd want to do that for Christmas card photos, and all of the cards have already been sent. I also can't get those photos done and end up waiting a year before I share them online, no -- they would be posted ASAP for the world to see. Also, you have to make an appointment for this, you can't just waltz in there and say take pictures of us, bitches or something to that effect. It's a decent idea but maybe it's best left for another event holiday. 

My other thought was that...I really, really miss the mall around Christmastime, and Omaha does have a big, still rather thriving mall called Westroads. I told Daisy I would just love to wander through the mall, look through various stores, see if there's anything I/we want just to see if I can recapture some of that nostalgic spirit by pretending it's still the 80s and 90s. Daisy thinks I'll end up frustrated and disappointed, and that is indeed possible. Making a run through Burlington is another option. I wish Kmart was still a thing. 

This year's birthday just feels directionless for some reason -- in other years we've had set tasks to do, things to look forward to and accomplish to really feel celebratory. A couple of those years it's been tattoos (2019, 2021), a few of them have been tentpole movies like the Star Wars films or a comic book movie, and last year the entire day was spent looking for the cat who would become Empress (we didn't find her until four days after Christmas). I don't want my birthday to be frustrating and unhappy, but I also don't want to just sit at home and be like "well, I'm 42, I guess." I just want to do something fun, and it's so tiring and frustrating to find something I'm actually interested in. 

I also know that my energy will be limited, likely; no matter how much rest I get, I will feel like crashing in the late afternoon/early evening hours. When I am off work I am very much a morning person -- I know how weird that sounds, yes -- but I'm the guy who sleeps a few hours in the overnight and is up by 4am, 5am, taking care of things for the day. Daisy is not a morning person and will sleep until noon or later if she can. So, if we're going to do things on my birthday, that will absolutely need to change. I'd like to be out the door and on whatever adventure we're doing by 9am. 

Whatever happens I will write about here, of course.

In other news...

Sadie is getting really close to her time, we think. I don't know if she'll make it to the new year. She's just old and her body is giving out, and she's trying to hold on -- I think, for us. I don't really think she's in pain or anything, but the winding-down process is accelerating, and it's now become very noticeable. As I told Daisy, it would be very 2024 of her to just up and die between now and the end of the year. Daisy made the joke that it would be cosmically funny were she to die on my birthday and have dealing with that be my "birthday activity." I told her if that happens we'll be taking care of the arrangements and immediately going to try to adopt a new kitten -- because not only will that not let/make me grieve terribly for the old girl, it would be a bright spot for my birthday.

Let's hope that doesn't happen though, okay? I've had enough emotional trauma for this year. 

Plus, I did the whole "let's find a kitten" thing last year on my birthday, and I'm sort of over that as well.

Anyway.

Daisy still has a lot to do before the holidays -- she has to finish up hand-crafting gifts for her sister(s) and we have to get those in the mail, along with the tie-dyes I made for their family and the box of stuff I'm sending my parents. My parents sent me/us a box too, as they do every year; it arrives tomorrow. I have no idea what is in it. I already sent half of their Christmas gifts for the year yesterday, via Amazon -- they arrive on Saturday the 21st, unless Amazon is slower down there. Anything I send my parents I do so with a grain of salt on the delivery dates, because with them living on an island it's apparently just as difficult to do deliveries there as it was when they lived on top of a mountain in West Virginia. 

I am still excited though, despite the fact that I have zero birthday plans, our old lady is likely slowly dying, and we both just had Covid -- I have something to look forward to, finally. Every night I'm working this week is one night closer to freedom from that job for ten straight days. Every obstacle can be overcome or ignored for the next four days of work. After that I can sleep when I want, I can eat when I want, I can lounge about playing video games and reading and writing and wrapping presents. I can be free for a short ten days. 

That may end up being the best gift of all. 

Holidays 2024, Part X: Falling Into Place

 Days until 42nd birthday: 6

 Days until Christmas: 11

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 5

I have now recovered from Covid almost completely. I still have a bit of residual congestion, though I think that can also be chalked up to allergies too, who knows. The weather has been very cold this week, with snow flurries off and on -- and then today we got snow and ice, turning Omaha and the surrounding area into a skating rink and causing all sorts of accidents around town. Luckily, neither of us have had to go anywhere.

Daisy has also recovered almost completely from Covid, and is pretty much back to normal. She left the house for the first time today (before the bad weather) since...well, Black Friday, I guess, to pick up groceries and run a few errands. The parents also seem pretty recovered as well, as both of them went to go see Wicked in the theater yesterday. So, I assume we're done with this round of sickness and we can now move on with our lives.

Daisy still wants to test herself again tomorrow to see if she's testing clear. I'll likely do the same thing just to be able to prove that I'm in the all clear now as well. 

Everything is slowly falling into place as we head into the holidays. I don't know exactly how to describe it or why -- absolutely I don't understand the why, as something awful usually happens when everything seems to be going well -- but I can't argue with the results:

• All Christmas cards have been mailed, like two weeks ago -- and I have gotten a few in return
• All Christmas shopping has been done for a while, though I did get the wife a few more things from the TikTok shop -- more on this below
• Cats seem to be in decent enough health and happy, even though Pete's anxiety has been spiking
• For now, my job seems to be somewhat stable
• Bills are being paid or have already been paid, and we have groceries in the house
• The weather has not been really bad yet this winter, and
• I seem to be in pretty good health overall now that the Covid has gone away

I also have this newfangled thing that I don't get very often and haven't had in a long time -- downtime. Free time. Time where I can actually relax a bit and decompress, sleep when I need to (most of the time) and just...be me. And this is good, because there's a lot of things I'd like to be able to accomplish with that downtime. 

I know -- the irony, right? But they are spiritually-fulfilling things. Keep in mind that sleep is also spiritually-fulfilling to me, so the bar is sort of low at this point. But that doesn't mean I don't still have a to-do list to take care of. I do, and there are a lot of things on it. Most of them are small tasks or errands, but it's still a list.

I slept most of the day, was up for a few hours in the evening, and then went back to sleep for a while -- so now, in the overnight hours, I'm awake and systematically taking care of tasks one by one while I have the energy to do so. I have stripped the blankets out of my chair and am washing them, I will strip the blankets off the couches downstairs and wash them next, and then I'll likely wash the cats' water fountain and take a shower. During all of this I also plan to look into enrolling for healthcare for 2025 (the deadline for my enrollment with my job is Tuesday), set up a Walmart delivery order, see if I need to do an order from Amazon for household essentials, back up my hard drive, feed and pill the cats, take a shower for the first time in three days, and then...maybe...if I have any energy left, start wrapping presents.

I don't know that or if I'll get all of these things accomplished today. All of this takes a lot of energy that I don't normally have and can't normally sustain for long periods. But, Daisy is asleep and I just want to get everything that I can accomplish done while I have the time and energy. I can rest when I need to, and I will once my holiday PTO kicks in, but for the next eleven days I have a lot that must still be done. At the same time, I also want to just sit in my chair and play a video game. 

[Edit: almost none of these things happened.]

Holidays 2024, Part IX: Recovery

 Days until 42nd birthday: 12

 Days until Christmas: 17

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 11

This entire weekend has been about recovering, slowly, from the depths of Covid. I am almost completely normal again. I have a mild sinus infection, as I will generally get one anyway after I'm sick with almost anything, but thankfully it is very mild. Sinus infections generally clear up pretty quickly for me these days, unlike the old days when I was a smoker and they would take weeks to heal -- sometimes requiring antibiotics. Most of the time now I can kick them out of my system in a few days with minimal discomfort. 

Daisy has been mostly okay, but she is also still slowly recovering -- as mentioned previously, she's a few days behind me in that process. We've both spent the weekend doing as little as possible, just trying to rest. Her parents are not doing so hot -- Mama says yesterday was the worst day thus far, and Dad is struggling too.

Because we've been isolated and haven't really been doing anything but, well, resting, Daisy and I have had a lot of quality time together this weekend -- quiet time where we're just on the couch together or in bed together hanging out with the cats. I expect this trend to continue throughout the day today as well; while I'd normally be up early-ish on a Sunday, it's usually for football -- the Chiefs are the evening game this week, so I can sleep as much or as long as I want into the afternoon.

We do, however, think Pete has Covid. Cats can get Covid -- it was pretty well-documented during the pandemic. Pete has had pretty terrible anxiety again this past week or so when for the past few months, he's been mostly okay -- and he has diarrhea. Diarrhea is one of the telltale signs in cats. Given his propensity to sleep with us like a teddy bear and be right up in our faces no matter what, well...it's likely he's gotten it. 

I told Daisy not to worry; he more than likely had it last year when we had Covid at that time as well, and he (or any of the other cats) do not seem to be suffering from any adverse or otherwise strange health concerns at the moment. Diarrhea in the pans are nothing new for this household as we have five cats and five pans. Cats get upset stomachs from time to time just like we do. 

Anyway, "cat Covid" basically just has to run its course like it does in us. I guess.

I have nine working days left until my holiday vacation starts. I'm sure they're all going to go as slow as mud. This week is the last full week for me until after the first of the year, though. All five days this week, four next week, and then I'm off for ten straight days. Trying to fill the schedule for the holidays at work has been a nightmare thus far, and I can't help it if people don't want to work over the holidays -- I certainly wouldn't. I also can't force anyone to work the holidays, as per our company they are paid holidays and they don't have to work them if they don't want to. 

We've also lost a lot of our team in the past several weeks/months; about fifteen or so agents from the After Hours team were either outright fired or moved to other programs. I lost three of mine. Now, granted, none of them were huge losses to my team or the program in general, but warm bodies in seats does mean something when it comes to holiday coverage, and two of those three would always volunteer to work every holiday. 

The whole program is going through a lot of changes and it is going to look very different after the new year. I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled about the direction it's heading in, but I still have a job, a paycheck, and my nightly duties to perform, even if those duties become more difficult as time goes on. As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, not one of these changes my workplace rolls out ever makes the job easier or makes it better. Ever. Not one, never, not ever, not one single thing. I absolutely long, absolutely lust for a change that would make my job easier, with less responsibility and accountability, with a higher paycheck. 

So, that and the Covid have both been weighing heavily on my mind and have really stopped me from getting into the Christmas spirit as much as I would really like to. The election results last month didn't help much either. I'm in a weird headspace enough as it is without all of that stuff not grinding me down.

I've written here before about my nostalgia of holidays past -- when times were simpler, when times were very different than they are now. I've gone into that here a lot in the past, so I won't rehash it again. I do miss Christmas Shopping Trips™ though -- just making marathon runs through malls and stores one after another, the excitement of it being part of the season, seeing all of the people and all of the lights, and being excited; I miss the anticipation and the build-up of knowing no matter what else happened, around my birthday there would be the big mall trip to Pittsburgh. 

And then I think and realize that the last time I did this was easily twenty years ago, and it's been eighteen years that I've been living on my own away from home. Hell, my parents don't even live back home anymore. Everything is so different now. Nearly all of my Christmas shopping is now done online, via Amazon or Walmart (or, as of late, the Tiktok shop). It feels so impersonal, and trust me it also feels much more expensive. 

Christmas this year will just be the four of us -- me, Daisy, and the parents. There were supposed to be a lot more of us but that's not how plans ended up going. I am okay with a quiet and more subdued Christmas. I honestly just want to be comfortable and at peace, with my wife and the family. Some food, some presents, time spent with the cats on the couch watching a Christmas movie, etc.

More than anything else I long for rest and recuperation. I'm beginning to feel exhausted this month already, and I'm sure the Covid isn't helping that. My body just wants to sleep. It wants 2024 to stop. It wants quiet time without stress and without responsibilities. My body, and psyche, want my holiday vacation days to feel like a true vacation. I don't want to think about work, I don't want to think about the bills that need to be paid or bad weather or the fact that this will likely be the last Christmas for Sadie and maybe even for Pete -- I desperately want all of that pushed out of my head, off the table, and set aside for just a few weeks. 

Holidays 2024, Part VIII: We Do Not Have Time for This Shit

 Days until 42nd birthday: 15

 Days until Christmas: 20

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 13

We are now one week past Thanksgiving. I started getting Covid symptoms -- if you count the surf-and-turf, which at this point I basically have to count as the start of it -- six days ago. That means Black Friday was day zero, and I am now on day five.

I am mostly okay at this juncture. I am still fighting off some minor fatigue and still have major congestion in my head and chest, but overall I'm fine. I'd say I'm at about 80% and holding steady, with no real decline or backslide that isn't easily fixed with another dose of DayQuil or some decent sleep. 

For Daisy, she started her symptoms a day after I did and is probably two or more days behind in recovery. It's still taking its toll on her, but she is indeed better than she was. Complicating matters for her is that over the weekend, Mable tripped her while she was walking down the stairs, and she fell down a few of them and bashed multiple body parts in the process -- so she is very sore and recovering from that too. She relayed today that had that not happened, she'd likely be a lot further along in recovery. The NyQuil/DayQuil combos are helping her too.

The parents...well...the parents are not doing too hot. All four of us tested positive on Sunday (I believe), at approximately the same time. Mama is still really sick and says it's the worst bout of Covid she's had, and she's had it a few times. Dad, who was already having some health issues, also tested positive but seems like he's weathering it okay for the most part. But, Dad tends to suffer quietly and isn't the type to burden anyone else with his health issues. They're both still very old and it will take its toll on them harder than on us, likely. 

I did have to take off Monday -- I did not want to, but I really had no choice. I would not have been able to sit upright at my desk and concentrate all night long. I'm not concerned about the PTO hit at this juncture; nobody's said anything to me about it and my leadership was primarily concerned with my health and recovery more than anything else, so if they let it slide and don't mention it, I'm fine with it -- I am salaried anyway, it's not like it actually matters. I returned to work on Tuesday to great fanfare and well-wishes from my staff and agents. Tonight is my final night of work for the week and believe me, I am glad for that. 

Daisy's sister and her second-oldest son, the disease carrier, both tested negative for Covid once they returned home after Thanksgiving (despite both of them still feeling ill). I guess they left it all here in Omaha. 

Wildly enough, as I've been recovering I've been sleeping really well, even if it's a bit less than I'd like -- and that recovery and sleep has not been aided by NyQuil. I'll go to bed and will wake up feeling actually rested, actually healed a little. And then an hour after I wake up, my body realizes it's not only awake but it's still sick, and I will absolutely have to take more DayQuil to counteract it. So, yeah, this isn't completely out of my system yet -- nowhere close. I would imagine I'll probably still test positive a week from now or more. But, it's going.

However, as it slowly goes, time moves ever faster towards the holidays. Christmas is less than three weeks away. My birthday is a little more than two. And there is a lot that still needs to be done:

• Daisy has to finish up her Christmas gifts for the family -- it involves handcrafting some things. It's not something that can be done while she's sick, so she still has to wait on that.
• Most of those aforementioned things have to be mailed to those family members, from the post office, in a flat-rate box.
• I already have a flat-rate box for them packed and sealed, ready to go, to mail to those family members (so I'll have to do that too, and will have to be well enough to do that).
• I have to get for my own parents what I've been planning to get for them, order and ship it to them, and then ship another flat-rate box of stuff to them from home. I also need to be well for this, so that I'm not sending them a box of Covid-infected items. 
• The final set of Christmas cards still needs to be delivered to me, and I have to address/envelope/stamp and send those out within the next week or so.
• We have to figure out if we're doing Christmas Eve church services or not with the parents.
• I have to figure out what, if anything, we're planning to do for my birthday this year.
• I have to help finalize the holiday schedule for work (even though I won't be there) because I'm basically in charge of the entire overnight crew.
• Wrap all the presents for Daisy.
• Wrap all the presents for the parents.
• Wrap all the presents for the disease carriers, who apparently will NOT be in town for Christmas.

It's a lot. I'm sure there's stuff on there I'm completely forgetting about right now that will become more apparent in the next few days or weeks.

People have already started receiving their Christmas cards for the year -- both Daisy and I have been getting responses here and there from friends and family about how much they love them. As all 60 were mailed by this past Saturday, I'm sure that most people -- aside from the Canadians on the list -- have gotten them by now. 

Why would the Canadians not have theirs? Welllll....

So, that's a thing that started. Wanna guess what day I sent out all of the cards to Canada?

No idea when the Canadian family will get their cards. I'm guessing it could be into January or later depending on how the strike goes. I don't know much about the strike other than from what I've seen online, a lot of folks are on the side of the postal workers, despite the inconvenience caused to the general public.

Still, can you imagine if the whole of the USPS just up and went on strike here in the states? In less than a week people would be burning down post offices. This country would lose its goddamn mind.

Anyway.

So, I guess after tomorrow I should technically be "good" to leave the house and stop self-isolating, per health guidelines -- though I don't plan to go anywhere or do anything but rest and recover this weekend and try to knock some of those above items off my to-do list. Both Daisy and I are being intentional about trying to recover slowly and carefully, because we don't want a relapse infection. We had a relapse the first time we had Covid and were knocked flat again for about another week before we finally were able to kick it out of our systems, and we just can't afford to be down another week with this bullshit if it can possibly be avoided -- there's just no time for it. So, my weekend will hopefully consist of sleeping and resting with as much downtime as possible in order to attempt to rebuild my battered immune system.

Holidays 2024, Part VII: Sidelined

 It's Covid. Daisy and I both have Covid. 

Yeah, turns out that the surf and turf of Black Friday may not have been food poisoning after all -- that is one of the symptoms of the new strains, I guess. Not everyone gets it.

Yesterday, we began to feel more and more sickly all day, into the afternoon and evening hours. It got to the point where we were both googling Covid symptoms just to check them, at the same time, without telling the other person. At that point, I was just like "fuck it, let's just test ourselves."

Mine came back positive within a minute -- it's supposed to take 15-30 minutes. Daisy's took a few minutes but the positive line on her test came in much darker than on mine, indicating a high viral load. 

I guess. Truthfully I have no idea scientifically how those tests work. I think they're supposed to test not for the virus itself, but for antibodies or something. 

Regardless...we're sick. 

I am mostly lucid and am feeling -- cognitively, at least -- pretty normal. I have big time, wicked head congestion, runny nose/sneezing, and an awful cough, but I'm not dying or anything. Daisy, however, is really sick. She sounds like death, has a near-constant fever/chills, and in general is not doing well. I have already started to lose a bit of my smell and taste (though not all of it, thankfully) and she has not.

More than anything else, I'm just tired. The fatigue is just draining. Were it possible and/or comfortable, I'd be sleeping the majority of the next 24 hours or so. I should be okay to work for the rest of the week, provided the illness doesn't take a really bad, wild turn somewhere. Regular intervals of DayQuil and Mucinex are helping, greatly so. I notice a huge difference when I am medicated versus when I'm not, which is good -- it means the medicine is working the way it's supposed to. 

We did, of course, let Daisy's parents know and let her sister and family (now safely back in Denver) know as well. The parents, mom at least, are testing negative so far. We'd like that to continue. I don't know about the sister's family yet, but I know the sister herself had already told Mama that she was really sick upon returning home...and remember, her second-oldest son (who sat next to us at the Thanksgiving table) was sick on the way into town, so I think we've found the likely disease vectors here.

The sickness does, however, throw a bit of a wrench into our plans for the next week or so. We now have to self-isolate for at least five days (which isn't a problem for me, because I never leave the house unless I have to), and that means the dentist appointment we had scheduled for Wednesday morning is now definitely going to be canceled. It means Daisy can't go run errands or get groceries during the day when I'm sleeping. It means delaying mailing out my Christmas boxes for folks by at least another week.

I guess I can look forward to my Tiktok shop stuff showing up over the course of the next two weeks or so, right? Right?

Anyway. I digress.

The last time we had Covid was February 2023. That was actually our first time having it. I got my kidney stone exactly one month later. So, I'm going to try to avoid repeating that scenario this time around -- I'm going to drink a lot of water, avoid excess vitamins/supplements, and just try to cleanly recover as much as I can. We've got so many things coming up this month as we have the lead up to Christmas. Here's the rough calendar as is, that will absolutely get stuff added to it over the course of the month:

• December 2 through 18: work as normal for me.
• December 10: Repairman appointment for our adjustable bed frame, which is behaving badly.
• December 13: Payday.
• December 19 through 28: I'm off work for my "Christmas vacation." 
• December 20: My 42nd birthday.
• December 27: Also payday. 
• December 29 and 30: work as normal for me.
• December 31: off for New Year's Eve.
• January 1: work as normal for me, I cover the holiday.

There will be a lot more thrown in as the month progresses. I have to see if I can get in for a doctor appointment at some point with my new PCP, in order to get refills on all of my meds. I do not for the life of me know when that's going to happen. I also don't know for a fact that Daisy is completely done Christmas shopping, and we'll certainly have to get some foods for Christmas dinner -- which, I learned will just be the four of us this year (us and the parents). 

I will, of course, have to make time to wrap presents for everyone (whether they're in town or not) and mail out packages to extended family like my own parents. I'll also have to deal with the final batch of Christmas cards over the next few days too, once they arrive.

Don't worry -- for those of you who get cards from me in the mail (so, like 1% of 1% of people reading this), you won't get Covid from the cards. They were all sealed up and done before I had any contact with the patient zeroes at Thanksgiving dinner. By the time the others get here in the mail and I send them out, this crud should be completely out of my system.

What am I doing in the interim to feel better? Well, unless this gets worse, I'm thinking the worst part of it I might already be through -- given the surf-and-turf on Friday and how bad I felt on Saturday evening and most of Sunday. My goal is to just rest as much as possible, to stay hydrated, to keep taking my meds at regular intervals, and to just try to ride it out, as they say. I'm probably at around 60% right now, but Daisy is likely around 20-30%. My goal is to hang loose and see how long it takes for this shit to dissipate. 

Holidays 2024, Part VI: The Blackest of Fridays

Warning: there is some graphic and/or likely triggering content in the below post for those of you who have weak stomachs. If you really want to know some intimate details about sickness, feel free to keep reading. If you don't, might be best for you to skip this one, m'kay?

So on the morning of Black Friday, I woke up somewhat normally. Well, normal for me anyway.

The plans for the day -- originally, anyway -- were for me to get some chores done around the house. Washing the bedsheets and blankets, getting the Christmas cards into the mail, and eating leftover fake turkey on two ciabatta rolls I had specifically saved for it while watching the Chiefs game. Daisy would be at the zoo with the kids and it would be a nice, restful day for me. Once she arrived home, our plans were to go to the local fish store (for live fish, not for eating fish) and pick up a few shrimp for our fishtank -- Daisy recently cleaned out the fishtank, we got some plants for it a few nights ago, and she wanted to get some pretty little shrimp and another betta for it -- since Ghost, our last betta, died within six months. I was fine with that. I like having the fishtank set up with little animals swimming around in it. 

So, that was the plan. Or so I thought.

Before we'd left the parents' house on Thanksgiving night, Daisy's sister had mentioned that they wanted to head out for the zoo around 10:30 in the morning. It was also her oldest son's/our oldest nephew's 16th birthday, so it was a celebratory thing for him of sorts. 

I thought that leaving for the zoo at 10:30 -- on Black Friday -- was a very bad idea. Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo is gigantic. It is the size of a small city. While all of us have been to the zoo many times before (over the course of the past decade, I've been there no less than five times -- one of those times at night for the Christmas lights display they put up), you don't leave for the zoo in mid-morning, you leave for the zoo at dawn. Otherwise, you'll have to park quite literally half a mile away from the front gates, you can hit a few of the big attractions and then you'll have to turn around and come home because yes, the zoo is that large. It took me at least three separate visits over the course of multiple years to see everything I wanted to see at the zoo. 

Not to mention, well, it was cold AF -- the temperature when I got up yesterday morning was 13 degrees (the coldest temperature of the season thus far in Omaha) with a windchill of zero. Most of the zoo's big attractions are indoors of course, but again, it's small-city-sized and there's no way to avoid walking miles in the cold when you're there to get from point A to points B, C, and D. I think my record at the zoo the last time we went there during the day was something like seven miles walked -- over the course of a few hours. That day I was fighting off a summer flu, too. This will be important later. 

But, I digress.

Daisy said sure, 10:30 was fine or something like that and didn't think much else about it. She set her alarm for 9 or so, in order to be able to get up and get some food in her and get ready. She put the responsibility of handling the toilet guys on me, and I was fine with that.

I may not have mentioned that before, so little side note -- our downstairs toilet was making weird sounds, like it was never completely turning off. Hissing quietly even after it was full, etc. It wasn't leaking or anything, but over the course of the past year or so it's gotten a little louder and more forceful. Daisy and I know nothing about plumbing, and the louder and more forceful it got the more Daisy mentioned that she wanted to open a ticket on it with our home warranty people to get a plumber to come out and fix it. I was fine with that; whatever, preventative maintenance I suppose. It is what it is. 

So, she did, and that appointment was set for 7am to 1pm on Black Friday. 

I mean...I was home, I was going to be home, it didn't really matter to me when they came to do it. So I told her that was fine.

The guys showed up around 10, looked at it briefly, said they needed to go to Home Depot to get a part, as it was a really simple fix, and left to go get said part. I immediately had the horrifying thought that oh fuck, we just sent these guys to Home Depot at 10am on Black Friday, which I told them when they returned.

"Oh, we've been there four times already this morning."

Anyway. 

Toilet was quickly fixed -- it needed a new valve -- and they were on their way, and Daisy was getting ready to leave to get over to the parents, when she found out that her sister had just put a cake in the oven for our nephew's birthday -- fifteen minutes or so before they were supposed to be leaving for the zoo.

I...yeah. Daisy has the patience of a saint, because I would've been very frustrated and angry. Daisy was not at all upset. I get that it's the kid's birthday, but plan the fuck ahead please. Bake the cake once you're home for the night, not when everyone else in the family is on a set schedule for the day. 

"So," Daisy asked, "[Fish store] opens at noon. It's going to take 40 minutes to bake the cake and then to take it out and let it cool so it can be frosted. Do you just want to go there now and get the shrimp so we don't have to do it later?"

"Sure," I said. "Let me get dressed."

So here's where the fun part comes in. Throughout all of this, the longer I'm awake and moving around for the day, the worse I feel. I am having bad gas, I am having very foul burps that won't stop and smell like nothing I've ever smelled, and my guts are staging a revolt. I've used the bathroom twice but have not felt any better -- the nausea has persisted pretty strongly throughout the entire morning. I figured oh, I ate a lot of different food yesterday that my body isn't used to, so this is how it's trying to process and digest it. I'm a diabetic and on Trulicity, and I don't generally eat a lot anymore. Trulicity in itself makes me digest things more slowly and isn't exactly great for my guts anyhow.

Well, so I thought.

The fish store is across town; it's in the same plaza where our old gym used to be. There is apparently a very large, very enthusiastic fish community in Omaha -- like people who want fish and sometimes other exotic aquatic creatures -- as pets. It is a niche market for sure, but holy hell is it apparently a profitable one. The fish store advertised a sale for Black Friday -- it wasn't anything remarkable I don't think, like 25% off a lot of stuff, including all of their "livestock."

Another aside -- calling fish, shrimp, and anything else that lives in the water "livestock" absolutely rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway, 25% off was enough to get all of the city's fish people crawling out of the woodwork and there was a line to get into the door as soon as the store opened at 12.

We got five little blue shrimp and a bag of food for them, and it came out to around $40 or so. As the worker was there bagging them up, Daisy mentioned that she wanted to get a betta to live in there with them, but we needed to be able to pick out the right one.

His face fell. "With shrimp? They'll become betta food."

Apparently, some bettas can coexist with shrimp, and others (read: most of them) can't. They quickly get eaten. Female bettas have a much lower chance of eating all the shrimp, but it's not a zero chance. We got the shrimp because they clean the tank and they breed like crazy, so we could have a thriving colony of shrimp to help keep the tank clean for our new fish. Apparently, the only way to keep a shrimp colony going with a betta, and to minimize loss, is for there to be a lot of them so that when/if a few get eaten by the betta, it's not noticeable. 

The wife, a vegan and not exactly a fan of the idea of our pets getting eaten by our other pets, was not exactly thrilled with this idea.

So, I guess we're going to be doing some more research on fish that will work with the tank and water/plants we have, but aren't going to eat the shrimp (or at least not eat as many of the shrimp).

The shrimp themselves are pretty tiny, less than a centimeter long each, and are a brilliant cobalt blue. I don't know the name of the breed or anything, but they're very pretty. Still, they're shrimp and it's not like they're really "pets" you can get to interact with you or get them excited for food like you do with bettas or other fish. 

Anyway. Moving onward.

By the time we left the fish store, my guts were in serious havoc. This continued to worsen as we ventured back home, and it felt somehow different than my normal upset stomach. I again used the bathroom and felt like that wasn't enough, and once again collapsed in my chair for a bit as Daisy was getting ready to go over and finally go to the zoo with her sister and kids. I would venture that this was around...oh, a little after 1pm or so.

So, I'll recap a bit and set the stage for what is about to come. Throughout the day so far, I had:

1. Slept with a sour stomach

2. Gotten up and helped take care of the plumbing guys

3. Done some minor Black Friday shopping (I'll cover this below, it was not mentioned above)

4. Gone out, in the cold, to spend $40 on live shrimp

I had eaten nothing for the day yet -- the thought of food made me even more ill. I had drank about 1/4 bottle of water and about half of a zero sugar Monster Ultra. 

And, on top of everything else, as we arrived home from the fish store, it began snowing. Heavily. Big white flakes. It had been flurrying while we were out, but it was now noteworthy. As it did last year, the snow waited until after Thanksgiving to start in Omaha. 

Daisy was still getting ready when I felt the need to go to the bathroom again. I was in there on the toilet when she told me, through the door, that she loved me and she'd be back later in the afternoon. 

It was about this time when I felt my mouth fill with saliva and my stomach wrenched in a way it hadn't before, and the scary thought of oh my god, I'm about to vomit flashed across my mind. I was barely able to grab the bathroom trash can in time, and I unleashed the fury.

All of this happened within the span of about 20 seconds -- Daisy was likely not even halfway down the stairs.

"Are you okay?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said. "I'm just puking." 

"I know, I heard. Do you need me to stay?" she asked. "Are you going to be okay?"

"No," I said, "go. I'll be fine. I'm just throwing up. Just feeling sick. It'll pass."

I did not want to deprive her of the zoo experience with the family. Me being sick wasn't a big deal; I feel sick to my stomach all the time.

After another five minutes or so, at the point where I was sure I would be done, I opened the door to find her standing at the bottom of the stairs looking very concerned. I tied up the garbage bag from the trash can in the bathroom and she dropped it in the dumpster on the way out. She suggested I get one of the large popcorn bowls I do my tie-dyeing in and to keep it close to me as a puke bucket. I again assured her she was fine to go, I would deal. 

I heard her leave; kitchen door close, garage door up, car fire up, garage door back down. It's not hard to hear in this house unless there's a lot of background noise. There was not background noise in my silent bedroom office in my chair.

I was coated in sweat. I don't vomit; generally I have a pretty iron stomach in most scenarios. The last time I puked was when I had my kidney stone a couple of years ago, and that was from pain and nausea not in my guts, but from when the stone was moving. 

I felt okay for about half an hour or so. I didn't know if it was over, so to speak, but I wasn't feeling sick, just really shaky and weak. 

This. Did not last long. 

The second bout was even more violent than the first. This time I took the bowl to the bathroom with me. I call, ahem, vomiting from both ends the "surf and turf," if you will. Best way to describe it without being too gross about it, plus it's an amusing term. 

At the end of the second bout, it felt like I was fading in and out of consciousness for very brief moments -- less than a second each time, etc. I was feeling really, really bad. I looked down into the bowl and I could see remnants of Thanksgiving dinner, which I had eaten a full 24 hours before this point -- pieces of corn, carrot, mushrooms, and lentils (an ingredient in the vegan turkey loaf) all clearly visible and undigested. All of that -- all of it -- had been sitting in my stomach for an entire day? A full DAY? A full day with other foods eaten since then -- I ate some potato chips and some Combos after returning home on Thursday night -- and it's still in there? That was really concerning to me.

I phoned Daisy from the bathroom. I didn't know what else to do. I was really shaky, covered in sweat, and was very much feeling like I might faint. She had just arrived at the parents' to go to the zoo. She immediately asked if I needed her to come home and I said yes. I assume she just dropped off the zoo pass for the kids, got back in the car, and sped home -- because she was here in less than fifteen minutes.

In that span of time it happened twice more. I texted her that this was 100% stomach flu or food poisoning, because nothing like this happens to me and I hadn't been this sick for a long, long time. 

When she got home, I was dazed, sweaty, and out of it, and was trying to get the Roku on my office TV to work correctly so that I could stream the Chiefs game -- which was only being shown on Amazon Prime. She immediately brought me up a couple bottles of Gatorade/Powerade (I always keep the zero sugar stuff in the house, at least one or two bottles, because I sometimes crave it) and made me a giant water bottle of Liquid IV. She then sat with me for a bit to make sure I was okay.

I told her how sorry I was that I had to call her back, and that I thought I was going to pass out/faint. She asked me if I had any chest pain or pain shooting down my arm or anything like that, as that would be signs of a heart attack.

"Nope, just the guts," I said.

Through it all, Daisy was very sweet and very kind and understanding. She immediately went into nurse mode and just wanted to take care of me. In the midst of conversation, I had to get up and run back to the bathroom because it was going to happen again, and it did.

Overall, I had...ahem...the surf and turf five times over the course of an hour or two. Daisy was here for the first one and the last one, but missed the three in-between. Time blends together and I wasn't exactly keeping an eye on my watch. My heart rate was fine, everything else seemed normal, I was just really sick.

After the last one, I drank most of one of the bottles of Gatorade, which burned like hell -- the stomach acid had ripped up my throat. The Liquid IV went down more smoothly. I was still weak and could barely move. 

But, thankfully, that was the end of it. Throughout the evening, I gradually approached normality again. I was still really shaky and weak, but I had no more surf and turf. I finished the Gatorade and Liquid IV and even drank the rest of the Monster and bottle of water from the morning hours to try to rehydrate myself. I took my evening pills to no ill effects. I went to the bathroom normally at least twice. 

It was at this time where Daisy let me know she planned to go back over to the parents' after all of them had returned from the zoo -- which apparently closed at 4pm. Four in the afternoon? I'm pretty sure I've been at the zoo later than that, but apparently that's their winter hours. 

So to recap, even if she'd gotten to go do the zoo thing with them, it would've been about two hours maximum and then the zoo staff would've said "okay, we're closing now, get the fuck out." Really?

Anyway.

By the end of the Chiefs game, I was feeling mostly normal. I got up and resumed some of the chores I'd started that morning -- laundry, washing the bed, etc. Daisy went over to the parents' again in the evening and I took a nap for several hours while she did that.

Yesterday was spent mostly in recovery mode, as her sister's family went back home to Denver in the morning hours.

I've been mostly fine since. I'm still weak, I'm still sort of dizzy, and I believe I'm now coming down with some other sort of sickness -- I have a sore throat and a lot of post-nasal drip that is really not great, and for a while this morning I was sure I had a fever. All of my muscles and joints hurt from the really intense puking, and I apparently burst a blood vessel under my tongue while vomiting as I have a big purple spot there now under the skin.

In short, I'm not at 100%. I'm nowhere near 100%. I feel like I've been hit by a truck, quite honestly. 

Annnnd, of course, Daisy is now also sick with the same post-Thanksgiving crud I have. It started roughly around the same time. And adding to all of this, when I thermometer'd myself earlier...I confirmed that I am running a fever. This was after, a few hours after, taking sinus/pain/congestion medication (which includes fever-reducing acetaminophen) to try to clear this stuff out. 

This really just isn't my week, is it?

Daisy and I are staying home; we don't have the energy to go out, and we don't want to risk getting anyone else sick anyway -- especially if this is Covid or something like that. We're going to take Covid tests tomorrow, especially if either of us are feeling worse. Neither of us got flu or Covid boosters this fall, though we meant to set that up and do it multiple times. We just never got around to it. Well, we now may end up paying the price for that. I am also lucky that I took tonight (Sunday) off work for what I called "recovery time" as it now seems that I'll legit be using it for exactly that purpose. There's no more time I can feasibly take off, though -- if I have Covid or the flu or whatever, I'll be working through it; I do not and will not have any more PTO to burn for the rest of the year unless I want to sacrifice days from my birthday/Christmas vacation, which I do not. 

I'll live. It may suck for awhile, but I'll live. I mean, hopefully.

I mentioned above that I did some Black Friday shopping, and I did -- well, I should say that I've continued to do it here and there all weekend long. None of the things were big-ticket items, though; I didn't want or need any of those things and truthfully I don't think a lot of them are really on "sale" for Black Friday. What I got was carefully selected and curated, and I made sure all of it was far cheaper than it normally would be. So, here's the list:

• Ghost's latest record, Rite Here, Rite Now and their corresponding tour t-shirt ($28 total)
• A second Ghost shirt that was on Black Friday sale for $12
• A pair of zero-drop "barefoot shoes" that had been on my Amazon wishlist for approximately a year, now on sale for $30 instead of $50
• Cat treats, Tim Horton's K-Cups (in two different varieties), and more purple hair dye -- all substantially cheaper than normal thanks to Black Friday
• Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection for my Switch -- yes, I have it on the PS4, but I got the digital version for my Switch Lite. I'd been planning to do this for awhile, actually ($30).
• A king-size faux fur blanket for 40% off ($30)
• A Chappell Roan t-shirt ($20ish)
• A Stevie Nicks t-shirt ($20ish)
• A Star Trek Captain Picard ugly Christmas sweater, in my size, for $20
• A wool blend peacoat in wine red (read: dark maroon), in my size, for $20

And three things I can't write about here as they're tangentially related to Christmas and I don't want to spoil any surprises for Daisy.

There were other things I wanted, of course, but I decided it best for me to stop while I was ahead. After all, I finished Christmas shopping for Daisy months ago, I don't have anything else I need to purchase for anyone else; the vast majority of the stuff mentioned above was for me and me alone -- which makes me feel sort of selfish as we head into the holidays. But, I don't splurge on things for just me very often. 

So, here we are; the first set of holiday times for the year have ended, and we now enter the headlong rush towards my birthday, Christmas, and the New Year. Man, I can't wait for this truly awful year to end. 

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.