My Spring Break: day eight
I have returned safely to Kansas after our trip to Omaha, and Daisy just left to go back home a little over an hour ago, as she works tonight. Now begins the time of the great decompression, the winding-down of a long break and a trip that, while fun, was quite tiring, and at times, moderately stressful. We returned last night in the overnight hours, and arrived this morning around 5AM. She drove us to York, and I took us the rest of the way -- over 200 miles, as I kept an eye on the trip meter in her car. When we got here, we put everything away that needed to be put away, I made something to eat, and then she went to bed. I showered and followed about an hour later. I got up around 1; she got up a little after 2. I made her waffles for breakfast, and then she left for home.
The trip was long and mostly busy, especially when coupled with the fact that both of us were off our sleep schedules. I'm still off mine, obviously -- a good chunk of my weekend will be spent playing catch-up on sleep, and taking care of stuff around the house that needs to be done in the meantime, since I've been gone for most of the week -- like the several piles of cat vomit which have manifested because the cats still don't know how to eat when I'm gone, so they gorge themselves and then puke. Over and over. I have to do all of my laundry from the trip, I have two new bills that have come in over the course of the past several days (cable and Discover card bill), I have to re-clean the cat room, etc.
Right now, of course, I'm relatively low on energy. That's why I mentioned "the great decompression" above, because that's what I'll be doing over the next day or so at least -- decompressing, winding down, returning to my normal routines and trying to get back into the groove of being alone here again with the cats and my solitude.
"Do you think I'll get to see you again between now and the end of the semester?" Daisy asked me this morning, in reference to the fact that it's not incredibly far off, but also because my class schedule resumes as per the normal again on Tuesday with no other breaks from now through mid-May.
"It depends on whether we both have time, babe," I said. "My classes resume Tuesday, and my schedule goes back to normal teaching again. It depends on if you have time to take off and/or can make time to come down with all of the wedding stuff coming up."
Of course, I'm always happy to see Daisy and have her around; even if I have a busy week ahead of me, I can always plan a few days ahead, at least, to re-order the stuff I have to do (such as grading and lesson planning) to maximize our time together. I had three stacks of papers and a stack of journals to grade through before I left for Omaha, and I did all of those at once last weekend so that I wouldn't have them hanging over my head or be bogged down by them upon my return home this weekend. I did my taxes last weekend so that I wouldn't have to worry about those, either. I took care of everything I could take care of and cleared a big swath of time for us, is what I'm saying -- and I don't expect to find myself much busier than that at any given time for the rest of the semester, so I could do it again.
We did a lot over the trip up there in the short timeframe we had to do it. Rather than give you a detailed day-by-day rundown as I usually do (because, again, I'm tired) I'll hit the big beats and will go into detail on the ones that deserve a little further explanation and/or attention:
1. I now have a jacket for the wedding (or I will, once it arrives).
2. I also now have all of the invitations to give out to my friends/colleagues.
3. I got a new messenger bag (courtesy of Daisy's parents).
4. Daisy got me a vaping starter kit.
5. It snowed like hell on Tuesday night and had melted off by Wednesday afternoon.
6. We went to see Mr. Peabody and Sherman.
7. We had Night Flight Pizza and met up with a group of friends at Crystal Jade.
8. We began seriously discussing job and relocation plans for after the wedding.
Those are all of the big beats to hit, anyhow.
When we left here on Monday night, I was incredibly tired and strung out, sleep-deprived and starting to get frazzled. I'd downed a pot of coffee beforehand, but it seemed to be having little effect on how I felt or how tired I was. Daisy, meanwhile, was perfectly fine -- it was her "daytime," since she works night shifts. She's used to being awake and alert all night long. I was okay overall, but being that tired also puts me into an ADHD-like mode -- I become obsessive, jumpy, paranoid, etc. I function fine, yes, but I'm burnt-out underneath the surface and everything I did during that time is fuzzy when I try to recall it the next day or a few days later. I was okay to drive and told her so, but she refused -- she took us all the way back home, despite the fact that she was getting tired herself by the second half of the trip. We got to Omaha shortly after sunrise (so, around 7:30 or so) and went to bed soon after. We slept until close to 4PM, at which point I got up, made coffee, and tried to wake myself fully before we went out to take care of our evening plans.
Throughout the trip, I was plagued by stomach issues -- I don't know exactly why, but it was probably a combination of allergies, sleep deprivation/switching my schedules around, sleeping on Daisy's bed (which also gives me back problems) and eating a lot of different foods I don't normally eat. I'll get to this more in a bit, but keep it in the back of your mind for the time being.
It was probably around 65 on Tuesday afternoon -- gorgeous and clear. It was cold driving in the overnight hours beforehand, but as we slept and the day progressed, it was warm and nice. I wore shorts and a zip-up fleece jacket. Daisy wore flip-flops and a light dress because it was so nice. This was a mistake on both our parts.
We went to JCPenney that evening, leaving the house around rush hour, to look for jackets for me. We found a few, but they were at least one size too small. We chose Penney's because they were having a big clearance sale on sport coats and suits, and could get them cheaply there if they had them in my size. I'll remind you, I'm not a huge guy, but I'm large. My sizing is weird because while I am not huge, I do have wide shoulders and I am barrel-chested, so it's hard for me to put on a jacket that would otherwise fit fine if my shoulders weren't so wide that I can't raise my arms without popping the seams on the sleeves.
Anyway. The largest size JCPenney had in stock was a 52 long. I could wear a 52 long, but it wouldn't close at the buttons. I asked if they had a 54 long, and they didn't, but they could order one.
"We could go home and order one," Daisy said, "and still get the style and size we need with all of the discounts from coupon codes and the like."
I agreed. We now knew the exact size we were looking for, so we could look other places if we wanted to. Daisy suggested that before we order anything, we should look in Kohl's to see if they had something I liked in stock in my size. So, to Kohl's we went. By the time we got there, it was dark, and the temperature had gotten considerably colder -- it was easily in the low 40s with some wind. Hm. It was also spitting a little rain, which -- as we were walking to the door from the parking lot, was turning over into light snow. Snow. Fucking snow. On MY spring break.
Kohl's was fruitless in the search for coats; the largest one they had was a 48. They may have had one or two 50s, but again, way too small. They had a good clearance section for clothing, though, except none of it was in my size either. I browsed through some of that, found a plaid fleece shirt that was marked down to $5.50 and got it, and Daisy got some nice, pretty green towels for our new household -- towels that were something like 80% off.
When we left Kohl's -- which, really, we had gone to in order to kill a bit of time before the movie we were planning to see -- it was whiteout conditions outside. It was snowing like fucking crazy, and it was beginning to stick to everything. Big, dense, thick snowflakes, the kind that all stick together and are perfect for snowballs. It was not yet, however, sticking to the roads, and the roads were just wet. We went to the movie theater, got our tickets and snacks, and sat down for Mr. Peabody and Sherman -- which Daisy liked, and I absolutely loved. They did it so well.
Upon coming out of the movie theater, the snow was much worse than it was when we went in, and the wind was whipping it around like crazy. Remember: we were wearing rather light clothing, as when we had left the house it was like, 65 outside. At this point there was at least an inch on the ground and the passenger door of Daisy's car, which was facing the wind, was covered in a layer of snow so thick that I could barely see the handle.
By this time it was also close to midnight; we'd gone to the second-latest showing of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and had shared the theater with only three or four other people, a family who sat about ten rows behind us. It was quiet, the theater's parking lot and the city streets were mostly deserted, and we...were not feeling that great.
Remember how earlier, I mentioned that I had stomach issues for most of the trip? Well, Daisy did too, off and on, and I think the trigger for a lot of those issues was that particular movie theater's popcorn. It was terrible. Both Daisy and her mother had gotten ill from it once before, but this time Daisy said it wasn't much different. Mine tasted stale and way, way too salty, and Daisy maybe only got through a third of hers before she gave up on it because hers was just as bad. Mental note: if we go back to that theater again...we're not getting the popcorn.
So, feeling slightly ill from that but needing to put something on our stomachs to get rid of it, we opted to go get our vegan pizza from Night Flight. I've written about Night Flight here before on a few occasions, but it's a pizza place in Omaha that we really like, and it has overnight hours -- they open at 4PM and close sometime in the middle of the night (2, 3, something like that). They're also very vegan friendly, at least one of the owners is vegan, and Daisy knows the staff really well because she's been going there since...high school? College at least? Anyway, they know us, but they know her super-well because she goes there about twice a month or so.
Well, apparently one of the longtime workers there keeled over and died from a heart issue about three weeks ago, or something like that. Daisy knew him decently well, but hadn't heard about it. We were told the story at great length when we arrived that night, and it was...well, it was very sad and heartbreaking. The guy who died was only 46, he'd just gotten engaged and was getting married next month, and the entire situation was tragic. It upset Daisy quite a bit, as she knew him. We were also the only ones there in the restaurant in the middle of the night, so we were able to get the whole story about what had happened before we got our food -- but it definitely cast a bit of a pall over the entire evening. Daisy got a sympathy card for all of them at the pizza place last night before we returned to Kansas, as it was the least she could do and she hadn't known about his passing until this week (so she didn't go to the funeral or anything like that).
When we returned home with our leftover pizza, Daisy put on a few episodes of her new favorite television obsession, Sister Wives, and I used my computer for a bit/wound down somewhat. By this time it had finally stopped snowing (the roads were beginning to freeze by the time we came home that night), but there was probably close to two inches of fresh snow covering everything. It was enough to where I put a towel down in front of the back door so that I wouldn't track in snow off the porch when I came back in from smoking.
Again, it had been 65 or so that afternoon. I don't even know how the snow was able to stick -- the ground must have frozen really quickly.
When I got up the next morning around 10, it was already 50 degrees and the sun had melted all of the snow off of everything it touched. Three hours later, it was close to 70 and everything had completely melted and dried -- you wouldn't have been able to tell that it had snowed at all. It was so strange. And I thought the weather in Kansas was weird.
My stomach issues persisted, however; I'd only awakened that morning at 10 because I had godawful heartburn, and that combined with the back pain from sleeping on Daisy's bed (I seriously don't know how she sleeps on that thing) made me miserable enough to get up. I dug through the kitchen medicine cabinet until, in the back, I found a bottle of generic Walmart-brand Tums, and took about six of them. I looked at the label to find that they'd expired nine years ago, in 2005. Still, they worked. I would rely on these antacid tablets several more times over the course of my visit.
I let Daisy sleep; I knew she was tired, and I knew she needed the rest to make up for all of the sleep she hadn't gotten over the course of the previous 36 hours or so. I don't think she got up until after 3PM, and I wasn't going to bother her. We didn't have anything pressing we had to do that day; everything could wait until she'd gotten enough sleep. In the meantime, my stomach issues extended to my, ahem, backside parts, and I was just trying to feel better myself and get more to normal.
I'd forgotten to ask Daisy how to run Netflix on their TV, as I need to watch the last two seasons of Breaking Bad and that was good a time as any to do so. Dad has everything wired up and accessed through a Roku box, and I've never used one of those before so I'm clueless as to how to operate one without messing any of those electronics up. Dad showed me how to run it once, but that was a year ago (or more), and I really don't remember any of that now. I'm good with computers and I'm good with most technology in general, but anything I'm not familiar with -- especially something that isn't mine -- I don't mess with and don't know how to use. For example, Mama texted Daisy while we were driving somewhere, and she handed her smartphone to me and asked if I'd text her a reply. My response, after looking at it for a moment like an idiot: "Uhh, no, I won't, because I don't know how to work this damn thing, as it doesn't have buttons to press." This is 100% true. My phone is a flip phone; if you want to text someone, you hit the actual numerical buttons until the letter you want pops up. I don't know how to use any of those newfangled touchscreen-based bullshit things, nor do I necessarily want to know. I'll have to get a new cell phone/plan sometime this summer, more than likely, and I asked Daisy if you can even get a phone now that isn't a smartphone. She wasn't sure. I'm not even sure. I so wish I could just have my magenta Razr V3 again.
I adored that phone.
Ahem. Anyway.
Our only Wednesday plans were to go to a vapor shop, because Daisy wanted to see if I'd like vaping, and to see if I wanted to get a vaping kit to help me smoke fewer cigarettes and/or eventually quit, and then meet up with friends at Crystal Jade (a Chinese restaurant) for dinner at 7.
The vapor shop was fine; I mean, it was interesting, at least. I have several friends who have vaporizer pens and use them a fair amount, and I know a few people who now use them exclusively and have basically quit smoking. I tried a few different flavors and a few different pens, though I realized how quickly it irritated my throat and chest -- the vapor itself, if I used the pen more than two or three times in a ten-minute timeframe or so, made me feel like I was drowning, and it made my throat tighten and ache. I found one I liked, one that tasted like an actual cigarette ("Turkish tobacco") and Daisy got me a bottle of that liquid and a starter kit pen.
Meh, it's okay.
No, seriously. It's just okay. I cough on the vapor, a lot, because it's quite literally water vapor being inhaled into my lungs with some nicotine in it. It irritates the shit out of my throat if I use it for more than a few minutes at a time, and yes, I do feel like I'm inhaling liquid, so I can feel the fluid in my lungs and throat. It will take a lot of getting used to if I'm going to be able to switch over to that. It works fine -- and when I say that it means that it does the job -- and I'm optimistic that it won't hurt and/or make me feel like I'm drowning once I really get used to it, and it's much cheaper than cigarettes...so I mean, it's a viable option if it doesn't keep messing up my throat and chest. The bad part is that the "starter kit" I got will burn out its wick/heating mechanism/vaporizer unit in about two weeks' worth of regular use, which is why they called it a starter kit. That shop has all sorts of different parts and mechanisms to make your vaping experience fully customizable and the like, but two weeks of use is still only two weeks of use, and after that it's going to be pointless once that thing burns out, as it's not like I can magically teleport myself to Omaha to get more vaping supplies.
I told Daisy I'll use it until it burns out and then I'll either get more stuff/parts/etc when I'm up there again or I'll get a more higher-end unit if I like it and want to keep doing it -- but that's seriously going to depend on whether or not my throat/lungs can handle it and get used to it. I like it just fine, but until my lungs and throat do, I can't really help that. And she understands, of course -- she tried a few of the fruity flavors they had when we were doing our "taste testing," and she had the same throat irritation I did.
After that we went out to dinner at Crystal Jade, as I mentioned before. It was good; it was pleasant and fun. I got to meet one of Daisy's friends I'd never met before, and good food and conversation was had by all. We basically closed the place down. We were the last ones there in the restaurant -- I don't know what time they normally close, but as soon as all of us were outside, they turned off the lights and locked up, which was a sure sign we were there a little later than they'd expected to have customers. Crystal Jade calls itself a "Pan Asian" restaurant, and this is true -- they had all sorts of different stuff. I ended up getting some crab rangoon, beef fried rice (my go-to when I don't know what the food at a place is like, as it's hard to fuck up beef fried rice no matter where you go) and some curry noodle soup. Daisy had some sort of fried tofu concoction that I tried, and it was okay too.
Upon returning home, with one of our best friends (and Daisy's maid of honor) coming back with us to hang out for a while, we logged on to JCPenney's website and ordered my jacket for the wedding -- a black linen-cotton jacket with pockets, 56 long (a size bigger than I need just because we want to ensure it will fit well) -- and with coupon codes and their clearance sale (which expired that night, so that's why we had to do it then), we got it for under $60. Including free ship-to-store. It will arrive in about three weeks at the store near Daisy's house, and she'll pick it up. Daisy bought it for me, as she'd already worked that purchase into the wedding budget. I think it looks really nice, it's classy, and it's something I'll be able to wear for more than just the wedding. I wanted one with pockets because, well, I use pockets. More than half of the ones we looked at in-store had decorative pocket flaps only, and the material was too stiff and unwieldy to wear for a long period of time. The one I picked looks good, and it looks comfortable.
As an aside, we wanted to go to the Men's Wearhouse too, but the only black jacket they had in my size on their website was $379. I haven't spent $379 on any and all clothing purchases TOTAL over the past five years or so combined.
So, at this point we'd basically accomplished any and all things we'd been meaning to do while I was there. We went to our movie, we had our pizza, we'd gotten me a vaping kit, we'd gone out with our friends, and we'd gotten my jacket. Those were the big things, obviously, that needed to be done.
What was left? Not a lot. We hung out with our aforementioned friend until around midnight, when she had to go back home and go to bed as she had work in the morning, and then we did the other thing that Daisy had planned for us to do: we watched the entirety of the first Anne of Green Gables movie. All THREE AND A HALF HOURS of it. Ahem.
Daisy has been meaning to sit me down and make me watch this movie ever since we've been a couple. No, seriously, the entire time we've been together. I will, eventually, watch the other two films as well, if only out of morbid curiosity to see what happens to this Anne Shirley character. I liked it fine, though as it is thirty years old, it's a little goofy in places, and I'm sure Daisy didn't appreciate my commentary during the...ahem... "bosom friends" sequences. Because, of course, leave it to me to arch my eyebrow at things like that, as the years of my life spent in academia beat into my head the concept of reading into characters' thoughts/actions/intentions to pull out hidden meanings for literary criticism.
After the movie was over, I almost immediately went to bed. I got up about five hours later, again with screaming back pain and terrible heartburn, and went downstairs to sleep on the couch to see if that would help. It did, and I slept until almost 4PM yesterday. We went to the Dollar Tree (where I bought everything this time around, since Daisy had been paying for everything for me/us the entire trip), Daisy ate some dinner and cleaned up the house, and we packed up everything and left Omaha. We got back here early this morning.
Since Daisy left I haven't done a whole lot -- again, I'm in the decompression stage, and I'm guessing I'm not going to be awake late tonight, as I need to sleep and recuperate somewhat from the week. I got my health insurance packet in the mail today, but haven't opened it yet. I started one of my loads of laundry while I was typing up this post, and I haven't eaten anything today yet. I don't really want anything, honestly, as I'm not particularly hungry. My digestive issues have settled, though, so that's a plus. The cats are fine; they didn't even go through half of the food and water I'd set out for them. and they didn't tear anything up or get into anything while I was gone. They have, understandably, been quite clingy since we got back home, though.
Over the weekend I have some important things to do, but none of them really have a set timeframe aside from updating/reminding my students what's coming up next week. I will cover that stuff, as it requires a fair amount of detail, in my next post here -- whenever I write it. For now, though, I should probably get something to eat and try to get some rest.
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