The Empress and Her Father, Part II

 

I didn't know what to do or make of her yet, really. 

We'd haphazardly set up the bedroom for her to be sequestered -- it's always a good idea to isolate kittens from the rest of the house, as well as other cats, until they can get a full vet checkup after adoption. Her first vet appointment isn't until the 4th -- given the holiday it was the soonest we could get her in -- and until then we planned for her to be closed up in our master bedroom, much like we did with Hank when we got him.

While Hank was semi-destructive -- liked to explore, chew on wires, climb things, hide in places he shouldn't be hiding -- Empress (or Emmy, as I call her) is, so far, really none of those things. She immediately found a nice, quiet cuddle spot under the bed and basically stayed put. I would go in and check on her once an hour or so, hold her and get her used to me, and then I'd put her back down and she'd either go back under the bed to sleep or she'd go to the food bowl and eat -- and I'd quietly slip out of the room.

She's the most beautiful longhaired cat I've ever seen. And she is intensely loving and cuddly. She loves being held, loves being stroked and scratched under the chin and behind the ears, having her long hair smoothed out -- all of it. She tried to climb up on my shoulder the first time I held her -- she's going to be a shoulder cat. A parrot kitty.

But she is a needy little thing.

I went downstairs to feed the other cats, and the fish, and about five minutes later I heard her crying.

"Mew! Mew! Mew! Mew!" almost like a chant.

I went back upstairs to find her sitting in the middle of the room, staring at me like I'd personally offended her by leaving. 

She then ran back under the bed and stayed just out of my reach, as if to say "I didn't need you, I just wanted you to know I was here."

I let her be after a few minutes of talking sweetly to her and rubbing her with my fingertips -- that's as close as she'd let me get -- before leaving the room again. 

When I stepped out of the room, Pete and Hank were waiting for me, guarding the bedroom door. They knew something was in there, something that smelled like them and sounded like them. 

I went back into the room, picked her up in my arms, and carried her into the hallway so that the boys could see her. Pete got excited; he got this magically happy look on his face like "It's a new baby! Can I see her? Can I lick her?"

Hank was not enthused. Hank saw her, narrowed his eyes and glared, and then growled. I have never heard Hank growl before. Then he hissed, loudly.

In response, Emmy hissed and growled back at him, louder and higher-pitched, and then turned to look at me as if to say "did you see what that little orange fucker just did?"

Hank stomped downstairs, growling and grumbling (yes, literally) the whole way. 

I put Emmy back into the room and she was fine the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, when Daisy finally got home. Pete stood guard outside the bedroom door, so desperate to see the new little furball with the attitude and the big eyes.

Daisy brought home pizza for dinner, and we ate. Hank mostly avoided us. It was very clear that he was not happy. I told Daisy that I thought it was because he knew he would no longer be the baby. Daisy disagreed and said she didn't think he could reason like that (she's likely right) and that it was a territory thing, more than likely.

I will remind everyone here that upon meeting Hank, all three of the older cats hissed and ran off, and our introductions to him were slow and metered out, only a few minutes at a time, before that became an hour or so, then two hours, then he was finally given free reign of the house. 

When Daisy got home, we found that Empress had puked on the bed. It was just water and I assumed it's because she was dehydrated and drank a lot of water when she had free access to it in the bowl in the room. We washed the sheets and she seemed fine. When we came back upstairs after dinner, she'd puked a second time -- still water, but this time on Daisy's pillow and on the new sheets. We washed those too. Daisy looked it up and apparently after female cats were fixed, it wasn't uncommon for them to vomit a few times, sometimes for a week, as the surgery anesthesia wears off and they heal. I seem to recall Maggie and Sadie doing the same thing for a bit, but that was so very long ago now. 

I also considered the trauma factor -- in the span of about two weeks she'd been rescued, fostered, taken to the humane society, spayed, put in multiple cages in multiple rooms, put in boxes and cars and had been driven around to various places, and then hastily adopted -- put into another box in another car -- and quickly was taken to a bedroom and was immediately isolated. She'd been through a lot.

Daisy showered, and I held Empress on my chest on the bed for quite some time. She was very content and very happy -- it is very clear that she likes attention and likes people, and even more apparent that she adores being held and cuddled. I'm still trying to gauge her personality. She is very playful, but very snuggly and wants your entire attention span. She likes belly rubs, but we have to be careful because of her still-healing incision. She is not yet a goblin, though she is inquisitive and likes to explore. 

Daisy came back into the room after her shower and laid down on the bed with us. Emmy nuzzled in and began licking my lips and nose -- just like Hank used to do with Daisy. I could have cried again. When she finished, I said to Daisy out of the side of my mouth "you picked the right cat."

I think she's happy.

The Empress and Her Father, Part I

 So. I have news.

I'm sure that you can guess what it is simply from the post title, but there's a story involved, so...relax.

I'm going to start from the beginning as this will take a while to fully explain.

As all of you know, once we got Hank, I began very deeply pondering the mortality of our older generation of cats in this house. Pete, Maggie, and Sadie are all sixteen -- almost seventeen -- and it's becoming more clear now as time goes on that they will not be with us forever. Pete is in the best health of all of them, but he's still older and a lot slower than he used to be. Maggie is in kidney failure and has been for almost two years now -- she seems to be in good spirits and is active enough for her age, but she could take a turn for the worse and go at pretty much any time. Sadie has deteriorated pretty badly and rapidly over the past year or so, and is now bone-thin and very frail. I don't think she has much more time left and will likely leave us during 2024 -- I don't want her to, but I will be very surprised if she does not. 

All of these cats have had very long, very safe and incredibly loving lives. They've wanted for nothing, they've always had shelter and any food or treats they've ever wanted, an abundance of toys and safe spaces to call their own, and endless love, kisses, and cuddles from us, from the time all of them were very young kittens small enough to sit comfortably in a teacup. They've never known the horrors of the streets, have never known what it's like to fear predators or the weather or not know where their next meal is coming from or when they'd get it. Even during my poorest, saddest years on this planet, I would always make sure they were taken care of as well as possible -- even going hungry sometimes so that they would not. As I have no human children, these cats have always been my actual children, and have always been loved, protected, and taken care of as such.

When Daisy came into my life, she became their mother. It was a role that she fit into naturally -- very naturally -- and she is such a good mom. She is so patient and kind with the kids. Pete was thrilled to have her as his mom, and Maggie took to her very quickly as well -- Maggie essentially became "Daisy's cat" and would take every opportunity, in her younger years, to lay on her chest or on her lap. Pete began splitting time with me and Daisy equally, and eventually also gravitated more towards Daisy. Sadie was always my shadow, but Daisy force-socialized her into loving her as well (Sadie has always been, by far, the most skittish of all of them). In their older years all of them spend time with us pretty equally. Sadie has become much more of a Mama's girl over the past year or so, and Maggie/Pete love attention regardless.

When these children die off one by one, we will be sad and we will mourn, but it will not be unexpected and we will not be destroyed psychologically when it happens. We know it's coming. We don't like to think about it, but we know. I've researched cat cremation and memorials and have reviewed the process for getting it taken care of. Death for pets is always that inevitability lurking in the shadows, the void that -- as I have frequently said in casual conversation -- comes for us all.

We had a very strong, very safe and comfortable dynamic for many years. 

And then we found Hank.

I will again stress that Hank wasn't exactly planned -- like a surprise pregnancy -- but getting another cat had been on our mind for years. Daisy had wanted another little boy, an "asshole," as she said, who would be fun to raise. 

Oh, he was fun all right. Mr. Shortlegs the Orange Lad became the new king of our household, determined to make friends with Pete and become his, and our, snuggle buddy. Meanwhile, I got the big orange boy that I'd always wanted in my heart for a very long time. I always told Daisy that if we got other cats, I wanted Empress (first and foremost of course) but a big orange boy was on my list too -- as well as a seal-point Himalayan and a longhaired, giant brown tabby (which was also on Daisy's list). 

Remember this, it'll be important for later.

We were very worried about Hank's settling in with our old farts who had never been around any other cats and were crotchety, set-in-their-ways senior citizens long before Hank was a twinkle in his parents' eye. But, Hank had been fostered, he'd been socialized with other cats -- and while he was new to our household he was not new to interacting with other felines...he just was hoping they'd be a lot more active and rambunctious and playful, and wouldn't need the cat equivalent of walkers and wheelchairs. Hank is very active, to the point where we called him the goblin, and our other cats...well, weren't. Pete is the most active of the old farts and even he was like "get this little shit away from me so I can sleep" a fair amount of the time.

He's simmered down a lot now. Possibly because as Hank's grown up, he hasn't gone so hard with Pete when Pete isn't in a playful mood. Perhaps Hank finally got the message. 

Hank is still very active though, is mischievous and likes to get into everything, tears up cardboard, tries to climb into the TV stand and chew on wires, and just last week before I was on vacation unplugged my monitor cable while I was working and tried to run off with it.

Despite this, I love him anyway.

Daisy has wanted to get Hank a playmate for some time. I mostly shut this down for several months, since he was just burning off kitten energy and I couldn't imagine two small furballs tearing ass around the house. Also, given Pete's reaction to when we brought in Hank (it did, of course, soften with some time and those boys love each other now), I was tense about territorial disputes and disrupting the dynamic we had -- which had finally settled down into a good groove. I had also been incredibly stressed at work and helping to keep Hank calm in the night or having to watch his every movement to make sure he wasn't going to get into anything, eat something he shouldn't, or tear something up was very tiring and nerve-wracking. Pete had been an absolute horror to raise and train into the very sweet and loving cat he eventually became, and I had scars from nails and teeth on my hands for years after raising that cat. Hank was, comparatively, a breeze -- but I am not as young as I once was and Hank was still quite the handful sometimes. 

When we actually started looking in earnest, even in a passive fashion, for another cat -- of course, finding Empress was at the top of my to-do list. It did not have to be Empress, but I wanted another little girl. I did not think Pete would be as tense or as anxious with a little girl compared to another male in the household, and Hank had such a dominant personality where I thought another male would likely challenge him as well. However, I was not overall opposed to getting another little boy eventually -- Daisy bonds much more strongly with the male cats, and the girls tend to gravitate towards me for love and protection (I never really understood this, but over the years I've learned not to really question it). 

Daisy, to her credit, mostly put aside her own wants in a cat to help me search for Empress. As you folks are aware if you've been following this site for the past month or two, we have looked at many cats in many different places -- multiple PetSmarts, multiple humane societies, a private adoption agency, etc. Most of them were Empress candidates (or otherwise just cute little kittens) that either didn't give us the right vibe, or were already gone by the time we tried to go see them. Some of them were cats that Daisy was interested in -- she almost brought home a tuxedo cat a few weeks ago, and wanted to bring home a long-haired little boy (named Mewtwo, of all things), but her coworker adopted him first -- and good for him, I know that cat will have a wonderful home. Some cats had a bit of a vibe for her, some cats had a LOT of a vibe for her, and the same went for me. Some of them I thought to myself "okay, this cat would be a good fit for our house" but was either too skittish, didn't like other cats, or despite everything else, the vibe just wasn't there enough for me to pull the trigger. 

There was a gray-and-white longhaired boy that we'd been watching for on the humane society website, for example. He was four months old and had a thick mane, and looked much larger/older than the four pounds and four months of age that he'd been listed as (for perspective, Hank is now eight months old as of tomorrow and weighs twelve pounds). He was there and had been in the "holding period" since well before my birthday, and we kept waiting for him to become available so we could go see him and likely adopt him -- I put aside my want for Empress as Daisy had really wanted this cat, and I agreed that once he came available, we would go meet with him and very likely adopt him. He never became available and just sat there in the holding period for close to two weeks (generally they release a cat into the adoption pool in 4-5 days at the most). As of last night, he had been removed from the site -- which either means someone had claimed him or he is no longer amongst the living.

As I'd written here, I was becoming frustrated with even looking and felt like I'd reached my endpoint for the time being. Daisy suggested a few times that we could pause on the active searching if we wanted to, because the winter is not a great time for new kittens -- spring and early summer they get bombarded heavily with kittens at the humane society. This is part of why Hank was there so long and why he wasn't immediately adopted -- there were probably fifty kittens there when we got Hank, and they'd get five or six more every day. In the winter months they're lucky to get five or six a week. 3,494 cats had been adopted out by the Nebraska Humane Society this year alone, as of last week. That's a lot for any humane society. There will always be more cats. So, as the holidays ramped up, the weather changed for the worse, and I became more weary of the search, I would glance at their website for a few minutes maybe once a day or so and focused on taking care of more pressing matters at hand.

Christmas came and went, we both went back to work, paid bills, waited for Daisy's sister to arrive in town, and generally went about our lives.

And then this cat showed up on the website:

Longhair tabby -- appeared to be a black tabby with a little brown/fawn in her, and actually listed as a longhair, which is rare. Sometimes we'll see cats that are listed as shorthair but are actually medium-hair because I don't think the humane society is that great at gauging proper floof levels. Apparently, longhaired cats are only about 10% of the general cat population.

I thought she was very pretty but wasn't really getting a lot of vibes from the photo. 9 weeks is young and she was very small. No way to tell if she was going to become a cat large enough to ride into battle, which is what I was looking for in my Empress -- regardless of what coloring she had in her fur.

But, I always said Empress could end up being a longhaired brown/black tabby -- she could basically be any color but white or orange. And Daisy herself had always wanted a longhaired brown tabby.

Harriet, as they called her -- her "shelter name" -- was posted on the site on Thursday night, which meant that she would be available when the doors opened at noon on Friday. I had to work Thursday night and Daisy had to work in-office on Friday, but I looked at the above picture a few times and asked Daisy if she'd go over there on her lunch on Friday and take a look, get a vibe check, etc. I'd be asleep, of course, since I'd worked the night before. There was another floofy little girl too who was all black, and I said she could check out that one too if she wanted -- both were sort of Empress candidates, but I didn't have high hopes either way.

Daisy agreed -- even though driving across town and back at noon on the last Friday of the month before a holiday would be stressful for her -- and mentioned that even if she thought either of those cats were the right fit, it was very hard for her to essentially "pick a cat for me," as she said.

"Use your best judgment," I told her. "I trust you. You know what I'm looking for in Empress. If she's not the right fit, she's not the right fit and that's fine. I want to stress that I will not be disappointed or upset if you don't come home with a cat and she's adopted by someone else. It's fine."

Daisy also knows what she's looking for in a cat for this household, not just my own wants. She'd have to be able to fit in and not only be a good match to hang out with the boys, but also the girls (which I have never been that concerned about, since Hank). We'd want her to feel safe and loved and to be a comfortable fit.

And then I went to bed. Well, more accurately, I passed out in my chair even before Daisy left for work Friday morning, and later got up and moved to the bed, where the boys came to sleep with me eventually.

I woke up shortly into the afternoon hours, rather dazed and sleep deprived, to find these messages from my wife, with my replies in purple:

 

I went to the bathroom and peed, and as I was flushing the toilet, I heard the garage door open. A few moments later, I heard Daisy ascending the stairs, and I came out to meet her. She was carrying a box.

"Come here," she said, as she went into our bedroom, "and meet Empress."

She sat the box on the bed and we opened the blinds and curtains to let natural light fill the room, and there I was -- awake for five minutes or less, in the middle of the day, looking at a box on the bed with a cat in it. 

I did not know what cat was in the box. I didn't know who or what Daisy had chosen to bestow my name of Empress onto. I slowly opened the flaps of the box and looked down to see a tiny ball of brown tabby fur and two giant eyes looking up at me. I picked her up and immediately began crying.

Daisy, of course, made sure to document this in photos. Luckily you can't really tell that I'm crying.

She was so small. Nine weeks and 2.6 pounds of thick, fluffy fur. She'd been spayed, chipped, and fully registered as "Empress" on all paperwork and documentation already. 

And she was a cuddler.

I stood there, crying, still not fully awake or able to take everything in, while this little furball snuggled into my arms and purred really hard. I didn't know what to do. A wave of emotions came over me that I was greatly struggling to process.

Daisy made sure the bedroom litter pan was clean and I made sure she had water and kitten food in a bowl on the floor (we had two bags of kitten food left over from when Hank was a baby) and just like that, Daisy had to jump in the car and get back to work -- leaving me alone with this small child in our bedroom.

So the search was over. I had my Empress. 

The Holidays, Part XXII: Christmas

Merry (now very belated) Christmas from our house to yours.

 

This is going to be a long one, so strap in. 

I'm going to start from the beginning -- where we left off on Christmas Eve.

By the early afternoon hours on Christmas Eve, Daisy had already had a very long day. While I had done a few scant things around the house (like some laundry, unloaded/reloaded and ran the dishwasher, etc), she had eaten, opened all of the Amazon boxes (half of which contained presents for me as well as the parents), broke down all of those boxes, wrapped all of the presents, drove the boxes and our glass recycling to the recycling center for drop off, gone to Whole Foods to pick up the last of the necessary Christmas groceries, had spoken to her mother at length via phone, and had returned home -- all in the span of about two hours, while still fighting her cold symptoms and bouts of nausea.

In the interim (during the conversation with her mother) we were all becoming increasingly concerned about the storm moving in. The rain was unrelenting and the temperature, when it had been really warm before, was steadily dropping. At this juncture, around 2pm on Christmas Eve, the forecast was still a bit iffy as to the timing for the rain-to-ice-to-snow changeover. Some parts of Nebraska were already getting snow, and none of the local forecasters could really pinpoint a time when it would happen. Some said evening, some said in the overnight hours, others said early morning Christmas Day. We had to make a decision on the evening -- and possibly Christmas Day -- plans before it was too late to roll them back.

After the conversation with her mother, we decided to forego the church service and turn Christmas Eve into a full Christmas -- meaning, do dinner and all of the presents all at once ASAP in the afternoon instead, because of the snowstorm rolling in. We did not know whether we would be able to return to the house on Christmas Day, even though it's only 7-8 miles across town, due to the incoming weather. Yeah, we could get an inch or two of snow, or we could get nine. So, the decision was made, I put away the dressy clothing I'd pulled out for the church, and hopped into the shower. I ended up wearing a red flannel, sweatpants, and a t-shirt that literally says Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animal. 

We set a time limit -- because of the weather -- to go, do the stuff, and return home around 8pm. This was a good round number that would give us 5-6 hours of quality time with the parents, during which time we could do dinner, presents, and just relax a bit to enjoy the holiday. Christmas is about family, it's about spending time with loved ones. I didn't care as much about presents as I did about that, especially as we'd been prevented from spending a lot of time with the parents over the past week because both Mama and Daisy had been sick.

Daisy, of course, put on her traditional Christmas nightgown -- a flannel nightgown with Christmas designs on it that Mama made for her long before Daisy and I were together. She wears it every year on Christmas. It is old, it has been stitched together/repaired several times, and is the much more beloved family equivalent of the pink bunny suit from A Christmas Story. 

I love the nightgown, as does Daisy, and I think she looks super-cute in it. It is very much her personality. And I think Mama is very happy every year to see her still wearing it. 

Twenty minutes after I got out of the shower, I was dressed and we were on the road to the parents' in the cold, alternating-between-misty-and-pouring rain, with all of our presents and Christmas food in tow. We were at the parents' well before the 4pm church services would have started, but none of us were really that upset about missing it. I've written about the church services here before, so there's no real reason to rehash any of that. It's only (I think) the third time or fourth time in eleven years that we did not do the church thing, and at least one or two of those times was because of a full-blown worldwide pandemic, sooo...yeah. That's worth noting, I think.

Anyway. 

We got there and Mama had already been working on food. Daisy dove in and began prepping the rest. I asked if there was anything I could do to help and was summarily shot down (sometimes there's a lot for me to do, others there's just not), so Dad and I got some bonding time together in the living room. Food was ready in less than an hour -- altogether, there was pizza, chips and guacamole, shrimp, chicken quesadillas, baked breaded asparagus, chopped vegetables with dressing, salad, steamed spinach, cookies, fudge, fruit salad, and many little other odds and ends. On the "eves," both Christmas and New Year's, we've always done "finger foods" and the like in lieu of a larger, more "traditional" meal, regardless of who's there and who's not. It's just the normal family tradition. I had at least two cups of very good, very strong coffee in an attempt to stay awake, as I'd been awake since very early in the morning.

After we ate and the food was put away, dishes were done, and as our night began to wind down, we distributed the Christmas gifts and took turns opening them. 

Now, I will normally state that usually Mama makes us a new quilt every year for Christmas, and that is our gift as a couple, as a whole, and we don't need or want anything else. This year, she told us early that there wasn't going to be a Christmas quilt for us -- there wasn't time or materials to do one -- and that is 100% fine. Making a quilt is a lot of work and it is very time-consuming, not to mention expensive. Since Daisy and I have been together, she's made seven or eight different quilts for us, with different designs, all of them very intricate and beautiful. She's made probably double that for Daisy alone throughout her life, and has even made several of them for just me over the years. Add to that the fact that if she's not making clothing/dresses/jewelry for the younger grandkids, she's making them quilts as well. Mama's time and energy is finite and I stressed to her that she never has to make us anything, that she's done so much and made so many things for us over the years. I stressed this because I know she feels guilty or otherwise doesn't want to disappoint us. I want her to know that she could never disappoint us because no matter what she does, can, or can't do, she always does it with love -- and I don't want her to ever think she's let us down by not pouring hundreds of hours into a quilt just because she's done it many times before. 

We got the parents an array of different things, both large and small. I mentioned that I got Dad the tapes for the Handycam and the transfer cable I used, but generally the other stuff for the parents I let Daisy do herself. She knows better what her parents would want and/or need, and I tend to stay out of the way. Most of the time -- like this year -- I don't exactly know everything she's gotten for them until I see them open the stuff. I have a general idea, sure, and sometimes I know the bigger items, but sometimes it's as much of a surprise to me as it is to them.

I'm not upset by this; Daisy takes great care in her selections of gifts and I implicitly trust that for her parents, she'll pick out the right things with minimal involvement from me. As much as I like gifting things to people I'd likely just get in the way by trying to "help" or by making suggestions. 

What we got from the parents this year was rather eclectic and fun overall. Daisy got a lot of really nice clothing from Torrid (which I would imagine I'll be removing tags from and carefully washing over the next week or so). What I got, as always, is amusing and fun:

1. An all-over print hoodie, in my size, with golden dragons all over it. This thing looks wild and is all polyester, so it won't shrink. Ever. It's also quite warm. Daisy seemed quite envious of it. 
   
   
2. A cast resin coffee mug with a stainless-steel interior -- the outside is decorated in gold and silver and is covered in clockwork/steampunk-looking mecha dragons. This is also very cool. I don't think it can be dish-washed, but it's far more of a "special occasions" mug anyway. 
   
   
3. A toothpaste dispenser that is a rubber dog's ass. No, seriously, you screw it on top of a tube of toothpaste and the dog's ass poops out the toothpaste when you squeeze the tube. It even has a...well, I don't think there's any other way to say this...buttplug that you shove up the dog's ass to keep the toothpaste sealed and fresh. It's one of the funniest/goofiest things I've ever seen and I love it.
   
   
4. A travel carry-all kit for toiletries and other small items, for when we travel -- especially for when we travel back to Nova Scotia in the summer. It has two zipper pockets and multiple pouches, enough to hold most of the stuff I'd need/be taking with me anywhere we go. 

From there we gathered up our things a short while later, packed up the food (the parents don't want the vast majority of leftovers, it's just the two of them and they usually won't eat much of them before they go bad and get tossed) and went home. We still planned on trying to make it over on Christmas Day, but were playing it by ear. It was already getting a chill in the air and I think there was a little flurrying mixed in with the rain even by the time we got home. 

We made sure the animals were taken care of and fed and I went upstairs. Despite all the coffee I'd had, I was still very tired. It had been a long several days in a row of running around trying to get every last little thing done, plus driving back and forth to look at every possible cat candidate, and I was pretty worn down. The incoming storm was stressing me out too.

It felt like as if the holiday season had been a cavalcade of failures one after another, loosely interconnected but not really: no Empress despite multiple searches on multiple days, we didn't really do anything that special for my birthday aside from the breakfast -- due to lack of energy and time -- so all of those plans went to the wayside, no church service, Daisy's sister being delayed in her arrival to town for multiple days, spending $150 on an electric snow shovel we weren't planning to spend, most of the flash drives not arriving before Christmas (one did, I'll get to that in a bit) and now a snowstorm that threatened to basically cancel actual Christmas for us.

I was exhausted and was in bed before 9:30 on Christmas Eve. Actual bed. I was in bed likely a few hours before Daisy even knew I was asleep. 

This is significant because it's so rare that Daisy and I sleep in the bed at the same time anymore. With her working days and me working overnights, even on my two nights a week I have off, I still have to be awake for some/most of them in order to not wreck my sleep schedule. However, when I have time off I generally have the best intentions of sleeping with her -- and most of the time fail miserably and end up falling asleep in my chair for the times that I sleep. The chair is quite comfortable to sleep in, by the way.

But, I did sleep several hours with Daisy a few nights ago, and I promised her that on Christmas Eve, we'd sleep together so that we could both get good rest. So, once we got home and I felt myself getting very tired -- nodding off at my computer desk, etc -- I knew if I sat down in my chair it would be all over, and went to bed. Actually went to bed -- walked into the bedroom and went to sleep in the actual bed while she watched reruns of Charmed downstairs on the TV. 

I don't know when she came to bed because I was dead to the world. I didn't hear anything, didn't feel anything (the Purple mattress does not really transfer any movement or bouncing, tossing/turning, etc -- it's one of the things I love about it). I woke up at some point in the night, briefly, to find Pete in my arms and Daisy in bed next to me, and promptly fell back asleep.

I was awakened shortly before 5am on Christmas morning by ice/sleet pelting the bedroom window about six feet from my head. I was hot -- Daisy is a furnace, and the giant black cat sleeping with me as if he were my teddy bear was also (obviously) quite warm. I tried to lay there for a bit in order to get more sleep, but I was awake and that wouldn't be happening. I dressed myself in the dark and trudged across the hall to my office, where Pete followed and got his normal lounging spot on my ottoman. 

I looked out the window to see very little in the grass, but every structure coated in a thick layer of sleet and ice. It was coming down hard and sounded like it was raining glass shards. It was also around this time where I thought to myself well, I somehow doubt we'll be leaving the house today. By the time daylight began coming on, the sleet had stopped and had fully transitioned to snow. Hard snow. I watched half an inch pile up quickly, then a full inch, with no end in sight. 

I was hungry; I hadn't eaten anything since the Christmas Eve dinner, and I knew the cats and the fish would want food, so I put on my robe and headed downstairs. I made two small cheese sandwiches on the bread that Daisy had gotten for me to use in the Griddler, brewed a thick, large mug of coffee, and grabbed one of the vegan cake donuts Daisy had specially purchased for a Christmas breakfast. I made sure the cats and fish had their breakfasts, and sat down on the couch with the PlayStation -- because why not, I was killing time and this is my vacation and my holiday too -- and enjoyed a very quiet Christmas morning of coffee and video games for a bit. It got lighter outside and I could then really see how hard it was snowing, as by that time there was about two full inches on the ground and more coming. All of the cats gathered around me and got comfortable -- the girls on opposite ends of the couch, Pete in one of the cat beds, and Hank on the floor next to my work desk. All of them looked very content and happy. It was one of those snapshots of Christmas morning I'll always keep in my mind -- the youngest cat's first Christmas morning and the older cats' seventeenth. My thoughts went to all the cats sitting in the shelter in the dark, or in PetSmart, alone and sad.

I can't help everyone. I can't save everyone. I have to be content to give the cats I have a good life. And they have very, very good lives full of love -- in a home that is warm and safe, with plentiful food/water/treats and comfy blankets and cat beds to sleep in, toys to play with, and two wonderful parents who would do anything for them. 

Daisy did wake up eventually, in the 9am hour. She made herself a vegan egg omelet/scramble thing and grabbed a donut while I continued to play on the PlayStation. Once she finished, as the snow had stopped for a while, we called her parents to check in with them and see what they wanted to do about the day. More snow was coming -- we were predicted to get more squalls that could dump another two inches or so on the area off and on throughout the day, night, and into the next day. Mama was thrilled that it hadn't snowed that much yet, and we could see that it wasn't sticking that much on the street, even -- our neighborhood street just looked wet and a little slushy, and the main roads looked wet and treated, as people were driving on them normally. As such, we made plans to go over there to continue Christmas festivities, but to have an early dinner as the snow was supposed to pick up again later. We would call my parents first, open our own presents, and then make our way over. 

My parents were very happy to hear from us, because of course they'd already been up for hours, had already opened all of their presents (including the ones from us) and were already cooking for the day -- they were going to do dinner with their friends down the street -- they just had to get the ham finished (or what have you) and go over there in the afternoon. My mother rattled off the list of gifts they'd gotten each other -- my mother had gotten a bunch of necklaces/jewelry from my Dad, as well as a used/refurbished Dell laptop (hey, I have one of those too! two, in fact; one is a Chromebook). She then thanked me for the stuff I'd sent, and I explained why I'd picked it out for them. Here's a list of those things, now that I can share them here:

1. Dolly Parton's new "Rockstar" album, where she covers classic rock songs with a bunch of guest stars on the album with her -- because Dolly is timeless and if nothing else, a Dolly Parton cover album where she covers songs like "Purple Rain," "Night Moves," and "Let it Be" would at the very least be a wild novelty if not actually a good record. My parents were thrilled with this.
   
   
2. A giant WVU flag for the outside of their house -- like, the kind you'd fly from a flagpole (like how I fly the Federation flag outside my own house). Everyone in North Carolina who moved there from WV, especially around the Oak Island area, has a ton of WVU stuff decorating their houses and yards, and there are a lot of WV people down there. I can't tell you how many WVU flags or other decorations we saw when we were there. My parents have had that house for close to a decade and until I got them that flag, they weren't part of the "look, we're WV people too" club. Now they can be. 
   
   
3. Kind Almond Chocolate Breakfast Bars and Lemon Zest Luna Bars -- because both of them are great, vegan, and something relatively healthy for them they can have as a treat or a snack. While I hate getting food items for Christmas, I do love giving them. My mother was also excited about these. I told her to store both of them somewhere they'd be room temperature or slightly above room temperature so that they stay soft and chewy and don't get hard (I know this from experience). 
   
   
4. Interchangeable silicone watch bands, and interchangeable screen protector covers for my mother's Fitbit, in pinks/pastel colors. I got her the Fitbit at her request and delivered it to her when we were down there this fall. However, she wanted the pink one, and the pink one was $40 more for zero actual reason, so I made up for this by getting her the interchangeable bands and covers -- she can now have a pink one if she wants, or a blue one, or a purple one, etc. 
   
   
5. A three-pack box of African Black Soap bars. It's some of the best soap I've ever used, and Daisy uses a liquid version in the shower. It smells good and cleans really well, and that was basically my impetus for getting it for them. My mother was sort of...intrigued by the soap, and I got the sense that she wasn't interested in it at all, but was still polite about it. Meh, they'll either use it or they won't, and if they won't I'm sure it'll be there for us to use in several months when we go to visit again. 

If you look through that list, I've hit all the main beats for gifting with my parents -- some fun things, some decorative things, some helpful things, and some utilitarian things. That list is pretty representative of what I do for them for any given gift-giving holiday.

Also of note -- I had sent them a box of Tim Hortons k-cups too, the dark roast that I get, and Amazon fucked up and sent them the decaffeinated ones instead. Yes, I ordered the correct ones -- I double and triple checked. Amazon wouldn't allow returns/replacements on it because it was a food item (believe me, I tried) and my mother took them to work for anyone there who might want them. 

After we got off the phone with them, it was time for us to open our own presents. As we do every year, we take turns opening gifts -- I'll open one, then Daisy will, etc -- back and forth until we're all out. It is with great pleasure that I can now tell everyone here what I got Daisy this year:

1. A Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Edition and 6 months free Nintendo Online -- this was by far the most expensive gift of the holiday and was one of the very first things I purchased. It also continues a long-running tradition I started when Daisy and I got married -- her wedding gift from me was a Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart 64. The next year, as she already had a Wii, I bought Mario Kart Wii and two of the wheels for the Wii controller. Three years later, I purchased her the SNES Classic, which contained the original Mario Kart game. Now, this year, comes the full-size Switch for the TV with the deluxe edition of Mario Kart 8. I'm sure when Nintendo releases their next system and the next Mario Kart game, whenever/whatever that will be, the tradition will continue again. 
   
   
2. Basepaws Cat DNA tests -- a two pack -- to see what Pete and Hank actually are, genetically. This was the one thing she got this year that she specifically asked me for, and has wanted for years, primarily for Pete. It was also $200 because I got the two-pack. I got the two-pack because ever since we got him, and I've seen how he's grown, I desperately want to know what Hank has in his genetics. His vet visit last week where the doc said that it's very possible he has Maine Coon in him fuels my curiosity even more. This is the first gift I purchased this year -- back in September -- before any of this came to light, so my foresight is amazing.
   
   
3. Just Dance 2023 for the Switch
   
   
4. Wristbands that the Switch controllers (they call them Joy-cons, which I think is stupid but whatever) hook into, so that games like Just Dance 2023 can be properly enjoyed.
   
   
5. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe for the Switch
   
   
6. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury for the Switch
   
   
7. Disney Classic Games Collection for, yes, you guessed it, the Switch -- this one has some backstory to it. Growing up, Daisy had a SNES (it's actually in the trunk of the car right now, we brought it home when I was collecting the home movies to digitize). One of her favorite games for it was The Lion King, a tough as nails game based on the 1994 movie of the same name. I had the game on my Genesis growing up and it is brutal in its difficulty level -- like, there's no way that game, a game made for kids, should be that hard. But Daisy loved it, and her actual SNES is in pretty bad shape -- it needs, at the very least, a new power cable and a deep cleaning. But the Disney Classic Games Collection contains that game on it, as well as The Jungle Book (which I also owned at one point) and Aladdin. Even if we never get the SNES up and running again, she can still play that game again, now on the Switch, with her....
   
   
8. Switch Pro Controller -- I got one for myself too, so neither of us have to use the Joy-cons unless they're specifically required for a game. 
   
   
9. Lead From the Outside by Stacey Abrams, a book that she told me 2-3 years ago she wanted and then promptly forgot about. She was excited to get this, even though she never remembered telling me she wanted it. 
   
   
10. A Promised Land by Barack Obama -- large print edition. I'd also planned on getting this for her last year but never got around to it. Why the "large print" edition, you may ask? Because it was $4 for a book thicker than a family bible, while the normal edition was $30. You do the math, folks.
    
    
11. The same set of African Black Soap bars I got for my parents. She expressed some doubt that she'd use these as she loves the liquid Alaffia version she uses in the shower (it's lavender scented), but said she might, and if not, I cold use/have them myself. Can't win 'em all, I suppose.

This was by far the most expensive Christmas I've done for Daisy in quite some time. I did not plan for it to be -- that's just how it happened. If I'd gotten nothing but the Switch and the cat DNA tests I still would've outspent my normal budget by 2-3x, as well as Daisy's general budget, by about the same amount. This is not something I do every year nor do/will I plan it to be moving forward...it just sort of happened.

Plus side is that because I started shopping so early, about 90% of it is already paid off. The last 10% will be paid off in a month or so. 

Here's what Daisy got me....

1. A rechargeable massage gun -- something I've been wanting for a few years now. I've already used it and it's wonderful.
   
   
2. A giant jar of Alaffia shea butter for my tattoos -- this is something I asked her for a few times, as I'd been using her jar on occasion. It works really well to moisturize and brighten my ink, it's cheap, and it will likely last me years.
   
   
3. The Playmates' reissued USS Enterprise 1701-D toy. This was a re-release of the same ship model toy from the '90s when Playmates was doing the Star Trek: The Next Generation toy line. The company re-released some of the ships (and figures, I believe) in limited numbers this past year, and Daisy was lucky enough to snag one of the Enterprises. I never had the original, though I do have one of the original shuttlecraft toys. Aside from the shea butter, this is the one thing I asked for this year.
   
   
4. A bar of Pine Tar soap -- used for dandruff control as a shampoo bar. I've used this stuff for years and I've also bought it for Daisy in the past too, as she also likes it. 
   
   
5. Pine Tar Shampoo and Conditioner also from the same company -- I've used it before and surprisingly I'm not a huge fan of it. I may or may not use it, and if I don't, Daisy may.
   
   
6. A large model (I'm guessing 9-10 inches long) of K.I.T.T from Knight Rider, with a working scanner light bar in the front end of the car. I made the joke that I asked for a Trans Am for Christmas, and well, Daisy got me one. It's just in a box. Daisy's reasoning here was that it's my favorite car to drive in the Hot Wheels Unleashed games on the PS4...and she was correct in that reasoning.
   
   
7. Four Lume toasted coconut-scented bars of soap -- possibly my favorite soap from my favorite soap company. Each bar will last weeks.
   
   
8. Two pairs of Canada Weather Gear fleece-lined thermal socks. They are wonderful. 

This is pretty standard fare from Daisy and I loved all of it. She always gets me some useful things, some things to play with and/or toys, 1-2 things I asked for, and then a bunch of little surprises she knows I'll like and/or appreciate. My wife knows me so well. 

After we did the presents, we hastily got dressed -- I legit just put on the same pants and socks, but a different shirt than I'd worn the night before -- and left to go to the parents' house. The roads were fine. The main streets were so well-treated that they were almost dry (and were dry in some spots) and while our street was a little slushy, it posed no danger to us. 

We had a nice dinner at home with the parents -- relaxed and slow -- of traditional holiday vegetables: mashed potatoes (with the leftover gravy from my poutine), green beans, boiled carrots, etc. I ate as much of the remaining fruit salad as I could, and while we digested we just hung out with the parents for a bit. Daisy's oldest sister called and we all talked to her; she now plans to leave late on Saturday or early Sunday to get into town for New Year's Eve, and will be staying for around a week or so. This means we'll get to see her, her husband, and the boys for several days and will likely spend the New Year's Eve with them, as long as weather permits and none of them are sick.

I say this because as much as we love all of them, those kids are germ factories and either Daisy or Mama get really sick after their visits -- or both of them do. I'm hoping that's not the case this time around, especially as both of them just got over whatever sickness they had.

As predicted, in the late afternoon/early evening hours, the snow picked up again and once more began falling fairly heavily. It wasn't really sticking on the roads, but we knew it would start once the sun began going down and everything started refreezing, so we gathered our things and said our goodbyes and made it back to our house shortly after dark had fallen. I was tired, and came upstairs. Daisy then had a 90 minute phone call with her mother to finish up their conversations from earlier in the evening, and then proceeded to have another phone call of similar length with her sister in Pennsylvania -- who, yes, finally received the flash drive full of videos and was thrilled. 

Even now, I have not yet received word from any of the other relatives (read: Canadians) on whether they've received theirs yet.

So, that was Christmas. Daisy went to bed fairly early, as she had to work the next morning, and eventually I came to bed with her as well, even though I did not have to work on the 26th.

The days since have been spent...well, doing numerous things, which I'll write about here in some upcoming entries. I returned to work on Wednesday and badly struggled staying awake all night again for both my Wednesday and Thursday night shifts. It also didn't help that this is "garbage time" or "dead week" as I like to call it -- the week between Christmas and New Year's where nothing really happens, most real companies have most of their employees on vacation (and so, our client ticket load is generally very low) and a decent chunk of our own team is out on vacation for at least some, if not all, of this time as well. Because of this, both nights were easy but both went very slowly. I had to take early lunches both nights to take short naps on the couch because otherwise I would not have been able to stay awake -- and that is with two cups of very strong coffee in me each night.

Wrapping everything else up -- well, we received a few more Christmas cards. We got 22 cards total this year from 12/4 to 12/27. I also had a handful that were returned to me due to outdated addresses, so there's also that. Some I re-sent earlier in the month, once I got the new addresses, others I was never able to get an updated address for. We also got a few belated gifts -- my parents sent us a beach towel like the ones I really loved when we were down there, and there's yet another gift from them being delivered tomorrow (per what my dad told me). Daisy's sister in Pennsylvania also sent us a vegan cheese making kit and some vegan chocolate truffles. We haven't looked too closely at the cheese kit yet, but the truffles have been nice.

So that's Christmas, and the holidays series as a whole comes to a close. I am now off work for an extra day this weekend, since I took off New Year's Eve (Sunday) to spend it with the family and get some rest. Daisy will now be off until Tuesday as well, for a three-day weekend of her own. And, finally, we have some big news coming down the pipe...

The Holidays, Part XXI: O Holy Shit

 Christmas Eve.

T'was the day before Christmas, and all through Omaha...it's raining heavily and I was awakened this morning by a small thunderstorm. 

I'm really not complaining; this could have been all snow, just a mountain of snow dumped on the city before we could do any actual holiday celebrations.

The consensus is still out on what we're actually going to get or when it's going to start. I've seen predictions anywhere between one inch and over a foot depending on what weather-reporting outlet one follows:

So, it is what it is. We'll either get something or we won't. It'll either snow its white little ass off or it won't. It can't be controlled, it can't be reasoned with, it can't be pushed off another few days until it's more convenient -- it simply exists.

We've had freak snowstorms on Christmas Eve and Christmas before, and this forecast reminds me very strongly of eight years ago -- 2015. So permit me, for a moment, to hop into the wayback machine and tell a short story here. 

In 2015, I had been working for the company I work at now for a little over a year. Daisy still worked there too. We'd recently both switched to dayshift hours a couple of months before (oh, how times have changed now). It was a Thursday, and as Christmas was Friday that meant if we took off the Eve, we'd get a four-day weekend. So, we both took it off in order to rest up and prepare for the family holiday festivities. Daisy slept in that day, but I woke up early, tied my long hair back, stuck in my earbuds and began wrapping presents for the family. Daisy's middle sister's family had already moved to Canada at this point, but her oldest sister and their three sons (at the time, the youngest was a very young infant -- they have four now) were already here for Christmas, and with children comes a bunch of extra gifts to wrap. I knew this would be the only time I really got to wrap everyone's gifts, so that morning I dove in.

The apartment we lived in at the time had a large sliding glass door that led out onto an elevated wooden porch/balcony, where I had a chair and a small side table and I would sit and smoke -- I was a smoker then. The door provided so much natural light into the apartment that during daylight hours, no lights/lamps/etc were needed. And, on this Christmas Eve morning, it was snowing lightly -- picturesque, white fluffy snowflakes, like the kind you'd see in a movie. The weather forecasters said we would likely get a dusting to two inches at most, fulfilling many Omaha residents' dreams of a white Christmas. It wouldn't be enough to snarl travel, roads had already been pre-treated in preparation for the holiday, etc -- it was one of those magical snows people hold as a snapshot in their memories, the kind where all noise goes quiet, and nothing seems to be moving outside but the snow that's so delicately falling. I got to peacefully watch it while I was wrapping Christmas presents for the family -- what a perfect moment in time. 

And then it got heavier.

As I continued to wrap gifts, I watched the snow become more dense -- thicker, harder. I watched it begin to pile up on the narrow wrought-iron railing of our back porch. First half an inch, then an inch. There was no wind. It was impressive. Soon it was snowing so hard that I couldn't see across the street -- which was about 20 yards from the apartment. 

This picture was taken from the porch within the first hour or so of the heavier snowfall. On the right foreground you can see my old Silverado and Daisy's Hyundai parked right next to it, already heavily covered in snow. By this point we'd likely already surpassed the "up to 2 inches or so" that was predicted and it didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. 

When I finished wrapping gifts, I went outside onto the porch to smoke. By that time it was nearly whiteout conditions with about four inches on the ground, and zero wind whatsoever. And then there was a very bright flash, but I could not tell where it came from -- I almost thought I was hallucinating...until I heard the following, massive clap of thunder. Because of the snow it sounded like it was underwater. 

By the time the snow stopped in the afternoon hours, nine inches had fallen. The weathermen were stunned and didn't know what to say. It was one of the worst miscues/miscalculations I've ever seen in the history of following the weather on a daily basis. They weren't off by just a little -- being off by seven inches of snow is a lot. It's been very difficult for me to fully trust any sort of local weather forecast since, especially as they've made numerous other misses over the years. 

We did not go to the Christmas Eve church service that year and was barely able to make it over to the parents' for Christmas morning (I really don't understand or remember how that was possible, but it happened). 

This year...it's raining. The temperature is 55 degrees. I finished wrapping all of Daisy's gifts last night shortly before I fell asleep. Daisy is doing her own wrapping at the moment. Right now I'm doing laundry and will be taking a shower shortly as we are scheduled to be at the parents' for today's church services by 3pm. We will likely go to the service, have some Christmas Eve finger foods/etc for dinner and then Daisy and I will return home (hopefully safely and before the snow starts) to go to bed. At least, if all goes well. 

Now that we're at Christmas Eve on the holiday-o-meter, I'll explain what follows here over the next few days:

1. First and foremost -- I likely won't write here tomorrow. I expect it to be a long day and I expect it to be marred with stress and snow and who knows what else, and my primary focus will be on Daisy and the parents...and possibly the Chiefs game, depending on the weather.
   
   
2. Daisy returns to work on the 26th. I do not, I return on the 27th. There's a cat she's had her eye on that may be coming up for adoption on the 26th, and if he (yes, HE) is available, we're going to be first in line to go see him on her lunch hour and do a vibe check. If he seems compatible we've already decided we're getting him...and I'll write more about this if it comes to fruition.
   
   
3. I return to work for the 27th and 28th before I get another long weekend because of the New Year. I do not work New Year's Eve, but I do work New Year's Day. The following Thursday I'll take off due to it being a comp day for me as a salaried employee working a holiday...so I'll have yet another long weekend.  
   
   
4. Daisy's oldest sister arrives in town somewhere between the 28th and 30th, roughly, with her husband and four boys. Given the timing of this we should be able to ring in the New Year with them, barring any unforeseen snags. 

The Holidays, Part XX: The Birthday Party

 

I am not a fan of this. Each forecast we see gets worse and worse. The above is from about eight hours ago. Some of them are predicting rain turning to ice and then snow by tomorrow evening -- even before Christmas morning. If that happens, it's going to be a really rough Christmas.

I will note here as an aside that last week at this time, the weather forecasters were calling for it to be mild and around 50 on Christmas day.

This morning, Daisy and I went out to the local Best Buy (yes, Best Buy) and purchased the very last electric snow shovel they had -- the snowblower we had blew up about a year ago, and while we've been lucky in the interim and haven't had a whole lot of terrible snow since, we're preparing for this storm. If it hits. 

The electric snow shovel was $150. But at least we'll be prepared. Let me tell you, the last thing I want to be doing 36 hours from now is shoveling a fuckton of snow just to be able to get out of the driveway and get to the parents' for Christmas -- if we can even make it over there at all. That is, of course, worst-case scenario, but as the forecasts as of this evening say there's a possibility now of 10+ inches between tomorrow night and Wednesday, well...yeah.

Tonight we had my birthday dinner with the parents -- finally -- now that both Mama and Daisy were well enough to do it. When we left the house, it was probably in the 30s with a pretty good wind -- cold. By the time we got home well after 8pm, it was in the mid-50s and was misting rain. Yes, the temperature actually went up by a good bit while we were out.

The birthday dinner is a tradition in the family. If one of us "kids" (I say that to differentiate us from the grandchildren as well as people of the parents' generation) is in town for their birthday, they pick whatever meal they want and a family dinner is prepared of that meal. More often than not, for my birthday it's just us these days. Even when Daisy's sister(s) are in town for the holidays it has been very rare that they would be in a full five days before Christmas over the past 7-8 years or so. Anyway, the food is prepared, dinner is had, presents are bestowed, and then dessert is had before quiet wind-down family time. Sometimes the order of some of those things are changed up a bit, but we rarely deviate from that overall plan.

It used to be, back in the day when Daisy and I first got together, a much larger event when it was someone's birthday, and the largest event possible when it was the holidays -- Daisy's middle sister, the one who lived in Canada for many years and who now lives outside of Pittsburgh -- used to live about two hours north of us, and they would drive down for all family events and major holidays. Now that they're so far away, and with Daisy's other sister living in Denver, there has been but two times in the past near-decade that all of us have been gathered in the same place at the same time, and one of those was the South Dakota trip in 2021. 

When I was younger and more adventurous (but also much more sheltered and isolated from the rest of the world, living alone in Kansas) I would visit for my birthday/Christmas and we'd go out to eat somewhere, do Christmas shopping, go do fun things like Dave & Busters, etc. Now that I'm married, in my early forties -- still sounds weird to say that -- and have lived here in Omaha for almost a full decade, I value the quiet family time much more. With that, I also feel zero need to make my birthday into a "let's celebrate me and make me the center of attention" spectacle. 

Mama hand-cut two giant trays of french fries, salted and seasoned them, and we had my chosen birthday dinner of poutine -- with shredded cheese from Aldi and vegan gravy made by Daisy. It was one of the finest poutines I've ever had in my life. Mama made fresh coffee and had made two separate containers of shortbread cookies, which were also wonderful. To round it off, Daisy also made two giant cookie sheets of no-bake cookies (just like my mother used to make) and they turned out wonderfully.

After eating, the parents brought out my gift -- a very nice Columbia long-sleeved shirt and a bag of the gummy bears I love that they get at Menard's whenever they're there. I loved both items; both were thoughtful and very sweet. I've also already eaten at least 20% of the bag of gummy bears, so I may be a bit biased. 

I returned Dad's Handycam to him in a brand-new case (the old one was literally disintegrating) and inside the case was, new in the box, the same cable I used to transfer all the tapes -- as well as two brand-new Hi8 tapes so that the camcorder could still be used, as it still works like it's fresh off the factory floor. I downplayed the new tapes when he asked if they were expensive, because they're such old technology and a highly niche format of recording media -- they weren't prohibitively expensive to obtain, but they weren't cheap. Nobody asked the price of them, thankfully, because I would not have wanted to lie about that. It was all part of my Christmas present for him; I generally do something separate and special for Dad every year, usually something small and fun. This is what it was this year.

After all of the festivities finished, I'd brought over the parents' copy of the flash drive -- the master copy with everything on it, of which there are only five in existence -- and we spent the next two hours or so (perhaps longer) watching through some of the random videos on it. We covered some family Christmases, some family vacation videos, a tape made by Dad's father with all of his family and family friends on it from 1989, and Daisy's 6th birthday party. 

In the middle of all of this, Daisy's car alarm began going off.

Some backstory here before I continue -- Daisy's car is old. It's a 2009 model, she got it used shortly before she and I got together, and it's been wrecked twice. Neither time was her fault. She was rear-ended once and the second time we were backed into at an intersection. Both impacts, while repaired, slightly bent the frame enough to where it disrupted the crash and anti-theft sensors in the hood and in the driver's side door. There's a sensor in the front end of the car that eventually she had to get "unplugged," for lack of a better term, because her anti-theft alarm would randomly go off for no reason -- parking lot at work? Car goes nuts. Inside our own garage with nothing around the car? Goes nuts in the middle of the night. Etc. So she took it in and got some car repair place to just unhook the fucking thing, because it would happen 2-3 times a day. The alarm goes off now only if someone tries the door handle when the car's locked, not running, and nobody's in it. 

Which is possibly what happened -- thieves checking car doors in the neighborhood, perhaps. It happens a lot here in Omaha, and I'm guessing a lot of other places too.

Daisy went outside and checked, car seemed fine; nobody got into it or anything, as it was locked. She/we didn't see anyone around, either. She grabbed our garage door opener out of the car (the only thing, as she claimed, that had any real value within the car) and came back inside. 

Shortly thereafter, we returned home and I spent most of the overnight hours sleeping with Pete on my chest -- his choice of sleeping spot, not mine. 

And so ends the story of my "birthday party." We left the gravy that Daisy made and the cookies at the parents' as we'll be back over there the next two days in a row anyway (well, weather permitting of course) for actual holiday festivities.

The Holidays, Part XIX: The Headlong Rush

 Update: Yeah, more disappointment today. Not surprised. The cat we wanted to see was part of a group of feral cats that aren't available to be adopted by the general public -- instead they're adopted through some special program that lets people turn them into "farm cats" or what have you, likely for rodent control and the like. So, oh well.

So we're now entering the headlong rush into the holidays. Daisy is planning to make cookies over the next few days, made a giant batch of her version of Chex Mix tonight, and if all goes well, we're planning to celebrate my belated birthday with the parents tomorrow.

Not to be outdone, I have also been busy -- today I washed the bedsheets, blankets, and one of the rugs from downstairs. Tomorrow I'll likely wash all the "cat blankets" from the couch and the cat beds. If I'm feeling ambitious and/or we have the time, I'll wash the bathroom rugs and shower curtains too (Daisy wants to clean the entire bathroom on her days off, and if she has the energy/ability to do that, I'll need to wash the bathroom stuff as part of that). 

I killed my paper shredder today. It's the second one I've killed in the past decade. The first one had its motor get off track and it began grinding against its casing and itself, finally dying in a puff of smoke about five years ago. This one snapped some gears in its transmission/whatever it has as a motor/etc and now won't do much of anything but scream when I try to use it. So, it got trashed and a new one was ordered from Amazon -- it arrives next week after Christmas. I wasn't a huge fan of the older one anyway -- it overheated way too easily, and I would have to dump the basket every 5-10 minutes. 

Because I had a wildly good birthday coupon code from the KMFDM webstore (yes, the band, who Daisy and I also have tickets to go see live in March), I ordered three shirts from them this morning as late birthday/early Christmas presents for myself. It'll likely take them weeks to get here -- the hoodie I ordered in September finally got here last week. KMFDM is one of the few bands I will support wholeheartedly with everything they do, purchase every new record release they put out, buy multiple clothing items, etc. I've been a fan of their work since I was in middle school. My oldest band t-shirt I have is a KMFDM shirt, purchased in 1997 and still in occasional rotational wear to this day -- I probably own more KMFDM shirts than any other band I love. I am thrilled to be able to finally see them live in March, as the last time they came through Omaha was seven years ago (and I didn't even know they were here then). 

Daisy has said that she wants tomorrow to be a quiet day at home where she can sleep in and we can do the stuff we need to do without a schedule or timeframes, and I'm okay with that. The next three days are going to be busy and very family-oriented and while I am here for all of it, it's all going to be tiring. Truth be told, it's been difficult for me to stay awake all day and into the evening or late evening hours without the help of enough caffeine to kill a horse, as I'm just not used to a schedule of being awake during the day and leaving the house multiple times a week anymore. During the pandemic there were times where I did not leave the house for multiple months -- so doing it now, sometimes multiple times a day, is jarring to me to an extent. In my downtime, all I want to do is sleep and play video games and listen to my podcasts -- and completely detach from most of the rest of the world.

Well, I've done that for a few days now, and tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday are now all mission-focused on getting across that Christmas finish line. Daisy's last present arrives tomorrow and from there I'll be wrapping everything up, getting it all good to go for Monday morning. 

Mama relayed to us via phone yesterday that Daisy's oldest sister and her family -- who were previously expected to arrive in town on the 26th -- have now had to postpone that until the 29th or 30th for some reason or another. I took New Year's Eve off so that we could spend some time with them (and, well, so that I didn't have to work New Year's Eve), and I only have to work the 27th and 28th next week. Past that I don't know what our plans are yet -- generally when they're in town, we ring in the New Year with them. Sometimes they let their boys stay up late and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the weather is brutally cold and snowy and sometimes it's warm enough for the kids to burn off some excess energy by playing outside in the yard -- a few years ago it was close to 70 on New Year's Day.

It has indeed been unseasonably warm this winter so far -- temperatures have been in the high 40s to high 50s for most of the past few weeks, and all of these outside excursions we've made as of late -- to see cats, to run errands, to do grocery shopping -- I have not had to wear an actual coat. I've worn my hoodies. Today I wore a light sweatshirt and a vest. Most of these days I could've gotten away with wearing a t-shirt if it were just a tad less brisk outside.

Our family in Canada has not been so lucky -- we talked to Daisy's grandmother tonight via phone, and Atlantic Canada has been getting battered by one storm after another. Half of Cape Breton Island is without power, and they're trucking in power crews from New Brunswick to help restore it. The family homestead itself was without power for a good chunk of the day today, but it had restored by the time we talked to Daisy's grandmother on the phone. Rain and snowstorms one after another are continually pounding the Atlantic provinces. I could live there in the summer (and would greatly enjoy it) but in the winter months...I would not be a fan of that weather at all.

Not that I don't hole up inside our home in Omaha during the winter anyway. I may as well hibernate in a cave like a bear.

We aren't going to be spared the wrath of winter either, apparently -- the forecast is still changing and in constant flux, but right now it looks like we're going to get our first significant snowfall of the season on Christmas night through Tuesday/Wednesday, starting as a washout rain event on Christmas Eve. Right now I guess it's too far out to get an accurate read on what they expect us to receive, so we could either get some rain or get all of it, including snow and ice and all of that other bullshit -- right when Daisy and I return to work next week.