(Days of work remaining until holiday time off: 2)
With everything done before the holidays that I can feasibly do at the moment, I've found myself with a bit of actual breathing space this weekend. I can sleep when I want, watch TV when or if I want, play a video game, write something, cook, clean, and/or just actually relax. If I sleep weird hours, I don't really care -- sleep when I can; the last two days at work before I'm off for a week will very likely be extremely easy as we roll into the holidays, and I can put my head down and power through two quiet nights in my sleep.
No pun intended, of course.
Bonus? I'm no longer the director -- I survived my days as director backup unscathed and, mostly, as an observer. I didn't have to engage on nearly anything personally.
My birthday is four days away. At this juncture, the plans we made (and I mentioned here in previous posts) are still relatively unchanged. It's actually supposed to be partly sunny and in the 50s for my birthday too.
Aside from wrapping the Christmas gifts for Daisy, I find myself with little to do way ahead of schedule, far sooner than I ever thought I'd come to that point.
And it feels very nice.
Because I've been awake weird hours (read: most of them, including overnight hours), I've been able to keep a close and watchful eye on work email. It's not an obsession or anything, of course, but I like to be able to gauge what I'm walking into when I'm coming back from a weekend. If anything looks wild or if someone engages me while I'm off, I can also forward it to the teams on shift or I can boot up Microsoft Teams here on my normal PC and help out on something in real time without needing to go login on the work computer downstairs. I've made the joke with some of the colleagues I'm closer with that I can and sometimes do have eyes on everything that happens in that place. It is mostly a joke indeed, because about 90% of the time I don't give a single shit when I'm not there. I'll give even less of one from the 19th to the 26th, too.
Anyway.
I've been spending my newfound bit of free time in several ways, as my body only seems to want me to sleep at weird hours for weird stretches. Yesterday morning, despite Daisy being sick, we had a good lead on another candidate for Empress at the humane society in Iowa again. We went over there, found that she'd been moved to the local PetSmart, went there, and she'd already been adopted out. I never even got to see a picture of her -- we were going on text description only.
In the afternoon we found another solid lead for another candidate for Empress, and this one I did get to actually meet -- and she was perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. But her adoption price was $200 and she was being adopted out by a private organization, not the humane society. The private organization's vetting processes and lists of pages upon pages of straight up invasive bullshit questions and requirements to pay them for a cat was ridiculous, and I flat out said no. I'm adopting a cat, not a child. They wanted personality references and background checks and wanted to consult with your current vet, wanted a tour of your house to make sure it's a suitable environment, and I said no.
I told Daisy that cat will get a wonderful home with someone willing to jump through all of those ludicrous hoops, but that home won't be with us, not when I can go to the humane society and come back with a cat in less than an hour for far cheaper and I can give it just as good of a home.
But Brandon, you may be saying, you said she was perfect.
She had the exact physical look I was looking for in Empress, but I did not get enough time with her to gauge her personality -- and this facility didn't allow you to even pick up the cats to hold them and see if they were cuddly or lovey. I was in a small room with seven other people and about ten other cats, constantly on camera, and it was intensely uncomfortable to even try to get to see her for more than ten minutes. She seemed interested in me for a few minutes but really just wanted to hide away from the other cats and people in the room. Because I couldn't get to know her or get a feel for her, I finally just gave up, and we left. I will not have anything to do with that organization again, and the 90 minutes I spent there waiting to go into the room to see her is time I'll never get back.
I'm a little bitter. Could you tell?
I think I'm just going to give up on actively or even passively really looking for Empress for a while. It's really done nothing but provide frustration and disappointment, and a lot of wasted time. Daisy wants other cats too and knows what she's looking for in them, and if she finds one then I'll be happy for her -- but I just can't keep expending this emotional energy for no reason with nothing to show for it. It's becoming unhealthy for me mentally.
In other news, all but the last flash drive has been mailed out to the extended family. The last one will go out on Tuesday, as I mentioned, once I get the last bit of postage I need. I've sealed up the parents' flash drive as well and it will be wrapped with the other Christmas presents during this coming week.
Daisy is still sick. She went out with me yesterday as she wasn't feeling too awful at the time, and we had a nice sit-down dinner date at the local Chinese place afterwards -- but in the late evening hours she got really ill again and that illness has persisted. There's not a lot I can do to help her, really, as much as I'd like to. This cold or whatever it is she has just needs to run its course. She needs to rest more than anything else, and I can't rest for her -- she has to do that herself.
As for me, I'm fine -- and despite what I've said above, I have been resting a lot, just at weird intervals for weird hours. Yesterday, for example, I slept several hours in the evening and then a few more in the overnight. I'll likely take a nap again this afternoon or evening just to make sure my sleep amounts remain fairly consistent for today and tomorrow. After I finish with work tomorrow night, it doesn't matter when or how I sleep, or how much or little sleep I get, because I don't have to stay up until 7am for work duties anymore until well after Christmas.
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