The Void, Sometimes With Eyes, is Calling

 

Mable has been checked out at the vet now for her second appointment. Per the vet, she appears to be exceedingly healthy, and growing very well. She's easily tripled in size since we got her about...oh, 7 weeks ago...something like that (it feels far longer than that) and has more than doubled in weight. She is still quite fuzzy. The doc says she may end up being a normal-to-larger-sized cat after all. We thought she was going to be small her entire life, based on how quickly Hank grew versus how small Empress, and Mable, mostly remain. She returns next Thursday to get the last of her shots, and then she's all done for another year, provided we don't have any health scares for her.

There's been a lot happening over the course of the past few weeks and I've either been too busy or too exhausted most of the time to document it here. Everything has been a whirlwind -- sometimes literally -- and I have had trouble really getting quality sleep, catching up on the chores and tasks I need to take care of, or my capacity for additional stress and anxiety has just been at the maximum -- like a car's engine consistently at redline shortly before throwing a piston through the hood. 

There have been good things and bad.

I have finally gathered everything cluttering up my room and the house -- all the games, books, DVDs, cards, CDs, old game systems, magazines -- everything I needed to let go for a very long time, and sold it yesterday. I had a number in my head that I would have ideally, in a perfect world, wanted to get in cash for it but knew I never would, and a number that I thought was very likely the far more reasonable amount I'd likely receive. What I ended up getting was slightly more than half of the perfect world ideal amount in my head, and a good bit more than the "reasonable" amount I was expecting. So, overall, I am quite happy. Honestly I am just glad to see a lot of it go -- I don't need any of it. I will now have a pretty substantial amount of cash to spend in Canada for incidentals, food, etc. I don't plan to pick up any souvenirs while I'm there because, I mean, I really don't need anything else and I've come home with multiple Canada-related clothing items, coffee mugs, and other stuff every other trip I've made over the past few years. 

I have also now re-packed and re-organized everything for the trip, going down a checklist of stuff I will need while I am there, put together a toiletry and medicine case (an old camera bag that I actually used to keep my Game Boy and games in many years ago) and tried to prepare for every weather scenario -- anywhere from hot summer days to cold damp ones. Canada is fickle. This time last year when we were there, the warmest it got was in the high 60s and the coldest was below freezing. In late May. Summers there tend to be nice, but I'd rather be able to plan for it to not be nice.

There is also, of course, the essentials I need to stay sane when I'm cut off from the rest of the world for a time. This includes my disposable vapes (six new ones should do it, hopefully), several books, a fully-loaded mp3 player full of podcasts that I may or may not listen to when I'm there, but we'll see -- and a fresh pack of pens and a brand new hard-bound notebook so that I can write...well...anything that inspires me when I'm there. The notebook is something I needed desperately last summer. When I'm unstressed and unburdened by schedules and my daily life, my mind finally relaxes and expands and I actually want to write again. I don't have access to my computer while I'm there (if I did, I'd likely never leave it), and a notebook and pack of pens was a much cheaper option than my original idea, which was to get a new Amazon Fire tablet and keyboard case for it. 

Mind you, I do have a laptop -- like an actual laptop, a Windows 10 machine -- but I generally hate using it unless it is 100% unavoidable and don't want to take it with me in my backpack for multiple international flights. Also, it makes me more accessible than I would be otherwise, which is a bad thing when I'm on vacation. Daisy already has to take her laptop with her for work-related duties while she's gone, and I 100% refuse to be that person -- my phone is enough and when I am not available, I am not available, I am in another country.

Speaking of phones, Daisy upgraded her phone this past week to the newest...Samsung thing...whatever it is. I don't follow Android stuff; I am an iPhone guy and have been for a decade now, and I do not see that changing for the foreseeable future, if ever. I have no use for a phone operating system that I can't use or figure out within a few minutes of looking at it when I know the iPhone just works and I don't have to fight with it for app or navigation purposes.

Truth be told, my old iPhone 12 Mini is beginning to reach the end of its useful life and while it still works quite well, the battery longevity is an issue and it likely will come to the end of its available iOS updates here within a year or so. I don't necessarily want a new phone -- it's generally a horrible hassle to swap from an old phone to a new one -- but it's going to be time soon enough. the iPhone 16 (if that's what they end up calling it) is expected to be released in September and I can wait until then, I suppose, I don't think my phone is going to die before that point. At least I hope it does not. 

Anyway, Daisy wanted the new phone for the storage capacity as well as the camera, which is indeed impressive -- and she wanted it before the trip. I do not trust myself not to lose or break a new, much larger and more expensive phone on an international trip, so I'm fine with keeping mine until this fall at the very least. I don't need the greatest or highest-end tech to play Pokemon Go or watch Tiktoks. 

With the new phone, she also got an upgrade to our plan that gives us something like 3X the data while we're in Canada, so there's that. 

The same day Daisy initiated all of this, the motor in our six-year-old electric lawn mower blew out -- as I had just started mowing the back yard that so very desperately needed to be mowed. To be fair, the mower has been slowly dying for the past year or so, and trying to do the back yard just completely killed it. 

Frustrated and sick of everything breaking or going wrong, I marched into the house and said "the lawnmower is fucked; get up, get dressed, we're going to Lowe's and I'm buying a new one on my credit card, I don't care how much it costs."

We had to go to Home Depot instead of Lowe's, but I got a new model that is wider and easier to push, not to mention cuts the grass like butter, for $300-something. It also came with two more batteries, which are generally $50ish apiece (I know because I had to buy a spare one last summer) which made it a much better deal than it looked on the surface. I summarily mowed both the front and the back lawn in less than an hour. 

I could not string-trim -- our trimmer is out of spools. I had to order those and have them delivered a few days later. I still have not gotten to the string-trimming yet. It's on my list. 

Finally, this past week has taken its toll on me because we had not one or two, but three tornado scares. One was at 5-6 in the morning (roughly, somewhere in there) that woke Daisy up with the sirens, then another the following day around noon (again with the sirens) and then the final one was Thursday night in the overnight, around 2-3am when the sirens began going off again, also forcing Daisy to get up.

The other two weren't especially awful. The one on Thursday night was terrifying because it was in the middle of the night, we put on the news and found four different tornadoes tracking straight for the Omaha metro area -- with four different warnings. It was by sheer luck alone that two went south and dissipated and two went north and dissipated, leaving the city of Omaha essentially tornado-free. But it was very touch and go for a while, and we got the cats into their carriers (yes, all five of them) in order to do anything we could to protect them if the storms began moving this way. We don't have a basement -- it is what it is with this house. The most secure locations in the house are the downstairs bathroom and under the stairs (which we can't get into because we use it as a storage area). If a tornado comes close enough to do damage to the house, we cover ourselves and the cats in their carriers with the heaviest blankets/quilts we can find and hunker down, I guess.

Yeah, I know, that's not exactly comforting. Neither is Nebraska in April and May. Even after everything had moved through and the threat was pretty much over, I made sure we kept the cats in their carriers for another 10-15 minutes just in case. Thursday night's storm was classified as a derecho, which does not happen often here in Omaha.

So that's three times this week that the call of the void became strong, at least in one or more respects. I am so desperately tired of my nerves being frazzled for hours or days on end when this shit happens. I wish I could explain it to everyone here in more detail, but I can't. 

The New Normal, Part III: A Decade in Omaha

 It is ten years ago this week that Daisy and I packed up all of my things and the (at the time) three cats, loaded everything that would fit into a U-Haul, and performed a low-rent version of Smokey and the Bandit from Newton, KS to Omaha -- her driving the truck, me driving her car with all three cats in their carriers across the backseat, all of them howling the entire way. 

My car, the Monte Carlo -- oh, how I miss it -- was already up here and sitting in the parents' driveway; I'd driven it up there the previous weekend to essentially "drop it off," as we would have three vehicles and two of us (the U-Haul, Daisy's car my car) and couldn't get all of them up to Omaha at the same time.

I remember that drive -- it was exceedingly boring, hot, and is still likely the farthest/longest I've ever driven in one sitting, especially alone -- the drive between Newton and Omaha was approximately six hours. Daisy and I made it in five or under before, driving at night and going way above the speed limit in her car, but this was a drive during daylight hours with way more traffic (and a lot of highway patrol out and cruising). I was terrified that the Monte Carlo, which was the automobile equivalent of the Millennium Falcon, would fall apart or overheat or blow a major part during the drive, as it was a long drive on two different major interstates at highway speeds. I was shocked that on that drive it performed better than any other drive I'd taken it on. Not one issue, not one weird noise, not a single stall out or transmission slip or overheating problem the entire way. Moreover, I'd stopped for gas twice, I stopped at the Walmart in York, NE to get out and stretch my legs and get something to eat, and remarkably I was able to remember the exact path Daisy had previously taken to get to the parents' house when I'd visited the family on previous few occasions. I don't know if it was stress and anxiety giving me a laser focus or what, but I pulled into their driveway in the late afternoon hours safe and sound, and I was finally there.

The time of the move was stressful and tiring, and Daisy and I were squabbling a lot during it. I also badly wrenched my shoulder/rotator cuff (I may have actually popped it halfway out of socket, I don't know -- it didn't heal for weeks) and I must remind all of you, Daisy and I were not married yet. That wouldn't happen for another two weeks. I was also on edge for a lot of it because, truthfully, I was starting a completely new life in another state that I'd never lived in before, in a city much larger than any I'd ever lived in before (I say this knowing that yes, I did live in Kansas City, but it was the suburbs and not really within the city proper). I'd just left my teaching job, I only had the barest amount of survival money and did not have a guarantee of another job on the horizon at that point, and I was about to get married. 

Over the course of about 48 hours of nearly nonstop manual labor, we went back down to my house in Newton, loaded the U-Haul (which cost over $300 to rent for the time I needed it for), cleaned the house as best we could, slept quickly, and left that town forever. We drove in tandem to the new apartment in Omaha, unloaded all of the stuff with the help of Daisy's best friend, and were just trying to get it shoved into the apartment to be sorted later. Then Daisy dropped off the U-Haul and I seem to recall sleeping like a rock for about three days with my very stressed, out-of-place cats who hid in cupboards and tubs and sinks because they were frightened and in a place they didn't know.

A few days later the internet would be installed, I would sign up for Netflix, Daisy went back to work and we both, in our downtime, would slowly unpack, look for jobs for me, and would ready ourselves for the wedding.  

I have now lived in Omaha for ten years. Four of them were in that shitty apartment complex that I thought was so nice when I moved in, and then the last six of them (almost) have been in our house. During that time Daisy and I got married, I got the job at the place I -- unfortunately/sadly -- am currently still employed by, the Monte Carlo was vandalized and destroyed, and I got a truck that I drove for a while and later sold. I have survived numerous severe weather scares and multiple close-ish tornadoes -- including one where Daisy and I had to shelter in place in the breakroom of a Target store three or four days after the wedding. One of the original generation of cats has died, but we have since adopted three more. Daisy is still driving the same car, despite it now having been in at least two accidents, one of which messed her up for a couple of years. We have traveled to Canada and back three times (about to be four), to Chicago and back on a few occasions, to New Orleans and back, to West Virginia and back, to Denver and back, to South Dakota and back (twice), and to the Carolinas and back. Through it all, we have remained deeply in love and have called Omaha our home base. 

I don't know where we will be in ten years. Hopefully it is not here in Omaha.

I say that in a bittersweet fashion because I really do not mind this town that much -- there is always something to do here and someplace to go. There is some outlandishly good food in this town, shopping of almost any sort, and if I want to see a comedian or a band play live there's a good chance Omaha will be one of the tour stops. It's not an overly-dangerous or crime-ridden city, and I really like my house. 

That being said, the weather sucks -- the hottest summers, the coldest winters, tornadoes in the spring and sometimes the fall, and outside the immediate area of Omaha the state of Nebraska is deeply Trump-supporting Republican. We are here now, and for the foreseeable future, because Daisy's parents are alive and live here in Omaha. When they are gone, there is no way in hell I want to remain here. You'd better believe that I will drop whatever I'm doing and we will look for another place to live as soon as humanly possible. My dream is to live on a coastline somewhere (my parents are currently living my dream, but Daisy does not want to live in the Carolinas). 

The New Normal, Part II

 

This cat is the sweetest little kitten I've ever known. Any doubts I had about Daisy bringing her home last month are now very much long gone. She is amusing as hell -- whether that's waking Daisy up in the night by biting her toes or face (because she wants to play) or speeding around the house chasing after Hank and Emmy -- or being chased herself by them. She is so very cuddly, she is so very full of life. She is going to have giant green eyes just like Pete. She fills my heart with love and happiness every single day. 

Things around the house are progressing. Slowly. I need to go through the TV stand and pull out the games I want to sell, but that should be the last of it for my "decluttering" of the house for my own things. I plan to get the stuff to Half-Price Books to sell all of it in one big batch either this weekend or next weekend, and once I can do that I will feel accomplished. I generally just don't have the time or energy to do everything all at once.

There is one final donation bag of my stuff that is ready to go to Goodwill, too. Daisy had a bag going as well, and I'm going to encourage her to complete it so that we can drop it off at the same time.

Truthfully, if I wanted to go through my closet/belongings a second time to fill another donation bag, I could. Am I going to do that? Likely not, honestly. I've already gotten rid of some things that I found it somewhat hard to part with, but found it necessary to let go. I'm already getting rid of some games and systems and the like that I don't really want to sell, but need to sell because of the money involved and the space those things take up. And really, all they are are things. They're not needs, they're not life-and-death things, they're items taking up space in a house that is already somewhat cramped and selling these items is a means to an end. Do I want money in Canada? Yes. Do I want to use cash for a lot of things, and not use my credit card for everything? Also yes. Well then, time to get rid of a bunch of old shit. 

I am mostly already packed for the Canada trip, because yes, I'm that guy. I'll likely change up some of the clothing here and there in the interim, or some of the incidentals I plan to take with me, but when I travel my goal is always to travel as light as possible and anything that I don't need to bring back, leave it there (if I'll eventually be back) or toss it -- wherever and whenever I go someplace. I'm sure, on the shelf of the shower in the family house in Nova Scotia, sits the bottle of face wash I forgot and left there last year. I'm sure in my parents' house in North Carolina, there are little things the wife and I left there too (and have since forgotten about) that will still be there when we visit again -- hopefully later in the year. Truthfully, as much as I want to see my parents, and I do, I am even more looking forward to those burgers at the vegan place in Raleigh when we go back. 

I find that I'm feeling frustrated and exhausted almost all the time. There's just always something else to do. I've reached that point of the spring where it's been far too long since I've had an actual day off, a day or three on PTO or what have you to where I can just not do anything I don't want to. Complicating this is the fact that I will be working straight through the Memorial Day holiday because I need an extra day (what my company calls a "comp" day) at the end of that week so that Daisy and I can actually celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Aside from that one single extra day I'll get, I do not have any actual downtime until our trip to Canada. 

I'm burnt out. I don't want this to become the new normal, where I'm just constantly irritable and impatient and sleep deprived, but I don't really see any way out of that pattern. Even when we're out of the country there will still be a lot of travel, errands, family time, and social interaction. That's not "downtime" to me. "Downtime" is me sitting in silence, deciding when and how I want to eat, sleep, use my computer, read, write, play a video game, or anything else without having anything that must be done on someone else's schedule.

Of course, it's sometimes hard to sleep when I am awakened by a little black kitten screaming in my ear for attention and love...shortly before she attacks my toes. 

Daisy has the remarkable and frankly scary ability to be out like a light and snoring within ten minutes of hitting the bed. I know this because I can hear her when I'm working downstairs, and have tried to time it. 

Back in 2018, when we were prepping for the move into this house, I went through my collections of items and stuff then too, and sold a lot of it off -- books, CDs, movies, games, etc. We made at least 3-4 trips to Half-Price Books and to the local game stores, and as I recall I pulled in about $1100 in cash from that decluttering. I won't have that much this time around -- I'll be lucky if I get $500 this time around for my time and efforts, and it'll likely be well below that. But, it is what it is, and I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of boxes of things just...magically go away. 

During that time in 2018, however, I did find a large chunk of my music and movie collection (not all of them) which I carefully organized into CD wallets and stored away. This included burned CDs and burned DVDs that are close to or over twenty years old at this point. I used to have a DVD recorder; my mother got it for me one year for Christmas when I was in college, and its purpose was the same as a VCR -- it could record television programs onto DVD-Rs just like a VCR could onto tapes. Well, I never really used it for that; I daisy-chained it to my VCR and began moving my movie/tape collection onto DVD, and it worked really well for that. So, over the course of a few years -- before the actual DVD recorder blew out and stopped working -- I was able to shrink my media collection from multiple boxes of tapes to a few spindles of DVD-Rs. It was the storage media and technology I had at the time.

Now, twenty years later, I have a moderately powerful computer and multiple portable HDDs, one of which is 4TB. And while cleaning out my stuff, I found these CD wallets with a large number of the burned discs in them.

But how was I to get a video DVD off my disc and into a video file format on my PC to archive fully digitally? Windows has limited tools to do such a task, even today. I could rip a disc image (.iso) file, I guess, but that would just delay the inevitable and still not really make the content watchable again. So I began searching around for alternatives.

I found a program in the Windows store that essentially lets you do exactly what I was looking to do -- rip a DVD to a .mp4 video file. It would play any disc for free, but to be able to rip it you had to purchase the full program for $20. Okay. Sold. 

Once I figured out how to use it, I began the slow and meticulous process of pulling data off these old burned discs. And I found that in doing so, a lot of these discs are beginning to succumb to disc rot. As in, they weren't intended to last forever, and they're starting to break down now, just like VHS tapes also do. Some of the discs won't even load up; others give errors when I'm pulling the video and the transfer fails. Most of them, however, are just fine and I've likely gotten to them just in the nick of time.

So far I have about 30GB of content from the DVDs I've saved. Most of it is just random episodes of TV shows and cartoons, some comedy specials, etc -- but it's a wildly interesting window into my past, when I had cable television, when I was just a kid living in West Virginia with access to a VCR and some tapes. Some of it is from a time when I was still in high school, and I'm coming up on a quarter-century since I graduated high school. I'll likely never have kids, but whoever inherits my backup HDDs whenever I'm dead and gone will have an amazing amount of content to pore through.

The New Normal, Part I

 Over the course of the past month, we've established a pretty solid pattern as to how life in this house now is with five cats. 

After the tornadoes rolled through last weekend, Daisy put together the new cat tree she had ordered "to give the cats more vertical territory" in the house. It sits next to my work desk downstairs, in the corner where we used to have a large full-length mirror. It is shorter in height than the one upstairs in our master bedroom, and so I tried to introduce Sadie to it.

Apparently, Sadie, in her old age, no longer likes any heights whatsoever -- and after looking around in a concerned fashion for a few moments, figured out how to get her old, slow ass down off it and never looked in the direction of the new cat tree again. Pete was curious but apparently also unenthused when Daisy tried to introduce him to it.

Hank, Emmy, and Mable all love it.

We introduced Mable fully into the house a day or two after her "out of the bedroom all day while Daisy worked downstairs" experience, once the other children were used to her, and she has very quickly integrated into the tribe of cats. In doing so, we learned a lot about our youngest child:

1. She mostly leaves Sadie alone. She will smell Sadie or examine her when she's up and moving about, but she won't try to play with her, bat at her, or interact with her a whole lot. They'll eat together when I feed them, but that's about it. The other young cats have been like this with Sadie too, for the most part -- none of them try to "play" with her or really go after her. Hank used to hold her down and hump her (ah, teenagers...) and Empress likes to cuddle up with her a fair amount, but I think Sadie has established with all the kittens that she's old and has no desire for foolishness, so they all mostly leave Sadie alone.
   
   
2. Mable, as expected, adores Pete. She curls up tight with him, lays on top of him, he holds her and they lick each other lovingly, etc. Pete is her chosen cat companion. He's safe, doesn't chase her or growl/hiss at her, he just gives her all the love and attention she wants. He is just as sweet with her as he ever was with Hank or Empress, and Mable loves every bit of his dad energy.
   
   
3. Mable will almost always sleep with us, especially if Pete is sleeping with me or Daisy or if we're both sleeping together at the same time. During the day when I sleep and Daisy is working, Pete almost always comes to bed with me to be my teddy bear for most of or the entire day. She will join us, curling up with me and Pete. If Pete leaves, most of the time she'll stay there with me because I'm there. If Pete does not come to bed with me, she will also stay there in bed with me most of the time, sleeping in the middle between the pillows or on Daisy's side of the bed. She does the same with Daisy, though she likes to cuddle in tighter with Daisy or sleep on her chest.
   
   
4. She likes to climb things like Spider-Man or swing from the curtains like Tarzan. This is, thankfully, not an everyday thing.
   
   
5. She loves being picked up and held -- she has never once fought me on being picked up because she associates it, and being held, with love and attention. It makes her so happy and she relaxes, likes to be carried around, etc. I didn't know if I'd ever find another cat like that. 
   
   
6. She goes hard with Hank and Empress. I actually think each of them go a little too hard back on her sometimes -- she's still very much a little baby -- but they play hard and rough, chasing each other, pouncing on each other, biting and batting and running. It's all play, like there's nothing malicious to it (I've raised enough cats to know, trust me) but I am surprised how quickly Hank and Empress became wildly playful with the little girl, especially as she has a completely different personality than either of them.
   
   
7. Over the course of the past week, Mable has begun sleeping with and cuddling with both Hank and Empress -- sometimes separately, sometimes together in a big cat pile. Empress gives Mable what I call "Big Mom Energy" -- as in, her mothering instincts appear to be kicking in with the little girl. She will hold her and lick her and just snuggle in with her so happily. Hank is similar -- while the energy between him and Emmy is very much lover energy, it's very much "Big Papa" energy with Mable, similar to how Pete loves on the little girl.

Mable has also grown quite a bit -- she has doubled in size in the past month we've had her (I can't believe it's only been that long). She is innately comfortable with the entire household and we've never had to really watch her or babysit her, keep her from getting into things, etc. Daisy has made the comment that she's so very similar to Maggie in so many ways, and I think as her personality further develops, that will be cemented even more. Daisy has joked that she's Maggie reincarnated, as she was born about two weeks (approximately, anyway) after Maggie died. 

Pete had his first vet appointment with his new vet -- the one we take all the other cats to now -- and he did well, though he was anxious and frightened a bit (he usually isn't). The vet basically said he looked good for a cat his age and was about as "healthy" as could be expected given his hyperthyroidism and kidney disease. His bloodwork looked really good -- his kidney disease really isn't progressing quickly and he's responding very well to the thyroid meds (which he hates). 

Said vet also told us that Sadie will likely be fine if, while we're in Canada, our catsitters can't find/catch her and she doesn't get the medications she takes during that time. It's not ideal, but it won't kill her -- and he agreed with my sentiment that the stress and the anxiety caused by her being boarded during that time actually might kill her. So, I told Daisy to cancel the boarding. Sadie can stay quietly at home with the other cats in a familiar environment and just hang out with them as the old reigning queen of the household. 

I don't know if it's as big news nationally as it is out here, but the tornado recovery/cleanup since last weekend has been extensive. Daisy volunteered with a few other members of her workplace to assist in some of it for several hours last Friday. One of the guys from my own job lost his house in the tornado, and others were without power for days on end. Videos of the tornadoes are all over Tiktok and Facebook, as we now live in a digital age where that's possible, and they're all frightening. I've been reminding myself, daily, just how lucky I really am. One of my close friends was about...oh, a mile or so from where the biggest tornado hit, give or take. 

My brain is shot. These last two weeks at work have not been particularly difficult, but it has been very long. Last weekend was basically stolen from me by tornadoes and other severe weather alerts. This past weekend we went bowling for a Daisy work event and then were paranoid all day on Saturday because of yet even more storm warnings. Monday was the same. Thankfully nothing hit us, but we've still got several more weeks of "peak tornado season" in Nebraska. I have so much to do over the course of the next month or two and a lot of it is starting to slip my mind here and there because I've just been so exhausted, so sleep-deprived, and have not had the chance to really get downtime or rest. We have to actually do yard work and the storms and all the rain have been preventing any real time to do that, for example. Daisy tried to mow the yard the other night and it was so rough to do so with the little electric mower we have that our neighbor let us use his big powerful gas mower so she could complete the front yard, at least. She mowed the back yard and did some light trimming last night -- but by the weekend, it'll be time to mow the front again (this time it'll be my turn), and this cycle will repeat for the next four or five months. 

Of course, there's so much else we have to do before our trip to Canada as well. I have had zero time or energy to work on or finish the Great Cleansing of 2024™ and desperately just want a few days running of nothing else to do so that I can actually work towards those goals. On Sunday I was finally able to get some of my stuff organized, but the house is still a mess, all of my free time is sucked away by needing to actually get some sleep (or try to) or by social obligations -- for example, the aforementioned bowling above, and this weekend is Mother's Day -- which means we'll be focusing on Mom for a good chunk of my time off. There's only so much I can do or have energy for, and it all has to be done well before we go to Canada. 

Hank's 1st Birthday

 Hank's 1st birthday was yesterday.

That's it, that's the post. Enjoy pictures of the orange lad.