So, we're back...
Picking up where we last left off, on Saturday we celebrated Mama's (Daisy's mother) birthday. She turned 70 this year -- a monumental birthday for anyone really -- and to celebrate Daisy's oldest sister, husband, and their four boys came into town for a "birthday party" for her.
That is the short short version of the story.
The much longer/more detailed version is that they were coming into town for but one day -- arriving on Saturday morning and leaving early Sunday morning. Basically, just for the birthday celebration itself, an overnight of sleeping fast, and then back on the road back home. This wouldn't be a huge deal if they lived an hour away, or a few towns away, but they live in Denver. It's a ten-hour drive, roughly, one-way -- a twenty-hour round trip hauling four boys here and back across Nebraska. Ten hours may not seem like a lot, but I promise you that drive is very long and very boring for the vast majority of it.
Daisy said that it was important to her that we maximized the time they would be in town to spend the vast majority of it with the family, and I agreed. She'd made big plans on Friday for us to get several things accomplished, including going to pick up food for dinner (her sister was bringing the dessert) and getting Mama's gifts ready. Friday was my day off, so I planned to go do the shopping with her and to help her in her other endeavors as I could.
And then, Friday afternoon, I got a call from my executive director -- asking essentially what he would need to do for me in return to get me to work that evening and cover as director again. My direct boss would still be out of town until Monday and the weekend director took the weekend off for a family event, and her backup was unreachable/otherwise unavailable. In a situation like that, leadership's hands are tied and they have to start calling people in or otherwise we have no management coverage for what is generally one of the busiest times of the week for us -- Friday night.
I agreed to do it, primarily because it is very difficult for me to say no to my big boss, but also because I have a sense of honor, duty, and a work ethic and don't want the team to be thrown to the wolves when I do have the ability and capacity to help. So, I got some caffeine in me and logged in, and worked until three in the morning -- until everything was in a good enough place to where I could step down from the proverbial podium and slip into the shadows for the remainder of the night.
However, this meant that I got very little rest before Mama's birthday party. I passed out in my chair sometime around 4 and woke up around 9, groggy and disoriented with a crick in my neck. Daisy had already gotten up by that point and was running around getting things ready, getting dressed, etc. We'd eschewed going grocery shopping for dinner and instead Mama wanted us all -- the full family -- to go to El Basha (our town's best mediterranean restaurant) for lunch. I knew from it being one of the places we frequently get food from that they don't even open until 11am, so I had some time to wake up and try to force myself to be a person again, to get a shower and put on nice clothes to appear to be somewhat human, etc., before I'd be around the family all day.
Daisy let me know she was going over there early, around 10 or so -- her sister and the kids hadn't arrived yet, and wanted to know if I wanted to go over early. I looked at her like a bear who had just been awakened from hibernation and told her no, I wasn't a person yet. She said she'd swing back to pick me up before lunch, and off she went.
The rest of the day was spent doing that lunch, having cheesecake much later for a dessert, and spending time with Daisy's sister, her husband, and their four boys while they were in town. Mama had a good birthday, filled with love and family and surprise presents. The weather was gorgeous -- it's been very unseasonably warm here in Omaha for October and we've been breaking temperature records left and right -- and when we left to come home, even though it was late and well after dark, it still had to be in the 70s.
The family was set to leave town the next morning around 11. We told them we'd be back over to see them before they left. We even specifically mentioned that I would be there in the morning too, as I didn't have to work that Sunday night because I'd worked on Friday (normally this is not the case). This was the plan, and they'd acknowledged it -- they knew we were coming back to see them off.
Daisy and I slept in the overnight and got up early -- we were in the car and over there by the 10am hour...only to find that they'd left forty minutes beforehand. No calls, no texts, no Facebook messages to tell us that they were leaving, nothing. They'd been rushing to get out the door since 6-something that morning, and apparently us coming back was an afterthought.
How nice.
We'll likely see them again for Thanksgiving (the American one) and we'll definitely see them for Christmas, as it's their year to be in Omaha for it -- which is part of why I've been making so many tie-dye shirts.
About those -- I have now passed probably 40-50 shirts created over the course of the past month or so. In all sizes, too. Their four boys range from ages 5 to 16 and their sizes vary wildly across the board. Our brother-in-law is close to a foot taller than me and is built like me (read: large), and Daisy's sister is much shorter and is beanpole thin. Add to that the shirts I'm making for the parents and it is quite a lot.
Daisy has questioned this hobby/holiday project, saying that it's expensive and/or too large in scope, or that it's becoming a compulsive obsession (pick one). I'm just trying to give the kids and parents a good Christmas. If we have the rest of Daisy's family come in (her other sister, husband, and their five kids) for Christmas, I'll have more than enough shirts for all of them too. If not, everyone gets a lot of shirts.
I project that by Halloween or so I'll be completely done, and can divide them up, box them, and gift-wrap them. I will need to get some mailer boxes and/or envelopes to ship out the ones I'm sending to other friends and family.
It is a labor of love, of course. More than anything else it just takes time. I can dye a shirt in five minutes, but the 8-12, sometimes up to 24-hour dye "set" time is what makes it take so long. There is a sort of weird science to it; sometimes I think my color combinations are going to be awful and they come out great, and other times I think they're going to be beautiful and turn out to be absolutely dogshit. I have some "color remover" packets to use in case of emergency, like if a set of shirts get browned out really badly or something like that, but so far (luckily) I have not had to use them. Even the more iffy shirts tend to have some sort of morbid beauty to them. The beautiful ones, of course, are beautiful regardless.
The worst (and really, the only bad) part of this work is that I don't know if it is actually rewarding work -- I won't know until people open up their boxes on Christmas morning, or open up their packages sent to them in the mail. I told Daisy that once the shirts are gifted, they're out of my hands -- if people like and love them and wear them that's great; if they don't and they immediately get chucked into the Goodwill giveaway bag, that's on the giftee, not the gifter. What is that thing they always say? It's the thought that counts? Yeah. That. We'll go with that.
In other news, to wrap up this entry, tonight we attended a Halloween costume party hosted by one of our closest friends.
Now, mind you, I'm not a huge party/gathering person -- I am even less of one now that we seem to finally, after four years, be fully coming out of a mass pandemic. In that time I more or less became feral and mostly regressed in my social intelligence to not knowing how to handle groups of people anymore. I went from being someone with a rather quiet, but still active social life to the hermit who never leaves the house unless he has to. And honestly, I rather like the latter version of myself -- it's more me than I've been in many years -- since before Daisy when I was living alone.
Because I've gotten so into that groove (or rut, more appropriately), I haven't left it much.
But Brandon, you might be saying, didn't you spend two weeks surrounded by family in Canada this summer, and another week with your parents this fall?
I did, but those are special circumstances. I don't really count vacations.
Anyway.
When our friend bought a new home late this past summer, one of the things she wanted to do was throw a Halloween party this fall. It wasn't necessarily a housewarming party, per se, but part of it was indeed to show off the new house -- which is gorgeous, by the way -- and to see those of us she was close to for an evening of Halloween-themed food and costumes. I adore this friend; she's likely Daisy's best friend ever and was the Maid of Honor in our wedding -- I know her quite well. Over the years she has been a close ally and strong advocate for not just Daisy, but for me and for us as well. Her teenage daughter is a great kid and we go to all of her school plays. Her husband has always been wonderfully sweet to both Daisy and I. They are likely the closest friends we have in town. So, when she mentioned that she'd be doing the party, I was excited to go.
It's been some time since I've actually dressed up for Halloween in any sort of recognizable fashion; back when I worked in the office and not at home, we used to organize Halloween events and everyone working on Halloween night -- which, for 3rd shift, was anywhere between seven and ten people, generally -- came in costume, we brought food for Halloween potluck dinners, employees would bring in their kids and they'd trick or treat in the office, etc. It was fun. One of our team leads is big into the "haunt" scene -- as in, he's one of the guys who designs and works crew for haunted houses and other scare-based attractions, goes to conventions for it, etc -- and he used to bring his whole family to site, all of them in costume. It was pretty fun. Over the years we were in the office, I wore various costumes -- one year I was Cyclops of the X-Men, one year I was Mega Man, one year I was Captain America, one year I was a Team Rocket grunt, etc. You get the picture. One year I just wore my bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers because fuck it. Point is, it was a fun experience.
Until we all got off work at 7am on November 1st, when everyone is no longer in the Halloween spirit and they're all coming to work to start their shifts at the time we're getting off and going home -- people who seemed somehow shocked that the overnight crew would be in costume, because who are the overnight crew going to see, and Halloween is over now right?
Yeah, there always has been a huge chasm of personalities between the types of people who work the overnight and the types of people who work dayshift.
Now, working from home, I haven't dressed up in years. I don't think Daisy and I have even done a Halloween "party" since before we bought the house. The only ready-to-go costume I have on hand is my full-spandex Superman suit, and I will not leave the house in that as that spandex is really thin and it zips up the back -- I cannot use the bathroom, at all, in any way, without taking it almost entirely off. So when I have worn it, it has been for exceedingly short durations of an hour or two at most. And that was several years ago -- I have no idea if it even still fits the same anymore. My weight and body has fluctuated quite a bit in that time.
Daisy went shopping for Mama's birthday and for our friend's upcoming Halloween wedding about two weeks ago and found two very fuzzy, brown robes at Forever 21 on deep clearance -- she got one for each of us. Her thought was maybe we could get some bear ears and possibly bear noses off Amazon and go as teddy bears for our friend's party -- a couple's costume. I said sure, I was on board for that; the pictures would be hilarious and cute at the very least.
As the days went on, I told her I needed an answer on if that was what she wanted to do or if she wanted to split off and have us do individual costumes, because likely whatever we needed to get would come from Amazon and I'd need to order it in order to get it here before the party. She flip-flopped on it several times, she did not know what she wanted to do. I offered her another option -- I had black slacks and a Star Trek uniform shirt already (I'd ordered the shirt for funsies many months ago) and if she didn't want to do the teddy bear thing, I was more than happy to just go on Amazon and order the phaser I'd had on my wish list for years to complete the costume. It would be quick and simple for me. Bonus: I could go use the bathroom as necessary in the Star Trek uniform.
She eventually decided that the robes would likely be too hot to spend a few hours in at a party and told me to go order the phaser, which I did -- she'd find something else to wear. She had some ideas milling around in her head.
One day while I was asleep last week, she went to the local Goodwill looking for costume ideas. She returned home with a queen-size, olive-drab-green jersey bedsheet -- appeared to be new and unused or very lightly used at best -- a rainbow scarf, and a vampire cape. She said she was going to take the sheet over to the parents' and turn it into a dress that she could both wear on the daily as well as wear as part of a "forest goddess" costume for the party. The cape and the scarf were just bonuses that she may or may not wear for the party. Sounded fun to me.
What followed was two straight days of her bent over her sewing machine at the parents' house, working with Mama to turn a big green bedsheet into a dress. Now, as you know, Daisy is not a small woman. She's big and thick and I love her for it (if she wasn't I'd likely snap her in half like a twig, because I myself am not small). Dresses for big women are different than those for smaller ones. They have to fall on and fit the body comfortably, naturally, but also in a way that is stylish. When making a dress all of this has to be taken into account even more. When making a dress from a bedsheet with no real start-end points in mind and only mental patterns (and I am sure some physical ones/ rough plans) to go off of, it's a lot harder than it sounds.
Daisy worked on this dress for two solid days -- all day yesterday and all day today before the party. Throughout the whole process I tried to be as helpful and supportive as possible, though the process itself was frustrating her immensely. Last night she came home and was feeling ill, and said she'd just go back over in the morning and finish it. When she did that this morning, very early, she spent the entire day finishing it up before declaring it "good enough" for the party, and once I was in my Starfleet uniform, we were off.
The "party" itself was very small; it was our friend, her husband, her mother, her daughter and her boyfriend, some cousins up visiting from Missouri with their own kids, and us. It was a fun, intimate experience -- especially as we (and I guess her daughter's boyfriend) were the only people there who weren't actual family...but she considers us family. They put out a massive spread of food, making sure that most of it was vegan/vegetarian and/or gluten free, to try to cater to both Daisy's and my own dietary needs. There was a lot of it that was not, of course, but she made sure to point out those things. I was very impressed.
We stayed for probably 2 hours, maybe a little longer. Her husband even put the WVU vs. Iowa State game on the TV for me because I was missing it by being at the party. Our costumes went over exceedingly well, and I even got to use the line "yes, that IS a phaser in my pocket, but I am also happy to see you."
Her costume, by the way? She was a Cybertruck. She'd built a suit for it out of cardboard boxes. Her husband was a vampire, complete with amulet, collared cape, and fangs. Her daughter and boyfriend were Morticia and Gomez Addams. Daisy, of course, was a forest goddess in her new dress, with some decorative flowers attached -- in beautiful makeup, and with a flower crown.
It was a fun experience. There were many pictures taken. If you're on my Facebook, the two of us in costume is now my current profile picture. T'is the season, after all.
We came home, and Daisy -- who was now completely burnt out -- showered and had some vegan pizza, and I watched the remainder of the WVU game before setting another few shirts on to dye and passing out for a short, hour-or-so nap. When I awoke, she was already in bed and had been for some time.
So, that's all for now. But, believe me, there is much more coming.
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