Holidays 2024, Part X: Falling Into Place

 Days until 42nd birthday: 6

 Days until Christmas: 11

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 5

I have now recovered from Covid almost completely. I still have a bit of residual congestion, though I think that can also be chalked up to allergies too, who knows. The weather has been very cold this week, with snow flurries off and on -- and then today we got snow and ice, turning Omaha and the surrounding area into a skating rink and causing all sorts of accidents around town. Luckily, neither of us have had to go anywhere.

Daisy has also recovered almost completely from Covid, and is pretty much back to normal. She left the house for the first time today (before the bad weather) since...well, Black Friday, I guess, to pick up groceries and run a few errands. The parents also seem pretty recovered as well, as both of them went to go see Wicked in the theater yesterday. So, I assume we're done with this round of sickness and we can now move on with our lives.

Daisy still wants to test herself again tomorrow to see if she's testing clear. I'll likely do the same thing just to be able to prove that I'm in the all clear now as well. 

Everything is slowly falling into place as we head into the holidays. I don't know exactly how to describe it or why -- absolutely I don't understand the why, as something awful usually happens when everything seems to be going well -- but I can't argue with the results:

• All Christmas cards have been mailed, like two weeks ago -- and I have gotten a few in return
• All Christmas shopping has been done for a while, though I did get the wife a few more things from the TikTok shop -- more on this below
• Cats seem to be in decent enough health and happy, even though Pete's anxiety has been spiking
• For now, my job seems to be somewhat stable
• Bills are being paid or have already been paid, and we have groceries in the house
• The weather has not been really bad yet this winter, and
• I seem to be in pretty good health overall now that the Covid has gone away

I also have this newfangled thing that I don't get very often and haven't had in a long time -- downtime. Free time. Time where I can actually relax a bit and decompress, sleep when I need to (most of the time) and just...be me. And this is good, because there's a lot of things I'd like to be able to accomplish with that downtime. 

I know -- the irony, right? But they are spiritually-fulfilling things. Keep in mind that sleep is also spiritually-fulfilling to me, so the bar is sort of low at this point. But that doesn't mean I don't still have a to-do list to take care of. I do, and there are a lot of things on it. Most of them are small tasks or errands, but it's still a list.

I slept most of the day, was up for a few hours in the evening, and then went back to sleep for a while -- so now, in the overnight hours, I'm awake and systematically taking care of tasks one by one while I have the energy to do so. I have stripped the blankets out of my chair and am washing them, I will strip the blankets off the couches downstairs and wash them next, and then I'll likely wash the cats' water fountain and take a shower. During all of this I also plan to look into enrolling for healthcare for 2025 (the deadline for my enrollment with my job is Tuesday), set up a Walmart delivery order, see if I need to do an order from Amazon for household essentials, back up my hard drive, feed and pill the cats, take a shower for the first time in three days, and then...maybe...if I have any energy left, start wrapping presents.

I don't know that or if I'll get all of these things accomplished today. All of this takes a lot of energy that I don't normally have and can't normally sustain for long periods. But, Daisy is asleep and I just want to get everything that I can accomplish done while I have the time and energy. I can rest when I need to, and I will once my holiday PTO kicks in, but for the next eleven days I have a lot that must still be done. At the same time, I also want to just sit in my chair and play a video game. 

[Edit: almost none of these things happened.]