We have now gone to, and returned safely from, our trip to NC. Daisy returns to work today, and I return to work on Sunday night as per the usual. So...let's begin the (very) lengthy recap.
On Friday night, in the overnight hours after I wrote the last entry here, the Uber picked us up without incident and got us to the airport safely. Our mindsets were very much opposite of the normal when we left Omaha -- generally, I am the one who is extremely anxious and always feel like I've forgotten something or haven't done something important before a trip, and Daisy is very go-with-the flow. Well, this time it was the opposite. I knew I'd taken care of everything possible and Daisy was the one with anxiety that something had been forgotten or left incomplete. It was a strange dynamic for sure.
Anyway, we got through security without incident, got on the flights without incident, and got off the plane in Wilmington without incident. It was a remarkably smooth travel experience with no real need to go into further details about the travel itself, because nothing out of the ordinary happened. We picked up the rental car -- a brand new 2025 Volkswagen Jetta -- and off we went to get some dinner, swung by Walmart for a few supplies, and finally dropped anchor at my parents' house on the island around 8pm. My aunt and uncle were there waiting for us as well. We got to say hi to them, and by the time I'd taken the backpack off, set up my phone on the charger, and had gone to the bathroom, Daisy had experienced a five-minute conversation with them and they had already left to go back to their rental (two doors down from my parents' house).
We were exhausted, and after both of us had gotten a shower and a change of clothes, and some light social time with the parents and dogs -- my mother explaining to us twice that we would need to leave for their birthday party by 12:45 the next day -- we went to bed in the spare room we always stay in.
Sleeping at my parents' house on the island is not a great experience. Most of the time, it is at best "passable."
Let me explain -- my parents bought the beach house fully-furnished -- as in, the previous owners had decorated it, filled it with furniture and supplies (stuff like towels and baskets, small appliances, etc) and the like, and then left all that stuff there in the house for the next owners. My guess is that they were going to turn it into a rental house -- like an AirBNB or something similar -- and never did, just deciding to sell instead. Well, all of that stuff is still there. My parents didn't redecorate, they didn't toss all that stuff out, they just left the majority of their large items in the house in West Virginia and only took the essentials when they transplanted themselves to North Carolina. So, the bed, headboard, sheets, towels, etc in the "guest room" where we stay were provided by the previous home's owners, not my parents -- and that shows.
I've likely mentioned here before how extremely uncomfortable the bed is in that guest room. It's a queen, so it's large enough for me and Daisy to sleep on together (barely, as we're not small people), but the mattress is very thin and hard, the frame has no flex or give to it, and it is backed by a very 80s/90s white wicker headboard that creaks and cracks every time you move on the bed. I would not say it is the most uncomfortable bed I've ever slept on, but it's easily in the top five.
That being said, usually after my first night or two on it, my body gets used to it and I sleep fine for the rest of the trip. That...did not happen this time around. At all.
Despite my exhaustion, I only slept until around 4:30 in the morning. At that time I was too achy and stiff to sleep anymore. So, by 5am Sunday morning -- about fifteen hours since we'd arrived in North Carolina -- I was awake, clothed, and sitting on the porch with a cup of very strong coffee and a can of zero sugar Monster, ready to take on the day. I mean, as much as one could be, anyway.
Soon my dad woke up to get the dogs out, and my mother has an alarm that wakes her up every morning so that she takes her pills on what is apparently a very regimented schedule. My parents are senior citizens; they are almost always up at the asscrack of dawn every day either for medications, the three dogs, or both. My mother is now one of those people who falls asleep with the TV on in the bedroom at 9pm every night. Gone are the days of them having midnight snacks or watching TV or movies until 2am.
As an aside, my parents are very different people now than they were twenty years ago -- but really, aren't we all? Twenty years ago they lived by regimented schedules -- get up at 6, shower, have coffee and a quick breakfast while watching the morning news, out the door by 7:30 for work, back home by 6, dinner by 7:30 at the latest, movie/TV time until fall-asleep-on-the-couch time and then, eventually, wander upstairs to sleep the rest of the night before the cycle repeated the next day. On the weekends, my Dad would frequently play gigs with the band and they'd both be out until 3, sometimes later
Well, they're retired now, so this cycle is now null and void. It's just them, their beach house, the dogs, and the bird. They watch TV in separate rooms, separate shows, and my Dad has defaulted to becoming the dog caretaker for any and all dog needs. My mother could sleep through a freight train rolling by the house, and was already in bed most nights by the time Daisy and I were just winding down for the evening.
So, back to Sunday morning -- I'm sitting on the porch trying to wake up after helping Dad with the dogs, and its barely even daylight yet; those of you who live on a coastline on the Atlantic know that the sun rises and sets at different times there (I'm sure there's a scientific reason for this, but I'm too indifferent about it to look it up).
Around 6am, my mother -- who is fully dressed and already has some makeup on for the day -- comes out on the porch and asks if we can run some medicine over to my uncle, who had been in horrible back pain all night and wanted to go home.
"Go home?" I asked. "They just got here last night, like right before we did."
And they had -- they'd been there long enough to unload their stuff, have dinner with my parents, say hi to us briefly, and then go back over to the rental to sleep. And driving down from WV is a long drive; it's the equivalent of us just hopping in the car and driving to Chicago.
So, at about 6:30 in the morning, just as the sun was rising for the day, my Dad and I walked over to where my aunt and uncle were staying to find my aunt had already packed up the house and my uncle already waiting in the car, very clearly in a large amount of pain and actually rather out of it. He refused any medication from us. My aunt hugged us goodbye and we had a brief chat, and about half an hour later, from our front porch, I watched them pull out of the driveway and leave.
We were left with many more questions than answers. I'd never seen my uncle as clearly distraught and in pain than I saw him that morning. My aunt had said he'd been screaming in pain all night about his back. As an aside, my uncle drove big rig trucks for 20ish years of his life -- he used to drive the big USPS mail trucks cross-country and back several times a month. Doing that for a long period of time will no doubt cause back problems. I didn't think much of it at the time (he retired several years after he and my aunt got married, I believe, and even that was almost 30 years ago now), but the thought of this was brought to the forefront of my mind when the back pain entered the conversation. It had also come out of the blue -- both he and my aunt were their normal selves when we rolled into town -- I made the observation after they left that they were exactly the aunt and uncle I'd known my whole life, and we looked forward to spending the first few days of our trip with them.
So, just like that, they were gone, and it was just the two of us and my parents for the duration of the vacation again. Daisy had met them and conversed with them for less than ten minutes, as when they left, she was still asleep and would remain asleep for some time afterwards. I would've slept through it too, had my sleep schedule not been so well and truly fucked from the travel.
I'm going to take a moment aside here to talk about what I need to sleep. I need a room that is cool, if not downright somewhat cold, three pillows (two for under-head/neck and one to hug) and I need good, strong airflow in the room -- either from a ceiling fan or a stand-fan next to the bed. If I have those, some good darkness, and a comfortable blanket, I can sleep through almost anything as long as I'm comfortable.
Well...
Look, I'm not shitting on my parents' guest room where we stay, or at least I'm really not trying to. The ceiling fan in that room is nice, but it doesn't move air as hard as it should (it's on a high ceiling). My parents keep the house at 74, when I'm used to our house being kept at 66 or 67 in the summer. The room is indeed very dark (their whole house is), but the bed is hard, small, and the pillows suck. Add to this that it's a smaller bed and that Daisy is a living furnace, and no matter what, the temperature in that room always hovers around 80 or above. All of this combines to make it very difficult for me to sleep for long stretches of time. Naps are fine, but full overnights of sleep? It's nearly impossible. And it's not the parents' fault -- they didn't design or furnish the house. It's also not their fault that it's just not my bed and it's not my lounge chair in my office. My body has gotten used to sleeping in certain places under certain conditions, and once you get into a cycle like that, it's very hard to break.
Yet, I have never had any trouble falling asleep on an airplane. So figure that one out, America.
I will add to this that I knew the North Carolina heat would be oppressive, but it is absolutely a different kind of oppressive down there than it is in Omaha. Down there, yes, it is nearly 100% humidity at all times. I don't know if that changes outside the summer months or not, but we've only been there in the late summer (my parents both say that October there has the best weather). The vast majority of the time we're there, we're on an island -- surrounded by water -- and we're essentially boiling in it. The temperature can be 85, but it'll feel (to my body, anyway) as if it's well over 100. And it's unrelenting -- the humidity permeates everything and makes everything feel stuffy and thick.
What this does to my body is, essentially, it makes me unable to stay fully hydrated -- I for some reason can drink 130oz of liquids per day, every day, while I'm there and I will still feel the need to keep going. Daisy is the same way, actually. I can't tell you how many bottles of water, Powerade, coffees, Monsters, and other fluids we had while we were there, but it almost felt like it was never enough.
The second thing the heat does, it also does to me when we're home in Omaha -- it saps almost every bit of energy I have right out of my body. I found myself taking afternoon naps several days because I just could not stay awake. Daisy did the same, and I even noticed that my parents were doing the same from time to time. Now, mind you, when we're there I'm a lot more physically active than I am at home and I am already sleep-deprived, but not to the levels where the energy-sucking properties of that heat and humidity should be able to counteract Monster energy drink and strong Italian roast coffee. But it does, it did, and I was very low-energy for a lot of the trip despite my efforts. How do I know this? Because now that I'm back home, I feel normal again -- I do not feel like my energy is being sucked away from me.
Anyway, I have digressed pretty far away from the story, so let's continue.
That Sunday afternoon was my parents' birthday party at the local Mexican restaurant, despite the fact that their birthday was four days later. My mother had reserved the party room (yes, it was indeed a closed-off room) at said restaurant and had organized the whole thing. I don't know how much it cost and I didn't ask. We'd been given the same paper invitation all of their friends had received -- with the date and time, the address of the restaurant, and two special notes at the bottom: pay for your own meal and no presents please.
I found the note hysterical -- just my mother's need to point out both of those things. But, I get it. Leave nothing to chance, etc. I have the same mentality on a lot of things in life, and I can't honestly say I would not have written those specifications on every invite too.
This says a lot about me, actually, and I promise, I will get to that later.
So we took separate cars to the restaurant -- the parents took their van, and we took the rental Jetta. Do you know how hot it gets inside a shiny black rental Volkswagen if it sits in the Carolina summer sun for even five minutes? Well, we do now, and the answer is somewhere in the realm of "unbearable."
Still, the car got an average of 35-45 miles per gallon, and it wasn't a hybrid -- that's saying something remarkable there.
We took separate cars because Daisy was not satisfied with the meager selection of groceries we'd been able to procure from Walmart on our drive down to the island (neither was I, honestly; they didn't have half the stuff I had on my list) and she wanted to go to Publix or somewhere similar on the way home to pick up a few things. I was fine with this too, because, well, I needed a few items.
So, we got there, started to set up the tables, etc. The waiter (who my parents seem to know well) took our drink orders. He asked my mother first.
"I'd like a virgin margarita," she said.
"I'd like a virgin margarita," she said.
I turned and looked at both Daisy and my dad. My mother has never ordered a virgin anything in her entire life. For a split second I wondered if she even knew what the word meant in reference to drinks.
He went to me next. Again, for another brief split second, I considered saying "well, I'd like a virgin named Margarita," but decided against it.
"I'll take one of those too," I said. "That sounds wonderful."
My dad ordered a beer, I don't remember what, and Daisy got a Diet Coke. And then we were alone at the table again.
"I quit drinking," my mother said, flatly, locking eyes with me. "With all the heart stuff, I just said I'm done."
"Good," I said. I was taken aback. I'm sure she could see the surprise on my face, because I'm also sure there was no fucking way I could hide it.
And that was the end of the conversation. People started arriving, and we had a wonderful party/dinner with everyone who showed up. The room was filled with my mother's former coworkers from the university on the island as well as most of the folks from the street my parents live on -- they're a somewhat close-knit community, apparently. Hell, I wouldn't recognize most people on our own street in Omaha in a police lineup -- which, ironically, is the most likely place I'd end up seeing any of them anyway, knowing our neighborhood -- much less know all of their names and house numbers and the names of their pets like my parents do.
At the end of the dinner, the staff brought out the very intricate cake that my mother had ordered and brought to the restaurant with us and pictures were taken of them wearing sombreros and having said cake. One of my mother's colleagues paid for my parents' dinner, which was very sweet (no worries, my dad tipped the entire staff separately and left them what was left of this giant cake to split/eat amongst themselves). I slipped to the front to pay for our own meals and while up there, bought them a $25 gift card as I know they frequent this place quite a bit.
How was the food? Eh, it was fine. They're not big on caring a lot about cross-contamination, so Daisy said she picked some cheese out of her very-specifically-veggie-only meal, and while I didn't say anything, I picked a few small pieces of steak out of my veggie chimichanga. Their guacamole was top notch and their chips, cheese dip, Mexican rice, and salsa were all amazing, so I could overlook a lot of the little things. Oh, and that virgin margarita? Phenomenal. I could've drank three of them.
Later, once we were all home, I was downstairs with my dad and the dogs, far away from my mother, when I asked "so why wasn't her quitting drinking stop-the-presses, front-page-news as soon as we got here?"
"She never really said anything about it," he said. "I noticed she'd been cutting way back for a while, but the restaurant today was the first time she came out and really said it."
We did not see my mother ingest a single drop of alcohol throughout our entire trip.
Now, mind you, my dad still likes a drink, but it's one or two a day in the evening after dinner -- an appropriate, acceptable amount at an appropriate, acceptable time. But, I do remember growing up in West Virginia seeing a very well-stocked counter full of liquors and wines of all sorts every day, 24/7/365. Apparently that is now mostly a thing of the past. There is still a box of my mother's wine in the fridge though, as if she couldn't bring herself to throw it out. I did not check to see how full it was because, honestly, I didn't care and it doesn't matter. The fact that my dad still has a drink also does not seem to affect or bother my mother.
How do I feel about this wild change of lifestyle? Very happy and content, actually. If you know me, you know I had a drinking problem for years that raged with ebbs and flows until around the time I got married, after which I mostly -- and eventually, completely -- stopped. Aside from the very rare and appropriate drink (which I am very careful about these days due to my medications) I have not consumed any alcohol on a regular basis in about eight years. In those eight years I can only recall two or three times I've had any drink with alcohol in it whatsoever -- and one of those times was purely by accident when I thought I was grabbing a normal seltzer. I am intensely proud to be alcohol free by choice, and it has made my life much better.
My mother is very scared of her upcoming ablation procedure, and her quitting drinking was very strongly motivated by her heart issues. She is so scared of it she does not want to talk about it, does not want to think about it. I did offer to have Mama talk to her on the phone about it while we were there -- which I mentioned here I would attempt, to help her calm her fears, but my mother outright refused. Thinking or talking about it causes her massive anxiety (gee, I wonder where I get it from), so we let Mama know that wouldn't be happening and we dropped the subject completely with my mother -- we did not bring it up again the entire time we were there.
So, onward...
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