Black Friday (and Saturday, and Sunday)

 Black Friday. 

Meh.

I got some of the household stuff during the week because of the early Black Friday sales that Amazon did, but this year's Black Friday sales for most places I would be interested in or following was...lackluster at best, to be honest. Columbia thinks $70 is a good Black Friday deal for a jacket when I got two very warm, nice fleece jackets from them months ago for $20 each. Old Navy had a fair amount of stuff I was at best only vaguely interested in, but nothing I needed. Walmart and Best Buy had good deals on things that I had no desire whatsoever to own. Macy's had some good deep discounts on home and bedding items, but meh. Woot? Didn't even look. I used to love ThinkGeek's Black Friday sales, but they haven't even existed as a standalone company in years. Years. 

Daisy, surprisingly, found some of the best Black Friday deals this year -- including a ton of cat stuff from Chewy and PetSmart (including a veritable mountain of litter), and various items on Amazon that she was interested in. I myself found a few things on Amazon but nothing to really write home about, and certainly nothing to use as gifts. I ran down my list to Daisy -- including things like a pair of shoes, fabric softener, Lenny & Larry's cookies, generic DayQuil, and cat treats -- and she found all of them mind-numbingly reasonable.

The only other things I got during Black Friday sales were more self-indulgent. I got four new pairs of glasses from my glasses website as they were doing a "20% off on all glasses over $10" sale, and we needed to burn some of our FSA dollars before the end of the year. I also ordered some vapes from my vape supplier as their deal gave me a $50 off my final order price coupon.

That's it. I am a man of few needs or wants these days. Twenty years ago, if I had access to the salary I do now, I would've blown a large amount of money on increasingly ludicrous items and I wouldn't have had much of a conscience about it. Today? Not so much. I'm old, I have joint and muscle pains and thick glasses, and most of my "disposable income" goes to keeping the cats as healthy and comfortable as possible. I'm such a dork. 

Pete has greatly improved; he is back to eating normal, if not large, amounts of food and drinking his normal amounts of water. He had diarrhea this morning, per Daisy, but this evening had some very substantial solid shits -- so we're hoping he's on the mend and that the medicine is working. He seems far more lively and mobile than he has in a week or so, even if he's pretty wobbly due to age and muscle loss. I am comfortable enough in saying that, at this juncture, he appears to be once again out of the woods for now. Again, any or all of this could change tomorrow, but right now? He's fine. He has spent a good chunk of the weekend snuggling up to us and to the other household cats, primarily Gary/Empress/Charlie, who are all his snuggle buddies and the cats he will seek out to go find and cuddle with, but also the ones who will curl up with him while he sleeps.

All of this is also good because, well, the weatherpeople weren't kidding about the snowstorm.

Friday morning -- as I do almost every Black Friday, if I'm home -- I watched the Nebraska vs. Iowa game. Am I a fan of either team? No, not really. I do confess that I own a Nebraska Huskers hoodie, primarily because I bought it within a few weeks of marrying Daisy and moving up here, and felt like I needed it to fit in. It has since, strangely, become one of my most prized possessions and one of the five or ten oldest clothing items I own. It is old, faded, and worn, but it is incredibly comfortable and has held up remarkably well over the years.

Anyway, I digress. 

The game is usually a daytime game, and is generally a daytime game that starts at 11am. Yes, local time, 11am Central. I didn't turn it on this year until it was nearly halftime, only to find in the broadcast that it was already snowing in Lincoln.

This does not bode well, I thought. 

I ate Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch and dozed off in my chair for a couple of hours. When I awoke, it was nearly dark, and the snow had started here in Omaha -- forming a light dusting in the grass and on structures, but nothing yet on the roads or our street.

It was a snow that would not stop for nearly 24 hours. 

By the time we awoke, sometime shortly before noon on Saturday, there were a few inches on the ground and coating everything. While we had gotten snow earlier in the month, on November 9, we got our first measurable snowfall in this storm. Interestingly enough, it was November 29 last year when we got the first measurable snowfall too. 

Because we knew we'd be snowed in, and because we no longer really had to worry about Pete for the moment, we took the day to focus on ourselves. Daisy cooked breakfast and we finished season 5, part 1 of Stranger Things, which we'd started on Wednesday. We then attempted to get Christmas photos of the cats:

These were the three best ones, in my opinion -- Emmy, Gary, Mable and Pete. 

Photos of Hank and Charlie, while taken, didn't really come out that well in my opinion. I'm going to try to redo their photos over the course of the next few weeks, and see if I can get better angles and lighting on all of the cats. I also desperately want to get side-by-side photos of the double trouble boys with both of them in the hats and scarves looking into the camera (similar to Gary's photo above), but I don't know how theoretically possible that will be. Daisy thinks that will be a near-impossible shot. She's likely right.

"It's not like we just have one shot at this," I said. "It's not Christmas yet; we've got weeks to try to get perfect photos of the kids."

Which is true; it's not school picture day, or an Olan Mills or JCPenney photo studio and it's no longer 1990; we can take thousands of photos every day if we want to because we all have camera phones now with good quality cameras. I have trouble getting out of the "everything has to be perfect in one sitting" concept as I am a perfectionist at heart, and I'm sure my dash of autism has something to do with that. 

Anyway.

After that, the snow had stopped (thankfully) and we went out to shovel the driveway and walks, which had about 3-4 inches on them when all had been said and done. We made the tactical error to let ourselves run out of rock salt/ice melt, and as some of the snow had come down as little ice pellets, that made it much more difficult to clear. 

I didn't think I'd be shoveling snow in November, but here we are. 

We had everything cleared off, more or less, in about forty minutes. It was cold (it still is cold), and we were in our heavy coats. Daisy used the electric snow shovel and I used the normal one. The amount of snow was riiiiight on the cusp of needing to be shoveled versus not needing it because of city statutes -- I think the law in Omaha is if it's more than three inches, it needs to be cleared from walks and driveways within city limits. This was brushing up against that, and while I didn't want to do it, we are supposed to get a bit more snow on Monday and we both have to be out and about multiple days this coming week, for reasons I'll get to later. So we basically needed to get it done and be done with it.

After that, we had a quiet dinner and some nice, peaceful bonding time with the cats before eventually coming upstairs. Daisy showered and went to bed, and I was likely awake for another two hours or so before I had to gently remove Hank from my room -- where he had been sleeping very hard -- and I passed out in my chair. It wasn't my intention to pass out in my chair, but that's where it happened. 

When I awoke, the temperature was under 20 and it was daylight again. I'd slept for almost seven hours straight, which revitalized me enough to where I feel that I've had ample sleep before needing to return to work tonight.

When we went downstairs, we found that Pete had shit on the floor.

Well, at least it was a possibility that it was Pete. When I picked it up with a towel and cleaned the carpet, it was warm -- and Pete was very clearly out like a light on the couch and had been for some time. It was behind my work chair, and it was deliberate -- as in, it wasn't a little turd that would've fallen off one of the cats, it was a full pile. Solid, a little goopy, but solid. Not diarrhea, but we also know Pete had taken a good solid shit last night in the pan, so...we don't know.

Look, I'm aware you don't need to know about this, nor do you particularly care. I just found it odd. 

Shortly after we went downstairs I gave Pete his pills and Churus and he ate them normally...and then he went to the pan and peed normally. So it's not like he'd forgotten where the pan was. I know he has his senior moments, but none of those moments have ever involved him just straight up shitting on the floor, so who knows.

However, this was a thing that Maggie used to do. And Maggie also suffered through and eventually succumbed to kidney failure. So...I mean...

It is what it is. Pete still seems mostly fine and mostly normal. I told Daisy as long as we can keep him happy and healthy, let it ride. It won't take forever. It is likely a much shorter window of time than we think it is now, whether he was the phantom shitter or not. I'll keep an eye on him over the next few nights while I'm working, but I expect his end to come before Christmas. As I've mentioned before, I will be shocked if he lasts longer than that. 

Anyway, moving onward...

I have not yet sent any of the Christmas cards. They've all been done, sealed, stamped and addressed since Thursday morning, but they haven't been sent yet. This is mostly because of the snowstorm; I'm not sitting cards outside in the mailbox for them to get pummeled by the weather for a few days before they even get picked up -- those cards cost me far too much money to be careless with them.

At the same time I am disappointed in myself because I'm a few days behind in getting them into the mail. I have already lost the "first card battle" this year -- one of my friends from high school who now lives in Florida had her card arrive here in Omaha on Black Friday. I told her via Facebook that she won this year, and that it is considered unsporting to mail cards before Thanksgiving. Friendly ribbing, of course. I refuse to escalate my timeline next year; cards do not go out before Black Friday, and that's my hard and set rule I have for myself. This year, they'll start going out tomorrow -- Cyber Monday. To be fair, it's really only going to cause a one-day delay for most people in their delivery, and I am always one of the first people I know who starts sending them out. For some people I don't get cards until shortly before, and sometimes shortly after, the holiday itself.

So, finally, we have reached the end of the holiday weekend, and tomorrow is Cyber Monday. While Daisy was volunteering this afternoon, I -- purely by chance -- was able to basically finish Christmas shopping for her. I have not told her this yet and do not plan to; I'd like to keep her guessing and extend the ruse a bit longer. And, to be fair, I have only gotten her four things, with the other three being done weeks ago. I may get her a few other little things between now and Christmas, but if I don't -- or if I don't find anything else -- it's not a big deal at all and I'll be satisfied. 

We've semi-finalized my birthday plans for this year -- after all, it is coming up in a short three weeks. Earlier this summer, Daisy and I jaunted down southward to Shadow Lake, one of the many suburbs of Omaha (I suppose, anyway) where they have a giant shopping center with far superior stores to what mainline Omaha has. The Burlington down there is great, and there's a giant Ross store and the only Torrid left in the immediate area, as well as many other places in a giant complex. It's not a mall, it's not a strip mall, it is a retail gated community of sorts. The only reason I knew it existed at all is because a few years back, when we were looking for Empress, we were looking at cats at the PetSmart there. 

And you know me and the holiday season -- it's not the holidays without a shopping trip. Even if we don't really end up getting anything.

Herein also lies the larger problem, like the elephant in the room nobody talks about -- my birthday is five days before Christmas. My birthday, this year, is also on the last Saturday before Christmas. 

It's going to be a retail nightmare. Everyone will be out shopping. If we do this, we do this knowing that it's going to be overwhelming and crazy everywhere we go. There will be no escape of it. It will likely be the busiest shopping day of the year, and doubling down on that...it's the only day we actually can do it. My birthday being on Saturday means that Daisy works until 9pm the night before, on Friday. It also means that I work the day after, on Sunday. Unless we wanted to do it a week or two in advance (I don't), my actual birthday is legitimately the only day it can be done before Christmas. 

So I formulated a plan.

We get up very early -- like, Daisy sleeps fast on Friday night and we're both awake and mobile by 7am -- and we get down to Shadow Lake by 9am. We hit the stores we want to hit, methodically, and then pull out when we're done and get back north to Omaha by the early afternoon hours, where we go to the parents' and have my birthday dinner with them. It should still, at that point, be just us -- Daisy's sister and family from Denver will not have arrived in town yet -- and then we can return home hopefully by dark or a little thereafter to end the day.

Do I expect the plan to go this smoothly? Hell no. It'll be my birthday, and something always goes wrong around my birthday -- either the car will break down, Daisy or I will be forced to work, Pete will die (a new fear this year; happy birthday, Brandon -- here's a dead cat for you), or the weather will be horrifying. For example, the blue jay tattoo I eventually got in July 2023 was supposed to be my birthday tattoo in 2022, but on the day of my birthday we got a snowstorm and the temperature was single-digits cold, so that wasn't an option. 

Alternate plan if we can't end up doing the above?

Well, uh, I don't have one yet. It's going to be a very situational thing. If Pete dies right before my birthday, for example, it's going to be hard to find some birthday mirth to pull out of my ass. And honestly, that has a very distinct possibility of happening. He's absolutely on borrowed time as it is; three more weeks may be all we get out of him.

So, onward, into December we go...

Thanksgiving 2025, Part II

 Today is Friday, November 28. Black Friday.

On Wednesday morning, Pete vomited up a bunch of water. I did not think much of it as he hadn't vomited in weeks, and he does do that sometimes when he drinks a lot of water all at once -- too much, and his stomach is just like "nope." 

On Wednesday night, Pete began getting sick. We could tell he was nauseous, and seemed lethargic. He didn't want much, if any, food. I was able to get some Churu down him after his pills, but he was beginning to look like he was in October when we thought we were going to lose him -- wobbly, ill, sleepy. We kept an eye on him out of concern, and gave him his IV fluids on schedule as per the usual. 

Yesterday morning, he had diarrhea and once more refused food. I once more coaxed a Churu into him, but he hadn't really improved. Since we knew he was having diarrhea, Daisy started him on the stomach meds that our vet had told us to get him taking if he experienced diarrhea again, and we gave him nausea meds as well as the appetite-stimulant ear gel so we could see if we could get him to eat. 

Yesterday morning, of course, was Thanksgiving. A holiday. If he decided to go south quickly -- as Maggie and Sadie did -- there would be little we could do. We began to wonder if this was it, if it was time to call it and throw in the proverbial towel, to schedule his end-of-life appointment. Again, we've prepared for this mentally for a long time, and we know the process and order in which things must be done. Pete had been doing so very well since he'd recovered from his sickness in October -- he was basically back to being normal old Pete. So, to have him start getting sick again -- even though we know that's how it's eventually going to end -- was disheartening and stressful on us. 

These cats seem to love getting sick around the holidays; Sadie began having her seizures on New Year's Eve last year, and I knew then her time was almost up. I asked her, kindly and gently, if she could wait until after the holiday. Foolish, selfish perhaps, to think I could ask that of her and expect her to not only understand but to comply, but she did -- she lasted until January 2nd, when she had her next seizure, and at least one other on the way to the vet, where we peacefully ended her suffering.

Of course, Thanksgiving is a hectic time for both myself and Daisy, but moreso Daisy -- we were so worried about Pete that we got a very late start to the day, and Daisy was to cook Thanksgiving dinner at the parents'. They'd said they preferred an earlier meal rather than a later one, so that meant we were sort of on a time schedule. Pete's health, of course, came first. When he went to the pan and had diarrhea, he came back into the living room, laid down on the floor, and cried.

Pete is and always has been a vocal cat, but he doesn't really cry out in pain, he cries out for attention and acknowledgment. He has always been very good at keeping his pain hidden. Crying out in pain, for him, means he has to feel really awful.

Adding to the stress and frustration here was this:

We knew this was coming. Every forecast we'd seen throughout the week was worse than the last; this storm wasn't going to miss us, it wasn't going to be lighter or nonexistent -- it was on its way and we couldn't do anything about it. The first storm of the season to usher in winter. 

You might be wondering why this was a concern to us. Well...if we get snowed in and roads become impassible and Pete were to take a turn for the worse, we couldn't get out to get him taken care of and we certainly would not expect the in-home euthanasia group to go out and make house calls in the middle of a blizzard. If he were to get worse and pass during the storm, we'd be stuck in the house with his corpse until we could get out to take care of it. 

This, as I told Daisy, was my personal worst-case scenario; it's not like we have anywhere to store a dead cat for a couple of days. The mere thought of that, of having his body locked in here with us, is horrifying to me. I couldn't even look at Sadie and Maggie once they were gone; the vets had to remove them from my presence because their bodies just being there, but without them inside those bodies, filled me with a sense of dread and doom and anxiety that I can't quite place. Pete, as my first cat, my oldest son, the first cat I've ever had really love me, will be so much worse -- no matter how much I prepare for it.

Daisy said that her best-case scenario would be for him to pass peacefully in his sleep while she held him in bed, knowing that he was warm and safe and loved. She has a bond with Pete that I will never fully have or understand; he is, as she calls him, her "soul cat." 

We started discussing plans. I told Daisy that if he wasn't getting better I was okay to just call it to prevent him from getting really sick again and prevent misery and suffering. I told her it is what it is, we don't have to be happy about it but it was going to be the eventuality sooner or later. If it was sooner, that was unfortunate, but there is not much we can do to stop it. 

She did not want to call it, and I understand that. I didn't either. I reminded her that if he took a dive, the soonest we could possibly expect any sort of real assistance for him would be Monday because of the storm. 

However.

Over the course of a few hours, he acted like he was starting to feel better. He got down and went to the pan and peed, which tells me good, his kidneys are still working at least somewhat, and went to drink water from the fountain in the kitchen. He was still getting around okay. He'd eaten the Churu. He'd gotten his pills, he'd drank some water, and was lounging on the couch. He would get up and follow us to the kitchen and hang out there while we were in there, and would follow us back to the living room when we went back in there. He also got up and laid down in the cat bed in the window, one of his favorite sleeping spots.

His movement and use of the pan and the fact that he did eat something gave Daisy the confidence she needed to be okay with leaving the house for Thanksgiving dinner with the parents. So, we packed up everything we needed and made the jaunt across town. Daisy set up the indoor cameras when we left so that we could track Pete's movements and if he ate/drank anything else while we were gone. 

About two hours or so after we got to the parents', I got a notification on my phone from the cameras. When I pulled it up, it was Pete sitting on the couch eating food/treats from the bowl of them I keep there, which made me feel much more at ease -- he was eating, he was existing normally and didn't seem to be on the struggle bus so much.

Dinner was wonderful; over the course of an hour or two, Daisy was able to get everything put together and made. The parents did not opt for a turkey, but instead had some ham that Dad said was quite good, and I took his word for it. Mama made her famous rolls, two different types of cranberry sauce, and a peach crumble from peaches from their own backyard trees, and even doubled down on desserts with a tray of muffins. Daisy made the vegan turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, carrots, corn, green beans, and her famous gravy. We watched the Chiefs lose to the Cowboys, and I napped on the couch for a bit after dinner. 

Eventually, we packed everything back up and came home, where I found Pete in the same place I'd last seen him -- on the couch with the bowl of food/treats. He came to greet us normally and we loved on him. We sat up with him for some time well into the overnight hours, and made sure he got another dose of fluids, a big bowl of probiotic broth (which he loved, and drank up almost all of) and some more Churus. He was, for all intents and purposes, mostly normal again. Daisy even saw him pee again in the pan, which tells me that again, his kidneys are still functioning as per the usual at the very least.

I came upstairs around 12:30 to decompress a bit, and Daisy followed soon after, bringing Pete up with her so he could sleep with her. She conked out quickly, and I wore myself down over the course of about two hours before I crashed out in my chair for some rest of my own. 

I was awakened around 8am by the hair dryer in the bathroom on the other side of the wall from my office. Daisy had not showered before bed last night because she didn't want Pete to leave and go back downstairs, so she woke up early and showered. At some point in the night he had wandered back downstairs, so when Daisy checked on him after her shower she noted that he seemed normal, there was no more diarrhea in the pan, and she gave him another dose of the nausea meds before coming back upstairs. 

I got up to go to the bathroom and she was looking at Black Friday deals in the dark on her phone. She ended up doing a fair amount of Christmas shopping for everyone -- apparently including me -- before rolling over and going back to sleep.

It takes me ages to wake up, of course; my body fights me, as I think its natural state is somewhere in the realm of "unconscious and dead to the world as much as possible at almost all times," so there are times (many times, in fact) that it just does not want to be awake and mobile. This worsens in the winter months as it feels like my giant, hairy bear body is just telling me to hibernate until the weather no longer hurts to exist in. 

To be fair, I had no real plans for the day; it's not like I leave the house anymore unless I have to, and the days of me getting up at 3am to be at the doorbuster Black Friday sales for places like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart are far, far behind me. The most active I planned to be for the day was to shower and get something to eat, and do some laundry.

And dye my hair.

I had browsed, over the course of the week, some early Black Friday deals on various websites. One of the most obvious, of course, was Amazon. During the week I'd jumped on stuff on sale that I knew would go out of stock quickly as well as just normal household supplies that happened to be Black Friday deals. I got, for example, a new pair of Hey Dude shoes. Do I need a new pair of Hey Dudes? No, not at the moment, but I will eventually. Nevermind that I have two other pairs I've ordered on similar sales that are still in the box. Shh. We don't need that kind of negativity in our lives. 

Anyway, the stuff I'd already picked up ranged from wet wipes to fabric softener to packing tape -- just stuff I'd normally get at regular intervals anyhow -- and then I saw that my Clenditioner hair dye was on sale for half off. 

Now, to be fair, I haven't re-dyed my hair nor have I done anything to it since before visiting my parents in North Carolina in August; I'd dyed it so much and with multiple colors before eventually just covering everything up with black so many times that my hair was fully saturated with dye and was taking legit months to wash out/fade out. As it has faded in the time since, my normal brown-and-gray has begun peeking through at the roots and temples, and the rest has faded out to a dark black-blue that shimmers with green in direct sunlight or otherwise intense light. I actually liked the way it looked, even with the faded green in it, so I just figured I'd let everything wash out naturally and when I wanted to change up my look again, I would.

Well, when they put the dyes on sale for Black Friday, I was interested. I picked up a bottle of silver blue, two more pump bottles of black, and a bottle of Arctic Fox's "Blue Jean Baby," which is their midnight blue dye that mixes well with black as well as other colors. On Wednesday, I did a treatment of the silver blue, hoping that it would lighten and shine up things a bit, but all it really did was replace the faded out green with a dark blue. I wasn't mad at this.

This morning, I used the last of my bottle of blue mixed with a lot of black, and positively coated and caked my head with it to see how much I can get it to take. My hair is longer at this point and would be doubly long by now if I had not cut it before the trip to North Carolina, so it takes a lot of dye to make it look the way I want it to. 

When I went to the bathroom to do this, Pete was back upstairs and was laying with Daisy in bed, and gave me a "hi dad!" sort of look. When I came back out of the bathroom he was sitting in the hall waiting for me to let him into my office, something he's always done. I want to stress that this appears to be normal Pete behavior, and a strong sign that he's feeling a lot better. I let him in and he immediately got up on my ottoman, flopped down and began eating treats/food from the bowl that I keep in here. Again, normal Pete behavior. Eventually he dozed off to sleep there -- possibly his favorite sleeping spot in the house aside from my arms or Daisy's. 

So, I mean, I guess he's doing better. He appears leaps and bounds better than he was for the past two days. Later in the day he would eat more and spend more time in the window downstairs, which is pretty much normal for him. We're going to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't get really sick again (even if he does, again, can't really do much but hospice care for him), but marked improvement is good. Throughout the day and evening he remained mostly normal, ate more, drank water, got his pills and fluids, and was generally regular Pete. So, I guess we may be a bit of the woods for now. We'll see. It's always a day by day thing, and we're going to be on deathwatch for him from now through the end of his life regardless of whether we want to be or not, so...it is what it is. 

Thanksgiving 2025, Part I

Today is Sunday, November 23rd. 

It is now less than a week away from Thanksgiving. American Thanksgiving, anyway.

The PTO has been put in, the shifts at work are covered, the refrigerator/freezer and pantry are stocked with all of the Thanksgiving goodies we will possibly need for the holiday dinner. 

We're ready to go into a short week leading into the holiday weekend.

Now, I will note that for neither myself nor Daisy, it's an actual holiday weekend. Daisy gets Thanksgiving Day off only, and returns to work normal shift for Black Friday. I took Wednesday night before the holiday off, otherwise I would be getting no extra time off at all -- and I return normally next Sunday. So, both of us only get one extra non-normal day off, really. Daisy doesn't even view the day itself as a day off, really -- it's a "day of service" for her, so she says, as she generally cooks the entirety of the Thanksgiving dinner, aside from the real turkey and Mama's rolls. 

"I am happy to help you do it as much as you'll let me," I told her, "and you know this, but the reality is that you don't really want to let me."

And that's the truth. The long-suffering Daisy is very much a "do it herself" person, and the three big things she does -- the mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing -- there's not much I can do to help with those; they would not be "hers" if I helped. I want to clarify that statement, too -- she has magic, she has kitchen alchemy, and for as much as I love those three things, I can't make them worth a damn. My traditional Thanksgiving dinner for years when I lived alone, if I did anything special at all -- was Heinz gravy from a jar, Stove Top stuffing from a box, and if I didn't have real potatoes, potato flakes from a box was fine as long as I had milk and butter and some garlic powder. I was very cheap and very utilitarian.

Yet, Daisy and her mother are the best cooks I've ever known. My own mother is great too, of course -- and most of the time they've made stuff from scratch and look at me like I'm crazy when I've said in the past that my favorite stuffing is Stove Top from the box and that my favorite gravy was Heinz from the jar. 

That was part of the poverty mindset I had for many years, I suppose. And it's really hard to shake, almost like it's hardwired into your psyche as a survival tactic. It's like the people who want Kraft macaroni and cheese (Kraft Dinner for those of you in the great white north) instead of homemade, or would prefer a can of Campbell's condensed soup over a carefully crafted homemade soup. Growing up, I always thought it was a treat to get Velveeta shells and cheese as a rare splurge instead of the cheap Kraft mac and cheese or, horrifically, a less expensive generic version. My palate had not yet developed; I was poor when I lived alone (and we weren't exactly a high-roller family when I was growing up, either) and the $3 for the box of Velveeta shells and cheese seemed extravagant for just one meal -- after all, for three dollars, at the time you could probably get four or five boxes of the Kraft version. 

The holidays seem to be coming up very quickly this year, which has been a really strange thing for me. I prepared for months to visit my parents in NC and then go to Canada and come back, and it felt like for both of those, time was dragging so slowly it felt those trips would never get here. Now it seems like the holidays are ready to steamroll over us and we are woefully unprepared.

In reality, we're prepared just fine for Thanksgiving, as mentioned above. I am not prepared for the aftermath and for the following holidays of my birthday and Christmas. I am sitting here listening to Gord Downie's solo records and doing laundry. I am prepared for nothing. 

Of course, as Thanksgiving approaches, I think back to the Thanksgivings of my past -- the last big Thanksgiving dinner we had as a family, my own family, was probably 1999 or 2000. I am thinking it was 1999, as I remember I was in high school and Santana's "Supernatural" album was everywhere at the time. It was held at my aunt and uncle's house; they lived a mile or so from my grandmother at the time. It's the last time I remember the vast majority of the family being gathered together in one place; it was a simpler time, a much more peaceful time. Nobody was at each other's throats, my generation of kids were mostly still living at home (or, if they weren't, they were just starting to strike out on their own, get married, etc), and the family was still a pretty cohesive unit. I remember my grandmother calling my mother to point blank say "dinner's at four at [aunt and uncle's] -- when are you showing up to cook the turkey?"

My mother had the reputation of being the one who actually knew how to make a turkey correctly, and I believe there was some sort of history or running joke about that in the family, now lost to the ages. 

There are many things I remember about that final family Thanksgiving -- it was the year my mother made a wonderful green bean casserole and got heavily criticized for it. I remember the old aunts of the family, who smoked, just lighting up at the table -- in someone else's house -- like it was nothing, like it was expected, and the smell of that smoke slowly dissipating with nobody batting an eye. I remember my uncle asking me why I didn't come to his wedding, when I was (at the time) only halfway aware of it, and my cousin talking to her boyfriend on the phone and explaining to him who I was and why I was hanging out with her in her room -- something that was not unusual for me, as I grew up with my cousins, but apparently seemed absurdly threatening to a non-related boy on the phone. I was at the peak of my awkward, punk-rock goth phase of high school, weird and somewhat withdrawn with ill-fitting clothes, just wanting to be  I remember my grandmother, 72 at the time -- younger than Daisy's parents are now, younger than my dad is now -- sitting in the living room very content, peacefully taking it all in, surrounded by the family she helped create, none of whom would be there without her. She seemed so much older than that in those moments, or maybe it was us who seemed so much younger. She'd live another eighteen years, but she would never see us all gathered in one place for a Thanksgiving dinner ever again. The closest she'd get would be a few years later when about 3/4 of us would gather for an Easter dinner at another aunt and uncle's house in 2004. 

I've had many Thanksgivings at many places over the years. For multiple years running, we'd do it at the house of my dad's family, with all of his relatives. I've written about that, as well as the Christmases spent there, before at length. That started to wane and drop off in the early to mid 2000s. 

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that it was during Thanksgiving week in 2006 that I moved out to the midwest; my ex and her mother arrived in her father's truck to the house in West Virginia, helped me load everything into the bed, and then we made our way back across the country to Kansas City -- or, really, the farm community 25 miles east of the city that, for many years, I would refer to as "Smallville." We arrived at the family house around 4am Thanksgiving morning, and I woke up early that afternoon in a completely different house with a completely different new family, even completely different dogs -- dogs who didn't know me or trust me yet because I was an interloper. I had a wallet and a debit card to my name, a bank account with a few thousand dollars in it that I had saved, and everything that I'd deemed important shoved into the back of a truck -- and at the time I was the most free and untethered I'd ever been for the first time in my life. I didn't even own a cell phone yet.

Of course, all of that would slowly change over the course of several years. I'd have a few Thanksgivings with the ex and her family, Christmases too, and then a few years later would find myself alone again for all of those holidays, in yet another different state (Kansas), almost penniless but with a car, a roof over my head, and three cats. It was around that point I began to dislike the holidays and would become withdrawn and morose when I'd see Christmas lights or hear Christmas music, and would recoil at mentions of the holidays. I'd seal the Monte Carlo into the garage between college semesters, only venturing out to get groceries and cigarettes when absolutely necessary, and otherwise hole up. I had multiple people ask me if I'd like to do Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners with them as they knew I was alone (even one of my professors, actually) and I turned them all down as politely as possible. I was very much in the mindset of "I did this to myself, so I have to atone for it" for a few years there. Meaning, I'd gotten myself stuck where I was, and I had to live with those choices and let them make me feel the way I felt. 

That also changed, of course, in time.

Now, in the present, my Thanksgiving traditions are rather simple and mostly routine -- I take the Wednesday night beforehand off so that I can relax and sleep, and get up early on Thanksgiving morning. I caffeinate myself, I make sure I'm fully awake, and then I watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while I prepare the Christmas cards for mailing the next day. This year, the first batch has already been prepared, and on Thursday morning during the parade I'll be preparing the second and likely third batches. There are 70 cards total, and I don't generally have more than a small handful of them left over at the end of the year. Daisy wakes up eventually and starts the cooking for the day, and eventually we venture over to the parents' for dinner, most of the food in tow. We will only return home with about half of it. I will pass out early in the evening or early overnight hours, and Daisy will go to bed at a reasonable hour as she will get up and work the next day while I browse Black Friday deals online. This has been the "tradition" of sorts for many years running now. I think I've only ever worked two Black Fridays over the entirety of my employment at my current job. On the first one, we had a potluck and played Cards Against Humanity for hours because it was just that dead, and on the second one it was quiet and a snowstorm was rolling in, so my boss just said to go home before the weather got worse. Past that, I've been the manager on overnights and I've never been scheduled on Fridays.

Ironically, for the new company I work for now, Black Friday is treated as an actual holiday, and it's a paid day off. I guess they figured that nobody stateside would do any work of actual substance on Black Friday anyway, and honestly...yeah, I kind of feel that sentiment as well. Nobody wants to be in the office on Black Friday at any company or business unless they're absolutely forced to be. Black Friday is for four things -- digestion, sleep, football, and impulse purchases. 

Last year on Black Friday, I started getting really sick, and found out shortly thereafter I had Covid. This was also after I'd gone out already and gotten the fish that we would name Lucy (who just died recently, as I documented here). Black Friday last year was the first day we had significant snow, as well -- as if the weather had waited until Thanksgiving was over and thought to itself "okay, we're in the Christmas season now, it can snow." Between the snow and the Covid, that weekend was miserable.

So, I guess, here's hoping for better this year. I'm ready to have a relaxing, comfortable Thanksgiving for once. It's just us and the parents and I have zero other plans. 

Field Roasting on an Open Fire

 Friendsgiving was fine.

No, really. 

We were welcomed with open arms by our neighbor, and our neighbor across the street (whom I'd never formally met) attended as well...along with about thirty other people crammed into a house about half the size of our own, if not smaller. Aside from the neighbors, we knew nobody. We mingled a bit, I drank a glass of pineapple juice (one of the few drinks there without alcohol in it), and after about two hours made our gracious exits twenty-five feet back across our front yard. It was a fun little get-together with a bunch of people we'd never met, but by the end of the time we were there, our social batteries had run dry -- likely mine more than Daisy's, but dry nonetheless. 

I can say now that I have gone an entire week back-spasm-free. I have had some twinges of pain here and there, and some soreness, but absolutely nothing like the pain and spasms I'd had a week ago. Do I know what it was at this point? No, I absolutely don't. I'd like to chalk it up to a kidney stone, a pinched nerve, or just plain getting old, but I've got no explanations and none of those symptoms quite fit the bill. I just don't want it to happen again. 

Friday was payday for us -- it is always payday for us, one of us or the other -- and we celebrated by paying down a bunch of bills and by Daisy taking a few hours off in the afternoon so that we could go get a quick "date lunch" and make a trip to the Dollar Tree and Lowe's to get some household supplies. I love going on little adventures like this with Daisy, especially when I have the time and energy to do so. Saturdays tend to be over before they start, as Daisy will sleep in, and I'll run myself out of energy by mid-afternoon. On Fridays, though, it's a different story -- I will almost always have slept well on Thursday night, and I use Fridays to take care of errands and household tasks that need to be handled when I have no other time to do said tasks. 

We have begun preparing for the holidays, finally. I have three gifts now for Daisy, the latest one being delivered yesterday, and Daisy picked up a number of gift bags at the Dollar Tree on Friday. Additionally, yesterday morning we ventured out to Natural Grocers and picked up the vegan Field Roast turkey that I traditionally get for Thanksgiving:

Trust me, it tastes much better than it looks, and for $20 for a two-pound roll of seitan, it damn well better.

"If it's just going to be the four of us," Daisy said, "maybe we could do like a Thanksgiving brunch."

I visibly recoiled at this. "Like...how?"

"Like early in the day, brunch time," Daisy said.

"...if you want to eat earlier in the day, like 1, I'm sure the parents would be fine with that, but I can tell you that it's Thanksgiving and I personally want an actual Thanksgiving dinner."

Not to mention that I know Dad will as well. Dad is traditional and loves the holiday feasts, despite eating like a bird most of the time now since he's aging quite rapidly. I remember when that man would pound down two giant pork chops and multiple rolls and sides, and now he picks at his food and eats very little, very slowly. 

Also, Christmas dinner? I don't give a shit about Christmas dinner; it can be whatever. But, Thanksgiving is the high holy day of Gravy Season™, and as such I am a very big fan of it. On the other side of that same coin, I know it's a lot of work for Daisy and a huge pain in the ass. She calls it "a day of service" for her more than anything else, and then dreads doing the same a month later for Christmas dinner, usually for a much larger party of people. And I absolutely see her point and understand that.

Pete is holding steady; the old man seems completely normal. Most days he still comes upstairs to sleep with us, and we've been giving him his subcutaneous fluids every other day, 100ml to 150ml at a time. He seems to be eating, drinking, and going to the pan normally, and getting around ably enough -- leaps and bounds improved from a little under a month ago when we were expecting to lose him. He could, of course, take a turn at any day, and we're waiting on that other proverbial shoe to drop and for him to be like "okay, it's time, I'm done now" and it will eventually happen, but for now? He seems perfectly fine.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we're going to attempt new Christmas photos with all the kids; I ordered another Santa hat and scarf for the cats because I'd like to get the double trouble boys together in the same photos wearing the same apparel. It is, after all, their first Christmas with us. It is also, very likely, Pete's last Christmas with us -- if he makes it that long -- and I want one last set of photos of him in the scarf and hat while he's still doing well and still looking and feeling relatively like himself. 

Hank's eye is almost completely healed now that we've had him on the steroid drops for about a week and a half. The improvement was almost immediate, and he is almost back to looking like his normal, orange eyed self again. He gets three drops a day -- one non-steroid drop in his good eye to keep it from going bad (or something; it was never really clearly explained to me why we're putting drops in his good eye) and two steroid drops in his healing eye, once in the morning and once at night. He no longer really fights us on it, as I do honestly think he can logic enough to put together that it makes him feel better and he can see again since the steroids began. I am looking forward to the new Christmas photos with him as well, since he'll be able to show off two pretty eyes again. We take him back to the eye doctor for a check-in a week after Thanksgiving, and at that point we'll figure out where to go from there in regards to dosage and the like for the foreseeable future. However, sometime over the next couple weeks we will need to get a refill of the steroid drops, since I don't think they're going to last until the next appointment. 

I have but seven days left to work before Thanksgiving, four this week and three next week. It is coming up so much faster than I thought it would. After Thanksgiving, of course, begins the headlong rush leading up to Christmas. Aside from the cards, I am woefully underprepared this year. When I'd normally be doing "holiday work" on the weekends around this time of year, I've been sleeping a lot more or sidelined with an injured back, taking care of sick cats, or attending Friendsgivings. I don't know when I'm going to be able to finish shopping for Daisy. I don't even know what else to get her at this juncture. Normally I have some grand plan, an amazing or creative idea, and this year I'm just burnt out and find it difficult to plan and function.

It is not, of course, her fault -- she herself is the greatest gift I could ever personally ask for, but I also get the feeling that the next time she asks "so what do you want to do for your birthday this year?" the answer to that question is going to be "find somewhere I can finish Christmas shopping for you so that I don't feel like an inadequate asshole."

Yes, I know, I have well over a month. But usually I'm far more finished than I am now, too. 

Night of the Living Friendsgiving

 Our neighbor, who has lived next door to us for approximately five years, has invited us to "Friendsgiving" this weekend. For those of you who don't know what "Friendsgiving" is, it's become a trend in the past decade or two to host a Thanksgiving dinner for your friends sometime around (but not usually on) Thanksgiving, as the holiday itself is traditionally spent with family. Friendsgiving is more of a casual, partyish atmosphere that may or may not contain a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

I've been invited to a few various Friendsgivings over the years, but have only rarely attended them. It's not exactly my thing. You want me to be social and talk to people? In person, with my mouth? Eew. 

That's old man Brandon talking, though. Brandon in his twenties and early thirties delighted in these sorts of gatherings, and my own parents did a variation of them every year usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas, disguised as an early Christmas party or a birthday party for me. In grad school, I attended a couple Friendsgivings, and even as recently as six or seven years ago we used to turn our game night into a Friendsgiving-like party around the Thanksgiving holiday.

Those days are long behind me now though; all of those more local friends have either moved out of the Omaha area or we've all slowly drifted apart over the years, sometimes by circumstance and other times by choice. So, it was a surprise to me when, in our text messages, both Daisy and I got an invite from our neighbor for a Friendsgiving celebration on Saturday.

Our neighbor is not young, but she is not old; she is 50 (just turned 50 while we were in Canada, as we missed her party because we were up there) and looks 30. She lives alone but has a daughter of college age who lives in Chicago and who occasionally comes to visit. I have always liked this neighbor; she is calm, seems pretty rational and sane, is rarely loud -- though she does occasionally have a hot tub party with friends during the summer months -- and has never caused any problems. We let her know when we'll be out of town, and she does the same when she leaves town. We watch each other's houses. She is kind and sweet and funny, and likely the best neighbor we could have asked for.

And, in the spring, she's moving to Chicago. 

She is not selling the house; she is planning to rent it out for a while and eventually return to it in a few years. We will be sad to see her go, and apprehensive about any new renters; we don't live in a great part of town, but it's far from the worst. Still, I've seen some of the other nuts who live on my street and it's enough to give me a little pause about interacting with anyone else in the neighborhood if it can possibly be avoided. What bothers us more, at least bothers me more, is that by the time she returns, we may or may not still be living here or in Omaha at all. 

After all, we don't know what the future holds -- depending on the state of the government in this country, we could be living in Canada this time next year. If we're not, Daisy and I have been having serious discussions for some time about gutting this house, refurbishing it and selling it, and purchasing another home in...ehhh...I'd say, maximum fifty-mile radius of the area, and that's likely being generous. We do want to be closer to her parents if possible, and I want us to have more room, an actual two-car garage, and a basement. I'm not married to being inside Omaha; I could just as happily live in a suburb or twenty miles outside the city limits in the countryside -- as long as high speed internet works and Amazon Prime can still get stuff to my door within a day or two, I'm good. 

Anyway.

My point is that we're not really social people anymore. We haven't been for some time, at least since before the pandemic. But, the event is quite literally next door. And our neighbor is moving soon -- might be the last time we actually get to see and/or hang out with her for a while.

"The invite says 'swing by or stay for a while' so I vote we go," Daisy said. 

"Sure," I replied. "It's not like we have to drive there or anything."

The "Friendsgiving" is Saturday afternoon. Daisy asked if she wants us to bring anything. It's but one more event in a long list of holiday happenings coming up over the next month and a half.

I've always said the holidays are a magical time of year for me now that I can enjoy them again and look back on the old ones with grand nostalgia. I love going Christmas shopping, I miss malls, I love the lights and trees and pomp and circumstance all surrounding the holidays. I like making plans for my birthday and then executing those plans. I like the downtime of it all the most -- knowing that during the holidays, I get at least a little extra time off to decompress and relax.

Daisy said she is a big fan of this year's Christmas card design and that it's one of her favorites of all of the card designs I've put together over the years. I responded that for $171 -- and that was with a 50% off coupon -- I was glad they came out that nicely. 

I can't show them here -- they have our personal information on them -- but I will say that it's seven photos on a dark blue background that says Happy Holidays in rose gold foil printing, and lists all of us, including each of the cats, by name. There is a large photo of us in the center, taken on the waterfront at the Cove Motel in Nova Scotia, and the six photos surrounding us are of each of the cats. On the back is a longform holiday message and a memorial picture of Sadie wearing her Santa hat and scarf, taken just a year or so before she passed:

There was an entire set of these photos taken of all the cats we had at the time, all the way up through Mable (and including Maggie, since she was still with us then too). I'd like to get some photos of Charlie and Gary in the hat and scarf this year too. Hopefully I can find where I put them.

We have made zero concrete plans for the holidays aside from the bare framework of them. We know that we'll spend Thanksgiving alone with the parents and that for Christmas, the Denver denizens will be coming to town to spend the holidays here with us and the parents. Other than that? No plans, no ideas for anything to do, and I'm already low on energy after slowly recovering from my back trauma.

Over the course of the next two weekends or so, because we have little choice otherwise, we will have to gather the necessary groceries for Thanksgiving dinner. I've done a little of that already -- I got the sourdough gluten-free bread for the stuffing -- and Daisy has gotten frozen corn. We have to go to Natural Grocers, however, to get the specific vegan turkey I like (before they sell out for the season) and need to pick up the other vegetable staples at some point too. I try not to venture too close to any grocery establishment in the days leading into the holiday, so the sooner we can acquire these items, the better. Daisy says it'll be fine and we'll figure it out soon enough. 

Because of the way the holidays fall this year, and especially next year too, I can minimize the amount of time off I take around them. My birthday is on a Saturday this year, so I don't have to worry about taking PTO then. Christmas is on the following Thursday -- another day that I no longer work after returning to my 4x10 schedule. I took off the 23rd and the 31st, but that's about it -- I wanted to give myself a little wiggle room and cushioning. Now, mind you, I could've taken basically the whole week off between Christmas and the New Year, but chose against it; I know I have a few people out that week and honestly, I'd rather save up my time for when I need it. I know I generally get sick at least once during the winter, and taking any extra time off ends up being "just for me" if Daisy still has to work; I'd rather we be able to spend some of that downtime together. I believe Daisy is working all the way up through Christmas Eve, and then gets right back to work on the 26th. Gross.

To be fair, and I discussed this at length this past week with my executive director, we're about to enter the quiet season at my job. I expect it to be busy up until Thanksgiving week, then have a lull until around December 5, then be busy up until right around my birthday before our workload will immediately drop like a stone. During the mid-winter we have about half our normal workload because a moratorium is put on construction/orders/changes/upgrades and the like until well after the new year. That kicks in around the second week of December. Additionally, during the winter, most outages are weather-based. There are special exceptions here and there for this, of course, but by and large, January/February are some of the nicest months of the year to work that job because you're not constantly bombarded by customers and don't always want to hang yourself, only sometimes.

I have volunteered to work New Year's Day (I always do), MLK Jr. Day, and President's Day -- all three of which are considered paid holidays at our new company. I do this because the latter two are Mondays anyhow and I would already be there, but also because as we have so few managers, we are all required to work at least one holiday a year. If I work three before the end of February, it makes everyone else step up their game and nobody gets to point fingers at me. 

To be fair, I've worked (I think) four other "holidays" this year already -- I made sure my team and leadership knew that I am done now and they won't be seeing my ass anywhere near Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's Eve. 

Anyway.

I have finished Christmas shopping for my parents, and all that's left for them is to box everything up and take it to the post office down the street to weigh/mail it. I finished for them, honestly, over a month ago. For Daisy's sister, her husband, and the boys, I still have last year's gifts boxed up and ready to wrap for this year -- they did not make it into town last year for Christmas so those gifts have just been sitting here in my office. In case you're wondering, it's their selection of all of the tie-dye shirts I made last year. It seems so much longer ago than that now.

For Daisy's parents, I don't think we've gotten anything at this point. Maybe Daisy found something here or there for them that I don't know about and don't remember now, but I generally let her handle stuff for her parents. I tend to get Dad one small thing and Mama one small thing specifically from me, and then Daisy handles whatever else she wants to get for them or give them. 

We don't really do gifts for other people much anymore. While I sent off a lot of the tie-dyes last year to some close friends and family, that was sort of a one-off thing that isn't really starting a trend, but more of an act of kindness. And, of course, I haven't made any more tie-dyes this year. I don't plan on making any more ever again, if I can avoid it -- it is a long, messy process and I think almost everyone in my life who would appreciate them, like me, has like 5-10 of them now because of the ones I've made previously over the years. My own parents love them, but even they told me they had enough of them at this point. 

Which brings me to Daisy.

Last year for Daisy, she said she wanted a "treat Christmas," which means a lot of food-and-candy-based gifts. Okay, I said, ask and ye shall receive. So over the course of the several months leading up to Christmas, I stockpiled her favorite candies, cookies, and general treats to give to her. It was a far less expensive Christmas than some others in the past, and she greatly enjoyed the stuff I got her, but it was not something either of us were really interested in doing again. And, to be fair, it was a lot of work spread out over a long period of time and a lot of wrapping paper, especially for the smaller things. 

This year, we set a limit of no more than $100 spent on each of us. I am perfectly fine with that. I have gotten two little things for her thus far, both things she asked for in the past, and I'm sure I'll find a few other small things over the next month or two. I am not stressed about it.

"You want ideas for me?" I asked. "Get me the new Uncle John's Bathroom Reader book and some new Duluth Trading Company underwear and I'll be happy. Maybe some new socks too."

You know you've become an old man when you ask for books, socks, and underwear for Christmas. 

Truthfully I don't really want anything; I could buy those items for myself if and when I wanted to. But, Daisy has told me in the past I am notoriously difficult to buy gifts for (I don't understand why she thinks that, but okay) and I am trying to lessen that stress on her by minimizing any actual importance. Because, truly, it's not important. I'm going to be 43 years old next month. Christmas is for the kids, it's not for people our age. 

Back 2 Back

 I mentioned that while we were in Canada, the hotel beds were doing me no favors. Well, in the time since, I don't know how much I can blame those beds anymore.

About two weeks ago, I realized my back was aching in the same spot it was when we were in Canada -- lower right side, lumbar region, etc. I didn't think much of this because I have almost always had back pain of one sort or another and I am no spring chicken anymore -- I turn 43 next month -- and with that I know that I can just randomly develop aches and pains out of the blue for no other reason than simply getting old. 

Over the course of two weeks the pain got steadily worse -- no matter how I slept, the position, the place, etc, my back went from aching at me to screaming, pretty consistently. Ibuprofen became my friend but, after a while, didn't do much to dull or wipe away the pain. My back got stiff and hard to move.

And then the spasms started.

Take your fist and quickly clench it, over and over. That's what my back muscles were doing, in that exact spot, over and over. Involuntarily. It became hard to stand. It was at times nearly impossible to walk. I would cry out in pain because I couldn't not cry out, that is how bad it felt. It felt like I was being stabbed.

"Is it a kidney stone?" Daisy asked. 

"I don't think so," I said. "This seems entirely muscular."

I couldn't necessarily rule out a kidney stone offhand, but I know what they feel like. This did not feel like that, and I did not have the nausea and vomiting that the kidney stone pain gave me. I also could not feel it moving through my urinary tract, which would have been another telltale sign. But what if it were a much smaller stone, one that didn't scrape my insides as much as it traveled? I also got constipated with my last kidney stone, and that wasn't an issue this time around. And I'm not peeing blood. So...like I said, I couldn't completely rule it out, but the symptoms did not seem to be matching. 

Last weekend it was so bad that when we were visiting Daisy's parents, Mama put a lidocaine patch on me on my back to try to dull the pain. It worked for the time I had it on, which again tells me muscular. 

I fought off and on with this pain and the spasms for several more days, until one morning last week I had gone to bed, gotten back up about two hours later to pee, and the spasms started stronger than ever before -- I was frozen in place, bracing against the wall and doorjamb, and could not move, could not walk. My entire body was locked up, all stemming from that one muscle group that was spasming like a fish out of water flopping on a wooden dock. 

"Do we need to get you to the hospital?" Daisy asked me, very concerned.

"No," I said, through ragged breaths. "It's just spasming really hard and I can't stop it."

I eventually made it across the room to my side of the bed, with great effort, and very slowly sat down. I was stuck in that position for probably five minutes before my muscles were relaxed enough to let me lay down fully and try to sleep. 

I now know how people can get so much at the end of their rope to where they beg for back surgery. 

Some days are better than others. Some days I feel mostly normal. Others I feel so stiff I can barely move and need the heating pad against my back almost all of my waking hours.

Sleep -- even good, restful, fulfilling sleep -- does not seem to help. I have slept a full 24 hours of this weekend at various times and in various places and the slightest wrong movement once I'm awake can set off hours of pain and spasms. I can say that it seems when I nap on the couch on my lunch hours at work, that makes it worse. But sometimes I need the rest and Pete needs his teddy-bear time. 

I know, I am getting old. I am not the man I once was, full of vigor and flexible limbs and moving parts. I am no longer the man who could bike six miles a day to and from working at the newspaper, or the man who spent multiple hours per week in the gym. I know it takes me much longer than ever before to recover from even minor aches and sprains or minor bodily injury, and I am not in shape at all. I mean, by body is a shape, but it's not in shape.

No, I don't think I have a hernia. No, I don't think I "threw my back out." The aches/spasms are worse when I'm stressed out, which is...well, pretty constantly most days, for one reason or another. I have tried to "move normally" and stop myself before the spasms start, and sometimes this works and my muscles relax a bit, and I'll be okay.

And then yesterday morning happened. 

I felt fine -- stiff, a little sore, but fine -- and went to the bathroom. On the way back I got the worst bout of spasms I've had yet, and they would. not. stop. I was frozen in place; I could barely walk. My entire body was seized. Each movement of any muscle I could use to walk or even really move to brace myself against the wall or doorjamb was like being stabbed. I was screaming in pain and I apologized profusely to Daisy because I could not help it. 

I was, eventually, able to hobble to my office and to my computer chair, where sitting upright and trying not to move any more than possible helped slow down the spasms, but not stop them. From there I was able to track my Walmart delivery order I'd placed shortly before my back waged war on me that morning -- but in which I had ordered a box of Doan's back pain pills. Maximum strength. Everything hurt. Every muscle in my torso was clenched and on fire, trying to compensate for the spasms in my lower back. When I could move, I hobbled across the room and leaned against the dryer, and Daisy applied a lidocaine patch to my back and used a percussion massager on it, neither of which really seemed to help.

Through it all, my thoughts were like what did I do to myself? Why is this happening? How could I have hurt myself this badly? I didn't have answers to any of these questions. I still don't, even now.

In the end, the only thing that helped was being able to get some next-level muscle relaxers. 

Over the span of about twelve hours (and two of those large pills), the spasms subsided and my body let me regain control over it again. Supplemented here and there with a dose of the Doan's back pills, I am almost completely back to normal. My back muscles there are still strained and very sore, but I'm no longer spasming and I am no longer unable to move. I'd say that at right now, I'm at about 90%.

But the question of why all of this transpired is beyond me. 

I cannot completely rule out a kidney stone or kidney infection, as mentioned above; I am diabetic, I have had a kidney stone in the past, and both are known to cause back spasms -- but I have had zero other signs of kidney stones or infection. 

I could have been constipated or had a blockage of some sort that shook itself loose; I am iffy on how likely or unlikely this is because I think my guts have felt pretty normal since we returned from Canada -- and that's the least graphic way I can describe that, really. Normal for me.

Diverticulitis? Unlikely. Hernia? Unlikely. 

My only guess is that I somehow pulled, and kept pulling until it became excruciating, a back muscle -- somehow, some way, by merely existing and/or sleeping in a position that at the time was comfortable but was overall detrimental to my physiology. I do not have good posture, and as I get older, it worsens with age and inactivity. I noticed that when I napped in my chair over the weekend, the pain lessened, and when I slept in the bed, it worsened. Is it the bed doing it to me? Also unlikely -- the back pain started when we were still in Canada. Could've been the beds up there, but you'd think once we returned home that would've righted itself. 

In the end, I'm left with few answers. I'm just going to be grateful that it seems like this episode is finally ending, and I hope to be fully recovered within the next few days.

Incoming Unimaginable Loss

 It has now been almost a month since we returned home from Canada -- which honestly is quite hard to believe, for me at least. It feels like I was just there yesterday. 

In the time since we've returned home, we've gone from simply "fall" into the "holiday season" and with it, everything that entails. Daisy uploaded all of the photos from our trips, and with them I was able to create this year's Christmas cards -- very late for me to do it in November -- and I ordered them. They were delivered remarkably fast this year, well over a week before their original ETA. They cost me $171, and that was with a 50% off coupon. With them, I also got a few more sheets of stamps from USPS -- this year's selections are Jimmy Carter and Betty White being added to the collection of stamps to choose from for mailing out the cards. These cards will, as always, begin mailing out on Black Friday. 

We have been informed that Thanksgiving this year will just be the four of us -- me, Daisy, and her parents -- as nobody else is coming into town for the holiday. This means we can just plan for a small normal Thanksgiving dinner for all of us, with just the basics necessary. To me that includes (vegan) turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and Daisy's famous vegan gravy, Mama's rolls, corn, green beans, and some sort of dessert. We have gotten approximately none of these ingredients yet, but will slowly acquire them over the next couple of weeks.

A lot has also happened since we've returned home, not all of it good. 

About a week after we got back, Pete began getting sick. Like, really sick. He could barely move, he was leaking diarrhea out of him, and he was quite wobbly and looked, well, like he was dying. We rushed him to a late-night vet appointment on a Sunday night and had bloodwork done, which told us that he had:

1. a kidney infection

2. a urinary tract infection

3. a stomach bug

4. cat hepatitis, caused by the other three things.

The late night vet, different than our normal vet, offered to hospitalize him and keep him on IV fluids. We said no to that; we have his fluid bags at home already and we could administer the fluids ourselves. Also, who hospitalizes an 18.5 year old cat? Like, if you're at that point, it's generally time to throw in the towel.

The very kind vet lady did not think it was the end for Pete yet, even though we had our doubts. She prescribed him several different meds that we were to begin giving him immediately, and because he was leaking poop out of him, we set up the cage in our bedroom again for him -- the same cage we'd had Mable in after her hip surgery. We lined it with puppy pads and towels, and this became Pete's home for the next five days or so.

I felt so bad for the old man. He was clearly struggling, and we did not know if he was going to pull through. He smelled so strongly of his kidney disease and was so weak that he could not make it to the litter pan in the cage half the time, just shitting where he laid -- which facilitated the need to bathe him at least once or twice a day (at least enough to get the poop off him). 

We administered the fluids to him while in the cage -- twice a day at first to help rehydrate him and to try to wash the sickness out of him. The antibiotic for the stomach bug was the same one he'd been on this past spring -- when we thought we'd lose him then -- and its side effect was...you guessed it... diarrhea. He had another medication to stop the diarrhea, another one for nausea, and of course he had his normal daily pills as well for his thyroid and pain/anxiety. 

Over the course of several days, he slowly began to improve. Daisy went and got a pack of pet diapers for him from Target, and we let him out to stretch his legs and try to be a little active once he started to feel a bit better, but we always put him back in the cage at night to rest. We did, of course, take the diapers off when he was in the cage.

Finally, when we knew he was no longer leaking and his health had greatly improved, we let him back out of the cage and put it away. The medicines were doing their job, and in about a week, he was back to being mostly the same old Pete we'd always known. He was eating and drinking normally, using the pan normally (still mostly diarrhea, but likely only due to the antibiotics at that juncture), and he was able to rejoin the rest of the household as per the usual.

But, we noticed something strange -- Emmy and Mable, who generally adore sleeping and cuddling up to Pete, now completely avoided him. Not in a "hiss and run away" fashion but more of a we no longer have any interest in this creature fashion. Charlie took their place by Pete's side -- he adores the old man and Pete really loves him. The two of them began cuddling together on a regular basis multiple times a day, and they groomed each other, used each other as pillows, and generally just snuggled in together. 

And so it seemed the house and our old man were back to normal. Pete was slower and a little more wobbly than he had been, but otherwise our normal old boy.

About a week after he was better, we made a follow up appointment with our normal vet so that he could get Pete's numbers checked out in comparison to the ones when he was really sick.

The results were...not promising, as you may have already guessed.

Pete's kidney disease is progressing more and more by the month. Not much we do is slowing it down. Our vet tracked his numbers from this summer to September to now and it is showing what was previously a slow deterioration has now become a much more rapid one. Basically, he could take a turn for the worse and be done at pretty much any day now. The subcutaneous fluids we give him are helping a little, and his thyroid levels are good, but there's no longer a way to slow this down any more than what we've done. Our vet estimated, at best, a couple of months more before he's gone, and it could be as soon as a week or two.

Daisy and I aren't exactly shocked by this; we'd already almost lost Pete twice this year already. And to be fair, he seems mostly happy and content, he gets around the house just fine (going up and down the stairs, eating and drinking normally, sleeping with us at night, etc) but we know the writing is on the wall. Our vet even told us he'd be hard pressed to disagree with us were we to say "I don't want him to suffer anymore or watch him deteriorate further, let's just end this now" and encouraged us to begin those hard thoughts and talks on end of life actions, because it's coming.

"If he gets sick again," Daisy asked the vet, "at this juncture should we even bring him in again for further bloodwork, or should we just..."

"That's not something I can really answer for you," our vet said. "I have a feeling that when it's time, you'll know, and he'll tell you."

Seeing him normal and being cuddly loving old Pete has me skeptical to believe that this cat's end is coming soon, but I know the numbers and I know we're in a losing battle. Sadie was fine until she began having seizures, and then three days later she was gone. 

"I think [the vet] is right," I told Daisy. "When it's time...we'll know."

If he dies peacefully in his sleep in the house we can take him to the humane society for their end-of-life program, called Rainbow Bridge -- where we can have him cremated and the ashes returned to us in a tasteful little urn. Daisy wants to keep the ashes of Pete instead of having them scattered in a park like the girls. 

If we know it's time there are also services we can call to come deliver a painless euthanasia here in the house, and then they take him to be processed/cremated. These groups can generally do same-day or next-day services.

It will likely be one of the two; I don't want to put him in a carrier and lug him to the doctor again if it can be avoided -- it greatly stresses him and he now gets carsick or shits himself or both. Daisy doesn't want to put him through that either. 

We have now reached the acceptance stage of Pete's decline, I believe; we both know it's going to happen soon and that it is only a matter of time. Neither of us are happy about it and Daisy is, in fact, quite emotional about it, but we both get it. We have known this time has been coming for a while and I don't think we could be more mentally prepared for it than we are already. That doesn't mean we want it to happen, of course. We just can't stop it. There's no magic drug, no expensive cure, nothing to prevent it. 

I just want Pete to be happy and comfortable, and I think for the most part, he is. I'm sure the old man has aches and pains and nausea, and I'm sure his kidneys failing doesn't feel good, but I don't want him to be confused or scared. I just want him to enjoy his last few weeks or months of life while he can. I want him to be able to get up and go drink water or eat food and treats when he wants to, or eat an entire Churu for me when I give him his pills. I want him to be able to come upstairs and cuddle with us while we sleep -- even now he still asks me to teddy bear him when I go to bed for the day. That is Pete, same old Pete, regardless of how his health is failing him. If one of these days he doesn't come up to bed with me/us because he has passed peacefully on the couch, then so be it. If he gets really sick again or starts having seizures and tells us that yes, it's time, then so be it. Until either of these scenarios happens, we're going to keep him as happy, comfortable, and as well-fed as possible before the inevitable end. 

Yes, it's sad. Losing Pete is almost unimaginable to me simply because he has always been there for me since 2007. I knew there would be a time where he was no longer with us, but I never knew what that would look like or feel like. It appears I'm going to experience that soon. For Daisy it is worse -- she has a "soul connection" with Pete and he is as much her son as a human boy would be. She will likely take it far harder than I or even she will expect to when he does eventually pass. 

I will be impressed if he lives through Thanksgiving. I will be surprised if he lives to my birthday and Christmas. It is almost a certainty he will be dead before the end of the year. 

Anyway.

In less depressing news, Hank's eye is finally recovering. We took him in to the cat ophthalmologist again this week, and in his latest examination he was healed enough to start him on steroid drops that will end the ulcerations on his eye and heal his eyeball back to normal. We started the drops that day and have seen a remarkable improvement since -- the ulcers are shrinking and his eye is beginning to clear up again. We have an appointment for follow up on December 4, by which point we are hoping that he is almost completely healed. 

Hank himself no longer seems to mind the drops. He used to fight us on them every day, and he will still sometimes run and hide when he knows we're trying to catch him to give them to him, but generally when I catch him he knows it'll all be over in a minute or so and just goes limp and doesn't fight me. I honestly think he knows and realizes that it makes him feel better afterwards, similar to how Pete tells us it's time for his pills. Hank is a very smart, sweet boy and I know he must be able to make that correlation somehow.

He'll need to be on the drops for the rest of his life, though. That's the sad part. If he goes off them, the ulcers will likely quickly return. The overall goal is to see how little of the drops we can use to have them still be effective for the long run -- i.e. if he will always need them twice a day, once a day, twice a week, once a week, etc. That's what's unknown at this juncture and why we are going to keep getting him checked up once a month or so for the foreseeable future.

Cats are expensive, man.

The other cats are fine; we finally, as of last night, have paid off Mable's hip surgery completely. She seems to be almost completely normal, and you'd never know she had a surgery to begin with. Charlie and Gary continue to grow, with Gary starting to come out of his awkward hair phase now and he's beginning to poof up like an actual Maine Coon (albeit somewhat slower than Emmy did). Charlie is fulfilling the predictions that he will be a very big boi™ and is probably eleven or twelve pounds at this juncture and only getting larger. He's got a belly on him, but pound for pound that cat is thickly muscled. He is Daisy's "soul cat in-training" as he is such a little lover and absolutely adores her. He loves me, but he adores Daisy, and gets bed cuddle time with her every morning -- and couch cuddle time with her every night. He reminds me so much of Pete when he was younger and also so much of Maggie with how he loves. 

Empress, on the other hand, celebrated her 2nd birthday this past week:

She is as much of a beautiful diva as ever and put up zero fuss whatsoever when I put the hat on her. She is softening as she ages; when she used to be extremely antisocial and aloof, she will now come out and spend time with people when they come to visit, like our friends or Daisy's parents. She apparently loved getting attention from our catsitter, too. Daisy and I can pick her up and cuddle her at almost any time now, and while she doesn't necessarily like it, she tolerates it because she knows it's love. She also spends more time than ever being my shadow, my new Sadie, when I work at night -- sleeping at my feet and coming over to me for love or wanting me to play fetch with her. She is a wonderful little girl. If Mable were not so territorial of the upstairs and of Daisy, I have no doubt Emmy would be sleeping at my side every day like she used to when she was younger. Mable will run her off, though, claiming the upstairs of the house as her domain.