Happy Holidays 2025, Part VIII: The Never-Ending String of Crises

 Days until Christmas: 7

 Days until my birthday: 2

I think Pete may have been our good luck charm, because ever since he died it's been nothing but one bullshit thing after another that we've had to deal with. 

It started on Sunday, when all of a sudden, water began dripping through our light fixture in the upstairs bathroom. Not like, a lot of water, but steady dripping through the fan/light fixture on the ceiling for a couple of hours -- signifying that we likely had a hole in the roof or a leak up there somewhere, and were just now seeing it due to melting snow from the previous storm.

Daisy immediately called the roofing guys who had helped us repair the siding on our house after the severe storms last year, and on Monday afternoon they arrived and went up on our roof to check it out. According to them, there was absolutely nothing wrong; the roof looked good, no shingle loss, no holes, no leaks anywhere to be found. They chalked it up to condensation along the vent pipe in the attic above the bathroom, but didn't even need to look -- they checked the vents and could tell they were venting just fine and that the attic seemed normal based on that assessment.

"So what if the next time it rains, water pours down through the ceiling?" Daisy asked them. 

"Then you call us back, and we come out and fix it. And stick a bucket under it and pray."

No joke there, that's verbatim what they relayed to Daisy and what she told me a few minutes later.

It rained all night last night, and no leaking. So, likely condensation. I thought it could have been condensation all along and told Daisy as much, but the entire situation greatly stressed me out and I wasn't able to really sleep until the guys were up there on the roof.

Daisy wanted to open the fan cover (or otherwise pull it off) to clean it anyway -- it's a bathroom vent fan/light combo, and we haven't used it in over a year because the fan buzzes really loudly like it's going to blow out and the light flickers and strobes like our bathroom is the hottest new rave club, so we've just left it off. Well, with water leaking out of it we figured it was time to get that looked at, as we figured...if water is condensing up there, probably not a great idea to ever try to use it until we can get it assessed and/or fixed. Who knows if the condensation was causing the problems. 

So, Daisy opened a ticket with our home warranty people to have it looked at and assessed, along with the one in the downstairs bathroom as well -- that one hasn't worked for years, it's just been dead. They immediately scheduled a repairman to show up between 9am and 11am yesterday.

For those of you who are unaware, the hours of 9am to 11am are essentially the equivalent of 3am for you day-walking folks. It's the time of the day where I am generally getting my deepest sleep and where, if for any reason I am awake during those hours on a working day, shit has gone wrong and I am going to be straight up not having a good time, bro twelve hours later when I'm forced to work all night. 

Because we knew he was going to be here during a time I would absolutely be sleeping, Daisy asked if I planned to sleep in my chair or the bed. I chose my chair in my office because if necessary, that would allow Daisy to close the cats up in the bedroom without disturbing me, and I could maybe sleep through whatever work the repairman needed to do. It did seem to reassure Daisy when I told her those vent fan/light systems are mostly modular and basically plug and unplug, they're not as complex as one might think. I.e., if it needed to be replaced, it would be fast and pretty easy. 

I don't know what time the repairman came; Daisy took care of it and always would have been the one to take care of it as she doesn't start work until 12:30. He was here for less than ten minutes, but still woke me up with the noise. Once I'm awake, it is impossible for me to get back to sleep again without medicinal assistance...which I can't take when I have to be able to get up and work again in the overnight hours. So, from the time he left, I was awake from that point forward.

Both fan motors need to be replaced. The parts are on order, and he'll give us a call to set up a time to swing back by and swap them out. There's no ETA on the parts. I'm guessing it'll likely be well after Christmas, given that Christmas is nearly upon us. He unhooked the motor from the fan upstairs so if we need to use the light, we can. The light bulb got replaced too -- apparently the bulb in there was going bad and that was why it looked like the ultimate rave any time we flipped the switch. 

That night, Mable pooped in the cat tree again. 

Sigh.

Mable and Emmy have basically been at war with one another for months. They are the only cats in the house who do not get along, but simply tolerate one another. We've never been able to understand it fully, as when they were younger Emmy adored little Mable and treated her like a daughter. Once she grew up, that stopped, and both of them view each other as rivals now for love and territory. 

I will note that precisely none of the boys are like this. Pete, when he was still with us, used to be highly territorial when he was younger, but as he got older that slowed down and eventually ceased. He wasn't a huge fan of Sadie, and even in their older years would bully her, but even that stopped too when they both got geriatric. Hank, Charlie, and Gary are some of the least territorial cats I've seen -- all of them just want to love and be loved. Hank wants love from us and from Emmy, and he can dominate her at times, but that's about it. 

But these girls, man...sigh.

We were pretty sure it was behavioral for her to poop in the cat tree, as a way to mark territory. Emmy bullies Mable around the litter box, trying to be the poop police. Mable, of course, does not like this and has been sneaking to use the pans when nobody else is around. In times of high anxiety or when she plain does not want to deal with Emmy's bullshit, we figured she was just going to the cat tree. 

And then two nights ago, she got into the cat tree and peed. Which she has never done before. 

Daisy immediately booked an appointment with the vet and took her in this morning, where she found that Mable may possibly have a UTI because of blood found in her urine -- but also he did not negate that he could have nicked a blood vessel when getting the sample from her -- and also is likely a high anxiety cat from Emmy's bullying and maybe even from losing Pete (we can never be sure about that one). It's also quite possible she's in residual pain and aching/arthritis from her hip surgery, as colder weather can exacerbate that. Any/all of those could make her act out and eliminate outside the box. Our vet put her on antibiotics in the event that she does have a UTI or anything else going on in there, and prescribed her gabapentin for pain and anxiety (just like we did for Pete, for many years). I am lucky in that Mable is almost as easy to get pills into as Pete was. She came home looking like she'd just been through an alien abduction experience and spent a lot of time in my office with me, essentially clinging to me to protect her.

On the way to the vet, the check engine light came on in Daisy's car.

Like, come on Universe, shit can stop going wrong or being expensive now.

Daisy took the car to get the codes run on it and it came back as an EVAP (emissions) canister purge valve that needs to be replaced. It's a $30-40 part for her particular car -- not expensive, and it won't kill the car to drive it until it can be fixed -- I drove for years with far worse shit wrong with my Monte Carlo and Silverado -- but it's still yet another bullshit inconvenience that we have to deal with. Daisy has an early morning appointment at our car repair place to get it done on Tuesday -- two days before Christmas. For however much it costs, because she checked around other places and everyone else was booked solid until after Christmas. And we're both off on Tuesday -- though I do have to work the night beforehand.

We are, of course, lucky that it was not something worse or more expensive to deal with, and we are doubly lucky that we don't leave the house anymore unless we have to most of the time -- simply because we both work at home now and as such we're driving the car a lot less. But, it's the holidays, and in two days we're planning a big birthday trip for me down to Shadow Lake and back, and tomorrow we have a lot of errands to run, and then Christmas and New Year's and all the back and forth driving that entails. 

Today is Thursday. I am finally of and can get a little breathing space on my birthday weekend. And I get paid tomorrow too, so that's good. But I am always wondering what the next crisis is going to be. Are we going to wake up one morning to find the power off and the pipes frozen? Will one of the boys eat something in the middle of the night and choke to death? How many family members are knocking on death's door for one reason or another this winter? Etc. Between Pete dying and all of this other stuff happening one thing after another, both of us are beginning to fray at the seams. None of it is world-ending on its own, none of it is even anything but first world problems on their own, but all of them hitting one after another after another is really wearing us down a lot. It's gotten to the point where I am not sleeping much, or I am sleeping when I can. It's gotten to the point where I feel constantly overwhelmed by stress and bullshit and have had trouble, sometimes a lot of trouble, thinking straight or making plans or answering questions. Truthfully, I've been getting there for a while, too. I told Daisy a few weeks ago that this may be what a midlife crisis is like, at least for me. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone, of course. I don't know how to reconcile everything with reality anymore when reality has become so measurably awful. Not our marriage or the household or anything like that, but just in general -- government, politics, people starving, ICE, people dying, celebrities being murdered, etc. Then add that to the stresses of normal daily adult life like pets dying, home and car repair inconveniences, doctor's visits, vet visits, ramped up responsibilities for the holidays, etc. It's all reaching a tipping point to where, once it hits it, I don't know that I'll be able to care or care for any of it anymore. I'm getting there much sooner than Daisy is, but Daisy is on the way as well. 

But, as I have said here many times before, it is what it is, and life goes on.