The suitcase is very green. It is basically what you saw in the picture in my previous entry here, no real differences. It is ever-so-slightly smaller than my old one, but its hardshell sides are thicker and more durable.
So the packing and real preparations can begin now, I suppose.
I talked to my mother on the phone for a while on Monday afternoon, and she is thrilled about us coming to visit. She always is. I think somehow she knows how important it is for me, mentally and spiritually, to occasionally get the fuck out of Nebraska, and she doesn't question it because she's always excited for us to visit. There was a long period of time after I moved out of the house that I was not able to visit, for both responsibility and financial reasons. Between 2006 and 2016 -- a ten year span -- I only visited home four times, each time for a brief period of time only, less than a week at most.
Since I've been married to Daisy, we've made it a point to visit as often as possible when we've been able to, and for the past four years that's been a yearly trip. The only thing we have not done yet is celebrate a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving with my parents (though I did fly into WV for Christmas in 2012). I don't know if that will be in the cards anytime soon as, well, Daisy's parents are a few miles away across town and mine are not.
We're not in the greatest financial space right now; because of the holidays and our trip to Canada in the fall, we've been stretched a little thin at times. The $4,000 new furnace isn't helping that much either. We're in a period of rebuilding, so to speak. It's not like we're destitute or scrambling to cover bills or anything, but we are a little more paycheck-to-paycheck than the usual. It comes with being homeowning, multi-job-household adults with six cats, I guess. There is an ebb and flow to a lot of it. Because of this, though, we're doing some budgeting and some creative cooking, cutting back on a lot of spending to cover the essentials and the occasional small luxury, and we're getting by just fine. As I've mentioned here in the past, I don't need anything special -- you give me enough money to pay the bills and keep the basics of food in the house for us and the cats and I'm fine; I learned to survive on far, far less when I lived alone and only made $8,500 a year as a professor. We are lucky and blessed that the trip to my parents won't be incredibly expensive and will let us have some relative peace and downtime.
I have contacted my aunt, who was in town to see us last fall when we visited the parents...and had to leave 12 hours into our trip. I wanted to let her know we would be back down there in March if they wanted to try a do-over and actually get to see us for more than ten minutes. Both my aunt and uncle are technically retired at this juncture, so it's not like they're really busy, but I know cost and time is a factor. The house they rented last time, two doors down from my parents, is not available in March -- but the house directly across the street from them is. My mother is trying to work out the details to see if they can rent it for some of the time we're there. Whether that will pan out or not remains to be seen, of course, but it's a possibility at least. I figured I would have been a supreme asshole were I not to tell my aunt we'd be back down there, as my aunt adores me and barely got to meet Daisy for more than a few minutes -- we have a lot of catching up to do. Not to mention she just sent me and Daisy "Cat Dad" and "Cat Mom" t-shirts last week out of the kindness of her heart, and we share reels and memes back and forth on Facebook on a daily basis. It would be in very poor taste were we not to tell her we were going to be back down there. If it were me, I'd find it inexcusable.
Anyway.
I got a message from my dad this afternoon saying that a bunch of comics arrived in his mailbox yesterday -- comics he didn't order and that I hadn't sent him. It turns out that Marvel, in their transition to a new subscription system, changed the address of all of the books I subscribe to and sent them to him instead of me. Why? Who the fuck knows, I didn't ask them to do that. I had to go into my account and manually change all of them back to me, save for the ones that are supposed to be going to him anyhow.
"I can send them to you if you want," he told me, "or you can get them when you're down here in March."
I found this very sweet, especially when I explained to him that they were all series I was bringing down there to him anyway and that he can hold onto them. In reality, I really just rent my comics now -- I get them in the mail, read them, and then box them away so that I can take them down to North Carolina on our yearly visit (and mail any stragglers at Christmas). I don't think there's a single series now that I don't take down there to him, as I've pared back my subscriptions by about half of what I was previously getting. This is also part of the reason that getting the new suitcase was so vital -- I'll need the space in it. I already have one sealed box to take down there and will have a second by the time we're wheels up from Omaha and on the way.
Tonight is my last night of work for the week, and it can't come soon enough. I am exhausted; this week has been really hard on me for some reason, even though most of it has not been awful at work. I think part of it is January in general, my most low-energy month. And, while I've been mostly okay energy-wise, I am absolutely looking forward to Nebraska climbing out of the depths of cold, dark winter where everything is not gray all the time and there's not a constant layer of light snow or ice on all the grass and sidewalks. I am also looking forward to taking Dolly on walks in the stroller to see if she enjoys it as much as Pete did.
Speaking of the children, Dolly and Emmy had their vet appointments yesterday and both appear to be very happy and healthy. Dolly is 3.4 pounds and is expected to be around 5 pounds when we take her back in for her final appointment on February 28, and Empress is 15.4 pounds (up from 13.8 this time last year), looks absolutely great and apparently has perfect teeth.
Savor this photo, it may be the only time we see Emmy this calm around the little chaos goblin.
We will have a few more appointments for the other cats going into the late spring and early summer; Mable, Gary, Hank, and Charlie will need to go in at different times for their yearly checkups and rabies vaccinations. Daisy has a calendar she keeps for when all of them need to go in. Depending on the schedule we may be able to add another cat to the docket for Dolly's next appointment just to get it out of the way.
Dolly has adjusted really well to the house. She does not get into anything, she is not destructive, and she is getting along really well with the other cats. She loves to play with Gary and Charlie (and she and Gary actually go pretty hard on each other). Mable still remains a mostly quiet observer, as do Hank and Emmy. It always takes them the longest to warm up to new kids in the house. They all show curiosity and are gentle with the child, though. None of them try to attack her or dominate her, and if she gets too hyper and they don't want to play, they will back down and shy away kindly. Mable really seems to like her miniature twin, and they spend a lot of time together, but she doesn't mother her like she did with Charlie, and I am kind of surprised by that. Dolly has also started cuddling up with Charlie here and there. Charlie is such a sweet boy and he never shows any real aggression towards her -- just playful wonder more than anything else.
But, ultimately, Dolly has absolutely become a true mama's girl and spends a large amount of her time with Daisy -- on her lap, curled up tight with her in bed, on the pillow on the couch with her, etc. She loves me too and is always excited to see me, but it's very clear where Dolly's loyalty ultimately lies. In contrast, possibly because she may feel like she's being spurned or replaced, Mable has become much more of a daddy's girl and spends an inordinate amount of time with me. The other dynamics in the house remain mostly unchanged.
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