The Holidays, Part XXII: Christmas

Merry (now very belated) Christmas from our house to yours.

 

This is going to be a long one, so strap in. 

I'm going to start from the beginning -- where we left off on Christmas Eve.

By the early afternoon hours on Christmas Eve, Daisy had already had a very long day. While I had done a few scant things around the house (like some laundry, unloaded/reloaded and ran the dishwasher, etc), she had eaten, opened all of the Amazon boxes (half of which contained presents for me as well as the parents), broke down all of those boxes, wrapped all of the presents, drove the boxes and our glass recycling to the recycling center for drop off, gone to Whole Foods to pick up the last of the necessary Christmas groceries, had spoken to her mother at length via phone, and had returned home -- all in the span of about two hours, while still fighting her cold symptoms and bouts of nausea.

In the interim (during the conversation with her mother) we were all becoming increasingly concerned about the storm moving in. The rain was unrelenting and the temperature, when it had been really warm before, was steadily dropping. At this juncture, around 2pm on Christmas Eve, the forecast was still a bit iffy as to the timing for the rain-to-ice-to-snow changeover. Some parts of Nebraska were already getting snow, and none of the local forecasters could really pinpoint a time when it would happen. Some said evening, some said in the overnight hours, others said early morning Christmas Day. We had to make a decision on the evening -- and possibly Christmas Day -- plans before it was too late to roll them back.

After the conversation with her mother, we decided to forego the church service and turn Christmas Eve into a full Christmas -- meaning, do dinner and all of the presents all at once ASAP in the afternoon instead, because of the snowstorm rolling in. We did not know whether we would be able to return to the house on Christmas Day, even though it's only 7-8 miles across town, due to the incoming weather. Yeah, we could get an inch or two of snow, or we could get nine. So, the decision was made, I put away the dressy clothing I'd pulled out for the church, and hopped into the shower. I ended up wearing a red flannel, sweatpants, and a t-shirt that literally says Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animal. 

We set a time limit -- because of the weather -- to go, do the stuff, and return home around 8pm. This was a good round number that would give us 5-6 hours of quality time with the parents, during which time we could do dinner, presents, and just relax a bit to enjoy the holiday. Christmas is about family, it's about spending time with loved ones. I didn't care as much about presents as I did about that, especially as we'd been prevented from spending a lot of time with the parents over the past week because both Mama and Daisy had been sick.

Daisy, of course, put on her traditional Christmas nightgown -- a flannel nightgown with Christmas designs on it that Mama made for her long before Daisy and I were together. She wears it every year on Christmas. It is old, it has been stitched together/repaired several times, and is the much more beloved family equivalent of the pink bunny suit from A Christmas Story. 

I love the nightgown, as does Daisy, and I think she looks super-cute in it. It is very much her personality. And I think Mama is very happy every year to see her still wearing it. 

Twenty minutes after I got out of the shower, I was dressed and we were on the road to the parents' in the cold, alternating-between-misty-and-pouring rain, with all of our presents and Christmas food in tow. We were at the parents' well before the 4pm church services would have started, but none of us were really that upset about missing it. I've written about the church services here before, so there's no real reason to rehash any of that. It's only (I think) the third time or fourth time in eleven years that we did not do the church thing, and at least one or two of those times was because of a full-blown worldwide pandemic, sooo...yeah. That's worth noting, I think.

Anyway. 

We got there and Mama had already been working on food. Daisy dove in and began prepping the rest. I asked if there was anything I could do to help and was summarily shot down (sometimes there's a lot for me to do, others there's just not), so Dad and I got some bonding time together in the living room. Food was ready in less than an hour -- altogether, there was pizza, chips and guacamole, shrimp, chicken quesadillas, baked breaded asparagus, chopped vegetables with dressing, salad, steamed spinach, cookies, fudge, fruit salad, and many little other odds and ends. On the "eves," both Christmas and New Year's, we've always done "finger foods" and the like in lieu of a larger, more "traditional" meal, regardless of who's there and who's not. It's just the normal family tradition. I had at least two cups of very good, very strong coffee in an attempt to stay awake, as I'd been awake since very early in the morning.

After we ate and the food was put away, dishes were done, and as our night began to wind down, we distributed the Christmas gifts and took turns opening them. 

Now, I will normally state that usually Mama makes us a new quilt every year for Christmas, and that is our gift as a couple, as a whole, and we don't need or want anything else. This year, she told us early that there wasn't going to be a Christmas quilt for us -- there wasn't time or materials to do one -- and that is 100% fine. Making a quilt is a lot of work and it is very time-consuming, not to mention expensive. Since Daisy and I have been together, she's made seven or eight different quilts for us, with different designs, all of them very intricate and beautiful. She's made probably double that for Daisy alone throughout her life, and has even made several of them for just me over the years. Add to that the fact that if she's not making clothing/dresses/jewelry for the younger grandkids, she's making them quilts as well. Mama's time and energy is finite and I stressed to her that she never has to make us anything, that she's done so much and made so many things for us over the years. I stressed this because I know she feels guilty or otherwise doesn't want to disappoint us. I want her to know that she could never disappoint us because no matter what she does, can, or can't do, she always does it with love -- and I don't want her to ever think she's let us down by not pouring hundreds of hours into a quilt just because she's done it many times before. 

We got the parents an array of different things, both large and small. I mentioned that I got Dad the tapes for the Handycam and the transfer cable I used, but generally the other stuff for the parents I let Daisy do herself. She knows better what her parents would want and/or need, and I tend to stay out of the way. Most of the time -- like this year -- I don't exactly know everything she's gotten for them until I see them open the stuff. I have a general idea, sure, and sometimes I know the bigger items, but sometimes it's as much of a surprise to me as it is to them.

I'm not upset by this; Daisy takes great care in her selections of gifts and I implicitly trust that for her parents, she'll pick out the right things with minimal involvement from me. As much as I like gifting things to people I'd likely just get in the way by trying to "help" or by making suggestions. 

What we got from the parents this year was rather eclectic and fun overall. Daisy got a lot of really nice clothing from Torrid (which I would imagine I'll be removing tags from and carefully washing over the next week or so). What I got, as always, is amusing and fun:

1. An all-over print hoodie, in my size, with golden dragons all over it. This thing looks wild and is all polyester, so it won't shrink. Ever. It's also quite warm. Daisy seemed quite envious of it. 
   
   
2. A cast resin coffee mug with a stainless-steel interior -- the outside is decorated in gold and silver and is covered in clockwork/steampunk-looking mecha dragons. This is also very cool. I don't think it can be dish-washed, but it's far more of a "special occasions" mug anyway. 
   
   
3. A toothpaste dispenser that is a rubber dog's ass. No, seriously, you screw it on top of a tube of toothpaste and the dog's ass poops out the toothpaste when you squeeze the tube. It even has a...well, I don't think there's any other way to say this...buttplug that you shove up the dog's ass to keep the toothpaste sealed and fresh. It's one of the funniest/goofiest things I've ever seen and I love it.
   
   
4. A travel carry-all kit for toiletries and other small items, for when we travel -- especially for when we travel back to Nova Scotia in the summer. It has two zipper pockets and multiple pouches, enough to hold most of the stuff I'd need/be taking with me anywhere we go. 

From there we gathered up our things a short while later, packed up the food (the parents don't want the vast majority of leftovers, it's just the two of them and they usually won't eat much of them before they go bad and get tossed) and went home. We still planned on trying to make it over on Christmas Day, but were playing it by ear. It was already getting a chill in the air and I think there was a little flurrying mixed in with the rain even by the time we got home. 

We made sure the animals were taken care of and fed and I went upstairs. Despite all the coffee I'd had, I was still very tired. It had been a long several days in a row of running around trying to get every last little thing done, plus driving back and forth to look at every possible cat candidate, and I was pretty worn down. The incoming storm was stressing me out too.

It felt like as if the holiday season had been a cavalcade of failures one after another, loosely interconnected but not really: no Empress despite multiple searches on multiple days, we didn't really do anything that special for my birthday aside from the breakfast -- due to lack of energy and time -- so all of those plans went to the wayside, no church service, Daisy's sister being delayed in her arrival to town for multiple days, spending $150 on an electric snow shovel we weren't planning to spend, most of the flash drives not arriving before Christmas (one did, I'll get to that in a bit) and now a snowstorm that threatened to basically cancel actual Christmas for us.

I was exhausted and was in bed before 9:30 on Christmas Eve. Actual bed. I was in bed likely a few hours before Daisy even knew I was asleep. 

This is significant because it's so rare that Daisy and I sleep in the bed at the same time anymore. With her working days and me working overnights, even on my two nights a week I have off, I still have to be awake for some/most of them in order to not wreck my sleep schedule. However, when I have time off I generally have the best intentions of sleeping with her -- and most of the time fail miserably and end up falling asleep in my chair for the times that I sleep. The chair is quite comfortable to sleep in, by the way.

But, I did sleep several hours with Daisy a few nights ago, and I promised her that on Christmas Eve, we'd sleep together so that we could both get good rest. So, once we got home and I felt myself getting very tired -- nodding off at my computer desk, etc -- I knew if I sat down in my chair it would be all over, and went to bed. Actually went to bed -- walked into the bedroom and went to sleep in the actual bed while she watched reruns of Charmed downstairs on the TV. 

I don't know when she came to bed because I was dead to the world. I didn't hear anything, didn't feel anything (the Purple mattress does not really transfer any movement or bouncing, tossing/turning, etc -- it's one of the things I love about it). I woke up at some point in the night, briefly, to find Pete in my arms and Daisy in bed next to me, and promptly fell back asleep.

I was awakened shortly before 5am on Christmas morning by ice/sleet pelting the bedroom window about six feet from my head. I was hot -- Daisy is a furnace, and the giant black cat sleeping with me as if he were my teddy bear was also (obviously) quite warm. I tried to lay there for a bit in order to get more sleep, but I was awake and that wouldn't be happening. I dressed myself in the dark and trudged across the hall to my office, where Pete followed and got his normal lounging spot on my ottoman. 

I looked out the window to see very little in the grass, but every structure coated in a thick layer of sleet and ice. It was coming down hard and sounded like it was raining glass shards. It was also around this time where I thought to myself well, I somehow doubt we'll be leaving the house today. By the time daylight began coming on, the sleet had stopped and had fully transitioned to snow. Hard snow. I watched half an inch pile up quickly, then a full inch, with no end in sight. 

I was hungry; I hadn't eaten anything since the Christmas Eve dinner, and I knew the cats and the fish would want food, so I put on my robe and headed downstairs. I made two small cheese sandwiches on the bread that Daisy had gotten for me to use in the Griddler, brewed a thick, large mug of coffee, and grabbed one of the vegan cake donuts Daisy had specially purchased for a Christmas breakfast. I made sure the cats and fish had their breakfasts, and sat down on the couch with the PlayStation -- because why not, I was killing time and this is my vacation and my holiday too -- and enjoyed a very quiet Christmas morning of coffee and video games for a bit. It got lighter outside and I could then really see how hard it was snowing, as by that time there was about two full inches on the ground and more coming. All of the cats gathered around me and got comfortable -- the girls on opposite ends of the couch, Pete in one of the cat beds, and Hank on the floor next to my work desk. All of them looked very content and happy. It was one of those snapshots of Christmas morning I'll always keep in my mind -- the youngest cat's first Christmas morning and the older cats' seventeenth. My thoughts went to all the cats sitting in the shelter in the dark, or in PetSmart, alone and sad.

I can't help everyone. I can't save everyone. I have to be content to give the cats I have a good life. And they have very, very good lives full of love -- in a home that is warm and safe, with plentiful food/water/treats and comfy blankets and cat beds to sleep in, toys to play with, and two wonderful parents who would do anything for them. 

Daisy did wake up eventually, in the 9am hour. She made herself a vegan egg omelet/scramble thing and grabbed a donut while I continued to play on the PlayStation. Once she finished, as the snow had stopped for a while, we called her parents to check in with them and see what they wanted to do about the day. More snow was coming -- we were predicted to get more squalls that could dump another two inches or so on the area off and on throughout the day, night, and into the next day. Mama was thrilled that it hadn't snowed that much yet, and we could see that it wasn't sticking that much on the street, even -- our neighborhood street just looked wet and a little slushy, and the main roads looked wet and treated, as people were driving on them normally. As such, we made plans to go over there to continue Christmas festivities, but to have an early dinner as the snow was supposed to pick up again later. We would call my parents first, open our own presents, and then make our way over. 

My parents were very happy to hear from us, because of course they'd already been up for hours, had already opened all of their presents (including the ones from us) and were already cooking for the day -- they were going to do dinner with their friends down the street -- they just had to get the ham finished (or what have you) and go over there in the afternoon. My mother rattled off the list of gifts they'd gotten each other -- my mother had gotten a bunch of necklaces/jewelry from my Dad, as well as a used/refurbished Dell laptop (hey, I have one of those too! two, in fact; one is a Chromebook). She then thanked me for the stuff I'd sent, and I explained why I'd picked it out for them. Here's a list of those things, now that I can share them here:

1. Dolly Parton's new "Rockstar" album, where she covers classic rock songs with a bunch of guest stars on the album with her -- because Dolly is timeless and if nothing else, a Dolly Parton cover album where she covers songs like "Purple Rain," "Night Moves," and "Let it Be" would at the very least be a wild novelty if not actually a good record. My parents were thrilled with this.
   
   
2. A giant WVU flag for the outside of their house -- like, the kind you'd fly from a flagpole (like how I fly the Federation flag outside my own house). Everyone in North Carolina who moved there from WV, especially around the Oak Island area, has a ton of WVU stuff decorating their houses and yards, and there are a lot of WV people down there. I can't tell you how many WVU flags or other decorations we saw when we were there. My parents have had that house for close to a decade and until I got them that flag, they weren't part of the "look, we're WV people too" club. Now they can be. 
   
   
3. Kind Almond Chocolate Breakfast Bars and Lemon Zest Luna Bars -- because both of them are great, vegan, and something relatively healthy for them they can have as a treat or a snack. While I hate getting food items for Christmas, I do love giving them. My mother was also excited about these. I told her to store both of them somewhere they'd be room temperature or slightly above room temperature so that they stay soft and chewy and don't get hard (I know this from experience). 
   
   
4. Interchangeable silicone watch bands, and interchangeable screen protector covers for my mother's Fitbit, in pinks/pastel colors. I got her the Fitbit at her request and delivered it to her when we were down there this fall. However, she wanted the pink one, and the pink one was $40 more for zero actual reason, so I made up for this by getting her the interchangeable bands and covers -- she can now have a pink one if she wants, or a blue one, or a purple one, etc. 
   
   
5. A three-pack box of African Black Soap bars. It's some of the best soap I've ever used, and Daisy uses a liquid version in the shower. It smells good and cleans really well, and that was basically my impetus for getting it for them. My mother was sort of...intrigued by the soap, and I got the sense that she wasn't interested in it at all, but was still polite about it. Meh, they'll either use it or they won't, and if they won't I'm sure it'll be there for us to use in several months when we go to visit again. 

If you look through that list, I've hit all the main beats for gifting with my parents -- some fun things, some decorative things, some helpful things, and some utilitarian things. That list is pretty representative of what I do for them for any given gift-giving holiday.

Also of note -- I had sent them a box of Tim Hortons k-cups too, the dark roast that I get, and Amazon fucked up and sent them the decaffeinated ones instead. Yes, I ordered the correct ones -- I double and triple checked. Amazon wouldn't allow returns/replacements on it because it was a food item (believe me, I tried) and my mother took them to work for anyone there who might want them. 

After we got off the phone with them, it was time for us to open our own presents. As we do every year, we take turns opening gifts -- I'll open one, then Daisy will, etc -- back and forth until we're all out. It is with great pleasure that I can now tell everyone here what I got Daisy this year:

1. A Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Edition and 6 months free Nintendo Online -- this was by far the most expensive gift of the holiday and was one of the very first things I purchased. It also continues a long-running tradition I started when Daisy and I got married -- her wedding gift from me was a Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart 64. The next year, as she already had a Wii, I bought Mario Kart Wii and two of the wheels for the Wii controller. Three years later, I purchased her the SNES Classic, which contained the original Mario Kart game. Now, this year, comes the full-size Switch for the TV with the deluxe edition of Mario Kart 8. I'm sure when Nintendo releases their next system and the next Mario Kart game, whenever/whatever that will be, the tradition will continue again. 
   
   
2. Basepaws Cat DNA tests -- a two pack -- to see what Pete and Hank actually are, genetically. This was the one thing she got this year that she specifically asked me for, and has wanted for years, primarily for Pete. It was also $200 because I got the two-pack. I got the two-pack because ever since we got him, and I've seen how he's grown, I desperately want to know what Hank has in his genetics. His vet visit last week where the doc said that it's very possible he has Maine Coon in him fuels my curiosity even more. This is the first gift I purchased this year -- back in September -- before any of this came to light, so my foresight is amazing.
   
   
3. Just Dance 2023 for the Switch
   
   
4. Wristbands that the Switch controllers (they call them Joy-cons, which I think is stupid but whatever) hook into, so that games like Just Dance 2023 can be properly enjoyed.
   
   
5. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe for the Switch
   
   
6. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury for the Switch
   
   
7. Disney Classic Games Collection for, yes, you guessed it, the Switch -- this one has some backstory to it. Growing up, Daisy had a SNES (it's actually in the trunk of the car right now, we brought it home when I was collecting the home movies to digitize). One of her favorite games for it was The Lion King, a tough as nails game based on the 1994 movie of the same name. I had the game on my Genesis growing up and it is brutal in its difficulty level -- like, there's no way that game, a game made for kids, should be that hard. But Daisy loved it, and her actual SNES is in pretty bad shape -- it needs, at the very least, a new power cable and a deep cleaning. But the Disney Classic Games Collection contains that game on it, as well as The Jungle Book (which I also owned at one point) and Aladdin. Even if we never get the SNES up and running again, she can still play that game again, now on the Switch, with her....
   
   
8. Switch Pro Controller -- I got one for myself too, so neither of us have to use the Joy-cons unless they're specifically required for a game. 
   
   
9. Lead From the Outside by Stacey Abrams, a book that she told me 2-3 years ago she wanted and then promptly forgot about. She was excited to get this, even though she never remembered telling me she wanted it. 
   
   
10. A Promised Land by Barack Obama -- large print edition. I'd also planned on getting this for her last year but never got around to it. Why the "large print" edition, you may ask? Because it was $4 for a book thicker than a family bible, while the normal edition was $30. You do the math, folks.
    
    
11. The same set of African Black Soap bars I got for my parents. She expressed some doubt that she'd use these as she loves the liquid Alaffia version she uses in the shower (it's lavender scented), but said she might, and if not, I cold use/have them myself. Can't win 'em all, I suppose.

This was by far the most expensive Christmas I've done for Daisy in quite some time. I did not plan for it to be -- that's just how it happened. If I'd gotten nothing but the Switch and the cat DNA tests I still would've outspent my normal budget by 2-3x, as well as Daisy's general budget, by about the same amount. This is not something I do every year nor do/will I plan it to be moving forward...it just sort of happened.

Plus side is that because I started shopping so early, about 90% of it is already paid off. The last 10% will be paid off in a month or so. 

Here's what Daisy got me....

1. A rechargeable massage gun -- something I've been wanting for a few years now. I've already used it and it's wonderful.
   
   
2. A giant jar of Alaffia shea butter for my tattoos -- this is something I asked her for a few times, as I'd been using her jar on occasion. It works really well to moisturize and brighten my ink, it's cheap, and it will likely last me years.
   
   
3. The Playmates' reissued USS Enterprise 1701-D toy. This was a re-release of the same ship model toy from the '90s when Playmates was doing the Star Trek: The Next Generation toy line. The company re-released some of the ships (and figures, I believe) in limited numbers this past year, and Daisy was lucky enough to snag one of the Enterprises. I never had the original, though I do have one of the original shuttlecraft toys. Aside from the shea butter, this is the one thing I asked for this year.
   
   
4. A bar of Pine Tar soap -- used for dandruff control as a shampoo bar. I've used this stuff for years and I've also bought it for Daisy in the past too, as she also likes it. 
   
   
5. Pine Tar Shampoo and Conditioner also from the same company -- I've used it before and surprisingly I'm not a huge fan of it. I may or may not use it, and if I don't, Daisy may.
   
   
6. A large model (I'm guessing 9-10 inches long) of K.I.T.T from Knight Rider, with a working scanner light bar in the front end of the car. I made the joke that I asked for a Trans Am for Christmas, and well, Daisy got me one. It's just in a box. Daisy's reasoning here was that it's my favorite car to drive in the Hot Wheels Unleashed games on the PS4...and she was correct in that reasoning.
   
   
7. Four Lume toasted coconut-scented bars of soap -- possibly my favorite soap from my favorite soap company. Each bar will last weeks.
   
   
8. Two pairs of Canada Weather Gear fleece-lined thermal socks. They are wonderful. 

This is pretty standard fare from Daisy and I loved all of it. She always gets me some useful things, some things to play with and/or toys, 1-2 things I asked for, and then a bunch of little surprises she knows I'll like and/or appreciate. My wife knows me so well. 

After we did the presents, we hastily got dressed -- I legit just put on the same pants and socks, but a different shirt than I'd worn the night before -- and left to go to the parents' house. The roads were fine. The main streets were so well-treated that they were almost dry (and were dry in some spots) and while our street was a little slushy, it posed no danger to us. 

We had a nice dinner at home with the parents -- relaxed and slow -- of traditional holiday vegetables: mashed potatoes (with the leftover gravy from my poutine), green beans, boiled carrots, etc. I ate as much of the remaining fruit salad as I could, and while we digested we just hung out with the parents for a bit. Daisy's oldest sister called and we all talked to her; she now plans to leave late on Saturday or early Sunday to get into town for New Year's Eve, and will be staying for around a week or so. This means we'll get to see her, her husband, and the boys for several days and will likely spend the New Year's Eve with them, as long as weather permits and none of them are sick.

I say this because as much as we love all of them, those kids are germ factories and either Daisy or Mama get really sick after their visits -- or both of them do. I'm hoping that's not the case this time around, especially as both of them just got over whatever sickness they had.

As predicted, in the late afternoon/early evening hours, the snow picked up again and once more began falling fairly heavily. It wasn't really sticking on the roads, but we knew it would start once the sun began going down and everything started refreezing, so we gathered our things and said our goodbyes and made it back to our house shortly after dark had fallen. I was tired, and came upstairs. Daisy then had a 90 minute phone call with her mother to finish up their conversations from earlier in the evening, and then proceeded to have another phone call of similar length with her sister in Pennsylvania -- who, yes, finally received the flash drive full of videos and was thrilled. 

Even now, I have not yet received word from any of the other relatives (read: Canadians) on whether they've received theirs yet.

So, that was Christmas. Daisy went to bed fairly early, as she had to work the next morning, and eventually I came to bed with her as well, even though I did not have to work on the 26th.

The days since have been spent...well, doing numerous things, which I'll write about here in some upcoming entries. I returned to work on Wednesday and badly struggled staying awake all night again for both my Wednesday and Thursday night shifts. It also didn't help that this is "garbage time" or "dead week" as I like to call it -- the week between Christmas and New Year's where nothing really happens, most real companies have most of their employees on vacation (and so, our client ticket load is generally very low) and a decent chunk of our own team is out on vacation for at least some, if not all, of this time as well. Because of this, both nights were easy but both went very slowly. I had to take early lunches both nights to take short naps on the couch because otherwise I would not have been able to stay awake -- and that is with two cups of very strong coffee in me each night.

Wrapping everything else up -- well, we received a few more Christmas cards. We got 22 cards total this year from 12/4 to 12/27. I also had a handful that were returned to me due to outdated addresses, so there's also that. Some I re-sent earlier in the month, once I got the new addresses, others I was never able to get an updated address for. We also got a few belated gifts -- my parents sent us a beach towel like the ones I really loved when we were down there, and there's yet another gift from them being delivered tomorrow (per what my dad told me). Daisy's sister in Pennsylvania also sent us a vegan cheese making kit and some vegan chocolate truffles. We haven't looked too closely at the cheese kit yet, but the truffles have been nice.

So that's Christmas, and the holidays series as a whole comes to a close. I am now off work for an extra day this weekend, since I took off New Year's Eve (Sunday) to spend it with the family and get some rest. Daisy will now be off until Tuesday as well, for a three-day weekend of her own. And, finally, we have some big news coming down the pipe...

The Holidays, Part XXI: O Holy Shit

 Christmas Eve.

T'was the day before Christmas, and all through Omaha...it's raining heavily and I was awakened this morning by a small thunderstorm. 

I'm really not complaining; this could have been all snow, just a mountain of snow dumped on the city before we could do any actual holiday celebrations.

The consensus is still out on what we're actually going to get or when it's going to start. I've seen predictions anywhere between one inch and over a foot depending on what weather-reporting outlet one follows:

So, it is what it is. We'll either get something or we won't. It'll either snow its white little ass off or it won't. It can't be controlled, it can't be reasoned with, it can't be pushed off another few days until it's more convenient -- it simply exists.

We've had freak snowstorms on Christmas Eve and Christmas before, and this forecast reminds me very strongly of eight years ago -- 2015. So permit me, for a moment, to hop into the wayback machine and tell a short story here. 

In 2015, I had been working for the company I work at now for a little over a year. Daisy still worked there too. We'd recently both switched to dayshift hours a couple of months before (oh, how times have changed now). It was a Thursday, and as Christmas was Friday that meant if we took off the Eve, we'd get a four-day weekend. So, we both took it off in order to rest up and prepare for the family holiday festivities. Daisy slept in that day, but I woke up early, tied my long hair back, stuck in my earbuds and began wrapping presents for the family. Daisy's middle sister's family had already moved to Canada at this point, but her oldest sister and their three sons (at the time, the youngest was a very young infant -- they have four now) were already here for Christmas, and with children comes a bunch of extra gifts to wrap. I knew this would be the only time I really got to wrap everyone's gifts, so that morning I dove in.

The apartment we lived in at the time had a large sliding glass door that led out onto an elevated wooden porch/balcony, where I had a chair and a small side table and I would sit and smoke -- I was a smoker then. The door provided so much natural light into the apartment that during daylight hours, no lights/lamps/etc were needed. And, on this Christmas Eve morning, it was snowing lightly -- picturesque, white fluffy snowflakes, like the kind you'd see in a movie. The weather forecasters said we would likely get a dusting to two inches at most, fulfilling many Omaha residents' dreams of a white Christmas. It wouldn't be enough to snarl travel, roads had already been pre-treated in preparation for the holiday, etc -- it was one of those magical snows people hold as a snapshot in their memories, the kind where all noise goes quiet, and nothing seems to be moving outside but the snow that's so delicately falling. I got to peacefully watch it while I was wrapping Christmas presents for the family -- what a perfect moment in time. 

And then it got heavier.

As I continued to wrap gifts, I watched the snow become more dense -- thicker, harder. I watched it begin to pile up on the narrow wrought-iron railing of our back porch. First half an inch, then an inch. There was no wind. It was impressive. Soon it was snowing so hard that I couldn't see across the street -- which was about 20 yards from the apartment. 

This picture was taken from the porch within the first hour or so of the heavier snowfall. On the right foreground you can see my old Silverado and Daisy's Hyundai parked right next to it, already heavily covered in snow. By this point we'd likely already surpassed the "up to 2 inches or so" that was predicted and it didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. 

When I finished wrapping gifts, I went outside onto the porch to smoke. By that time it was nearly whiteout conditions with about four inches on the ground, and zero wind whatsoever. And then there was a very bright flash, but I could not tell where it came from -- I almost thought I was hallucinating...until I heard the following, massive clap of thunder. Because of the snow it sounded like it was underwater. 

By the time the snow stopped in the afternoon hours, nine inches had fallen. The weathermen were stunned and didn't know what to say. It was one of the worst miscues/miscalculations I've ever seen in the history of following the weather on a daily basis. They weren't off by just a little -- being off by seven inches of snow is a lot. It's been very difficult for me to fully trust any sort of local weather forecast since, especially as they've made numerous other misses over the years. 

We did not go to the Christmas Eve church service that year and was barely able to make it over to the parents' for Christmas morning (I really don't understand or remember how that was possible, but it happened). 

This year...it's raining. The temperature is 55 degrees. I finished wrapping all of Daisy's gifts last night shortly before I fell asleep. Daisy is doing her own wrapping at the moment. Right now I'm doing laundry and will be taking a shower shortly as we are scheduled to be at the parents' for today's church services by 3pm. We will likely go to the service, have some Christmas Eve finger foods/etc for dinner and then Daisy and I will return home (hopefully safely and before the snow starts) to go to bed. At least, if all goes well. 

Now that we're at Christmas Eve on the holiday-o-meter, I'll explain what follows here over the next few days:

1. First and foremost -- I likely won't write here tomorrow. I expect it to be a long day and I expect it to be marred with stress and snow and who knows what else, and my primary focus will be on Daisy and the parents...and possibly the Chiefs game, depending on the weather.
   
   
2. Daisy returns to work on the 26th. I do not, I return on the 27th. There's a cat she's had her eye on that may be coming up for adoption on the 26th, and if he (yes, HE) is available, we're going to be first in line to go see him on her lunch hour and do a vibe check. If he seems compatible we've already decided we're getting him...and I'll write more about this if it comes to fruition.
   
   
3. I return to work for the 27th and 28th before I get another long weekend because of the New Year. I do not work New Year's Eve, but I do work New Year's Day. The following Thursday I'll take off due to it being a comp day for me as a salaried employee working a holiday...so I'll have yet another long weekend.  
   
   
4. Daisy's oldest sister arrives in town somewhere between the 28th and 30th, roughly, with her husband and four boys. Given the timing of this we should be able to ring in the New Year with them, barring any unforeseen snags. 

The Holidays, Part XX: The Birthday Party

 

I am not a fan of this. Each forecast we see gets worse and worse. The above is from about eight hours ago. Some of them are predicting rain turning to ice and then snow by tomorrow evening -- even before Christmas morning. If that happens, it's going to be a really rough Christmas.

I will note here as an aside that last week at this time, the weather forecasters were calling for it to be mild and around 50 on Christmas day.

This morning, Daisy and I went out to the local Best Buy (yes, Best Buy) and purchased the very last electric snow shovel they had -- the snowblower we had blew up about a year ago, and while we've been lucky in the interim and haven't had a whole lot of terrible snow since, we're preparing for this storm. If it hits. 

The electric snow shovel was $150. But at least we'll be prepared. Let me tell you, the last thing I want to be doing 36 hours from now is shoveling a fuckton of snow just to be able to get out of the driveway and get to the parents' for Christmas -- if we can even make it over there at all. That is, of course, worst-case scenario, but as the forecasts as of this evening say there's a possibility now of 10+ inches between tomorrow night and Wednesday, well...yeah.

Tonight we had my birthday dinner with the parents -- finally -- now that both Mama and Daisy were well enough to do it. When we left the house, it was probably in the 30s with a pretty good wind -- cold. By the time we got home well after 8pm, it was in the mid-50s and was misting rain. Yes, the temperature actually went up by a good bit while we were out.

The birthday dinner is a tradition in the family. If one of us "kids" (I say that to differentiate us from the grandchildren as well as people of the parents' generation) is in town for their birthday, they pick whatever meal they want and a family dinner is prepared of that meal. More often than not, for my birthday it's just us these days. Even when Daisy's sister(s) are in town for the holidays it has been very rare that they would be in a full five days before Christmas over the past 7-8 years or so. Anyway, the food is prepared, dinner is had, presents are bestowed, and then dessert is had before quiet wind-down family time. Sometimes the order of some of those things are changed up a bit, but we rarely deviate from that overall plan.

It used to be, back in the day when Daisy and I first got together, a much larger event when it was someone's birthday, and the largest event possible when it was the holidays -- Daisy's middle sister, the one who lived in Canada for many years and who now lives outside of Pittsburgh -- used to live about two hours north of us, and they would drive down for all family events and major holidays. Now that they're so far away, and with Daisy's other sister living in Denver, there has been but two times in the past near-decade that all of us have been gathered in the same place at the same time, and one of those was the South Dakota trip in 2021. 

When I was younger and more adventurous (but also much more sheltered and isolated from the rest of the world, living alone in Kansas) I would visit for my birthday/Christmas and we'd go out to eat somewhere, do Christmas shopping, go do fun things like Dave & Busters, etc. Now that I'm married, in my early forties -- still sounds weird to say that -- and have lived here in Omaha for almost a full decade, I value the quiet family time much more. With that, I also feel zero need to make my birthday into a "let's celebrate me and make me the center of attention" spectacle. 

Mama hand-cut two giant trays of french fries, salted and seasoned them, and we had my chosen birthday dinner of poutine -- with shredded cheese from Aldi and vegan gravy made by Daisy. It was one of the finest poutines I've ever had in my life. Mama made fresh coffee and had made two separate containers of shortbread cookies, which were also wonderful. To round it off, Daisy also made two giant cookie sheets of no-bake cookies (just like my mother used to make) and they turned out wonderfully.

After eating, the parents brought out my gift -- a very nice Columbia long-sleeved shirt and a bag of the gummy bears I love that they get at Menard's whenever they're there. I loved both items; both were thoughtful and very sweet. I've also already eaten at least 20% of the bag of gummy bears, so I may be a bit biased. 

I returned Dad's Handycam to him in a brand-new case (the old one was literally disintegrating) and inside the case was, new in the box, the same cable I used to transfer all the tapes -- as well as two brand-new Hi8 tapes so that the camcorder could still be used, as it still works like it's fresh off the factory floor. I downplayed the new tapes when he asked if they were expensive, because they're such old technology and a highly niche format of recording media -- they weren't prohibitively expensive to obtain, but they weren't cheap. Nobody asked the price of them, thankfully, because I would not have wanted to lie about that. It was all part of my Christmas present for him; I generally do something separate and special for Dad every year, usually something small and fun. This is what it was this year.

After all of the festivities finished, I'd brought over the parents' copy of the flash drive -- the master copy with everything on it, of which there are only five in existence -- and we spent the next two hours or so (perhaps longer) watching through some of the random videos on it. We covered some family Christmases, some family vacation videos, a tape made by Dad's father with all of his family and family friends on it from 1989, and Daisy's 6th birthday party. 

In the middle of all of this, Daisy's car alarm began going off.

Some backstory here before I continue -- Daisy's car is old. It's a 2009 model, she got it used shortly before she and I got together, and it's been wrecked twice. Neither time was her fault. She was rear-ended once and the second time we were backed into at an intersection. Both impacts, while repaired, slightly bent the frame enough to where it disrupted the crash and anti-theft sensors in the hood and in the driver's side door. There's a sensor in the front end of the car that eventually she had to get "unplugged," for lack of a better term, because her anti-theft alarm would randomly go off for no reason -- parking lot at work? Car goes nuts. Inside our own garage with nothing around the car? Goes nuts in the middle of the night. Etc. So she took it in and got some car repair place to just unhook the fucking thing, because it would happen 2-3 times a day. The alarm goes off now only if someone tries the door handle when the car's locked, not running, and nobody's in it. 

Which is possibly what happened -- thieves checking car doors in the neighborhood, perhaps. It happens a lot here in Omaha, and I'm guessing a lot of other places too.

Daisy went outside and checked, car seemed fine; nobody got into it or anything, as it was locked. She/we didn't see anyone around, either. She grabbed our garage door opener out of the car (the only thing, as she claimed, that had any real value within the car) and came back inside. 

Shortly thereafter, we returned home and I spent most of the overnight hours sleeping with Pete on my chest -- his choice of sleeping spot, not mine. 

And so ends the story of my "birthday party." We left the gravy that Daisy made and the cookies at the parents' as we'll be back over there the next two days in a row anyway (well, weather permitting of course) for actual holiday festivities.

The Holidays, Part XIX: The Headlong Rush

 Update: Yeah, more disappointment today. Not surprised. The cat we wanted to see was part of a group of feral cats that aren't available to be adopted by the general public -- instead they're adopted through some special program that lets people turn them into "farm cats" or what have you, likely for rodent control and the like. So, oh well.

So we're now entering the headlong rush into the holidays. Daisy is planning to make cookies over the next few days, made a giant batch of her version of Chex Mix tonight, and if all goes well, we're planning to celebrate my belated birthday with the parents tomorrow.

Not to be outdone, I have also been busy -- today I washed the bedsheets, blankets, and one of the rugs from downstairs. Tomorrow I'll likely wash all the "cat blankets" from the couch and the cat beds. If I'm feeling ambitious and/or we have the time, I'll wash the bathroom rugs and shower curtains too (Daisy wants to clean the entire bathroom on her days off, and if she has the energy/ability to do that, I'll need to wash the bathroom stuff as part of that). 

I killed my paper shredder today. It's the second one I've killed in the past decade. The first one had its motor get off track and it began grinding against its casing and itself, finally dying in a puff of smoke about five years ago. This one snapped some gears in its transmission/whatever it has as a motor/etc and now won't do much of anything but scream when I try to use it. So, it got trashed and a new one was ordered from Amazon -- it arrives next week after Christmas. I wasn't a huge fan of the older one anyway -- it overheated way too easily, and I would have to dump the basket every 5-10 minutes. 

Because I had a wildly good birthday coupon code from the KMFDM webstore (yes, the band, who Daisy and I also have tickets to go see live in March), I ordered three shirts from them this morning as late birthday/early Christmas presents for myself. It'll likely take them weeks to get here -- the hoodie I ordered in September finally got here last week. KMFDM is one of the few bands I will support wholeheartedly with everything they do, purchase every new record release they put out, buy multiple clothing items, etc. I've been a fan of their work since I was in middle school. My oldest band t-shirt I have is a KMFDM shirt, purchased in 1997 and still in occasional rotational wear to this day -- I probably own more KMFDM shirts than any other band I love. I am thrilled to be able to finally see them live in March, as the last time they came through Omaha was seven years ago (and I didn't even know they were here then). 

Daisy has said that she wants tomorrow to be a quiet day at home where she can sleep in and we can do the stuff we need to do without a schedule or timeframes, and I'm okay with that. The next three days are going to be busy and very family-oriented and while I am here for all of it, it's all going to be tiring. Truth be told, it's been difficult for me to stay awake all day and into the evening or late evening hours without the help of enough caffeine to kill a horse, as I'm just not used to a schedule of being awake during the day and leaving the house multiple times a week anymore. During the pandemic there were times where I did not leave the house for multiple months -- so doing it now, sometimes multiple times a day, is jarring to me to an extent. In my downtime, all I want to do is sleep and play video games and listen to my podcasts -- and completely detach from most of the rest of the world.

Well, I've done that for a few days now, and tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday are now all mission-focused on getting across that Christmas finish line. Daisy's last present arrives tomorrow and from there I'll be wrapping everything up, getting it all good to go for Monday morning. 

Mama relayed to us via phone yesterday that Daisy's oldest sister and her family -- who were previously expected to arrive in town on the 26th -- have now had to postpone that until the 29th or 30th for some reason or another. I took New Year's Eve off so that we could spend some time with them (and, well, so that I didn't have to work New Year's Eve), and I only have to work the 27th and 28th next week. Past that I don't know what our plans are yet -- generally when they're in town, we ring in the New Year with them. Sometimes they let their boys stay up late and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the weather is brutally cold and snowy and sometimes it's warm enough for the kids to burn off some excess energy by playing outside in the yard -- a few years ago it was close to 70 on New Year's Day.

It has indeed been unseasonably warm this winter so far -- temperatures have been in the high 40s to high 50s for most of the past few weeks, and all of these outside excursions we've made as of late -- to see cats, to run errands, to do grocery shopping -- I have not had to wear an actual coat. I've worn my hoodies. Today I wore a light sweatshirt and a vest. Most of these days I could've gotten away with wearing a t-shirt if it were just a tad less brisk outside.

Our family in Canada has not been so lucky -- we talked to Daisy's grandmother tonight via phone, and Atlantic Canada has been getting battered by one storm after another. Half of Cape Breton Island is without power, and they're trucking in power crews from New Brunswick to help restore it. The family homestead itself was without power for a good chunk of the day today, but it had restored by the time we talked to Daisy's grandmother on the phone. Rain and snowstorms one after another are continually pounding the Atlantic provinces. I could live there in the summer (and would greatly enjoy it) but in the winter months...I would not be a fan of that weather at all.

Not that I don't hole up inside our home in Omaha during the winter anyway. I may as well hibernate in a cave like a bear.

We aren't going to be spared the wrath of winter either, apparently -- the forecast is still changing and in constant flux, but right now it looks like we're going to get our first significant snowfall of the season on Christmas night through Tuesday/Wednesday, starting as a washout rain event on Christmas Eve. Right now I guess it's too far out to get an accurate read on what they expect us to receive, so we could either get some rain or get all of it, including snow and ice and all of that other bullshit -- right when Daisy and I return to work next week.

The Holidays, Part XVIII: Missed Connections

 As I've mentioned here over the course of the past month or so -- whether I write about it or not on any given day -- we have been looking nearly every day for the kitten who will be named Empress. Sometimes it's a passive search, sometimes it's very active -- like "we need to go see this cat now before she's gone" active. But, Daisy also has her eye on other cats too -- her equivalent of Empress is a big medium/longhaired brown male tabby she wants to name after her father, and another female that "she will know when she sees her" that she wants to name Mabel. Finding Empress has taken priority mainly because it's become so important to me, it's become my white whale of sorts.

Here's some of the cats we've looked at over the past few days:

Sweet little baby, very much a parrot-cat -- a shoulder-sitter -- who didn't want anything to do with Daisy whatsoever. I talked about her a few days ago. Her eyes did not stay that blue color and she was a little less floofy than the picture suggested, but she was cute. I got a lot of vibes from her but not necessarily enough to take her home. I'm sure she's already been adopted at this point.

A beautiful, but very shy little boy traumatized by the adoption/pet store experience. He didn't want anything to do with me and just wanted to be snuggled up into Daisy's dress. No vibes whatsoever for me but Daisy said she could have seen herself taking him home. We passed. I'm sure he's also been adopted by now.

From the picture, this guy looks like he could've been Hank's brother. In real life, he was much more pale cream in color than in the picture, was smaller (but a bit cuter) than he appeared, and was incredibly vocal with one of the most annoying meows either Daisy or I had ever heard. No vibes for me whatsoever, and very little for Daisy once we got to meet him.

Something you may note as you're looking through these pics with me is that not a one of them is a medium-hair or a longhair. Because apparently, they rarely exist in Nebraska or something.

We've seen one medium-hair who was very close to the characteristics I was looking for in Empress -- beautiful coat, a curious personality, liked to be held and loved on....and he was a male. We saw him yesterday and were he female, he would've already been home with us. I am not sharing a picture here because there never was one -- while his info is still up on the website, it's very likely he's been adopted already (PetSmart does not update their listings very often, which is why on those posts it says "call to see if I'm still there" at the bottom). There was a part of me that wanted to bring that beautiful boy home, and if I had, I would've named him Sorcerer (shelter name: Ed).

At each of the PetSmarts we've gone to to view the cats, we've been the first ones there to take a look for the day, and a line has formed behind us. People really want cats at Christmas, apparently -- every kitten that's shown up at the Humane Society this week has also been very quickly adopted same-day.

I've mentioned that looking for Empress has sort of become an obsession while I've been off work, and to be fair, it sort of was before I was on vacation too. I have, as Daisy described her own thoughts last week at some point, "cat FOMO." If there's a day I don't look, a day I don't search, that will be the day where she appears and is quickly adopted without me even knowing. The thought of missing out on that opportunity -- especially when cats that fit what I'm looking for are so rare here, is something that doesn't sit well with me.

We'll either find her or we won't. I have to accept that and doubly have to accept it as the winter gets nasty and I return to work for five months with no real time off. It is what it is, but I don't have to like it. I'm allowed to be disappointed and frustrated. 

Today we're going over to Iowa again, in about an hour, to see yet another black medium-hair female kitten with no picture listed. I don't expect anything to amount from this trip -- I do not expect to return home with a cat. I expect, once again, to return home frustrated and disappointed with a mindset of "I don't know why I bother" etc. It's hard to keep getting your hopes up over and over only to have them repeatedly smashed.

The question I keep asking myself is...why do I care so much? Why does it matter? Do I feel like there's something in the fates for me to get this cat?

I don't know. I can't answer those questions.

The Holidays, Part XVII: Mr. Short Legs

 The weirdest part about being off work when you normally aren't is the confusion it provides to your body and mental state. What day is it? Should I be sleeping now? Etc. If you're like me, you'll get used to this in a few days, only to have to revert back to your normal schedule once vacation ends. It can be really jarring -- likely doubly so -- for someone who works overnights like I do. 

This is likely why I slept for over ten hours straight last night.

Daisy is still very sick. She got antibiotics earlier in the week for what appears to be a chest infection that's forming in the aftermath of whatever cold she had before and is still experiencing symptoms of, and because this has gone on so long she took another Covid test this morning -- which was, of course, still negative. Whatever it is, it's not Covid. And whatever it is, it's not hit me. Don't get me wrong, I've had some nasty allergies this week, but that's because the temperatures have been in the 50s (it could hit 60 today, we'll see) and it's either been raining or dreary most of the time. Yesterday was the first truly sunny/clear day I've seen in about a week, with temperatures warm enough to where I didn't really need to wear a jacket if I didn't want to.  

Given that info it is rather ironic that today is the solstice -- the first day of winter. 

Hank had his follow-up vet appointment today, after his scary breathing episode earlier in the month. He is a healthy 12 pounds and isn't even fully grown -- vet said he strongly believes he has some Maine Coon in his lineage somewhere because of the paw size and because he's nowhere near finished growing yet based on the x-rays from the emergency vet earlier this month. And, Maine Coons are known to have enlarged hearts, like it's a thing for them, a genetic thing.

Doc says he expects Hank to reach 15 pounds or more and that's a conservative estimate. He is very healthy, all of his vitals are strong, no murmurs in his heart, breathing/lungs are good, everything seems to be in order. He thinks Hank had an asthma attack, and this is at about the age where he'd start presenting asthma symptoms if that's the case. He strongly believes that because Hank immediately got better once they gave him the steroid shot and has not relapsed since we gave him the prescribed steroids after the emergency vet visit. He said that it's possible he may have another asthma attack here and there, but some cats never have them again. We got a prescription of prednisone for him in the event it happens again, and he suggests an inhaler (yes, for cats) with a little mask we can order for $40 to help him if it happens again.

He had a blood test done just to see if there's anything whatsoever wrong with his heart, though the doc doesn't think so -- but didn't want to discount it based on the enlarged heart x-ray, so that'll take several days likely before we have results. If something does come up abnormal, they have treatments for him and meds he can take that'll still give him a long and healthy life for the most part.

We really like this vet. We'll likely move Pete's care over to him as well and any new cats we get in the future will also very likely go to him. Dude is a class act and is still young -- I'm guessing several years younger than me -- so it's likely he'll be practicing for a long time yet. I don't know how long we'll remain living in Omaha, but it will surely be another 5-10 years at least, I'm guessing. 

The Maine Coon thing intrigues me. I've gotten some strong Maine Coon vibes from Hank based on behavior, size, and appearance. No, he doesn't look like one outwardly, but one can't deny that he is seven months old and twelve pounds -- he is almost as big as Pete is now and is still growing like a weed. Doc says that he could have misjudged his age a bit when we first brought him in, back at the end of July, as could the humane society -- but even with that he wouldn't have been off by 3 or 4 months, which would be the expected age of a normal cat who'd gotten this large this quickly. Doc also agreed that he wasn't overweight, he wasn't unhealthy -- he was just large. 

With his little legs. 

I have speculated a bit, mostly in my head up to this point, that he had some of the facial features/structure of a Maine Coon from certain angles -- his muzzle, especially. The length of his body is another sign that he's got some sort of large cat breed in him, we just don't know what. Maine Coons are prized and valuable and get gigantic, bigger than dogs for the purebred ones. Several friends who have seen pictures of Hank -- including those who have actually owned Maine Coons -- have speculated that he likely has some Maine Coon blood in him as well. Of course, we never would have known that when we adopted him, because this is what we adopted:

He just looked like a little, normal orange cat to us, with giant feet. 

Well, he still has those giant feet. We figured he'd grow into them and/or they wouldn't really look that giant once he grew up. We were wrong. Giant feet, little legs. Mr. Short Legs. Daisy and I began speculating that maybe he's half Maine Coon and half munchkin cat (which, yes, is an actual breed known for its really short legs and a body close to the ground) -- the biggest cat breed mixed with the smallest cat breed would sort of...even out...into a relatively normal looking cat, right? Law of averages and all that.

Well, we don't know. What we do know is that Mr. Short Legs is fine and healthy right now and we don't really expect that to change. We certainly hope it doesn't change, anyway.

Despite Daisy still feeling sick, we were still out yesterday and decided to get the grocery shopping done -- which we did. We also paid some bills, I did an Amazon order for some necessities (it all arrives before Christmas, thankfully) and got Daisy one last Christmas present that I'd been holding onto as an afterthought. It arrives tomorrow. Once it arrives, that's when everything kicks into gear and I begin wrapping everything, so I can knock it out in one fell swoop. I expect Daisy will do much the same.

We have still not had my proper "birthday" with the parents -- that will likely be later tomorrow or on Saturday. Mama wanted to see if we would come over yesterday, as she is now on antibiotics and is feeling much better (Daisy is too), but we were already on our way home with the groceries and had Hank's appointment later in the afternoon.

Nobody I've sent the flash drives to has responded that they've received them at this juncture, either. When I talked to my brother-in-law a few days ago, he said theirs hadn't arrived yet and was hoping it hadn't gotten misdirected. Eh. If it gets lost in the mail somewhere I'll just make another copy to send. I mailed it eight days ago and it was just going to Pennsylvania -- if it's truly taking that long to get there, who knows how long the other copies will take to get to Atlantic Canada.

Birthday Forty-One

 Hello all.

As of 6:22pm EST last night, I am officially 41 years old.

I was born on a snowy Monday evening in a hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia. I looked like this:

Yeah, that's me.

I sent this picture to my parents this morning and said "someone really should have told this kid that it all goes downhill from there" or something to that effect.

We did not do much for my birthday. It was a very low-key affair, honestly. We'd made all of these grandiose plans to have fun and do fun things and in the end we never really did any of them. So here's how my birthday went, from the beginning to the end:

• 12am: I was asleep, having fallen asleep by 10pm the night before.
  
  
• 4am: I woke up, roughly, having a vague recollection of being so tired that I could no longer stay conscious before I had fallen asleep. I got up, took my pills, and played one of my games here on my PC.
  
  
• 6:30am: My dad tells me happy birthday via messenger. I reply to thank him and ask if they're both up (I didn't know if my mother worked yesterday or not due to the holiday schedule at the college she works at). No response. I text my mother and she says they're in the car on the way to work. I finish my previous post here about Christmas in the 80s.
  
  
• Sometime around 8am: Daisy wakes up and comes into my room to wish me happy birthday. She's still sick, but we make rough plans for the day -- we were planning breakfast at a place called The Brunch Box, downtown, then we had an errand or two to run before we were going to look at more kittens at the humane society. As Daisy was still not feeling great and neither is Mom, we postpone birthday dinner plans with the parents.
  
  
• 10:20am: After a lengthy search and deciding after numerous attempts that it was unwise to trust Daisy's GPS, we finally (easily) find The Brunch Box and have a wonderful breakfast of vegan/GF breakfast pizza, a hot vegan chicken-and-waffles sandwich, tater tots, and vegan frozen yogurt. It is easily one of the best pizzas I've ever had, period, ever.
  
  
• 11:50ish: We have completed breakfast and the errands we needed to run, and are on our way to the humane society -- there was a kitten there I wanted to see, a small black female kitten. Short-haired, but with deep blue eyes. I figured it was worth a shot. In the car, Daisy tells me I need to check, just to make sure, that she is still at the humane society and that she hasn't been moved to PetSmart, who also does adoptions for the humane society. She was moved, along with two little boys who were adorable and that Daisy wanted to see as well. However, she was moved to the PetSmart in Shadow Lake, which is about half an hour away from us. So we adjust the GPS to get us there and off we go.
  
  
• 12:20pm: We arrive at the PetSmart and are first in line to see these little cats. The little girl was adorable and very sweet, wanted all my attention and wanted to sit on my shoulders, but her eyes were not as blue as they'd previously looked (they were turning green, much like Pete), she wasn't a longhair -- which I knew -- and while she was sweet she wasn't hitting that "this is Empress" vibe for me. She was like 80% there but I didn't overall feel the entire connection. It has to be really right for me to want a cat and call her Empress, and I told Daisy that I'll know when I find the right one. The little boy Daisy looked at was sweet too, but very frightened and didn't want much attention or love. We left there with zero cats.
  
  
• 1pm-ish: Deciding to go to the humane society to see the other new kittens, we did -- to find the place crazy busy and crawling with people. We also saw multiple people walk out of the building with cats in boxes, too. There were a couple of really cute ones there we could interact with, but there were so many people around and we didn't even have a hint of the vibes for any of them. All of them got adopted by the end of the day. Before leaving the humane society, we take this photo together:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 2pm-ish: We were home once again. I had a bit of frustration, and it wasn't necessarily about the cats. I was losing energy like crazy and there was just so many things we could have done for my birthday or while we were out, but all of them felt like effort and like work. Like, we need some groceries, for example -- I need to spend about $200 or so on necessities for around the house and only make grocery trips in person once about every two months or so. I told Daisy that sounded like work and would take a lot of energy. There were the plans we'd had to go play mini-golf, which by the time we'd done everything else sounded like an extreme amount of effort. I don't know how I would've been able to do dinner with the parents in the evening if it were still on. 
  
  
• 3pm: Daisy gives me my birthday presents -- a sheet of stickers with Hank's face on them, a Cuisinart "Griddler" with waffle iron plates, and the newest edition of the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series -- a birthday/Christmas staple in this household. I am sort of overwhelmed; the Griddler was not cheap. I had planned to get it for Daisy for Christmas a few years ago and she told me no at that time. I had rarely thought about it since.
  
  
• 4pm-4:30pm: Sometime in here is when I pass the fuck out. During this time, Daisy cleans off the kitchen counters and sets up the Griddler, and vacuums the downstairs. I hear none of this -- I am dead to the world.
  
  
• 4am today: I wake up again. Birthday is over. My Fitbit tells me I actually slept 10 hours and 17 minutes.

I got close to 100 people who wished me happy birthday on Facebook in one way or another. I had a great meal. I got to play with kittens, I got a very expensive kitchen appliance, and I slept for over ten hours. All in all, I think that's a pretty good birthday.

The Holidays, Part XVI: Christmas in the 80s

 Holiday vacation has begun. So now I guess we can get this series of posts really started -- on its sixteenth entry in the series. Hah. 

I wrote here yesterday about what Christmas was like in the 90s -- likely the most formative years of my life. In the process, I mentioned but mainly glossed over the 80s. This is mainly because I was seven years old when the 80s ended and my memories of the 80s are nowhere near as clear or as sharp as my memories of the 90s. Don't get me wrong, some things are, but not most of them. It's just feelings, really, and strong nostalgia without solid dates/years I can place on a lot of it. There are many stories about my childhood in the 80s that I've touched on here before, from holidays to just general "what life was like for me then" things. I remember a good bit of my young childhood but as I get older, memories fade and/or disappear, details get blotted out or go fuzzy. 

I remember very little about specific Christmases, but the point of this post is to tell some of those stories about what I do remember, so I'll start from my earliest Christmas memory -- has to be 1984 or so, after I'd just turned two. I remember going Christmas shopping with my parents, though I don't know where it was. They were looking to get some piece of furniture or an appliance or something along those lines. It was cold and snowy that night and I seem to recall the store we went to was like a warehouse-like store, or a big department store in a mall, something like that. I don't think they ended up getting what they went looking for, but I remember they got me a toy golf set -- plastic clubs and balls and a little putter-hole thing, and I remember I was in the back seat of the car on the way home. That narrows it down to either the old 1976 Dodge Aspen or my mother's new 1984 Pontiac Grand Am, if she'd already gotten it at that point, and I remember them fighting about something on the drive home -- just snapping back and forth at each other.

The next year, or possibly the year after (so, 1985-86; I don't think at this juncture I'll ever know for sure, but it's much more like 1985) is likely the biggest reason I wanted to write this post. I've told the story here before in snippets, but never in full, and I think it explains a lot about who I am currently even today in 2023 -- and why I do some of the things I do. 

As a young boy -- and I do mean young, barely out of toddler stage; in 1985 I would have just turned three -- I had apparently told my mother that I wanted a cat for Christmas. I don't know why I wanted a cat. I don't remember ever telling either of my parents that I wanted a cat, showing them pictures of cats, drawing cats, anything like that. But, apparently, I did and it's what I wanted. 

Some backstory, because you'll need it for context: during the daytime hours, when my parents both worked, I would spend the afternoons at my grandmother's house -- she would "babysit" me, so to speak. My mother worked in a doctor's office (she actually worked for my childhood physician for years on end) and that job was a 8-5 job. My father worked 3pm to midnight (something like that, I can't remember now) as a coal miner -- yes, actually down in the mines, mining coal -- he did this for about thirty years, roughly. So, it was rare for me to spend a lot of time with my parents when they were both together, all three of us as a family unit. I would wake up in the morning after my mother had already left for work, and would play in my bedroom/playpen/whatever until my father got up around 10. We would have breakfast and watch TV, and he would get ready for work and take me to my grandmother's before his shift at the mines started. I'd spend the afternoons into the evening with my grandmother and uncle (who was still living at home at the time) and then my mother would come pick me up in the evenings when she came home from work and I would spend the evening into the night with her, being put to bed hours before my father came home from the mines -- and then the cycle would repeat the next day. 

To further set the stage, at this time, my mother was 24 and my father was 26. I turn 41 tomorrow, and mostly see people in their twenties as children at this stage of my life -- but it was the 80s and times were different then.

One night, shortly before Christmas -- it could have been my birthday, I don't remember -- I remember that it was very cold and the house windows at my grandmother's were fogged up/iced over. I used to watch for my mother to come home from work to pick me up, as she would arrive at my grandmother's house around the same time every day, roughly. My grandmother had seven children, all but two of them had moved out of the house and had gotten married at that point (in this point in time, my mother's marriage to my father was by far the most recent marriage in the family), but my youngest aunt and uncle -- uncle born December 1962, aunt born May 1965 -- would come and go to/from work and it wasn't uncommon for her other kids to stop by and visit as all of them lived within a 10-15 mile radius from the family homestead. My grandmother's house had a long, sloping driveway that took a dip from the main road, went down into a little valley, and then curved back around to come up to the bottom of the front porch stairs/parking pad area in front of the garage door for the garage that was never used for actual vehicles. For family gatherings and dinners, the cars would park behind one another like a line of ants.

I know I'm being long-winded, but I'm setting the stage.

Over the years, if a car pulled into the driveway after dark, I would be able to recognize who it was by the shape of the car's headlights. I knew when it was my older uncle's truck, for example, or my aunt's GMC Jimmy, by headlight shape even at night. For my aunt and uncle who lived at home, I knew what her 1984 Camaro's headlights looked like, as well as his 1970 Maverick. Likewise, I knew what my mother's headlights looked like for the Grand Am she drove. And that night, my mother had pulled off the road into the edge of the driveway, and had stopped dead -- headlights shining right into the windows about 80 yards away (I told you, long driveway). We didn't know what she was doing. She just sat there for a few minutes, as if she were talking to someone I couldn't see in the dark -- it was December, so it was dark anytime after 5pm, and my mother was not home before 6 on any given night -- so I couldn't see anything but the headlights. 

Eventually, after a few minutes, she came down and then up the driveway, and came into the house. She was carrying a box of some sort. It appeared to be a pretty plain, nondescript cardboard box of small size. She explained to me that Santa Claus had stopped her in the driveway and had given her a gift to give me for Christmas, even though it was early, because he knew how much I wanted it. I sat on the pea-green carpet of my grandmother's house and the box was put on the floor in front of me. My mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother all gathered around me so I could open it. There may have been pictures taken -- if there were, you have no idea how much money I would pay to have those pictures in my possession today. 

I opened the box -- I was told to do so slowly -- and in the bottom of it was a little black-and-gray furball with big eyes staring up at me. It was a kitten, a little long-haired female kitten with big eyes and long whiskers.

I have a feeling most of you know where I'm going with this by telling this story, but stay tuned because...yeah, it doesn't go well.

She was a Smoke Persian -- not the scrunched-up nose type of Persian, but a Persian nonetheless. She did not have a name. My aunt suggested "Percy" because of the Persian breed. I chose, out of the blue and very randomly, Priscilla. I don't know why. I liked the name. It didn't have anything to do with Priscilla Presley. I also had a decorative plastic pheasant that I named Penelope, so I guess as a child I  just really liked exotic P names.

Priscilla was a very patient and sweet cat -- at least with me. I was the only person that cat loved, and it seemed like she hated everything and everyone else. She followed me everywhere, loved it when I carried her around and played with her (even roughly, which I remember being warned multiple times that I needed to be more careful with her -- since I was a very young kid). However, she was, as they say, a menace to my parents, mostly my father. My father couldn't stand her, and I remember he was not happy that my mother had gotten me a kitten. In retrospect, she was just a kitten and doing kitten things -- having the zoomies, jumping on top of things, knocking things off shelves, etc. My father could not stand that and would lock her in the laundry room when she was being "bad." Even at my young age she saw me as her protector, and I bonded very hard with that little kitten. 

Eventually, after several months -- maybe a year -- of this, my father had enough. He sat me down and told me in no uncertain terms (I don't know if my mother was there or not at the time) that the cat needed to go, and he was going to find a new home for her. I don't think I believed him at first, or even really understood what he was saying. I also don't think my mother had really agreed to this or really wanted it. What I didn't know was that he had already placed/posted ads offering Priscilla up for sale -- Persians are exceedingly desired cats today, and were even then too, and can sometimes sell for thousands of dollars. My mother had purchased her from the pet store in the mall in Morgantown (I found this out many years later) and she was not inexpensive.

One morning, my father told me that someone was coming to the house to look at Priscilla and that I was not to say or do anything, was told to stay out of the way and to be quiet. He of course did this while my mother was at work. She came to the house and was a very sweet lady, but when I found out that she was trying to take Priscilla, I grabbed the cat and said "you can't take my kitty" and ran back to my room with her, crying. The lady, who had a conscience, told my father that she couldn't, and wouldn't, separate the two of us, and left.

My father came back to my room, angry with me but calm, and flatly told me something I'll never, ever forget.

"You cost me a lot of money today."

Sometime later, on a day I wasn't at home, he had someone else come to the house who he successfully sold Priscilla to, and she was gone. When I returned home and found out, I was inconsolable. My mother was very angry at him. I remember him telling my mother "he'll get over it" in reference to me and my feelings.

I have never forgiven my father for this and likely never will, even though he and I haven't had any sort of father/son relationship in over thirty years. 

I do not have any photos of Priscilla. I don't know that any pictures were ever taken of the two of us together, and if they were, I have never had possession of those photos. I only remember what she looked like through the eyes of a very young child, and my memories have faded greatly with time.

I told Daisy the entirety of this story a few nights ago, though she'd heard most of it before, and prefaced it with "So if you wonder why I am always passively looking for Empress, it's because I already had her once and lost her, and her name was Priscilla."

Yeah, so...there's that heartbreaking story. Christmases in the 80s can only go up from there, right?

Ehhhhh.

I did have good birthdays and Christmases in the 80s, but a lot of it is marred with fallout of my parents' divorce. They divorced in August 1987, so 1986 was the last real Christmas we had together as a nuclear family unit. I remember that year was great -- I got the Power Wheels Bigfoot truck and a Transformers: The Movie sleeping bag, which I unzipped completely and used as a blanket for many years, all the way up through my high school days, before it completely fell apart. I also got the Lazer Tag set that had the sensors, Starlytes (the guns) and the baseball cap with a sensor on it. I still have one of the Starlytes somewhere, possibly even in this house. I don't think it works anymore, but still.

You have to admit, this thing still looks rad as fuck.

So after 1986, everything took a dive. I remember Christmas Eves before that time were spent with family -- sometimes my father's family. I remember little snippets of those times with my aunts, uncles, and cousins (some of whom are no longer with us) but only snippets, as I was very young. Afterwards I don't remember a whole lot for a few years. In 1987 I think we still tried to do some semblance of a family Christmas, despite the divorce, but it didn't really work out that well. I find it interesting that I remember more details of my birthdays than Christmas during the late 80s

By 1988 my mother and I were living on our own in a trailer in Morgantown. I turned six that year, and she wanted to throw a birthday party for me in our home -- likely it would also have functioned as Aa Christmas party too, but still. She invited all of the ladies from work (she was working in a dentist office by this time, and they all knew me) and some if not all of my aunts and uncles. She'd made a cake from scratch with chocolate frosting and red gel icing letters. The weather was terrible -- rain, turning to ice, and then turning to snow -- and one by one people called the house and told her they wouldn't make it. Nobody ended up coming to the party. I remember that I was sad and disappointed, but I also remember that she sat at the kitchen table and wept.

Those years were a struggle.

Christmas Eve 1989 I spent with my father, as he'd just remarried three months prior, to my stepmother. It was really the first time I'd spent a lot of time with the stepmother's family, and they gave me piles of gifts. I felt so lucky and surprised by this as I always felt ancillary to them for the most part. Once my father married into their quite large family, family Christmases and other holidays were spent with them. Sometimes I was there for some of it, but most of the time I wasn't -- and by a few years later, once my father had had two daughters with his new wife, I'd been extricated from the situation completely.

But at least he didn't sell me to some rando like he would a cat, right?

The 80s ended with a whimper, at least for me. My mother was seeing the man who would end up becoming my abusive former stepfather (she would marry him in 1990) so there's not a lot else to tell. I am grateful that I have become a mostly stable adult, mostly unaffected these days by the pains of my childhood -- but it was a rocky road to get here, as you've seen.

Tomorrow, I turn 41 -- with everything that entails. I'll cover it here as well, of course.