The Other Shoe

 Well, 2025 started off with a bang, didn't it?

Look, I am still holding out hope that this year is not going to be another 2024 -- a year filled with misery, stress, and tragedy. I tried to rationalize that Sadie likely should have died in 2024, but I asked her to hold off on it until after the holidays (this is 100% true, actually). She did, of course, wait until January 2. I am trying not to let her death frame what could otherwise be a better year, but it seems like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

None of the cats seem to notice her absence. Pete did, I'm sure, that first night. And, truth be told, since her death he has been far less needy and anxious. I don't know what to make of that, honestly. But the children? None of them seem any different. The only thing I've noticed is that Empress seems to be cuddling with Pete on the couch far more now, as she no longer has to compete with Sadie for that spot. One thing I have noticed is how big of an eater Sadie really was -- we now don't need to give the cats multiple cans of wet food every day, because she was the one who had been eating most of it. Not that it really seemed to help her anyway.

I have had brief dreams about our dearly departed Sadie, slightly disturbing ones where I just see her sitting across the room watching me, and in the dream I know that's not possible because she's dead -- but I don't feel any malicious intent. She's just watching me. 

We also haven't experienced any signs that she's still with us in any way; after Maggie died, Daisy was sitting on the couch, very sad, and she said she swore she heard Maggie purring. A few days after Maggie died, I turned the corner to go upstairs and out of the corner of my eye, for a brief second, I swear I saw Maggie sitting in her spot on the couch. When I did a double-take, she was not there. It shook me up a bit.

With Sadie? Nothing. Maybe Sadie just winked out and moved on peacefully. I don't feel her presence in the house anymore at all. I don't expect to see her, I don't expect to feel her climb up onto the bed with me. She's just gone.

Perhaps that's the saddest part of it all, honestly. 

I re-blued my hair again yesterday afternoon. The color was fading out far too much for my liking. I do it about once a month or so now, though at this point I am basically out of blue dye, with only enough left for maybe one or two more treatments. I do, however, have a ton of the purple dye left, including an entire unopened bottle. I like the purple, but sometimes I just want a deep, dark blue. My hair's getting to the point where it's too long to effectively re-color without using a large amount of dye; when I get it cut in the spring, once it's warm, I'll likely get most if not all of the color cut off, wait a few months for it to grow out again, and then bleach and start over. Maybe this time around I'll choose a different color, maybe not. I can't honestly say at this point.

Daisy has also dyed her hair again recently -- she stripped all of the old blue, green, and purple out of it and now looks like a fiery natural redhead. It is gorgeous on her. Every day I'm impressed with how well it turned out.

We are in the midst of a snowstorm right now -- because, after all, it would not be January in Nebraska without a snowstorm. We're getting the light end of it here in Omaha, per the forecasts, but just a few hours south of us in the Kansas City and Wichita areas, it's a major storm and a white nightmare. For us, as I write this, it's barely a dusting outside. The weather people say we're supposed to get 1-3 from this, which, if that's it, fine. It'll take an hour or so to clean the driveway and walks, and it won't be fun, but I'd rather have that than 6+ inches to shovel. 

After the snow hits, it's supposed to be bitter cold for the next 3-4 days, because again, it's not January in Nebraska without a brutal cold snap. This one's not as bad as the ones in previous years where it got down to -22 or so; we're not even supposed to go below zero this time, and by the end of the week it's supposed to be well above freezing again (so whatever snow is left will likely melt off). 

None of this really concerns me, of course; I really don't have anywhere to go or anything to do but work. Starting tonight, I now return to work on my regular schedule for the foreseeable future, with no planned vacations or time off (save for Super Bowl Sunday) in my future, during the most depressing and miserable time of the year to be constantly working without reprieve -- the cold, dark months of winter. 

It is what it is, I suppose. I'm just so dreadfully tired all the time, and the dark and cold make it worse. I was able to rest and recover a lot over the holidays, but it never seems like enough. Wildly, I'm not depressed -- even though three days ago I had to say goodbye to one of my cats. I'm not any more anxiety-ridden than normal, and I think my stress levels are pretty normal. The good thing about the cold and dark winter months is that I generally don't have a lot of trouble sleeping, though now that I've said that, of course, who knows. 

There are some things I need to do on a relatively-soon basis; I need to get an appointment made for bloodwork to be done so I can renew all of my prescriptions (Daisy needs to do this for herself too). We'll have to pay bills and the mortgage as per the usual. The remaining cats all need to start going in for their own checkups and bloodwork, with (I believe) Empress being the first on the list for that. We need to see Daisy's parents, as we didn't get to go see them on New Year's Eve because neither of them felt well. And, in addition to all of this, we desperately need to get our passports renewed as they both expire this year.

I still have to send packages out in the mail too; Daisy will need to fill and seal the last box for her sister, and I have a box to send my friend April. I also have to return the Star Trek hoodie I got from the Tiktok Shop because, surprise, it is far too small, which again frustrates me to no end. 

But that's how life is going at the moment, I guess. 

The Death of Sadie

 [Trigger warning: as I did here when Maggie passed, I am letting all readers know that I'm going to discuss a dead cat. So, if that bothers you, perhaps you should skip this one.]

Sadie is dead.

Yesterday afternoon (January 2), she had another seizure -- a much worse one -- while sitting on the couch next to Daisy; she wasn't even doing anything, just sitting there. By the time the seizure stopped, Daisy was already on the phone with the vet. 

This seizure Sadie did not recover from quickly. It took multiple minutes, during which she needed to be helped down off the couch for fear of her falling, and she could barely walk. She stumbled over to the opposite side of the room and attempted to hide under my desk, and I stopped her -- I picked her up and held her, gently, and tried to love and soothe her. She was scared; her old, cloudy eyes were wide, and she was having trouble breathing. She was mostly limp, her legs not knowing where they were or needed to go. Usually when I hold her, she helps tuck them up into my arms -- this time it was like she didn't even know they were there.

She seemed conscious and alert, but not all there -- like she was trapped in her own body and didn't know what was happening. I handed her off to Daisy and got dressed, and we got her into the carrier and into the car to get her to the vet. She initially cried, softly, as Daisy drove -- she hates being in the car, going to the vet, or being in the carrier in general.

About halfway through the drive from our house to the vet's office, we heard a thud inside the carrier and she stopped crying for a few minutes. This was, very likely, another seizure. We couldn't see, of course, as she was in the backseat. A few minutes later she began whining again about being in the car, so we knew she'd recovered and had not died in the backseat. 

The vet we took her to is the vet we've been taking all of the cats to since we got Hank; they're halfway across town, but their prices are very reasonable and we both adore our vet there -- who is about my age, maybe a few years younger, and is very good at his job. The vet tech girls -- one of whom loves Sadie and took care of her last week when we had her in for her UTI, was very sad to see us back for the reasons we were there. She took Sadie's temperature and it was about six degrees lower than it was supposed to be, and it was at that point we really knew this is it, her body is shutting down.

I knew this as we'd gotten her into the carrier and into the car, of course. I knew that she would not be coming home with us. I let my sober logic take over when I realized that was going to be the case. Daisy, on the other hand, thought there may have been some hope, that there was something they could do for her. I would like to pause for a moment to mention that these roles are almost exactly reversed from what they were with Maggie on her final day with us -- I assumed Maggie just needed medicine and would be coming home; Daisy knew before we left the house that she wouldn't be. 

Because these roles were reversed and because I knew this was coming for a very long time, it was far less traumatic for me. When the vet came back in a few moments later, we had to discuss our options, which -- similar to the conversation we had with the other vets about Maggie -- were basically either to let her die at home in discomfort, confusion, and pain as to what was happening to her, or to humanely let her go to sleep right there in the office never to wake up.

I looked down at my old lady for the last time while she was still lucid and conscious, and told her how much I loved her and how she would be okay. She looked up at me with her big, wide eyes, and I rubbed her head and scratched her behind her ears.

And then I signed the paperwork to humanely euthanize the cat who had loved me more than any other cat ever had, and who had been my shadow for over seventeen years.

The process at this vet was different than it was with Maggie; this vet gives a sedative first -- the same sedative he uses to knock out animals when they get spayed or neutered, so he said -- that puts them into what can only be described as a semi-coma-like state. Once that has fully kicked in and the animal is fully relaxed, the actual injection of drugs that stops the heart is used.

As such, Sadie went from being scared and nervous to very relaxed and in a twilight, non-lucid state in Daisy's arms very quickly. Her eyes were half open and she was breathing slowly and steadily, but she was really no longer there, she was off in dreamland. Every once in a while, her muscles would twitch; Daisy said that was the most traumatic and disturbing part. I saw this happen once or twice as the drugs took hold. Sadie was facing me as Daisy held her, and her eyes did not move once she was in the sleeping trance; I moved my hands back and forth in front of her a few times to see if there was any reaction there, and there was not. There was life, but no reaction. She looked very peaceful and just off in her own little world.

Later, Daisy and I would both agree that once those drugs took hold, Sadie was no longer with us; she was, for all intents and purposes, already dead and starting her journey into the afterlife.

A few minutes later, the vet came back, Daisy placed Sadie on a very soft, comfortable pillow and blanket that was brought into the room, and a small spot was shaved onto her front leg so that the final drugs could be administered. When they were, she was gone within 30 seconds. I reached down to touch her head and her ears one last time to silently say goodbye to her, and felt how warm she still was -- it was as if it wasn't real, as if she were just sleeping, like she always did on my foot under my desk, or against my shoulder in the bed.

"Take all the time you need," the vet said.

"It's okay, you can take her," I told him, almost immediately. I couldn't bear to be there in the room with my dead cat just laying there. I couldn't just sit there and stare at her. "But we may need a few minutes in the room."

Daisy didn't seem to initially understand what was going on until I turned to her and said that I just couldn't sit there staring at her, I couldn't just be there looking at her. But the vet understood. He very gently wrapped her up in the blankets -- covering her like a sheet was being pulled over a body at the morgue -- and very lovingly, gently carried her out of the room. We would not see her again.

It took maybe two or three minutes to compose myself after he left. I did not cry, but I was not exactly okay. Daisy had cried a few times during the entire process. I tried to remain as stoic and unemotional as possible, but it tore me up inside. I need those few minutes of time to center myself and just become a functioning human again.

We thanked all of the vet staff profusely and returned home with an empty cat carrier. 

Sadie will be communally cremated and her ashes spread in the park in the spring, just like Maggie was. I chose this because I wanted her to be with her sister again physically as well as in spirit. Unlike Maggie, there weren't any options for keepsakes of paw prints or anything like that which I was made aware of, and honestly I was okay with that. I got almost eighteen years of unconditional adoration from Sadie, and her end was absolutely as peaceful as possible -- more peaceful than Maggie, even. 

The old girls are together again, and that brings me much peace. Hopefully they've met up in whatever afterlife cats have, if they do indeed have one, and they themselves are at peace. 

We did not bring the empty carrier inside the house; we stripped the towels out of it for laundering and left it in the garage. Inside the house, with the four remaining cats, life seemed to just go on as if nothing had actually happened. I don't think any of the children noticed Sadie was gone -- none of them really interacted with her that much anyway, save for Hank. Hank would check on her and go lay next to her to sort of watch over her if he knew she wasn't feeling well, but that's about it. None of them realized or understood that she was gone and not coming back.

"Did you tell them?" Daisy asked me.

"I did," I said. "It's not like they really understand me, though."

I had to work last night. It was a somber, quiet evening. My post about Sadie's death on Facebook got more reactions and comments than anything I've posted in years, so by the time I got in, most people I worked with in the overnight knew what had happened and treated me very respectfully and with love -- some of them even asking why I was there, asking how I could work after something like that. 

"No point in burning PTO and just sitting around doing nothing," I said. "It doesn't change anything. Besides [my boss] is out tonight."

That was the complete truth, by the way; I could either sit alone in the dark in my room to mourn and basically waste PTO, or I could let life move on. I've been mentally training myself for Sadie's death for years, and while I am still very sad, I am not completely devastated or non-functional. I worked as I was expected to work, I slept as I expected to sleep, and I got up today with one less cat in the house than there was when I woke up yesterday.

Still, I miss my shadow. I miss Sadie terribly. While my eyes have welled up with tears once or twice since her passing, usually when I am discussing her with the wife, I have not cried. I'm not sure that I will. She lived almost a full year longer than her sister, who passed last year on January 19. Almost all of that time was borrowed time. She got to see her 17th birthday (and nearly her 18th, if she'd hung around a few more months) and get party hat pictures taken of her. She got to see one last Christmas and one last New Year's. This cat was born in 2007 and made it to 2025. In 2007, I still lived in Missouri and had only been living in the midwest for about seven or eight months when I got her. Sadie lived a very long, full life -- she lived in three different states, six different residences, and with five total other cats (and for a very short time, three dogs) throughout her life. She never wanted for love, companionship, food, or treats -- never went hungry, always had a warm and safe place to sleep, was never in danger of any sort, and had two parents who loved her very, very much and would protect her with their lives. And I know she knew all of this. I know she knew how loved she really was, and how important she was to us. As I mentioned earlier this week, I think that's why she stuck around with us so long -- she did not want to go. She did not want to go until she had no choice.

As for Daisy and me, we're okay. We're not great, but we're okay. We're dealing with Sadie's death in our own ways. I want us to see if we can donate her medicines to pet owners who are less fortunate and cannot afford them (I don't know if that's possible, of course). We'll also likely donate the food that only Sadie liked to the local shelter where we got Hank, Empress, and Mable so that they can feed their population as well. In a grand sweep of irony, we returned home with our empty carrier to find the new paperwork to re-register all of the cats waiting in the mailbox for us. 

I told Daisy that I have changed my mind -- I do not want another new cat right now. I don't know when, or if, I'll truly want another cat. It will likely not be soon and will likely not be until Pete dies, if even then. There is a good dynamic within the house right now with Pete, Hank, Emmy, and Mable and I would like to keep it that way. Pete, as the last remaining old cat in the house, I also do not want to stress out with yet another one added to the mix -- and Sadie dying really reminds me of Pete's mortality as well, as he was and always has been the oldest; he'll turn 18 in April. He also appeared to search the house for her last night, just looking around everywhere he could with a very sort of depressed look on his face. When he couldn't find her, he just laid down and went to sleep for the night.

The other cats, as I said, don't seem to notice she's missing -- or if they do, they don't really understand or fully grasp that she's not coming back. Mable was not really a fan of Sadie and would always hiss at her when Sadie investigated her or smelled her, but over the past few weeks they seemed to get along better, even cuddling together on the couch on rare occasions. Emmy and Sadie got along fine, especially when Emmy was younger; one of my favorite pictures is of the two of them in the hallway outside my room:

And it was not really uncommon to see Emmy lay with Sadie or cuddle up with her on the couch or in that same spot above outside my office door upstairs.

Hank had a strange relationship with Sadie. When he was younger, he'd pin her to the floor and try to fuck her, which most of the time she seemed to just proverbially roll her eyes at and take it, and other times she'd be like "leave me alone, you weirdo." As he grew up, he seemed to take a protective role over her, especially as her health started to go downhill a lot more after Maggie's death. As I mentioned, he would check up on her, he would lay next to her -- not usually cuddled up, but almost like he was guarding her -- like a protector. I think he knew she was old and that her time was coming soon, and when he realized that, he became her watchman.

Pete and Sadie had a mostly antagonistic relationship, but also likely the closest cat relationship in the house. Don't get me wrong, everyone loves Pete and he loves them, but Sadie had been with him almost her entire life (give or take a month). She curled up with Pete every night and would snuggle in tight with him, even if they'd spent the entire day fighting -- which they did a lot, even up until the very end. She truly loved Pete as much as she loved me or Daisy, even if she showed it differently; she was very bonded to him. He was her rock who was always there, and this was never more apparent than after we lost Maggie. She would have been devastated if Pete had gone before her, as she's definitely the cat who would've wandered the house howling looking for him.

This is the final picture taken of Sadie before her death; Daisy took it while I was holding her shortly before the sedative was administered to her:

She was scared and did not know what was going on, but she was calm and she knew she was loved. I will cherish this last photo of us forever.

So what now?

Life, as always, moves on. Even I myself have to get used to the idea that she is not coming back, that I won't open my door to see her sleeping outside my office in the hallway, get used to the fact that I will never again feel her flop down on my feet while I work at my desk downstairs. I will have to get used to her no longer diligently following me from room to room anymore. All of this is difficult.

I still expect to see her downstairs on the couch when I enter the room. I still expect to feel her cold nose on my legs when I'm standing downstairs at the sink washing her food bowls. I still expect to hear her little quiet chirp of a meow when she's hungry, or to hear her purring in her sleep as she cuddles up with me and Pete on the couch. So yes, it's going to be hard. I told Daisy tonight that it still doesn't feel real, and that I still feel very numb to all of it. It feels like it's all a slightly unpleasant dream that I become lucid in the middle of, but try to wake up from and cannot. 

But, I guess this is all to be expected, right?

I want to stress, again, that we are okay. We don't need pity or sympathy, though the sentiment expressed by everyone thus far has been wonderfully kind and thoughtful. We will get by. Just like Maggie, it will hurt less and less by the day; it will never fully go away, but it will hurt less. 

Holidays 2024, Part XIII: Christmas Day, and the Aftermath

Christmas Day is, as always, experienced with one foot in the past and the other in the present. It is and always has been an emotionally-charged holiday for me, as much as it is for many others, I'm sure. As such, I have tried to start this post three times and have failed each time, deleting paragraph upon paragraph of writing just to start over again.

Before I go further I do want to say that Daisy and I had a wonderful Christmas, both in our own private time at home as well as with her parents. The day itself was nothing special; we went to the parents' in the morning for breakfast, watched the Chiefs game on Netflix, had our taco lunch, and came home in the evening to open our presents for each other and to watch a Christmas movie together (Robert Tinnell's Feast of the Seven Fishes) with the cats. It was a very peaceful, very relaxing day -- just like Christmas should be. 

As I talked up a big game about it before the holidays, this is the list of what I got Daisy for Christmas -- because I can now share it here:

Total cost was about half of what I spent last year on Christmas for her; she wanted a "Treat Christmas" and I gave it to her. If you've never heard of half of the candies/treats above, you should likely look them up. I'm not going to link them. They're all good. The first item was purchased in early September and the last item(s) were purchased and delivered on 12/23.

Here's what she got me -- all that I can remember, anyway -- I'm sure I'll leave something out here or there:

• A new parka, with the money received returning the Anbernic game system that was faulty. Technically I guess this could count as a late birthday present, but it didn't arrive until 12/31, so whatever.
• A box of Aloha bars
• An advent calendar full of snacks/nuts/chocolates
• A large art print of a tattooed, bearded merman (that very much embodies my spirit)
• A giant pack of the Dickies socks I like
• The latest (2024) Uncle John's Bathroom Reader
• Various chocolate bars
• A set of flavored instant coffees
• Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department, Anthology edition, which was a Target exclusive and apparently hard to find
• A cat t-shirt that she designed the art for and printed herself via Printify
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Criterion collection Blu-ray

Again, I'm sure I'm missing some little things here and there, but you get the gist of it.

From the parents, we received a cat stroller so that we can take the kids on walks, and a new set of wonderful bamboo sheets for the bed. Daisy got both her parents an array of items -- jams, marmalade, and a really nice footstool for Dad, and a bunch of Torrid clothing for Mama -- this was in addition to the homemade/handmade lip balms and body butter that Daisy made for both of them as well, and all of the tie dyes I made each of them -- including many pairs of tie-dyed underwear for Mama. 

I am completely done with tie dye now and I don't care if I ever make another tie-dyed shirt again. 

For my own parents, I sent them (you guessed it) a box of tie-dyed shirts to help their collection grow ever larger, a stack of comics for my dad, and a non-slip shower mat and new showerhead with sprayer for my mother's bathroom. I also later sent them a doormat that says, and I quote, "Hope You Like Loud Ass Birds."  

The box we received from them, on my birthday, came with a lot of treats for us, Tim Hortons K-cups, slipper socks (a standby of my mother's, and I love them so I'm not going to complain), some bracelets, bourbon scented soap, and a pie-and-bundt-cake maker machine that looks like a nuclear device with how complicated it is.

We have yet to send the presents we have to Daisy's sister in Ohio, and her other sister in Denver (the one who brought her germ-factory kids to Thanksgiving and infected all of us) has not yet returned to Omaha, so their presents also remain unwrapped and un-delivered as of right now. I guess they both have stuff for us we haven't gotten yet either; it is what it is. 

In the time since I have been mostly exhausted; I have accomplished almost nothing that I wanted to do during the last two weeks of December, and instead spent a lot of time feeling like each day was slipping in and out of consciousness and doing little else. When I returned to work on the 29th, to work the 29th and the 30th, I was simply there, going through the motions -- sometimes as little as possible -- waiting for the clock to hit 7am so I could log out. Both were two very long, dismal, slow nights for me that felt like I was watching paint dry for eight hours straight each night. I did my job, of course, but my heart wasn't in it. I wanted to go sleep upstairs instead.

During this time, this limbo week, both Sadie and Pete had vet appointments -- Daisy found blood clots in Sadie's urine when cleaning the pans, and we took her in to get medication for a UTI (which she does have). When Pete began attacking her every day and then began peeing on the floor, Daisy took him in as well to check him for a UTI (which he does not have, he's just a prick and kicking Sadie while she's down). Last night, in the lead up to the ball dropping, Sadie had what appeared to be a seizure and peed all over the floor. I did not see it happen; I only saw the pee and how dazed she was for a few minutes afterwards. She recovered quickly and seemed mostly fine, though a bit slower for the rest of the night. 

It's becoming very apparent that Sadie is not going to be with us much longer. She has been struggling a lot as of late, and it seems like she's holding on for our sake only -- holding on because she doesn't want to leave us. It's a losing battle, though. Aging comes to the lucky. Sadie has had a great life, a long life, but even with the antibiotics we got from the vet to combat her UTI (which, amazingly enough, she really seems to not mind) I don't know that she'll live long enough to fully recover, or if her body will allow her to. 

It's hard for us, of course, but it's also not -- we have known her time is coming for a very long time and both of us have tried to mentally prepare for it. Maggie went quick, and it was traumatic. Sadie is not going quick; she's been steadily declining for a while. Knowing that, and seeing it every day, isn't really making it any easier, though. I don't want to help her off this mortal coil unless I know that she's not going to have any quality of life left. Daisy is wondering if she'll just die peacefully at home -- just wink out one night (or day, for me) when we're sleeping. I don't want to be premature and take her to the vet saying "I think it's time" if it's really not. So yes, it's hard. Sadie is my shadow and always has been since she was a kitten; wherever I am, she's been by my side since the first week I had her and she bonded with me. I don't want to let her go, but I know I will soon have to. I'm sick about it. 

Last night -- New Year's Eve -- was my last "vacation" day off for the foreseeable future. I wish I could take another week off to rest up and refresh myself, to not have to work the remainder of this week as customers and clients slowly return to work and the post-holidays status quo resumes. I am intensely tired at almost all times, and the longer I work in my job, the more it wears on me. I have a wonderful team under me and a ton of experience in my field, but I also feel like I've accomplished all I can in that job from multiple perspectives and that I need to move on into something new and far easier as I get older. 2025 will be my 11th year working there, with nine of those years spent on overnights. 

I'm also not a fan of New Year's -- I am incredibly wary every January now, waiting for the first things to go wrong in the new year. 2024 was an awful, absolutely dismal year, and I am just so tired of having awful, dismal years. That being said, I hope your new year is a good one and that you can manifest what you need to be happy and healthy. 

I've been trying to manifest a winning lottery ticket and a 1977 Bandit Trans Am in my driveway, and so far it's not been working, sooo.....

Holidays 2024, Part XII: Christmas Eve

 Well hello again, everyone.

Christmas Eve is upon us once again, and I know I have not written here in a while, so let's backtrack a bit over what's transpired during the past few days, from the minor to the more significant:

• Mable is becoming much more of a "daddy's girl," and now that I've been off work for a few days, she has decided that her favorite place to be is in my upstairs office with me -- regardless of whether Pete is in there with me or not. If she is closed out of my office, she will sit at the door and trill/cry loudly until I let her in. 
• We had a pair of guys come look at our downstairs toilet again, as we feared there was something wrong with the trap or wax ring at the base. Nope. Plumbers thought it was all fine, told us to use the downstairs sink every day so that trap didn't dry out, and to put cleaning tablets in the back of the tank of the toilet, deuces folks. Okay. 
• All of my gifts -- all of them that I will be gifting tomorrow -- have now been wrapped. This took multiple hours over a few sessions. 
• I accidentally drank a dose of NyQuil instead of DayQuil on Sunday and slept for over 13 hours.
• We visited Modern Love -- the premier vegan restaurant of Omaha -- one last time for a date day meal yesterday. They are closing on the 29th, permanently. 
• Sadie is, thankfully, still alive.
• We need to sit down with Mable sometime today and get Santa hat-and-scarf photos taken of her for "baby's first Christmas," etc. Because, of course, it's her first Christmas.
• It is still up in the air at present time (no pun intended) whether we'll be doing the traditional Christmas Eve church service with the parents.
• We've still yet to finalize Christmas morning plans, whether we'll be getting up and running over to the parents' early or if we'll be going over later. 
• And, finally, I did get to celebrate my 42nd birthday.

That last one I would usually unpack in its own post, but this year I did not. Honestly, I haven't really had the energy to sit here and write for long stretches of time as much as I would like to -- every day there's been another task to complete, and when there's not, my body and mind have basically been in shutdown mode. Meaning -- I just want to sit in my chair and nap off and on, play a game on my phone or on one of my handheld devices, listen to podcasts, read a little, and not do anything I don't have to. I've been so tired for months on end and this week has allowed me a little downtime to where I can actually get some meaningful decompression...and it's been bookended by holidays so I still have something to look forward to and/or care about in the interim.

To those ends, early in the week last week we finalized plans for my birthday -- I told Daisy I wanted to go mail my box to my parents -- it contained half of their Christmas gifts, the other half were shipped to them via Amazon -- and then go to the mall (Westroads Mall, one of two remaining malls in Omaha) to walk around and take in the Christmas shopping environment, decorations, people, commerce, etc. I then wanted to go to Burlington, as this is generally the absolute best time of year to get stuff at Burlington and when I can generally find all sorts of stuff in my size. After that, we'd go to the local grocery store and pick up the remaining ingredients necessary for my birthday dinner of poutine (fries, a protein of some sort for the side, and string cheese to cut into chunks for the curds). 

I thought this was a pretty solid plan -- just some fun little things to do that wouldn't put pressure on me to have a good time or else, and to just see where the day's adventures took us. 

I wanted to leave the house a little after 9 -- the mall opened at 10, and I wanted to be some of the first people there so we could get a good parking spot and wouldn't be fighting through throngs of people.  Plus, we had to mail my parents their box first. Yeah, it was a Friday morning, and I assumed it would likely be a lot of folks' last day at work before they took the entirety of this week off. I was mostly correct in that, of course, but we'll get to that.

Daisy didn't roll out of bed until after 9, and we didn't leave the house before 10:30 or so. The post office where we mail stuff from is two miles away, inside the local Hy-Vee grocery store. It's really fast and convenient and generally I have zero trouble. It was $26 to mail my parents their box (standard flat-rate shipping) and we picked up a few small items there as well, including taco shells for our Christmas-with-the-parents taco night dinner (this was Daisy's choice, but I'm 100% good with it). 

From there, we went to the mall -- getting there around 11 or so, to find it crawling with people but not completely overrun. It took a bit to find a parking spot rather close to the building -- my birthday was the coldest day for the remainder of 2024, with a high of like 26 degrees and whipping wind -- and we were inside. 

Westroads Mall is a really nice, fancy mall. It's easily in the top ten malls I've ever been to (#1 is some way rich-people mall in Denver that has a Tesla dealership inside it, amongst many other things). And, ten years ago when I first moved to Omaha, it was even nicer than it is now. It was the only mall I'd seen in many years that still had a Suncoast movie store in it well into the 21st century, for example. It's giant, its stores are giant, its food court is awesome, and it is all around a great mall. 

However.

It has probably been five or six years since I've been inside Westroads for longer than half an hour or so. And, in that time, brick-and-mortar commerce has drastically changed. For one, we had a worldwide Covid pandemic, and for two, I can't remember the last time I actually bought a Christmas gift for anyone in a store in-person -- it's all been online for me. Everything this year that I got for Daisy was purchased online. The stuff I got for her parents, my parents, all online. So, I couldn't remember how the mall was really laid out, and the holiday decorations and people everywhere really didn't help much -- or help Daisy much, honestly, she who had been there far more recently than I had been. 

But, it has a TikTok Shop in it.

No, I'm not kidding.

In case you're wondering, it's full of cheap Chinese knock-off bullshit.

The mall has changed quite a bit. Gone are most of the stores we would've been excited to visit -- for Daisy, that means Lane Bryant and Torrid are now gone from the mall. Sephora, where she's gotten some stuff in the past, also appeared to be missing (though I admittedly did not look too closely). For me, sadly, Suncoast is now gone -- I don't know when it disappeared.

[EDIT -- Google tells me 2022.]

In addition to Suncoast being gone, the bulk candy shop is now gone, Auntie Anne's pretzels have been reduced to a small kiosk in the middle of the mall and they only sell three different pretzels, Old Navy was still there and still large, but only carried winter clothing and mostly nothing above an XL, and we took a cursory glance inside Hot Topic but didn't even bother to go inside Spencer's Gifts or Gamestop. Of course, all of the other stores I loved at Christmas time while growing up are long gone and have been for a very long time -- National Record Mart, FYE, Waldenbooks, Kay-Bee Toys, Radio Shack, etc. Can't even get a damn Orange Julius anymore whilst shopping, or a pretzel and nachos from Hot Sam.

Overall it was a bust. Daisy got a little bag of ducks from Five Below -- which has a presence within the mall there now, so figure that one out -- but we got nothing else. I still had fun and it still put me in the Christmas spirit. I made sure Daisy knew that, so that she would not think I was disappointed -- because I wasn't. A bonus to all of this is that we ran into my friend Adam while in the mall, and I got to introduce him to Daisy for the first time. 

The excursion through the mall took about 90 minutes, roughly, and we walked almost two miles. So if nothing else, it was good exercise. 

Our next stop was Burlington -- but we chose the Burlington across town, because the one we usually go to, Daisy had been to earlier in the week to get me a really nice plaid fleece hoodie for one of my birthday presents, and she said it was literally the only nice thing in the store -- the rest of the store looked terrible and rundown and picked over. Undeterred by that, I asked if we could just go to the other one, because my luck with Burlington at this time of year is rarely bad.

Well, this time it was bad.

There were a couple of things in the Burlington we went to that I was moderately interested in, but nothing that jumped out at me that I needed. I am looking for a new coat (I'll get to this in a bit below) and I just can't find one anywhere in my size or the style in which I want without spending $200 or more, which I'm not fucking doing. I would've bought a shirt or two, or a pair of pants or two, but I just didn't need them. I didn't even bother to look at shoes, their housewares/kitchen sections were piss poor, and we purchased nothing. I was shocked. Burlington is usually amazing this time of year. This year it was not. And apparently the other one we normally go to wasn't either, so says Daisy.

So let's recap -- the only thing I'd been truly successful at, at all, during my 42nd birthday was mailing a box of presents to my parents. 

Daisy asked if I'd wanted to do anything else, and I said nah, let's just get the poutine stuff and go do the dinner with the parents. So, that's what we did. We got the groceries, including a few extra things for the Christmas tacos, and went to the parents -- where we had poutine and cake for dessert. I ended up feeling very ill shortly after dinner and had to hit the bathroom multiple times before we even came home...where I again hit the bathroom multiple times. No, not the surf and turf. Just digestive issues because my body is an asshole. 

So what did I get for my birthday? Here's the list:

• An entire tray of homemade, amazing, Little Debbie-style Christmas Tree cakes from Daisy
• A new, blue-and-green plaid patterned shirt jacket ("shacket") hoodie from Daisy
• An Anbernic handheld game device, from Daisy, that I'd apparently had on my Amazon wishlist and had no clue I'd put it on there
• A box of various snacks from my parents, along with a shirt that says REAL MEN LOVE CATS in giant block letters 
• Three pairs of Duluth Trading Co. "Buck Naked" underwear from Daisy's parents
• A hand-sewn passport wallet case from Mama

I was overall very happy with my birthday, even with the intestinal distress at the end of it. Once we got home, after that had passed, I passed out in the chair in my office and slept like the dead for multiple hours, far into the night. 

The Anbernic handheld game device Daisy got me worked for about ten minutes, and then worked about 20% of the time I tried it before it completely froze up and died on me; it's a known/fairly common issue with those devices, and we're returning it so Daisy can get her money back. There are various, very intricate and/or downright stupid things you have to do to fix one of those devices -- which I am not doing -- and I told Daisy "fuck it, let's return it and you can get your money back for it." So, we'll be doing that at some point over the next few days.

Returns have been a big thing over the course of the past week or so; of the four other handheld gaming devices I bought from the TikTok Shop since Black Friday, two of them were defective as well -- one of them had a broken internal LCD display, with a big broken line down the middle of it, and the other (like the Anbernic) worked once or twice before it would never boot up again past the OS loading screen, and if it did try to get past that screen, it would throw an insane number of errors and would reboot over and over with no change. 

Daisy already returned the broken-screened one earlier this week. I'll return the one that doesn't boot myself over the next few days...along with the "5XL US size" peacoat I ordered that would not actually fit most small-to-medium/normal-sized adults. It also arrived on my birthday. Judging from the size of that, I immediately went in and canceled the order for the wine-red one that had still not shipped yet, because I'm not going to be burned twice and have to return yet another item I would've waited on for over a month. 

Needless to say, it's been frustrating. Ironically, all of the gifts I ordered for Daisy for Christmas, as well as the numerous band t-shirts I've ordered from the TikTok Shop, all arrived without incident and were as described and/or as expected. My adventures with the TikTok Shop are done at this point, though; I need to find a way to burn a $39 store credit I have on there in my account, and I'm sure I'll find something I want, but otherwise I have no need to ever even open their storefront again after that.

[EDIT: I did this a few minutes ago; I got a Star Trek hoodie and a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt to kill off that credit.]

So, anyway, back to the present.

Today is Christmas Eve. Daisy has spent the morning wrapping gifts -- not just for me, but for the parents too -- and we are waiting to see if we're going to do the 4pm family church service with the parents. Mama isn't doing too great this morning, but has told us that could change in a matter of hours. We're in a holding pattern at the moment to find out whether it's something we're doing, as the answer one way or the other will determine when we shower and go over to the parents (and of course, it will determine what we're wearing for the day). Daisy and I spared no expense on "finger foods Christmas Eve" where we're planning to do a lot of cheese and crackers and snacky things for dinner/evening with the parents. If we don't go to church, that'll take place earlier in the day and I'll wear sweatpants and loafers because fuck it, it's just the four of us. So, we'll see what happens. I'm pretty easygoing either way.

I'd like to be able to come home this evening and watch a Christmas movie with Daisy, but it's going to require a lot of energy to stay awake that long. My body woke me up around 4am, and my goal is to stay awake all day and all evening, with no naps, just powered by caffeine and excitement for Christmas. I've always had trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve ever since I was a boy; I vividly remember many Christmas Eves that I would just lay awake staring at the ceiling, maybe occasionally dozing off for 20, 40 minutes at a time, just waiting for it to be an "appropriate time" to get up and move about the house in the morning. This did not and has not changed, really, as an adult. 

The exception to this was when I lived alone for a couple of years; I didn't really have any reason to get up early on Christmas morning. Why would I? It's not like I had any plans, presents to give, or presents to open. It was just another day on the calendar for those years. One year I basically completely slept through Christmas (I believe this was 2011) and was happy when it was over. 

The year after that I was up early as well -- it was the last Christmas I spent in West Virginia and I was visiting my parents. I made them a bunch of tie-dyes (so this trend really hasn't changed much) and the weather was so awful that we didn't go anywhere.

The first Christmas I ever spent up here in Omaha with Daisy, before we were married, I was awake at 5am. We were at her parents' house and her sister, our brother-in-law, and (at the time) one kid were there too. I had been to the parents' numerous times, but I'd never been up and about in the house before when everyone had been sleeping. So I crept downstairs, made coffee, played around on my laptop for awhile (this was a time before I had a smartphone) and chain-smoked several cigarettes in the cold on their snow-covered back porch before people started waking up for the day. 

Once we were married and in the apartment together, this didn't change much. I was always thrilled for Christmas with the family as it was something I hadn't really experienced on a regular basis in a very long time. We'd always try to get over there early in the morning when the family was in town, or they'd have breakfast and start unwrapping gifts without us (good luck trying to get young kids to wait until their aunt and uncle arrive from across town). I loved just sitting there and taking it all in, watching the kids tear into things that we'd gotten them and the parents had gotten them, every once in a while opening a gift of our own. There's something about that experience, seeing the joy and the happiness in the kids' eyes, that was magical for me.

I know I've said it here before, but Christmas is really about the kids and about family. I don't need the pomp and circumstance; I certainly don't need the presents. It's about spending time with those who are most dear to you. Some years, in the dark years, that was the cats. In the many years since, that's been Daisy, the cats, her parents, and her family -- whoever is in town during said year for the holidays. Sometimes we attend the church service, sometimes we don't. Sometimes the weather sucks, sometimes it's gorgeous and we could wear shorts and t-shirts if we wanted to (one year it was like 75 degrees on Christmas, which was wild). Some Christmases are better than others. Some Christmases aren't fun at all, and are more exhausting than celebratory. 

This year, it's another quiet Christmas with just us and the parents -- all of the other family are off in faraway lands doing faraway things, so we're just doing The Omaha Christmas™ as a small, muted, quiet affair with the parents. And you know what? I'm okay with that. It has been a very long, very stressful and tiring year, and this will be a good way to just be merry and relax.

Holidays 2024, Part XI: Excitement

 Days until 42nd birthday: 5

Days until Christmas: 10

Days until holiday PTO starts: 4 

After being awake for approximately nine hours, during which I was doing all manner of chores and fulfilling household responsibilities, I crashed out in my chair for several hours. I was then awake for a few short hours in the afternoon before crashing out again and sleeping until 4am, followed by four more hours awake, then another four hours of sleep.

My sleep schedule is fucked, everyone. I don't even know anymore. I will need to drink some strong coffee tonight to reset myself for the last four days I'll be working before the holidays.

Because, yes, we are now in the home stretch -- the last few days of work, the last few days before my birthday, and ten days until Christmas. It will all go much faster than we all think. 

I still have a lot to do, of course. Even though I was done shopping for Daisy in October, the TikTok shop swayed me on a number of items, and I'm waiting on them to arrive. I'd like to wrap all of Daisy's gifts at once if possible; it's going to be a long process simply because there are many little things that will need to be individually wrapped. At this juncture, it's going to be a hail mary on whether all of the stuff gets here before Christmas.

Even the stuff I've gotten for myself off the TikTok shop has taken a very long time; the wine red peacoat, for example, is heavily delayed -- it's possible it won't even get here before late January. I've extended it once (if an order doesn't ship within ten days of purchase, you can either cancel the order or say "yes, I still want it" and it'll push it out another month before automatic cancellation). I've gotten a handful of things really quickly, though -- like within 2-3 days after ordering. The rest is taking forever. It's likely going to be a crapshoot if most or all of it arrives before Christmas, given shipping delays and the overall busy-ness of holiday mail. 

By the way, as far as I know, Canada Post is still on strike, so I'm guessing our family up there will not get their cards before Christmas. They likely won't get them for 2-3 weeks after the strike ends, as it is much slower up there to get cards (or anything) than it is down here. I've gotten a few cards from friends and family this year already, but as you know it's diminishing returns every year. Last year I got 24 cards in return -- this year I have, at this juncture, received four. I'm sure outgoing mail from Canada is affected too, because why wouldn't it be? So that's likely cutting into the reception count.

Overall, I am getting excited -- getting into the Christmas Spirit™ as it were -- as we inch closer to the holidays. Because I am so ready for them. I am so ready to experience a little joy, a little stress-free time with the wife and the family. My birthday I could really give or take, but the lead up to Christmas? Magical.

To those ends, I've got four more days at work and wow will I be checked out during that time. I am already mostly mentally checked out as it is. I am, as they say, over it -- and if I had the PTO I would've put in for this week as well. I should actually plan that better for next year -- just save up as much PTO as possible and take the 15th through the 30th off or something like that, just to be done with it. I mean, if I'm still working there next year at this time, anyway. Given the way they've been terming folks and yanking others to other line groups and teams, who knows. Over it.

Five days out, plans for my birthday are still murky and up in the air. I've floated several ideas to Daisy but I'm not even really that enthusiastic about most of them. I thought Dave & Buster's could be fun to do on a Friday morning when they first open, when there's nobody there -- but it's still likely to be very loud in there and also an expensive trip. I don't want or need another tattoo right now either. Because I'm having occasional intestinal distress that may or may not be caused by Trulicity, I don't necessarily want to go out to eat -- if we do that, I'd rather just get pizza delivered by our favorite mom & pop local shop, and even that I'm not incredibly enthused over at this juncture. There are absolutely zero movies in theaters I want to see right now. Indoor miniature golf, which we did on our anniversary because we thought it would be fun, was a major letdown. 

However, there are a few ideas that I thought might be interesting or fun. 

I told Daisy we could go get her hair cut and make an event of it if she wants -- I would enjoy that just as much as she would. She has said she wants to cut it short -- like really short, and I'm okay with that if she wants to do that. I'm just letting mine grow out for the winter and will keep re-coloring it blue and/or purple until the weather gets warm enough to where I don't freeze when I go outside with short hair. She didn't really seem into this idea that much.

Another thought was to go to JCPenney and get goofy glamour shots done of the two of us -- which I would love and have wanted to do for a long time, but...it is very expensive ($150 bare minimum) and the timing isn't great -- ideally I'd want to do that for Christmas card photos, and all of the cards have already been sent. I also can't get those photos done and end up waiting a year before I share them online, no -- they would be posted ASAP for the world to see. Also, you have to make an appointment for this, you can't just waltz in there and say take pictures of us, bitches or something to that effect. It's a decent idea but maybe it's best left for another event holiday. 

My other thought was that...I really, really miss the mall around Christmastime, and Omaha does have a big, still rather thriving mall called Westroads. I told Daisy I would just love to wander through the mall, look through various stores, see if there's anything I/we want just to see if I can recapture some of that nostalgic spirit by pretending it's still the 80s and 90s. Daisy thinks I'll end up frustrated and disappointed, and that is indeed possible. Making a run through Burlington is another option. I wish Kmart was still a thing. 

This year's birthday just feels directionless for some reason -- in other years we've had set tasks to do, things to look forward to and accomplish to really feel celebratory. A couple of those years it's been tattoos (2019, 2021), a few of them have been tentpole movies like the Star Wars films or a comic book movie, and last year the entire day was spent looking for the cat who would become Empress (we didn't find her until four days after Christmas). I don't want my birthday to be frustrating and unhappy, but I also don't want to just sit at home and be like "well, I'm 42, I guess." I just want to do something fun, and it's so tiring and frustrating to find something I'm actually interested in. 

I also know that my energy will be limited, likely; no matter how much rest I get, I will feel like crashing in the late afternoon/early evening hours. When I am off work I am very much a morning person -- I know how weird that sounds, yes -- but I'm the guy who sleeps a few hours in the overnight and is up by 4am, 5am, taking care of things for the day. Daisy is not a morning person and will sleep until noon or later if she can. So, if we're going to do things on my birthday, that will absolutely need to change. I'd like to be out the door and on whatever adventure we're doing by 9am. 

Whatever happens I will write about here, of course.

In other news...

Sadie is getting really close to her time, we think. I don't know if she'll make it to the new year. She's just old and her body is giving out, and she's trying to hold on -- I think, for us. I don't really think she's in pain or anything, but the winding-down process is accelerating, and it's now become very noticeable. As I told Daisy, it would be very 2024 of her to just up and die between now and the end of the year. Daisy made the joke that it would be cosmically funny were she to die on my birthday and have dealing with that be my "birthday activity." I told her if that happens we'll be taking care of the arrangements and immediately going to try to adopt a new kitten -- because not only will that not let/make me grieve terribly for the old girl, it would be a bright spot for my birthday.

Let's hope that doesn't happen though, okay? I've had enough emotional trauma for this year. 

Plus, I did the whole "let's find a kitten" thing last year on my birthday, and I'm sort of over that as well.

Anyway.

Daisy still has a lot to do before the holidays -- she has to finish up hand-crafting gifts for her sister(s) and we have to get those in the mail, along with the tie-dyes I made for their family and the box of stuff I'm sending my parents. My parents sent me/us a box too, as they do every year; it arrives tomorrow. I have no idea what is in it. I already sent half of their Christmas gifts for the year yesterday, via Amazon -- they arrive on Saturday the 21st, unless Amazon is slower down there. Anything I send my parents I do so with a grain of salt on the delivery dates, because with them living on an island it's apparently just as difficult to do deliveries there as it was when they lived on top of a mountain in West Virginia. 

I am still excited though, despite the fact that I have zero birthday plans, our old lady is likely slowly dying, and we both just had Covid -- I have something to look forward to, finally. Every night I'm working this week is one night closer to freedom from that job for ten straight days. Every obstacle can be overcome or ignored for the next four days of work. After that I can sleep when I want, I can eat when I want, I can lounge about playing video games and reading and writing and wrapping presents. I can be free for a short ten days. 

That may end up being the best gift of all. 

Holidays 2024, Part X: Falling Into Place

 Days until 42nd birthday: 6

 Days until Christmas: 11

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 5

I have now recovered from Covid almost completely. I still have a bit of residual congestion, though I think that can also be chalked up to allergies too, who knows. The weather has been very cold this week, with snow flurries off and on -- and then today we got snow and ice, turning Omaha and the surrounding area into a skating rink and causing all sorts of accidents around town. Luckily, neither of us have had to go anywhere.

Daisy has also recovered almost completely from Covid, and is pretty much back to normal. She left the house for the first time today (before the bad weather) since...well, Black Friday, I guess, to pick up groceries and run a few errands. The parents also seem pretty recovered as well, as both of them went to go see Wicked in the theater yesterday. So, I assume we're done with this round of sickness and we can now move on with our lives.

Daisy still wants to test herself again tomorrow to see if she's testing clear. I'll likely do the same thing just to be able to prove that I'm in the all clear now as well. 

Everything is slowly falling into place as we head into the holidays. I don't know exactly how to describe it or why -- absolutely I don't understand the why, as something awful usually happens when everything seems to be going well -- but I can't argue with the results:

• All Christmas cards have been mailed, like two weeks ago -- and I have gotten a few in return
• All Christmas shopping has been done for a while, though I did get the wife a few more things from the TikTok shop -- more on this below
• Cats seem to be in decent enough health and happy, even though Pete's anxiety has been spiking
• For now, my job seems to be somewhat stable
• Bills are being paid or have already been paid, and we have groceries in the house
• The weather has not been really bad yet this winter, and
• I seem to be in pretty good health overall now that the Covid has gone away

I also have this newfangled thing that I don't get very often and haven't had in a long time -- downtime. Free time. Time where I can actually relax a bit and decompress, sleep when I need to (most of the time) and just...be me. And this is good, because there's a lot of things I'd like to be able to accomplish with that downtime. 

I know -- the irony, right? But they are spiritually-fulfilling things. Keep in mind that sleep is also spiritually-fulfilling to me, so the bar is sort of low at this point. But that doesn't mean I don't still have a to-do list to take care of. I do, and there are a lot of things on it. Most of them are small tasks or errands, but it's still a list.

I slept most of the day, was up for a few hours in the evening, and then went back to sleep for a while -- so now, in the overnight hours, I'm awake and systematically taking care of tasks one by one while I have the energy to do so. I have stripped the blankets out of my chair and am washing them, I will strip the blankets off the couches downstairs and wash them next, and then I'll likely wash the cats' water fountain and take a shower. During all of this I also plan to look into enrolling for healthcare for 2025 (the deadline for my enrollment with my job is Tuesday), set up a Walmart delivery order, see if I need to do an order from Amazon for household essentials, back up my hard drive, feed and pill the cats, take a shower for the first time in three days, and then...maybe...if I have any energy left, start wrapping presents.

I don't know that or if I'll get all of these things accomplished today. All of this takes a lot of energy that I don't normally have and can't normally sustain for long periods. But, Daisy is asleep and I just want to get everything that I can accomplish done while I have the time and energy. I can rest when I need to, and I will once my holiday PTO kicks in, but for the next eleven days I have a lot that must still be done. At the same time, I also want to just sit in my chair and play a video game. 

[Edit: almost none of these things happened.]

Holidays 2024, Part IX: Recovery

 Days until 42nd birthday: 12

 Days until Christmas: 17

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 11

This entire weekend has been about recovering, slowly, from the depths of Covid. I am almost completely normal again. I have a mild sinus infection, as I will generally get one anyway after I'm sick with almost anything, but thankfully it is very mild. Sinus infections generally clear up pretty quickly for me these days, unlike the old days when I was a smoker and they would take weeks to heal -- sometimes requiring antibiotics. Most of the time now I can kick them out of my system in a few days with minimal discomfort. 

Daisy has been mostly okay, but she is also still slowly recovering -- as mentioned previously, she's a few days behind me in that process. We've both spent the weekend doing as little as possible, just trying to rest. Her parents are not doing so hot -- Mama says yesterday was the worst day thus far, and Dad is struggling too.

Because we've been isolated and haven't really been doing anything but, well, resting, Daisy and I have had a lot of quality time together this weekend -- quiet time where we're just on the couch together or in bed together hanging out with the cats. I expect this trend to continue throughout the day today as well; while I'd normally be up early-ish on a Sunday, it's usually for football -- the Chiefs are the evening game this week, so I can sleep as much or as long as I want into the afternoon.

We do, however, think Pete has Covid. Cats can get Covid -- it was pretty well-documented during the pandemic. Pete has had pretty terrible anxiety again this past week or so when for the past few months, he's been mostly okay -- and he has diarrhea. Diarrhea is one of the telltale signs in cats. Given his propensity to sleep with us like a teddy bear and be right up in our faces no matter what, well...it's likely he's gotten it. 

I told Daisy not to worry; he more than likely had it last year when we had Covid at that time as well, and he (or any of the other cats) do not seem to be suffering from any adverse or otherwise strange health concerns at the moment. Diarrhea in the pans are nothing new for this household as we have five cats and five pans. Cats get upset stomachs from time to time just like we do. 

Anyway, "cat Covid" basically just has to run its course like it does in us. I guess.

I have nine working days left until my holiday vacation starts. I'm sure they're all going to go as slow as mud. This week is the last full week for me until after the first of the year, though. All five days this week, four next week, and then I'm off for ten straight days. Trying to fill the schedule for the holidays at work has been a nightmare thus far, and I can't help it if people don't want to work over the holidays -- I certainly wouldn't. I also can't force anyone to work the holidays, as per our company they are paid holidays and they don't have to work them if they don't want to. 

We've also lost a lot of our team in the past several weeks/months; about fifteen or so agents from the After Hours team were either outright fired or moved to other programs. I lost three of mine. Now, granted, none of them were huge losses to my team or the program in general, but warm bodies in seats does mean something when it comes to holiday coverage, and two of those three would always volunteer to work every holiday. 

The whole program is going through a lot of changes and it is going to look very different after the new year. I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled about the direction it's heading in, but I still have a job, a paycheck, and my nightly duties to perform, even if those duties become more difficult as time goes on. As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, not one of these changes my workplace rolls out ever makes the job easier or makes it better. Ever. Not one, never, not ever, not one single thing. I absolutely long, absolutely lust for a change that would make my job easier, with less responsibility and accountability, with a higher paycheck. 

So, that and the Covid have both been weighing heavily on my mind and have really stopped me from getting into the Christmas spirit as much as I would really like to. The election results last month didn't help much either. I'm in a weird headspace enough as it is without all of that stuff not grinding me down.

I've written here before about my nostalgia of holidays past -- when times were simpler, when times were very different than they are now. I've gone into that here a lot in the past, so I won't rehash it again. I do miss Christmas Shopping Trips™ though -- just making marathon runs through malls and stores one after another, the excitement of it being part of the season, seeing all of the people and all of the lights, and being excited; I miss the anticipation and the build-up of knowing no matter what else happened, around my birthday there would be the big mall trip to Pittsburgh. 

And then I think and realize that the last time I did this was easily twenty years ago, and it's been eighteen years that I've been living on my own away from home. Hell, my parents don't even live back home anymore. Everything is so different now. Nearly all of my Christmas shopping is now done online, via Amazon or Walmart (or, as of late, the Tiktok shop). It feels so impersonal, and trust me it also feels much more expensive. 

Christmas this year will just be the four of us -- me, Daisy, and the parents. There were supposed to be a lot more of us but that's not how plans ended up going. I am okay with a quiet and more subdued Christmas. I honestly just want to be comfortable and at peace, with my wife and the family. Some food, some presents, time spent with the cats on the couch watching a Christmas movie, etc.

More than anything else I long for rest and recuperation. I'm beginning to feel exhausted this month already, and I'm sure the Covid isn't helping that. My body just wants to sleep. It wants 2024 to stop. It wants quiet time without stress and without responsibilities. My body, and psyche, want my holiday vacation days to feel like a true vacation. I don't want to think about work, I don't want to think about the bills that need to be paid or bad weather or the fact that this will likely be the last Christmas for Sadie and maybe even for Pete -- I desperately want all of that pushed out of my head, off the table, and set aside for just a few weeks. 

Holidays 2024, Part VIII: We Do Not Have Time for This Shit

 Days until 42nd birthday: 15

 Days until Christmas: 20

 Days until Holiday PTO starts: 13

We are now one week past Thanksgiving. I started getting Covid symptoms -- if you count the surf-and-turf, which at this point I basically have to count as the start of it -- six days ago. That means Black Friday was day zero, and I am now on day five.

I am mostly okay at this juncture. I am still fighting off some minor fatigue and still have major congestion in my head and chest, but overall I'm fine. I'd say I'm at about 80% and holding steady, with no real decline or backslide that isn't easily fixed with another dose of DayQuil or some decent sleep. 

For Daisy, she started her symptoms a day after I did and is probably two or more days behind in recovery. It's still taking its toll on her, but she is indeed better than she was. Complicating matters for her is that over the weekend, Mable tripped her while she was walking down the stairs, and she fell down a few of them and bashed multiple body parts in the process -- so she is very sore and recovering from that too. She relayed today that had that not happened, she'd likely be a lot further along in recovery. The NyQuil/DayQuil combos are helping her too.

The parents...well...the parents are not doing too hot. All four of us tested positive on Sunday (I believe), at approximately the same time. Mama is still really sick and says it's the worst bout of Covid she's had, and she's had it a few times. Dad, who was already having some health issues, also tested positive but seems like he's weathering it okay for the most part. But, Dad tends to suffer quietly and isn't the type to burden anyone else with his health issues. They're both still very old and it will take its toll on them harder than on us, likely. 

I did have to take off Monday -- I did not want to, but I really had no choice. I would not have been able to sit upright at my desk and concentrate all night long. I'm not concerned about the PTO hit at this juncture; nobody's said anything to me about it and my leadership was primarily concerned with my health and recovery more than anything else, so if they let it slide and don't mention it, I'm fine with it -- I am salaried anyway, it's not like it actually matters. I returned to work on Tuesday to great fanfare and well-wishes from my staff and agents. Tonight is my final night of work for the week and believe me, I am glad for that. 

Daisy's sister and her second-oldest son, the disease carrier, both tested negative for Covid once they returned home after Thanksgiving (despite both of them still feeling ill). I guess they left it all here in Omaha. 

Wildly enough, as I've been recovering I've been sleeping really well, even if it's a bit less than I'd like -- and that recovery and sleep has not been aided by NyQuil. I'll go to bed and will wake up feeling actually rested, actually healed a little. And then an hour after I wake up, my body realizes it's not only awake but it's still sick, and I will absolutely have to take more DayQuil to counteract it. So, yeah, this isn't completely out of my system yet -- nowhere close. I would imagine I'll probably still test positive a week from now or more. But, it's going.

However, as it slowly goes, time moves ever faster towards the holidays. Christmas is less than three weeks away. My birthday is a little more than two. And there is a lot that still needs to be done:

• Daisy has to finish up her Christmas gifts for the family -- it involves handcrafting some things. It's not something that can be done while she's sick, so she still has to wait on that.
• Most of those aforementioned things have to be mailed to those family members, from the post office, in a flat-rate box.
• I already have a flat-rate box for them packed and sealed, ready to go, to mail to those family members (so I'll have to do that too, and will have to be well enough to do that).
• I have to get for my own parents what I've been planning to get for them, order and ship it to them, and then ship another flat-rate box of stuff to them from home. I also need to be well for this, so that I'm not sending them a box of Covid-infected items. 
• The final set of Christmas cards still needs to be delivered to me, and I have to address/envelope/stamp and send those out within the next week or so.
• We have to figure out if we're doing Christmas Eve church services or not with the parents.
• I have to figure out what, if anything, we're planning to do for my birthday this year.
• I have to help finalize the holiday schedule for work (even though I won't be there) because I'm basically in charge of the entire overnight crew.
• Wrap all the presents for Daisy.
• Wrap all the presents for the parents.
• Wrap all the presents for the disease carriers, who apparently will NOT be in town for Christmas.

It's a lot. I'm sure there's stuff on there I'm completely forgetting about right now that will become more apparent in the next few days or weeks.

People have already started receiving their Christmas cards for the year -- both Daisy and I have been getting responses here and there from friends and family about how much they love them. As all 60 were mailed by this past Saturday, I'm sure that most people -- aside from the Canadians on the list -- have gotten them by now. 

Why would the Canadians not have theirs? Welllll....

So, that's a thing that started. Wanna guess what day I sent out all of the cards to Canada?

No idea when the Canadian family will get their cards. I'm guessing it could be into January or later depending on how the strike goes. I don't know much about the strike other than from what I've seen online, a lot of folks are on the side of the postal workers, despite the inconvenience caused to the general public.

Still, can you imagine if the whole of the USPS just up and went on strike here in the states? In less than a week people would be burning down post offices. This country would lose its goddamn mind.

Anyway.

So, I guess after tomorrow I should technically be "good" to leave the house and stop self-isolating, per health guidelines -- though I don't plan to go anywhere or do anything but rest and recover this weekend and try to knock some of those above items off my to-do list. Both Daisy and I are being intentional about trying to recover slowly and carefully, because we don't want a relapse infection. We had a relapse the first time we had Covid and were knocked flat again for about another week before we finally were able to kick it out of our systems, and we just can't afford to be down another week with this bullshit if it can possibly be avoided -- there's just no time for it. So, my weekend will hopefully consist of sleeping and resting with as much downtime as possible in order to attempt to rebuild my battered immune system.

Holidays 2024, Part VII: Sidelined

 It's Covid. Daisy and I both have Covid. 

Yeah, turns out that the surf and turf of Black Friday may not have been food poisoning after all -- that is one of the symptoms of the new strains, I guess. Not everyone gets it.

Yesterday, we began to feel more and more sickly all day, into the afternoon and evening hours. It got to the point where we were both googling Covid symptoms just to check them, at the same time, without telling the other person. At that point, I was just like "fuck it, let's just test ourselves."

Mine came back positive within a minute -- it's supposed to take 15-30 minutes. Daisy's took a few minutes but the positive line on her test came in much darker than on mine, indicating a high viral load. 

I guess. Truthfully I have no idea scientifically how those tests work. I think they're supposed to test not for the virus itself, but for antibodies or something. 

Regardless...we're sick. 

I am mostly lucid and am feeling -- cognitively, at least -- pretty normal. I have big time, wicked head congestion, runny nose/sneezing, and an awful cough, but I'm not dying or anything. Daisy, however, is really sick. She sounds like death, has a near-constant fever/chills, and in general is not doing well. I have already started to lose a bit of my smell and taste (though not all of it, thankfully) and she has not.

More than anything else, I'm just tired. The fatigue is just draining. Were it possible and/or comfortable, I'd be sleeping the majority of the next 24 hours or so. I should be okay to work for the rest of the week, provided the illness doesn't take a really bad, wild turn somewhere. Regular intervals of DayQuil and Mucinex are helping, greatly so. I notice a huge difference when I am medicated versus when I'm not, which is good -- it means the medicine is working the way it's supposed to. 

We did, of course, let Daisy's parents know and let her sister and family (now safely back in Denver) know as well. The parents, mom at least, are testing negative so far. We'd like that to continue. I don't know about the sister's family yet, but I know the sister herself had already told Mama that she was really sick upon returning home...and remember, her second-oldest son (who sat next to us at the Thanksgiving table) was sick on the way into town, so I think we've found the likely disease vectors here.

The sickness does, however, throw a bit of a wrench into our plans for the next week or so. We now have to self-isolate for at least five days (which isn't a problem for me, because I never leave the house unless I have to), and that means the dentist appointment we had scheduled for Wednesday morning is now definitely going to be canceled. It means Daisy can't go run errands or get groceries during the day when I'm sleeping. It means delaying mailing out my Christmas boxes for folks by at least another week.

I guess I can look forward to my Tiktok shop stuff showing up over the course of the next two weeks or so, right? Right?

Anyway. I digress.

The last time we had Covid was February 2023. That was actually our first time having it. I got my kidney stone exactly one month later. So, I'm going to try to avoid repeating that scenario this time around -- I'm going to drink a lot of water, avoid excess vitamins/supplements, and just try to cleanly recover as much as I can. We've got so many things coming up this month as we have the lead up to Christmas. Here's the rough calendar as is, that will absolutely get stuff added to it over the course of the month:

• December 2 through 18: work as normal for me.
• December 10: Repairman appointment for our adjustable bed frame, which is behaving badly.
• December 13: Payday.
• December 19 through 28: I'm off work for my "Christmas vacation." 
• December 20: My 42nd birthday.
• December 27: Also payday. 
• December 29 and 30: work as normal for me.
• December 31: off for New Year's Eve.
• January 1: work as normal for me, I cover the holiday.

There will be a lot more thrown in as the month progresses. I have to see if I can get in for a doctor appointment at some point with my new PCP, in order to get refills on all of my meds. I do not for the life of me know when that's going to happen. I also don't know for a fact that Daisy is completely done Christmas shopping, and we'll certainly have to get some foods for Christmas dinner -- which, I learned will just be the four of us this year (us and the parents). 

I will, of course, have to make time to wrap presents for everyone (whether they're in town or not) and mail out packages to extended family like my own parents. I'll also have to deal with the final batch of Christmas cards over the next few days too, once they arrive.

Don't worry -- for those of you who get cards from me in the mail (so, like 1% of 1% of people reading this), you won't get Covid from the cards. They were all sealed up and done before I had any contact with the patient zeroes at Thanksgiving dinner. By the time the others get here in the mail and I send them out, this crud should be completely out of my system.

What am I doing in the interim to feel better? Well, unless this gets worse, I'm thinking the worst part of it I might already be through -- given the surf-and-turf on Friday and how bad I felt on Saturday evening and most of Sunday. My goal is to just rest as much as possible, to stay hydrated, to keep taking my meds at regular intervals, and to just try to ride it out, as they say. I'm probably at around 60% right now, but Daisy is likely around 20-30%. My goal is to hang loose and see how long it takes for this shit to dissipate.