There Be Whales Here: Canada 2024, Part IV

 Mama did not come with us for the whale-watching experience. She said it would make her extremely seasick, which is fair. It was also going to be a very long day -- we were not sure how long when it started, honestly. I'd caffeinated myself with Reign and Monster and I had slept well the night before, so to me it was what it was. We grabbed some coffee from -- where else -- Tim's of course, and headed up onto the island. Our destination was Pleasant Bay, where the whale-watching boats set off from.

This. Was not a short trip.

As you can see, Pleasant Bay is nearly at the northernmost point of Nova Scotia -- nearly at the northernmost point of the northernmost chunk of Cape Breton Island. It is, as of 2024, the furthest north I've ever been on this planet. It is surrounded by the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To the north and northeast is Newfoundland and Labrador, and to the west is continental Canada -- New Brunswick. But, to the east of Pleasant Bay, once you round the tip of the island -- it is the completely open Atlantic Ocean all the way to Europe. 

This planet is a remarkable place.

Now, mind you, I've never been that far up on the island before. My previous experiences only took me as far north as Margaree Harbour, which is a little more than the halfway point on that line. If you go further north after that juncture, you'll hit Cheticamp -- which is the entrance to...

And the actual beginning to the world-famous Cabot Trail -- which if you look at the map above and follow the road, makes a large, very long circle around the northern half of the island. 

And oh sweet holy fuck is it beautiful.

I've mentioned that I wanted to go up through the Cabot Trail since 2015 -- my first visit to Canada. We never got the chance as it is 100% an all day trip, and would take many many hours to complete the whole trail, even by car. 

But, to get to Pleasant Bay, you have to drive up through the first half of the Cabot Trail, as Pleasant Bay is within the park itself. So, at Cheticamp, you have to pay a ridiculous fee of like $30 per car to get up into the park just for the day, and you're then allowed to drive up the mountains. And they are mountains to be sure.

Words cannot describe the beauty of the Cape Breton Highlands or the Cabot Trail. I don't even know that pictures or video can truly do it justice. It is, simply, the most beautiful place I've ever been on the planet. It is miles and miles of going up and down mountains, breathtaking scenic overlooks, incredibly steep cliffs, the cleanest and most blissfully fragrant ocean air imaginable, all set against a backdrop of an endless blue sea and hundreds of thousands of trees.

There's also, apparently, a moose population in the Cape Breton Highlands. We saw zero moose. Lots of bikers, though -- both motorcycles and bicyclists. My guess is that the bicyclists were driving their bikes to the top of the mountain passes and then biking back down, because the mere thought of biking up those mountain passes gives me chest pains.

Anyway.

When we got to Pleasant Bay and got to the whale-watching jumpoff, we found that the weather had not been kind to the sailors that morning, and they wanted to push back our trip out of the bay by two hours -- so that the sea could have some time to settle and so that we could have a better chance of seeing some actual whales. The tour earlier in the day had not seen any whales whatsoever, and they had a sort of ill-defined policy where if whales aren't seen, you get a refund (according to Daisy, they issue you a gift certificate sort of thing that you can use for a free trip another time). However, when a few people who were also scheduled to be on the boat with us couldn't come back in two hours, the tour guide pulled them aside and told them they'd get full refunds for the booking, so who knows.

In the interim time we were waiting, all of us hit up a gift shop up the road, and Daisy got a few things there. I also got myself a baseball cap that matched hers, and Daisy went back inside afterwards to pick up a bottle of coffee-infused maple syrup that I really wanted but didn't want to risk traveling with -- which I still haven't cracked open yet. At the time I was very concerned that it might burst in my luggage while flying; it did not, thankfully (nothing did, but I'll get to that eventually). After killing some time there in the gift shop, we returned to the cove the boats launched from.

Aside from our clan -- which was nine people total -- there were probably 10-15 other people who would be on the boat with us. This was a few families of various backgrounds, and some older couples. I heard various languages spoken by them on the boat once we finally got on it, mostly French (because, well, Canada). This wasn't a cheap little whale watching thing where they threw people onto rafts with outboard motors or anything like that -- oh no, this was on a small fishing vessel that had been converted for tours with the most baseline conversion tools possible. But, it was a solid boat with some powerhouse diesel engines. However, it had low sides, bench seating, and no real safety equipment like seat belts or anything like that. You had to hold onto well-worn metal rails, and those rails were your lifeline -- if the boat pitched too far to one side or hit the crest of a wave just right, your ass would fly off the boat into the water. 

And so, we were off -- the boat took us all out about seven miles offshore (according to the captain and tour guide) and I believe it -- we were in pretty open water, and the coastline of Cape Breton Island was pretty far off in the distance. 

I was excited -- I've been on boats before, of course, but they've been like, consumer-grade pontoon boats or small houseboats, or rowboats. The only other boat I've been on like this was when Daisy and I took the Navy Pier tour of Lake Michigan for views of the Chicago skyline from the water, and it was a much larger version of this same sort of vessel. 

But I do look good in photos when I'm on a boat, it turns out. 

This boat was much different -- you felt every wave, every movement, every turn, every fire-up or slowdown of the engines. Much more importantly, when they suddenly stop the boat when whales are spotted, if you're not secure in your footing, you will go flying from the inertia. I know this because I did, and almost crushed my niece. 

This niece, the one who adores her uncle Brandon:

She's such a sweet kid, and she was gripping me tightly almost the entire time we were on the boat. Daisy, of course, took the pictures. 

We had hoodies and/or other protective gear like hats and jackets on because, well, being out in the open water on a boat is wet. I made sure before the trip to order a pack of waterproof phone case lanyards for the family to use -- little pouches you slip your phones into when you're at the beach and the like -- and hang them around your neck. Once we got there I distributed them to the family so they could take their phones out and take pictures or video of the experience without having to worry about ruining their phones. A five-pack of them was $10 on Amazon, but foresight is priceless. All of the pictures, including the two above with my niece and the one below of me and Daisy, were taken through these cases.

We saw two whales -- Minke whales, apparently, per the tour guides, which are pretty common up there. They're not huge like humpbacks are (which are also seen up there quite often around the year at different times) but look very similar. The two we saw were maybe 20-30 yards from the boat, so we weren't right up against them or anything, but we did get a somewhat closer view of a harbor seal on the way back in, as it was hunting for its dinner (presumably). 

The entire trip took maybe 90 minutes or so, but it was exhilarating. I love being out on the water. I don't get seasick and after a few minutes, I can get my footing and balance pretty well. I wonder if I was a sailor in a past life or something, as there are many times I feel like I'm not meant to be on land, but on the open waters. 

When the tour ended, we went our separate ways with the rest of the family -- they had a long drive back down to Petit de Grat, and we found out the next day they took the long way and drove all the way down the other side of the Cabot Trail -- completing that giant circle I mentioned above on the map. We did not; we returned the way we came, hit a gas station in the first town that resembled civilization, and made our way "home" to the AirBNB.

Most of the days of the trip were spent like this, actually -- starting early in the morning, spending all day doing multiple things, and then ending at the homestead or AirBNB very late, spent and tired. There were, however, some nights of relatively free downtime where we had dinners at our makeshift home and watched Netflix just peacefully and quietly, just the two of us. 

However, by this point the Nova Scotia portion of the trip was coming to a close -- we had one final day with everyone at the homestead, and Daisy spent a good chunk of it taking pictures of everyone possible, including full-family pictures, posed and everything. It was very sweet and peaceful day, but it was a very long trip and I was beginning to feel thankful that it was coming to an end soon -- both Daisy and I were tired and fatigued and wanted to be home with our cats.

Beach'd Out: Canada 2024, Part III

 Unlike some other visits -- notably last year's -- the family was waiting for us this time around. As in, all of them knew we were coming and bringing Mama with us, and all of them were awaiting our arrival or were otherwise planning to be in when we were there. Daisy's cousin and his daughter had flown in from Alberta a week in advance to align their vacation time with ours. Her other cousin had come up from New Brunswick a day or two before. Yet another cousin who lives basically between the family homestead and Halifax (easiest way to describe it, really) was coming in for the weekend and would later join us, with her two kids, in PEI (we'll get there). All of these cousins are children of the same uncle who lives next door to the family homestead, so they all had a base of operations. 

Almost all of the other living aunts and uncles (so, two couples, four people, including the daughter of one of the couples -- five -- another cousin) had also planned time to come into town to see all of us while we were there, with varying arrival times throughout the first week or so we were there. And, of course, Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five children would arrive from Pennsylvania several days after we would. 

This...is a lot of people. When all of us were there in one place, group family photos were taken and we had close to twenty people in said photos. Actually, there may have been more; I haven't seen most of the photos yet as Daisy took them on her fancy new phone, with a tripod attachment.

It is also just a lot in general. I have mentioned here before that when I'm on vacation, especially a destination vacation like Nova Scotia, I really like having things to do every day, places to go, people to see -- this was the fourth time I've been to Canada in ten years, and the third time in as many years (2022, 2023, and now 2024). I know my way around. I know all the things we do and the daily missions we undertake. I know the people we come to see and the people who come to see us, too. However, going into Canada this time around, I was -- severely -- burnt out. 

2024 has been a miserable year, in case you haven't noticed. Almost everything that could've gone wrong in 2024 up to this point, short of the deaths of friends and family (none so far, as of this writing) has gone wrong, and I've documented a lot of it here. I have not documented all of it, and I have reasons why I haven't documented some things -- mainly for privacy's sake. So let's just run down the shortlist, shall we, of shitty things that have happened so far this year:

• Maggie took a hard turn and died very quickly
• Daisy's car died on the freeway in the middle of traffic and cost us a good chunk of money to repair
• Daisy was sick for months to the point where we didn't know if she'd need to go on disability or not
• It was -20 for like a week straight in the winter months and we didn't know if we could keep the house warm enough to keep all of the pipes from freezing
• We had several awful snowstorms almost back-to-back
• The washing machine died, necessitating its replacement
• Pete and Sadie's health have both started a steep decline -- I'm not sure Sadie will last the rest of the summer -- Sadie was diagnosed with diabetes and hyperthyroidism and Pete is in the middle stages of kidney failure and also has hyperthyroidism
• We've had the worst tornado season and severe storm season that the midwest has seen in about twenty years, with numerous tornado scares around our area

Who would've guessed more was coming after that? Well...we'll get to that.

Anyway.

I wanted as much downtime as possible on this vacation. The AirBNB we were staying in was a wonderful little place -- it had three bedrooms, a positively giant big-screen wall-mounted TV, onsite washer and dryer/dishwasher/side-by-side fridge, fast wifi, a giant deck that overlooked the ocean with a hot tub on one end of it, TVs in every room on the dressers, etc. It was everything we could've wanted in a place we'd be staying in for almost two weeks (and I did not ask Daisy the cost of it, because I did not and still do not want to know).

And...we were barely there. With everyone in town and plans to be had, I'd venture the guess that we were at the family homestead or on the road to a destination far more than we were in the AirBNB. There was but one day I got of quiet, peaceful downtime in the house -- when Daisy and her mother drove to the other end of the province to see her mother's aunt. Or great aunt, or cousin, or something -- I can't remember the relation off the top of my head, honestly. That day, I sat down in the dining room of the house with my notebook and a pen and wrote almost nonstop; I wrote twenty-five pages of the screenplay I've been wanting to write for years. When typed up, it will likely be more like fifteen pages, and I haven't even gotten into the first big plot point yet -- it's more just introducing the characters to the audience and showing how they interact at this juncture.

After that point, Daisy returned home and our hectic days continued. I got to meet Daisy's aunt (uncle's wife) for the first time -- she wasn't there for Daisy's grandfather's funeral in 2022 and I didn't get to meet her in 2015 or 2023 either, though we have talked extensively on Facebook and she is a very sweet person. One day we went on a beach adventure with Daisy's cousin and his daughter -- what really just ended up being an adventure of "let's drive up Cape Breton Island and...go where the road takes us, stop where we want to stop, see what beaches are up here, see what gift shops are in these little towns, etc" -- and that was a full, really fun day where we explored two different beaches, a cove or two, a small beachside park and hiking path (we did not hike) and the cutest little touristy gift shop where I got a baseball cap and Daisy got a flamboyant sequined shirt with a leopard (or some other big cat of some sort) on it. 

Speaking of flamboyant, we were in Canada in June -- Pride Month -- and holy shit does Canada take Pride Month super seriously. Pride flags are flying everywhere. And when I say "everywhere" I mean outside of police stations, government offices, churches, etc -- alongside the Canadian flag, the Nova Scotia provincial flag, and the First Nations flag. A giant Catholic church in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island was not only flying a pride flag but also had HAPPY PRIDE written on the church sign. Can you imagine that happening in the states? At a Catholic church? I was stunned.

Because of course I took a picture.

Also, I only assume it's Catholic because the size and ornamentation or the church and mention of St. Paul and the eucharist -- but honestly as I am not a religious person and it's been 20 years since I took a religious studies class in college...I have zero idea and don't care enough to actually check. They accept and love the gays? They're cool with me and that's good enough.

There's even a Canadian flag version of the Pride flag, where the red on each side of the maple leaf in the center is replaced by the rainbow colors of the standard Pride flag. We saw that one proudly flying in a few places as well. 

I've now been in Canada in May, June, August, and September, but not July. Maybe next year we'll shoot for July -- I would love to see what a Canada Day (July 1) celebration is like. 

So, getting back to the story, there were a lot of activities to do when we were there. Many people to see and spend time with, people coming and going like an airport. Aunts and uncles and cousins would come and go, making their appearances and spending time with us before returning to their lives. Daisy and I would do our grocery shopping, sometimes with Mama joining as well, and we filled the fridge and some of the cupboards with our foods -- most of which we ate, some of which we left behind, and an even smaller amount we brought back home to Omaha. I have learned that bread -- just normal, store-baked bakery bread at the grocery store -- is phenomenal in Canada. Canada's flour and yeast is somehow just different. Mama clued me in to this a few years back and I'll be damned if she wasn't right -- it tastes cleaner, crustier, just plain better than bread in the states.

Cheese is something else that's wildly better in Canada as well -- but oh man will you pay outlandish sums of money for it. A pound of run-of-the-mill Swiss cheese is $15 in Canada. But, I will tell you, it is one of the best ways to spend $15 while you're in the country, because you likely won't find better sliced-and-packed Swiss anywhere on the planet.

As an aside, when we got back to Omaha, I did a Walmart delivery for groceries and got some of the Great Value Swiss cheese for comparison. There is zero comparison. The American stuff tastes so cheap and processed. But it's $3, versus $15, so....

Actually we noticed an ungodly hike in grocery prices for so many things when we were in Canada this year. Last year when we were there, prices were mostly reasonable for our necessities. There were some things that were expensive (I covered this in last year's travel narrative of our trip) but for the vast majority of everyday items, prices were similar to what they are in the states. 

Not so this year. Inflation has spun wildly out of control in the grocery store aisles of Canada. Stuff that used to be affordable and close to US prices is now insane. We're talking $8.99 for a package of Oreos insane, $12.99 for a three-pack of paper towels insane. $11 for a stick of deodorant insane. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. 

Yet there are things that are 100% comparable to the states -- lettuce and most produce was comparable if not somewhat cheaper. Vegan turkey for my sandwiches I'd subsist on for a lot of the trip (don't you judge me) is about the same price. Soda, chips, chocolate and other candy bars -- the same price. It will make you very closely watch the price stickers on the items in the aisles while you're shopping, because a $100 grocery order stateside could easily end up being $250-300 in Canada. 

And then there are the items that make you feel as if you've awakened in a Sliders-esque parallel universe, such as....

...Mind you, Spam exists in Canada. So I either walked into an aisle and momentarily slipped into a parallel universe where it's called KAM or someone's getting sued. 

But I keep getting off track.

A few days after we arrived, Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five children ages 7 to 18 arrived in Nova Scotia. They stayed at their own AirBNB on the small island of Petit-de-Grat, an hour or two south of where the main homestead and our own AirBNB was. We drove out there to see their place, spend time with them and had a beach day with the kids -- after which, I'd been to three beaches over the span of four or five days; I was beach'd out. The sun was brutal and we hit a heat wave in Nova Scotia just as they arrived -- temperatures in the high 80s and 90s, which is almost unheard of in Nova Scotia, especially in mid-June when the snow has just melted a month or so prior. Several members of the family joked, again, that we must have brought the heat with us from Omaha.

It then proceeded to rain for three days straight.

Rain and storms in Nova Scotia aren't like they are here in Omaha. The rain will start and it will be a downpour for either ten minutes or for three days -- there's rarely an in-between. If it storms, it's a bit of light thunder and lightning that quickly dissipates and is gone just as fast as it came, flowing out over the ocean. The only exception is, well, the occasional hurricane -- which they've gotten a few times in recent years when even that was relatively unheard of in the past.

When it rains, you can either sit around one of the houses and socialize or you can go do shopping and explore indoor places in the area. We did both about equally, to be honest. Yes, we did go to Walmart and Giant Tiger. Yes, we did do some more grocery shopping. Yes, we did go get poutine -- twice -- while I was there, the second time of which I was able to get some compliments on my blue jay tattoo from a kind old man traveling through the area. On these rainy days, Daisy and I finished Bridgerton on Netflix, Mama and Daisy both went to the stylist and got haircuts, we picked up some groceries for Daisy's grandmother, and Mama bought a live lobster, cooked it, and ate it -- because maritime living, I guess. 

We did have a set schedule for time, of course. We were in Nova Scotia for about twelve days, then we'd be packing up and heading to Prince Edward Island for two more days, before returning to Halifax to fly out and come back to Omaha. By the time we'd gotten through the first week, we'd already had the rest of the trip planned out since we knew when everyone's comings and goings would be. I didn't have much on the agenda aside from my near-daily trips to Tim Hortons to get Double Doubles, and I was basically along for the ride when it came to doing things with the family. We had but three things Daisy wanted to accomplish while we were still there:

1. Go whale-watching off the coast of far northern Cape Breton Island
2. Go eat at some of the vegan restaurants in Charlottetown, PEI
3. See Green Gables in PEI with her sister/family and her cousin/cousin's two kids

Anything other than that was a bonus.

So, with vapes and phone charged, we set off to do those things.....

The Long Journey: Canada 2024, Part II

 Traveling with Mom is hard; she will acknowledge this herself. She is old and it's hard for her to get around, and travel in general is hard on her body. Adding to that, it was to be twelve straight hours of travel through four different airports -- two in each country, and then getting a rental car and driving another 2-3 hours to get to the family homestead...it's hard. It's very difficult even at our age, let alone Mom's, to be up and constantly on and running from well before sunrise until dusk the following evening.

Well...

Instead of twelve hours of travel, it was a full 24.

Let me explain.

So the trip out of Omaha went without incident; Dad picked us up, we got to the airport and were dropped off, we got our baggage checked, got our boarding passes, and got to the gate without issue. We were there early, so security lines were fairly short and there were no issues getting through security, except, well, the metal detector always detects metal in my crotch, so I am always forced to go through the pat-down procedure.

Mind you, I have no metal in my crotch. I do not have an iron cock. I have nothing down there that would even show as a hint of metal, especially as at this point I have already emptied my pockets into the tray for the scanner and there's nothing left on me. I stopped taking off my watch/wedding ring/necklace because they said it was no longer necessary, but I can tell you that I have no crotch metals. So I have zero idea what it could possibly be. But, I see it in the scans where there's a big red triangle of metal on the detector screen and the ring/watch/necklace barely register.

I used to think it was the aglets on the drawstrings of my shorts, which are aluminum -- however, I wore different shorts this time around, still drawstring (so no zipper or buttons) and it still went off. I'm beginning to wonder if I have some sort of alien-abduction-implant in my crotchal region someplace, because honestly I have no other explanation. I always get the pat-down, they usually swab me in a few places, and then shrug and say I'm good, clear to go, etc. Which was the case this time as well.

The flight to Atlanta was the best flight of the entire trip. We left early on an Airbus A320 so we had the amenities of seatback TV screens, the seats had good room to them, and I was comfortable. This was not the case on all of the other flights there and back, but we'll eventually get to that.

Atlanta was uneventful. We had a short less-than-an-hour layover, but Mama gets wheelchair assistance so we were able to get the gate ladies to book it to our next gate, where we sat for maybe 10 minutes before we were allowed to board the plane.

This is a wild, wonderful perk of traveling with Mama -- we make sure she has wheelchair assistance for every flight. That means we're met at every opportunity possible by airport folks actually looking for us, who proceed to let Daisy's mother sit down into a wheelchair provided for her and then haul ass across the airport to our gate. When we get to the gate, because Mama got the wheelchair assistance and we're traveling together, ALL of us get to board the plane first before anyone else. No waiting for zones to be called, no lining up, nothin' -- directly down the jetway and into the plane first, where every overhead compartment is empty and we have time to board, stow our bags, and get comfortable before everyone else fills the plane. It is amazing. Do I feel a bit like a dick for enjoying this perk so much? No, not at all. Airplane travel is uncomfortable, cramped, and very expensive. We flew on five different planes during this trip and believe me, I was very grateful to have Mama to travel with. 

Anyway.

The flight from Atlanta to Toronto was also easy. I've mentioned before here how people give the Toronto airport a bad rap, but honestly it's one of the more pleasurable airports I've flown into and through. It's easy to get around, it doesn't feel crazy or overcrowded (like Charlotte or O'Hare do) and customs there is an absolute breeze. Within fifteen minutes of getting off the plane we were through security/customs and on our way to the gate to board our last flight into Halifax. I exchanged my American cash for Canadian cash in a little kiosk in Toronto's airport on the way to our gate, and was very excited for the exchange rate that day as it gave me -- as they say -- walkin' around money. Without going into details, it was, ahem, a good bit of walking around money. Not enough to declare to customs of course, but enough to where if I were careful and mindful, I would not have had to spend another cent on my credit cards throughout the trip.

This. Did not happen. But I'll get to that.

So we get to the gate in Toronto and finally relax a bit, as our layover there was about two hours or so. About an hour into this, we find out that the flight into Halifax was delayed by another hour. Whatever, I guess -- it's our last flight and it's not like we'd miss a connection anywhere. 

Our original itinerary was to be wheels up in Omaha at 6am and to be wheels down on the ground in Halifax around 6pm, where we'd pick up the Spaceship Van at the rental kiosk in the parking garage and have a roughly two-hour drive time from Halifax to the family homestead on the eastern end of the mainland province. That would put us there around 9pm-ish -- just as it was getting dark for the night. It was a long trip to be sure, but Daisy and I have done far longer travels from Omaha to Nova Scotia by ourselves before -- notably two years ago when her grandfather died. 

We finally got on the flight to Halifax and it progressed without incident, but we were wheels down and off the plane at 8:04pm -- over two hours later than we were supposed to be arriving. 

This did not matter though, because the car rental place had but ONE van in their fleet -- it had been returned late and was going through cleaning and refueling/preparation for us to jump in it and go.

This took two more hours, while we were sitting there in the basement garage of the Halifax airport, exhausted. I was losing all patience at this point, Mama was getting sick because we hadn't eaten anything aside from some small snacks that were packed in our carry-on luggage, and we were supposed to have been at the family home an hour before we actually left Halifax for it.

When we were finally given the van after the very long wait for it, it was well after dark and going on 10pm. Mama didn't know if she could make the rest of the trip, Daisy was very tired but was pushing through it and not taking no for an answer, and we finally got on the road to the family homestead.

Halfway there, at the exit we had to take in order to get there, we found that the road was closed. At midnight. Both ways. With no explanation. Fire trucks were parked lengthwise across the exits on both sides, and there were multiple personnel in high-visibility clothing just...standing around. There was no sign of an accident. Just "road's closed, and we're all standing here."

What in the everliving fuck.

Please understand at this point just how tired we were. Daisy and I had been up since 1am and we left the house around 3. Mama had done basically the same thing. We're now into 23 hours straight of being awake and we'd been traveling for 19 -- and an hour from our destination all of the roads leading to it are closed. All of us were about to become completely unglued. 

We pulled over (it's not like there was a lot of traffic) and asked what had happened. One of the guys in high-visibility clothing said "accident up the road." We asked when the road would be open, because it was the only way to get where we were going. He told us 10-15 minutes, and to just go down into Truro (one of the towns in the area) and wait a bit, circle back again, and it should be open once we did.

Okay.

So, we exited the Trans-Canada highway and pulled into Truro -- into a Giant Tiger parking lot -- and ate some sandwiches and chips for about 25 minutes or so. Where we sat was right next to the highway, and as such in the time we sat there, we saw many tractor-trailers pass by us -- all of them weren't getting backed up at the closed exit, traffic wasn't getting backed up to down where we were a couple of miles away, so we figured...after some time and many cars/trucks...the road had to be open again, otherwise where were all of those trucks going? It was the only road up to the northern half of the province; they had to be getting through somewhere. 

We finally made the circle again, getting back on the highway, not seeing any traffic (a good sign), and...found that the road was still closed in both directions. 

We circled back into Truro again, this time bypassing the Giant Tiger and heading to the gas station up the street, to figure out what was going on and to use the bathroom/ask if anyone there knew an alternate route to get up "to the island" because, after all, that's the direction we were headed. 

I don't remember if I got anything in the gas station or not -- I know I used the (disgusting) bathroom because I had no choice. I was burnt out, I was tired, and was very relieved when suddenly, in the door walked a guy wearing one of the high-visibility jackets -- he was clearly one of the ground crew for the accident. We learned from him that a large truck had taken out part of the overpass past that exit and that it was an absolute mess. The exit had been closed for hours and would likely reopen to one-lane traffic at some point, but he could not at that juncture say when. 

We asked him if there was an alternate route up "to the island" that he knew of, a way to bypass that exit from where we were.

Well, of course there was -- we would get off at the exit shortly before the interchange, take a left, drive through a little town called Bible Hill for about 5-6km or so, and then take another left at a McDonald's that would route us right back onto the Trans-Canada highway well past the accident/affected area -- in essence, it excised that part of the highway from our journey. 

Daisy and Mama both had to write the directions down on their phones to take notes because we were all so tired, but we followed them -- and wouldn't you know it, that guy was right. That way was also where all of the trucks and other traffic were going, as it was the only alternate path. 

Because of the multiple detours and circle-backs, we finally arrived at the family homestead around 2:30am. We dropped off Mama and got her stuff inside for her, and headed down the street to our AirBNB, which the owner had texted us earlier in the day was unlocked and ready for us (it's rural Canada, it's not like there's any actual crime there). We were in and finally, finally ready to rest in our home-away-from-home for the next two weeks around 3am -- a full 24 hours of travel and 26ish hours of being awake later, we were there.

Secret Pains: Canada 2024, Part I

(written during early June and into the early part of July, so bear with me) 

There's not a lot I feel that I need to document in detail anymore -- life moves fast and things that are pain points or are feel-good stories tend to pass quickly, replaced with the next item on the agenda. However, I always make it a point to document the trips we take -- whether that's to visit my parents, have a weekend jaunt to Chicago, or as it is becoming a yearly thing now -- to the Great White North of Canada. 

I've never been a "travel" person, really. I've always considered myself a homebody. But, you do know if you've been following me here for some time, Canada feels like a second home to me. When I'm there, it feels like it's where I'm meant to be -- in little towns along the ocean with coves and fishing boats, quarries and harbors (sorry, harbours), where the internet is slow, not every TV is a flatscreen, there are still landline phones, and everything feels like it's still 1991. 

I love it. I love every bit of it. It is a real detachment for me from the stresses of my day-to-day job working as a manager-contractor for one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world. I logout, I disconnect, and...the world just stops when I'm in Canada. I'm surrounded by family, I am able to unwind and be comatose (relatively speaking) if I want to, and I can breathe the sea air -- air that is like nowhere else on the planet. 

But there's always something.

I should backtrack a bit before I go any further, really -- and the story really starts shortly after we returned home from visiting my parents in North Carolina last fall. It was shortly after that where Daisy and her mother began making plans for another trip to Canada this summer. I was fine with it; at that juncture it was almost a year away -- I wasn't worried about accruing enough PTO and didn't particularly care what was set up for it at the time. We'd originally planned to go in August, the second half of the month (roughly) that leads into Labor Day at the beginning of September, just to get the best weather and have it not be so blazing hot.

We'd been to Canada in August before -- our first trip up there, with the parents in 2015, was during that time. The family had told us at the time we "brought the heat with us from Omaha," as almost as soon as we arrived Nova Scotia got a heat wave where it was in the 80s-90s every day and would alter between wild heat and heavy thunderstorms the entire time we were there, sometimes in the span of an hour or two (very small province surrounded by ocean, so, that's sort of how it goes). 

Our second trip up there in 2022 was also in August -- when Daisy's grandfather died. It was also hot and rainy for a good chunk of that trip.

Our third trip was last year and we went in mid-May -- that ended up being a rather precarious time weather-wise because in May, Canada is just thawing out from winter. Daisy's uncle remarked when he saw us wearing shorts and sandals that "you know we just put away our snowblowers like two weeks ago, right?" And that was true. They'd gotten significant snow up there all the way through April and the province was just finishing its thaw with the last of the snow having melted a week or two before we arrived. Traveling up there in May is not something I'd want to do again unless Nova Scotia is having a significant heat wave at the time, as when we were there most of the time the temperatures struggled to hit 60 degrees, and it was at or below freezing every night and morning -- in mid to late May. The seasons had changed in Omaha a month before that, and my allergies had acclimated appropriately. Well, once we set foot on Canadian soil, into a country that was just then experiencing the real change of the seasons, those allergies came back. I don't know how many headaches and nosebleeds I had while there, sometimes (especially for the nosebleeds) completely out of the blue and particularly violent. There were beautiful beach pictures taken of Daisy and me -- but what you can't tell in those pictures is that it was 45 degrees and windy when they were taken. 

So yeah, August was fine with me.

As I recall, and my memory may fail me, the trip was set in late September for the following August. And I mean set-set -- as in tickets were ordered for me, Mom, and Daisy; Dad had chosen to remain home and take care of the garden and the cats. 

Over the course of the following months, plans would change -- a lot.

You should know if you've read my stuff here long enough that I am not a fan of change -- I set my mind to something or I make plans and I stick to them, without deviation of any sort where and when possible. Change causes me stress and massive anxiety.

Well, over the course of the next few months, our flights would be changed -- numerous times. Sometimes by the airlines making a small or large correction. The plans for the trip ballooned to include Daisy's two sisters and their families traveling up there at the same time (not with us, but all of them coming as well). The trip's timeframe was officially changed from late August to mid-June. There was even a time where Daisy wanted to change the flights to have us fly out from Kansas City -- some 4-5 hours away -- and then drive up to Nova Scotia from Boston. Both Mom and I absolutely shut down the Kansas City/Boston idea; the last thing either of us wanted to do was drive for four hours before we actually go anywhere, get on a plane and off again and then drive another sixteen hours to get where we're going -- and then, when we finally get back on the ground in the states to drive another four hours to get back to Omaha. Like fuck that, fuck every bit of that. Especially on the way back home -- when I step off the plane, I like knowing that I'm 10-15 minutes, depending on traffic, from my house and my cats -- and that my trip is over. 

Eventually -- eventually -- it was settled that we'd fly out of Omaha into Atlanta, Atlanta to Toronto, and from Toronto into Halifax...and the trip home would be Halifax to LaGuardia in NYC, and then from LaGuardia to Omaha. The trip would be in the last two weeks of June, from the 14th to the 29th. Mom would be staying in the family home and we would be in an AirBNB house owned by family friends (almost everyone in the town are "family friends" as there are only 300 people in the town) legit two minutes away -- walking distance if/as necessary. Daisy's oldest sister, her husband, and their four boys  (the Denver family) would not be making the trip due to finances and the children's activity schedules. Daisy's middle sister, her husband, and their five kids would be making the trip but would be coming in a week later than us, driving up from where they currently live outside of Pittsburgh.  Provisions were added to the trip to spend two days on Prince Edward Island at the end of our journey before coming home, to do some sightseeing and so I could actually see Green Gables in person. Daisy also made sure -- well in advance -- that our car rental this time around would be another Spaceship Van, a Chrysler Pacifica or similar, so that we could easily haul luggage and transport Mom.

All of these changes were...stressful to me. Bumping the trip up from August to June essentially meant that I could take zero extra time off work from Christmas to June, as I would need every single hour, every single minute, of accrued PTO to apply to a two-week trip. Now, I can tell you that my boss 100% does not care if I have all of that time submitted and on the books -- I am salaried and get paid the same every check no matter what anyway -- he is fed up with the company, just had a new baby, and doesn't care as long as he's made aware of when I'll be out -- but I am a man of honor and I dutifully submitted it. Well, what I had, anyway. The last two days of it I will have to put in once I return to work as I had two paychecks where more PTO rolled over while I was in Canada. I did this because I don't ever want to be accused of any sort of impropriety in that job; everything for me is always "on the books" and fully transparent to my leadership and my team. 

Bumping up the trip also meant that I had to make sure my finances were in order and bills were paid earlier than expected, and changed what kind of clothing I would pack -- heavier stuff for cooler/rainier early summer days and nights versus lighter, full-on summer clothing for August. I started packing my suitcase and backpack quite early -- like, early May -- and revised what I packed multiple times from that day all the way up to the day before we left on the trip. I would remove something, add something else, remove two things and add three others, etc. June is a wildcard for whatever weather we could experience there -- it could rain every day and be in the 50s-60s or it could be 85 and sunny every day...or both in the same day. I mentioned in previous posts that I flirted with purchasing a somewhat-inexpensive Amazon Fire tablet for entertainment purposes, or taking my laptop -- neither of which I wanted to do, really. Instead, I packed several books I've been meaning to read, two notebooks for writing, and a fresh pack of Pilot liquid ink pens. I packed five disposable vapes new and unopened, as well as a new stick vape all-in-one device that uses my actual liquid and coils, also still in the sealed/unopened box. I packed a toiletry/cosmetics stuff bag (an old camera carrying case) and loaded it for every possible scenario -- also so I had to buy as little as possible while I'm there -- including a bar of good soap, a shampoo bar, my tattoo balm, Q-tips, flossers, two new travel toothpastes, a new toothbrush, wet wipes, glasses wipes, a new stick of powder deodorant, laundry detergent sheets and dryer sheets, a small bottle of Lush "Dirty" (Daisy's favorite scent on me), sinus and pain pills, other various OTC pills and products, etc -- I'm sure you get the idea. The overall goal was to purchase as few personal items as possible while up there and to focus my money on food, gas, and experiences.

I made a checklist for myself of things to do before we left, on my computer. I got them all done. After I did that, the last night I worked before the trip I used a notepad at my desk and wrote a three page list of other things I hadn't thought of that needed to be done before we left -- both items I would take care of (mowing the grass, washing all of the cat bowls/fountain, charging batteries, dumping the trash/recycling, etc) as well as stuff that I knew needed to be done but Daisy wouldn't necessarily think of offhand. Some of those things were things that I actually knew she would think of but for my own anxiety and sanity I needed to remind her to do them, such as make sure all of the security cameras are set up and functional, change the filter in the furnace closet, make sure all the doors and windows are securely locked, etc. I even took the initiative to put the mail on hold until we return and to make sure the cats would have enough treats until we returned (they likely won't, but they can deal with it). We were originally going to have one of Daisy's work friends come over every day to take care of the cats and only have Dad stop by once every 3-4 days, but that plan fell through, so we just made sure Dad -- who is old but is happy to help as much as he can -- knew where everything was and how to distribute the foods and treats, made sure he had an ample supply of litter to change out the pans, etc. It was what we could do. 

Finally, I made sure to remove my debit card from my wallet (it would not have been used in Canada anyway), leave my keys at home in the event Dad needs to use them to get the car out of the garage or in the event something happens to his own keys, and put the cash I earned from selling off all my around-the-house stuff in my wallet so it could be exchanged. The last things I packed were my last two sticks of Trulicity, as I would use both of them during the trip, shortly before leaving the house.

I did not know what to expect for the actual trip. I originally wanted the trip to just be a true vacation for Daisy and me -- because boy have we earned it this year -- but Daisy wanted to include Mom as well. I had no problem with that. Unlike the stereotype, I adore my mother-in-law. She is a wonderful, patient person with an absolute biting sense of humor that rivals or can at times be darker than my own, and she also adores me -- it is unspoken but is very clear I am the favorite of her three sons-in-law. I'm a bit biased there of course, but I am also here in town and see her roughly once a week when the other two live in other states and are only in town 3-4 times a year at most, combined. So no, I didn't mind Mom. It was very important to her to see her own mother again -- her own mother who turns 91 in a few months -- and it's also unspoken that this may be the last time she sees her alive.

However, when they started brainstorming ways to bring in the entire rest of the family of Daisy's sisters, their husbands, and their total of nine kids all to arrive at the same time, my interest and desire to go on this trip dropped like a stone. Being surrounded by everyone at all times, including all of the children, is not a vacation for me. I love them all dearly, but it sounds, frankly, like torture. A vacation to me is peace and quiet, the ability to relax, read, write, and sleep when I want to, to explore and take day trips to different places like the beach or to one of the Nova Scotian towns I haven't seen yet, and to see and spend time with the family members who come into town from other parts of the country to see and interact with us while we're there. It's so difficult for me to disconnect and unwind -- I am naturally a high-stress, high-anxiety person and that's only gotten worse in recent years. I am big on silence and being left alone when I'm overwhelmed, and there would be no silence or being left alone were all of the family and the children along for the ride.

But I couldn't just opt out and not go -- for one, the tickets were not refundable or changeable after a certain point. If I or we did not go, we were out that money whether we were there or not, and there was no way to get it back. When I later (and by "later" I mean "mid-May") learned that Daisy's oldest sister and family weren't going and that her other sister and family would be coming up a full week after we got there, I breathed a long sigh of relief. Again, I love them all but I needed an actual vacation. It would be hard enough to disconnect and to be away from the cats for me as it was; I didn't need more stress thrown in there as well. Add to this that right around the end of the month and going into June, Daisy's sister who would be coming on the trip got Covid...along with her husband and likely the kids as well. So, there was a long stretch of time where she did not even know if they were going to be able to make the trip at all. 

Anyway.

Finally, on the overnight of the 13th into the 14th, Dad arrived at our house around 2:30 in the morning (for our 5:45 flight) with Mom in tow; we loaded our stuff into the parents' SUV, made sure the kitties had all the food and treats, water and clean litter and got extra love, and locked up/left.

The Void, Sometimes With Eyes, is Calling

 

Mable has been checked out at the vet now for her second appointment. Per the vet, she appears to be exceedingly healthy, and growing very well. She's easily tripled in size since we got her about...oh, 7 weeks ago...something like that (it feels far longer than that) and has more than doubled in weight. She is still quite fuzzy. The doc says she may end up being a normal-to-larger-sized cat after all. We thought she was going to be small her entire life, based on how quickly Hank grew versus how small Empress, and Mable, mostly remain. She returns next Thursday to get the last of her shots, and then she's all done for another year, provided we don't have any health scares for her.

There's been a lot happening over the course of the past few weeks and I've either been too busy or too exhausted most of the time to document it here. Everything has been a whirlwind -- sometimes literally -- and I have had trouble really getting quality sleep, catching up on the chores and tasks I need to take care of, or my capacity for additional stress and anxiety has just been at the maximum -- like a car's engine consistently at redline shortly before throwing a piston through the hood. 

There have been good things and bad.

I have finally gathered everything cluttering up my room and the house -- all the games, books, DVDs, cards, CDs, old game systems, magazines -- everything I needed to let go for a very long time, and sold it yesterday. I had a number in my head that I would have ideally, in a perfect world, wanted to get in cash for it but knew I never would, and a number that I thought was very likely the far more reasonable amount I'd likely receive. What I ended up getting was slightly more than half of the perfect world ideal amount in my head, and a good bit more than the "reasonable" amount I was expecting. So, overall, I am quite happy. Honestly I am just glad to see a lot of it go -- I don't need any of it. I will now have a pretty substantial amount of cash to spend in Canada for incidentals, food, etc. I don't plan to pick up any souvenirs while I'm there because, I mean, I really don't need anything else and I've come home with multiple Canada-related clothing items, coffee mugs, and other stuff every other trip I've made over the past few years. 

I have also now re-packed and re-organized everything for the trip, going down a checklist of stuff I will need while I am there, put together a toiletry and medicine case (an old camera bag that I actually used to keep my Game Boy and games in many years ago) and tried to prepare for every weather scenario -- anywhere from hot summer days to cold damp ones. Canada is fickle. This time last year when we were there, the warmest it got was in the high 60s and the coldest was below freezing. In late May. Summers there tend to be nice, but I'd rather be able to plan for it to not be nice.

There is also, of course, the essentials I need to stay sane when I'm cut off from the rest of the world for a time. This includes my disposable vapes (six new ones should do it, hopefully), several books, a fully-loaded mp3 player full of podcasts that I may or may not listen to when I'm there, but we'll see -- and a fresh pack of pens and a brand new hard-bound notebook so that I can write...well...anything that inspires me when I'm there. The notebook is something I needed desperately last summer. When I'm unstressed and unburdened by schedules and my daily life, my mind finally relaxes and expands and I actually want to write again. I don't have access to my computer while I'm there (if I did, I'd likely never leave it), and a notebook and pack of pens was a much cheaper option than my original idea, which was to get a new Amazon Fire tablet and keyboard case for it. 

Mind you, I do have a laptop -- like an actual laptop, a Windows 10 machine -- but I generally hate using it unless it is 100% unavoidable and don't want to take it with me in my backpack for multiple international flights. Also, it makes me more accessible than I would be otherwise, which is a bad thing when I'm on vacation. Daisy already has to take her laptop with her for work-related duties while she's gone, and I 100% refuse to be that person -- my phone is enough and when I am not available, I am not available, I am in another country.

Speaking of phones, Daisy upgraded her phone this past week to the newest...Samsung thing...whatever it is. I don't follow Android stuff; I am an iPhone guy and have been for a decade now, and I do not see that changing for the foreseeable future, if ever. I have no use for a phone operating system that I can't use or figure out within a few minutes of looking at it when I know the iPhone just works and I don't have to fight with it for app or navigation purposes.

Truth be told, my old iPhone 12 Mini is beginning to reach the end of its useful life and while it still works quite well, the battery longevity is an issue and it likely will come to the end of its available iOS updates here within a year or so. I don't necessarily want a new phone -- it's generally a horrible hassle to swap from an old phone to a new one -- but it's going to be time soon enough. the iPhone 16 (if that's what they end up calling it) is expected to be released in September and I can wait until then, I suppose, I don't think my phone is going to die before that point. At least I hope it does not. 

Anyway, Daisy wanted the new phone for the storage capacity as well as the camera, which is indeed impressive -- and she wanted it before the trip. I do not trust myself not to lose or break a new, much larger and more expensive phone on an international trip, so I'm fine with keeping mine until this fall at the very least. I don't need the greatest or highest-end tech to play Pokemon Go or watch Tiktoks. 

With the new phone, she also got an upgrade to our plan that gives us something like 3X the data while we're in Canada, so there's that. 

The same day Daisy initiated all of this, the motor in our six-year-old electric lawn mower blew out -- as I had just started mowing the back yard that so very desperately needed to be mowed. To be fair, the mower has been slowly dying for the past year or so, and trying to do the back yard just completely killed it. 

Frustrated and sick of everything breaking or going wrong, I marched into the house and said "the lawnmower is fucked; get up, get dressed, we're going to Lowe's and I'm buying a new one on my credit card, I don't care how much it costs."

We had to go to Home Depot instead of Lowe's, but I got a new model that is wider and easier to push, not to mention cuts the grass like butter, for $300-something. It also came with two more batteries, which are generally $50ish apiece (I know because I had to buy a spare one last summer) which made it a much better deal than it looked on the surface. I summarily mowed both the front and the back lawn in less than an hour. 

I could not string-trim -- our trimmer is out of spools. I had to order those and have them delivered a few days later. I still have not gotten to the string-trimming yet. It's on my list. 

Finally, this past week has taken its toll on me because we had not one or two, but three tornado scares. One was at 5-6 in the morning (roughly, somewhere in there) that woke Daisy up with the sirens, then another the following day around noon (again with the sirens) and then the final one was Thursday night in the overnight, around 2-3am when the sirens began going off again, also forcing Daisy to get up.

The other two weren't especially awful. The one on Thursday night was terrifying because it was in the middle of the night, we put on the news and found four different tornadoes tracking straight for the Omaha metro area -- with four different warnings. It was by sheer luck alone that two went south and dissipated and two went north and dissipated, leaving the city of Omaha essentially tornado-free. But it was very touch and go for a while, and we got the cats into their carriers (yes, all five of them) in order to do anything we could to protect them if the storms began moving this way. We don't have a basement -- it is what it is with this house. The most secure locations in the house are the downstairs bathroom and under the stairs (which we can't get into because we use it as a storage area). If a tornado comes close enough to do damage to the house, we cover ourselves and the cats in their carriers with the heaviest blankets/quilts we can find and hunker down, I guess.

Yeah, I know, that's not exactly comforting. Neither is Nebraska in April and May. Even after everything had moved through and the threat was pretty much over, I made sure we kept the cats in their carriers for another 10-15 minutes just in case. Thursday night's storm was classified as a derecho, which does not happen often here in Omaha.

So that's three times this week that the call of the void became strong, at least in one or more respects. I am so desperately tired of my nerves being frazzled for hours or days on end when this shit happens. I wish I could explain it to everyone here in more detail, but I can't. 

The New Normal, Part III: A Decade in Omaha

 It is ten years ago this week that Daisy and I packed up all of my things and the (at the time) three cats, loaded everything that would fit into a U-Haul, and performed a low-rent version of Smokey and the Bandit from Newton, KS to Omaha -- her driving the truck, me driving her car with all three cats in their carriers across the backseat, all of them howling the entire way. 

My car, the Monte Carlo -- oh, how I miss it -- was already up here and sitting in the parents' driveway; I'd driven it up there the previous weekend to essentially "drop it off," as we would have three vehicles and two of us (the U-Haul, Daisy's car my car) and couldn't get all of them up to Omaha at the same time.

I remember that drive -- it was exceedingly boring, hot, and is still likely the farthest/longest I've ever driven in one sitting, especially alone -- the drive between Newton and Omaha was approximately six hours. Daisy and I made it in five or under before, driving at night and going way above the speed limit in her car, but this was a drive during daylight hours with way more traffic (and a lot of highway patrol out and cruising). I was terrified that the Monte Carlo, which was the automobile equivalent of the Millennium Falcon, would fall apart or overheat or blow a major part during the drive, as it was a long drive on two different major interstates at highway speeds. I was shocked that on that drive it performed better than any other drive I'd taken it on. Not one issue, not one weird noise, not a single stall out or transmission slip or overheating problem the entire way. Moreover, I'd stopped for gas twice, I stopped at the Walmart in York, NE to get out and stretch my legs and get something to eat, and remarkably I was able to remember the exact path Daisy had previously taken to get to the parents' house when I'd visited the family on previous few occasions. I don't know if it was stress and anxiety giving me a laser focus or what, but I pulled into their driveway in the late afternoon hours safe and sound, and I was finally there.

The time of the move was stressful and tiring, and Daisy and I were squabbling a lot during it. I also badly wrenched my shoulder/rotator cuff (I may have actually popped it halfway out of socket, I don't know -- it didn't heal for weeks) and I must remind all of you, Daisy and I were not married yet. That wouldn't happen for another two weeks. I was also on edge for a lot of it because, truthfully, I was starting a completely new life in another state that I'd never lived in before, in a city much larger than any I'd ever lived in before (I say this knowing that yes, I did live in Kansas City, but it was the suburbs and not really within the city proper). I'd just left my teaching job, I only had the barest amount of survival money and did not have a guarantee of another job on the horizon at that point, and I was about to get married. 

Over the course of about 48 hours of nearly nonstop manual labor, we went back down to my house in Newton, loaded the U-Haul (which cost over $300 to rent for the time I needed it for), cleaned the house as best we could, slept quickly, and left that town forever. We drove in tandem to the new apartment in Omaha, unloaded all of the stuff with the help of Daisy's best friend, and were just trying to get it shoved into the apartment to be sorted later. Then Daisy dropped off the U-Haul and I seem to recall sleeping like a rock for about three days with my very stressed, out-of-place cats who hid in cupboards and tubs and sinks because they were frightened and in a place they didn't know.

A few days later the internet would be installed, I would sign up for Netflix, Daisy went back to work and we both, in our downtime, would slowly unpack, look for jobs for me, and would ready ourselves for the wedding.  

I have now lived in Omaha for ten years. Four of them were in that shitty apartment complex that I thought was so nice when I moved in, and then the last six of them (almost) have been in our house. During that time Daisy and I got married, I got the job at the place I -- unfortunately/sadly -- am currently still employed by, the Monte Carlo was vandalized and destroyed, and I got a truck that I drove for a while and later sold. I have survived numerous severe weather scares and multiple close-ish tornadoes -- including one where Daisy and I had to shelter in place in the breakroom of a Target store three or four days after the wedding. One of the original generation of cats has died, but we have since adopted three more. Daisy is still driving the same car, despite it now having been in at least two accidents, one of which messed her up for a couple of years. We have traveled to Canada and back three times (about to be four), to Chicago and back on a few occasions, to New Orleans and back, to West Virginia and back, to Denver and back, to South Dakota and back (twice), and to the Carolinas and back. Through it all, we have remained deeply in love and have called Omaha our home base. 

I don't know where we will be in ten years. Hopefully it is not here in Omaha.

I say that in a bittersweet fashion because I really do not mind this town that much -- there is always something to do here and someplace to go. There is some outlandishly good food in this town, shopping of almost any sort, and if I want to see a comedian or a band play live there's a good chance Omaha will be one of the tour stops. It's not an overly-dangerous or crime-ridden city, and I really like my house. 

That being said, the weather sucks -- the hottest summers, the coldest winters, tornadoes in the spring and sometimes the fall, and outside the immediate area of Omaha the state of Nebraska is deeply Trump-supporting Republican. We are here now, and for the foreseeable future, because Daisy's parents are alive and live here in Omaha. When they are gone, there is no way in hell I want to remain here. You'd better believe that I will drop whatever I'm doing and we will look for another place to live as soon as humanly possible. My dream is to live on a coastline somewhere (my parents are currently living my dream, but Daisy does not want to live in the Carolinas). 

The New Normal, Part II

 

This cat is the sweetest little kitten I've ever known. Any doubts I had about Daisy bringing her home last month are now very much long gone. She is amusing as hell -- whether that's waking Daisy up in the night by biting her toes or face (because she wants to play) or speeding around the house chasing after Hank and Emmy -- or being chased herself by them. She is so very cuddly, she is so very full of life. She is going to have giant green eyes just like Pete. She fills my heart with love and happiness every single day. 

Things around the house are progressing. Slowly. I need to go through the TV stand and pull out the games I want to sell, but that should be the last of it for my "decluttering" of the house for my own things. I plan to get the stuff to Half-Price Books to sell all of it in one big batch either this weekend or next weekend, and once I can do that I will feel accomplished. I generally just don't have the time or energy to do everything all at once.

There is one final donation bag of my stuff that is ready to go to Goodwill, too. Daisy had a bag going as well, and I'm going to encourage her to complete it so that we can drop it off at the same time.

Truthfully, if I wanted to go through my closet/belongings a second time to fill another donation bag, I could. Am I going to do that? Likely not, honestly. I've already gotten rid of some things that I found it somewhat hard to part with, but found it necessary to let go. I'm already getting rid of some games and systems and the like that I don't really want to sell, but need to sell because of the money involved and the space those things take up. And really, all they are are things. They're not needs, they're not life-and-death things, they're items taking up space in a house that is already somewhat cramped and selling these items is a means to an end. Do I want money in Canada? Yes. Do I want to use cash for a lot of things, and not use my credit card for everything? Also yes. Well then, time to get rid of a bunch of old shit. 

I am mostly already packed for the Canada trip, because yes, I'm that guy. I'll likely change up some of the clothing here and there in the interim, or some of the incidentals I plan to take with me, but when I travel my goal is always to travel as light as possible and anything that I don't need to bring back, leave it there (if I'll eventually be back) or toss it -- wherever and whenever I go someplace. I'm sure, on the shelf of the shower in the family house in Nova Scotia, sits the bottle of face wash I forgot and left there last year. I'm sure in my parents' house in North Carolina, there are little things the wife and I left there too (and have since forgotten about) that will still be there when we visit again -- hopefully later in the year. Truthfully, as much as I want to see my parents, and I do, I am even more looking forward to those burgers at the vegan place in Raleigh when we go back. 

I find that I'm feeling frustrated and exhausted almost all the time. There's just always something else to do. I've reached that point of the spring where it's been far too long since I've had an actual day off, a day or three on PTO or what have you to where I can just not do anything I don't want to. Complicating this is the fact that I will be working straight through the Memorial Day holiday because I need an extra day (what my company calls a "comp" day) at the end of that week so that Daisy and I can actually celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Aside from that one single extra day I'll get, I do not have any actual downtime until our trip to Canada. 

I'm burnt out. I don't want this to become the new normal, where I'm just constantly irritable and impatient and sleep deprived, but I don't really see any way out of that pattern. Even when we're out of the country there will still be a lot of travel, errands, family time, and social interaction. That's not "downtime" to me. "Downtime" is me sitting in silence, deciding when and how I want to eat, sleep, use my computer, read, write, play a video game, or anything else without having anything that must be done on someone else's schedule.

Of course, it's sometimes hard to sleep when I am awakened by a little black kitten screaming in my ear for attention and love...shortly before she attacks my toes. 

Daisy has the remarkable and frankly scary ability to be out like a light and snoring within ten minutes of hitting the bed. I know this because I can hear her when I'm working downstairs, and have tried to time it. 

Back in 2018, when we were prepping for the move into this house, I went through my collections of items and stuff then too, and sold a lot of it off -- books, CDs, movies, games, etc. We made at least 3-4 trips to Half-Price Books and to the local game stores, and as I recall I pulled in about $1100 in cash from that decluttering. I won't have that much this time around -- I'll be lucky if I get $500 this time around for my time and efforts, and it'll likely be well below that. But, it is what it is, and I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of boxes of things just...magically go away. 

During that time in 2018, however, I did find a large chunk of my music and movie collection (not all of them) which I carefully organized into CD wallets and stored away. This included burned CDs and burned DVDs that are close to or over twenty years old at this point. I used to have a DVD recorder; my mother got it for me one year for Christmas when I was in college, and its purpose was the same as a VCR -- it could record television programs onto DVD-Rs just like a VCR could onto tapes. Well, I never really used it for that; I daisy-chained it to my VCR and began moving my movie/tape collection onto DVD, and it worked really well for that. So, over the course of a few years -- before the actual DVD recorder blew out and stopped working -- I was able to shrink my media collection from multiple boxes of tapes to a few spindles of DVD-Rs. It was the storage media and technology I had at the time.

Now, twenty years later, I have a moderately powerful computer and multiple portable HDDs, one of which is 4TB. And while cleaning out my stuff, I found these CD wallets with a large number of the burned discs in them.

But how was I to get a video DVD off my disc and into a video file format on my PC to archive fully digitally? Windows has limited tools to do such a task, even today. I could rip a disc image (.iso) file, I guess, but that would just delay the inevitable and still not really make the content watchable again. So I began searching around for alternatives.

I found a program in the Windows store that essentially lets you do exactly what I was looking to do -- rip a DVD to a .mp4 video file. It would play any disc for free, but to be able to rip it you had to purchase the full program for $20. Okay. Sold. 

Once I figured out how to use it, I began the slow and meticulous process of pulling data off these old burned discs. And I found that in doing so, a lot of these discs are beginning to succumb to disc rot. As in, they weren't intended to last forever, and they're starting to break down now, just like VHS tapes also do. Some of the discs won't even load up; others give errors when I'm pulling the video and the transfer fails. Most of them, however, are just fine and I've likely gotten to them just in the nick of time.

So far I have about 30GB of content from the DVDs I've saved. Most of it is just random episodes of TV shows and cartoons, some comedy specials, etc -- but it's a wildly interesting window into my past, when I had cable television, when I was just a kid living in West Virginia with access to a VCR and some tapes. Some of it is from a time when I was still in high school, and I'm coming up on a quarter-century since I graduated high school. I'll likely never have kids, but whoever inherits my backup HDDs whenever I'm dead and gone will have an amazing amount of content to pore through.

The New Normal, Part I

 Over the course of the past month, we've established a pretty solid pattern as to how life in this house now is with five cats. 

After the tornadoes rolled through last weekend, Daisy put together the new cat tree she had ordered "to give the cats more vertical territory" in the house. It sits next to my work desk downstairs, in the corner where we used to have a large full-length mirror. It is shorter in height than the one upstairs in our master bedroom, and so I tried to introduce Sadie to it.

Apparently, Sadie, in her old age, no longer likes any heights whatsoever -- and after looking around in a concerned fashion for a few moments, figured out how to get her old, slow ass down off it and never looked in the direction of the new cat tree again. Pete was curious but apparently also unenthused when Daisy tried to introduce him to it.

Hank, Emmy, and Mable all love it.

We introduced Mable fully into the house a day or two after her "out of the bedroom all day while Daisy worked downstairs" experience, once the other children were used to her, and she has very quickly integrated into the tribe of cats. In doing so, we learned a lot about our youngest child:

1. She mostly leaves Sadie alone. She will smell Sadie or examine her when she's up and moving about, but she won't try to play with her, bat at her, or interact with her a whole lot. They'll eat together when I feed them, but that's about it. The other young cats have been like this with Sadie too, for the most part -- none of them try to "play" with her or really go after her. Hank used to hold her down and hump her (ah, teenagers...) and Empress likes to cuddle up with her a fair amount, but I think Sadie has established with all the kittens that she's old and has no desire for foolishness, so they all mostly leave Sadie alone.
   
   
2. Mable, as expected, adores Pete. She curls up tight with him, lays on top of him, he holds her and they lick each other lovingly, etc. Pete is her chosen cat companion. He's safe, doesn't chase her or growl/hiss at her, he just gives her all the love and attention she wants. He is just as sweet with her as he ever was with Hank or Empress, and Mable loves every bit of his dad energy.
   
   
3. Mable will almost always sleep with us, especially if Pete is sleeping with me or Daisy or if we're both sleeping together at the same time. During the day when I sleep and Daisy is working, Pete almost always comes to bed with me to be my teddy bear for most of or the entire day. She will join us, curling up with me and Pete. If Pete leaves, most of the time she'll stay there with me because I'm there. If Pete does not come to bed with me, she will also stay there in bed with me most of the time, sleeping in the middle between the pillows or on Daisy's side of the bed. She does the same with Daisy, though she likes to cuddle in tighter with Daisy or sleep on her chest.
   
   
4. She likes to climb things like Spider-Man or swing from the curtains like Tarzan. This is, thankfully, not an everyday thing.
   
   
5. She loves being picked up and held -- she has never once fought me on being picked up because she associates it, and being held, with love and attention. It makes her so happy and she relaxes, likes to be carried around, etc. I didn't know if I'd ever find another cat like that. 
   
   
6. She goes hard with Hank and Empress. I actually think each of them go a little too hard back on her sometimes -- she's still very much a little baby -- but they play hard and rough, chasing each other, pouncing on each other, biting and batting and running. It's all play, like there's nothing malicious to it (I've raised enough cats to know, trust me) but I am surprised how quickly Hank and Empress became wildly playful with the little girl, especially as she has a completely different personality than either of them.
   
   
7. Over the course of the past week, Mable has begun sleeping with and cuddling with both Hank and Empress -- sometimes separately, sometimes together in a big cat pile. Empress gives Mable what I call "Big Mom Energy" -- as in, her mothering instincts appear to be kicking in with the little girl. She will hold her and lick her and just snuggle in with her so happily. Hank is similar -- while the energy between him and Emmy is very much lover energy, it's very much "Big Papa" energy with Mable, similar to how Pete loves on the little girl.

Mable has also grown quite a bit -- she has doubled in size in the past month we've had her (I can't believe it's only been that long). She is innately comfortable with the entire household and we've never had to really watch her or babysit her, keep her from getting into things, etc. Daisy has made the comment that she's so very similar to Maggie in so many ways, and I think as her personality further develops, that will be cemented even more. Daisy has joked that she's Maggie reincarnated, as she was born about two weeks (approximately, anyway) after Maggie died. 

Pete had his first vet appointment with his new vet -- the one we take all the other cats to now -- and he did well, though he was anxious and frightened a bit (he usually isn't). The vet basically said he looked good for a cat his age and was about as "healthy" as could be expected given his hyperthyroidism and kidney disease. His bloodwork looked really good -- his kidney disease really isn't progressing quickly and he's responding very well to the thyroid meds (which he hates). 

Said vet also told us that Sadie will likely be fine if, while we're in Canada, our catsitters can't find/catch her and she doesn't get the medications she takes during that time. It's not ideal, but it won't kill her -- and he agreed with my sentiment that the stress and the anxiety caused by her being boarded during that time actually might kill her. So, I told Daisy to cancel the boarding. Sadie can stay quietly at home with the other cats in a familiar environment and just hang out with them as the old reigning queen of the household. 

I don't know if it's as big news nationally as it is out here, but the tornado recovery/cleanup since last weekend has been extensive. Daisy volunteered with a few other members of her workplace to assist in some of it for several hours last Friday. One of the guys from my own job lost his house in the tornado, and others were without power for days on end. Videos of the tornadoes are all over Tiktok and Facebook, as we now live in a digital age where that's possible, and they're all frightening. I've been reminding myself, daily, just how lucky I really am. One of my close friends was about...oh, a mile or so from where the biggest tornado hit, give or take. 

My brain is shot. These last two weeks at work have not been particularly difficult, but it has been very long. Last weekend was basically stolen from me by tornadoes and other severe weather alerts. This past weekend we went bowling for a Daisy work event and then were paranoid all day on Saturday because of yet even more storm warnings. Monday was the same. Thankfully nothing hit us, but we've still got several more weeks of "peak tornado season" in Nebraska. I have so much to do over the course of the next month or two and a lot of it is starting to slip my mind here and there because I've just been so exhausted, so sleep-deprived, and have not had the chance to really get downtime or rest. We have to actually do yard work and the storms and all the rain have been preventing any real time to do that, for example. Daisy tried to mow the yard the other night and it was so rough to do so with the little electric mower we have that our neighbor let us use his big powerful gas mower so she could complete the front yard, at least. She mowed the back yard and did some light trimming last night -- but by the weekend, it'll be time to mow the front again (this time it'll be my turn), and this cycle will repeat for the next four or five months. 

Of course, there's so much else we have to do before our trip to Canada as well. I have had zero time or energy to work on or finish the Great Cleansing of 2024™ and desperately just want a few days running of nothing else to do so that I can actually work towards those goals. On Sunday I was finally able to get some of my stuff organized, but the house is still a mess, all of my free time is sucked away by needing to actually get some sleep (or try to) or by social obligations -- for example, the aforementioned bowling above, and this weekend is Mother's Day -- which means we'll be focusing on Mom for a good chunk of my time off. There's only so much I can do or have energy for, and it all has to be done well before we go to Canada. 

Hank's 1st Birthday

 Hank's 1st birthday was yesterday.

That's it, that's the post. Enjoy pictures of the orange lad.