The Call of the Isle'd: A Canada Story, Part II

 

Port Hood, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia 

Thursday, August 18 2022

So, let's continue.

The funeral was set for Wednesday the 17th. We'd arrived on Saturday, the 13th, so we had a few days to do Canada things and spend some time with the family. 

When an entire family is in mourning and prepping for the funeral of the family's patriarch, in most cases there would be a heavy blanket of somberness over everything you do and everything you experience while gathered together. There's a lot of family business that needed to be taken care of, and a lot of it was little things you wouldn't think about -- who handles the funeral expenses, what accounts need to be changed or canceled -- the actual all-business side of things that generally gets pushed to the background or never mentioned in movies or TV when someone dies. There was a pall of sadness over a lot of things, yes, but as a plus the family knew this was coming for some time, and preparations had already been made for a lot of it -- those plans just went into action once the man actually passed. A lot of things I witnessed in the background between Mama and the uncles (his children) was very matter-of-fact, very removed from emotion; i.e. X person is doing X tasks, Y person is doing Y tasks, the body must be cremated by Z time and delivered to Z location, etc. Everyone had a set job to do and everything was moving about as smoothly as could be expected or possible. I offered numerous times to help where I could, but was told that things were already being taken care of, though the family appreciated my offers.

I am very lucky I married into Daisy's family, something that I've mentioned numerous times before. I was immediately accepted into the fold and was welcomed with open arms by all of the family members in Nova Scotia the last time we visited in 2015. Nothing has really, physically changed since then, aside from knowledge -- at that point they were all strangers to me. Now that they've seen my Facebook posts for the past seven years and receive all of the Christmas cards we send every year, it's as if I've always been one of them -- they got to know me in person first, as awkward and American as I was at the time, and then got to know the real me in the years since. Daisy's aunt got up, crossed the room, and hugged me tightly when we arrived, and whispered "welcome home" in my ear. I could have cried. That's how the family is. At this point, they know me. I am one of them. I may as well have been born there.

To an extent, Nova Scotia has always felt like a sort of home to me. I am never stressed when I'm there, and despite only having been there once before, seven years ago, I remembered my way around the area. I remembered landmarks. I remembered directions, geography, and how to get from point A to B like it was hardwired into me -- directions that even Daisy didn't remember, despite having been there many, many times since she was a child. The geography of the area is basically West Virginia but instead of there being Trump supporters in every direction, there's an ocean, a coastline, and beaches at the end of the driveway. 

I think, though, what I like most about the area is that nothing ever really changes and everyone is down to earth, knows each other (or knows people in the family) and that life is much, much slower there. This is a family that sits together around the house or the back porch for hours on end every night when we're all gathered, just talking and spending time together. This family doesn't gather around a television or bury their faces in screens (there is a time and a place for that, but not when we're all together). 

Even with the death of the family patriarch, this...well, this didn't really change for this visit. It was the elephant in the room nobody really talked about unless necessary, but it wasn't something that was a taboo topic. Grandpa came up in many discussions over the trip, and it was always as if he were just in the next room over, not deceased. Our purpose there, in those family gatherings that sometimes went into the overnight hours, was not to grieve but to enjoy all of us there in one place, one room, on one porch. Even Daisy's grandmother was pretty normal; as she looked around the room at all of us gathered there together, you could see the look of contentment in her face that we were all there sharing the space and rejoined as a family unit -- it did not matter, in those moments, what brought us there -- just that we were there. 

That's what I got from it, anyway. Daisy later told me that she also noticed the sad and distant moments, moments where her grandmother was likely thinking how much her husband would have loved having us all there too.

Again, they all knew it was coming. They'd all prepared and steeled themselves for it.

Over the course of the following few days, more of the family began filtering in and arriving from out of town -- not all of them live close by, of course. In fact, most of them do not. Aside from Mama, who is the oldest child (and lives the farthest away; in fact, we're the only family I can think of who currently live in the states) and her uncle who lives next door, the rest of the family is scattered across Canada. One of Daisy's cousins and his kids live in Alberta, another aunt and uncle live in Ontario, and most of the others live in and around Halifax -- three or so hours away, give or take. That also doesn't take into account those who weren't coming in for the funeral or who couldn't make it on short notice (or had already planned to be in town for the wedding gathering, and couldn't change their travel accommodations). When we arrived, it was just us, the parents, two uncles and an aunt, and one cousin (the daughter of the uncle who lived next door, who was not in town at the time) with her husband and kids. By Monday and Tuesday, this collection of people had nearly tripled in size as the remaining family trickled in. 

Mind you, most of these people filtering in, I'd never met before. Multiple cousins and their spouses and/or children simply weren't there when I was last in Canada. Many of them Daisy hadn't seen since they were tiny children, or had never met in person at all. Some of them she hadn't seen for many years in person.

I integrate well with the family. As much as I am one of them, however, it is at times very apparent how much I am not one of them -- how much I am the sore thumb American sticking out, out of place. And, as much of a Canadaphile as I am (and, oh boy, am I), there's a lot of little customs, references, and especially commercial product names/product lines/foodstuffs that I've never seen before and have no knowledge of.

For example: Nanaimo Bars. 

Canada has the snack and foods market on lockdown. I wrote about this years ago, but the food -- and the selection and variety of it -- is one thing that Canada definitely outdoes the states on. There are exceptions and drawbacks, of course, but the pluses far outweigh the minuses. Canada also has some items that haven't been available in the states for many years, such as...

Yeah.

I don't think Fruitopia has been available in the US since I was in high school, maybe early college. 

[EDIT: Wikipedia says it was discontinued in the US in most forms by 2003, but is still made/available in many other countries around the world.] 

The change is immediate as soon as you cross the border -- every store in the land stocks ketchup chips, all-dressed chips, and Canada exclusive candy bars like Coffee Crisp and Big Turk. Poutines are widely available. Donairs are plentiful, as are variations on them.

There are differences, though. For example, Diet Mountain Dew does not exist in Canada. When I asked my uncle about that, his response was "huh, that's a thing in the states?"

Caffeine, in anything, is limited to 180mg regardless of the size of the product. An energy drink in the US that has anywhere between 200-300mg of caffeine per can is locked at 180 or lower in Canada. This means that the Monsters and Reigns I bought there, while tasty, did not have the same kick and felt like they were watered down versions of their American counterparts.

Diet Coke in Canada tastes completely different. It's still recognizable as Diet Coke, but it is decidedly off what Diet Coke in the states tastes like.

Diet Pepsi, however, uses the old formula from the states that made it the best diet soda ever (before they changed/tweaked the formula in the states and made it almost undrinkable). Daisy and I consumed multiple Diet Pepsis while I was there, each time being amazed by how much better it tasted than here at home. 

Most other foodstuffs taste...cleaner? I guess that's the best way to describe it. They taste more natural, without any chemicals, preservatives, or additives that we're used to down here. Bread and cheese taste better, fresher, less sweet. Snacks like Wheat Thins, for example, aren't baked as hard or as salty as their American counterparts are. Bottled water tastes clean and crisp, not like plastic bottles. Energy bars and/or NutriGrain-style bars actually taste like their ingredients, not sugar. It's an altogether unique experience not knowing whether you'll get the product your US palate is used to or a completely different one with the same name.

Price differences on items, however, can vary wildly from item to item or even from store to store, and there seems to be no real rhyme or reason to the big price swings. Some things are relatively the same -- most foodstuffs we got were fairly comparably priced to what you'd see stateside -- however, things that are harder to get in Canada vs. the states you will, of course, see a significant price increase on. A lot of fresh produce either isn't available up there, for example, or if it is, it's astronomically priced. Cuties -- the little seedless oranges that are about $3-4 a bag here in Nebraska are double (or even close to triple) the price in Canada. Iceberg and romaine lettuce are almost or completely nonexistent this time of the year in Canada. Baby spinach and greens are double the price they are in the states. I'd be curious to know what meat prices are too, even though I don't eat it -- we saw but one field of cows while I was up there across two entire provinces of wilderness and farmland, and it's the maritimes, so people eat seafood, not red meat, for most of their meals. 

It's not just the foods, though. Paper plates that are $3 in the US are $9 in Canada, but paper towels that would be $4 in the US are $2 there. One single six-pack of Corona beer, in the state-run liquor stores, is $20. Twenty dollars for a six-pack of bottles! Yet a large coffee at Tim Hortons is still $2 or maybe a little more. Cigarettes may be $15 a pack, but I got a Vuse pod device and two pods in a gas station for $26, so there's no real rhyme or reason to a lot of it.

But weed is legal there, like...everywhere, so there's that.

Anyway. Back to the family stuff.

We had two cars -- the parents had a rental car (also a brand new Malibu, though in a different color) and we had our own rental. This meant we were free to move about. Daisy's sister (the Denver one) was flying in on Monday night and would be staying with us in our hotel room -- she was coming alone for the funeral, and leaving her husband and four boys at home. We drove to the Halifax airport to pick her up in the night, a long drive there and back, but a drive that also allows me to say I've been in the Halifax airport (though not Halifax proper, since the airport is about 20km away from the actual city). She stayed with us in the room for one night before she requested we just bring her stuff up to the family house, where she stayed for the rest of her trip. Daisy's other sister, in Alberta, did not make it in -- she'd gotten very sick with a stomach flu right as they were leaving and getting ready to fly out, and remained home.

By Tuesday afternoon there were approximately thirty or so people around the family home and next door/in campers in yards. This included all of grandpa's surviving children (Daisy's aunt had died in 2010 from cancer, so it was the remaining four) and most of their spouses/significant others, plus multiple children from those families and their own spouses/significant others and children, two cats, and a dog. All of them gathered around and within the two houses next door to one another to eat, sleep, and socialize.The mood was...happy. I was continually impressed how well the family was able to compartmentalize the loss of their patriarch and focus on the gathering and everyone there together, some of whom hadn't seen each other for quite some time.

Wednesday was the funeral and burial.

Now, mind you, I hadn't been to a funeral in over twenty years. I'm not a funeral guy. I don't need to "see the body" when someone dies, or anything like that, get all dressed in black and be solemn, etc. I'm perfectly happy to just go to a memorial service afterwards. I'd also learned earlier in the week that Daisy's grandfather was being cremated, so the "service" was going to be little more than family and a few family friends. 

Boy, were we all wrong.

The funeral service was a Catholic mass, held in the very church where Daisy's parents got married (and where her grandparents got married as well, though it was a different church then as that one burned down later). Because it was a funeral, and we were in Atlantic Canada, of course it was cold and pouring rain.

The church is about a mile from the family home, and the cemetery was about a mile from there. When we pulled up to the church, we found that the parking lot was full and that there was a line of traffic going up to it -- had to be fifty or more cars. There was also a hearse out front -- a gorgeous new Mercedes-Benz hearse. I wondered if that was just for show, because...I mean, he'd been cremated. Much smaller box than normal, etc. 

What we thought was going to be a very small gathering of just us and some close family friends to see him off (so to speak) ended up being most of the town. Because, of course it would be -- the community is small. Everyone knows the family, and even those who didn't know grandpa personally knew of him, or knew one or more of his kids, or worked with him or one of his kids. In a town that small, where Daisy and I have been approached in public and I've been looked at and unrecognized, but they'll look over Daisy's facial structure and shape and be like "you're [Mama's] daughter, aren't you?" or "you're a [surname], aren't you?" That is how close-knit this community is -- it's the kind of town where the residents can recognize entire family lines just by looking at one person they've never met in their life.

I've never been to a Catholic mass funeral. I've been to a Catholic wedding, which felt like it was six hours long and one of the most mind-numbingly boring things I've ever been forced to endure, but I didn't know what to expect from this funeral.

What it entailed was some music, some readings from the bible, a communion (no wine, just the wafers -- I did not partake, of course), a few prayers, and a brief biography from the priest (deacon? bishop? cardinal? I don't know, I'm an atheist) before they were like "burial will follow in the cemetery. bye, y'all." 

Burial?

As for grandpa himself, at the beginning of the ceremony he'd been carried in, in a very small wooden box about the size of a tissue box, and he sat on a table in the aisle just in front of the many rows of pews. His box (I don't know that I'd call it an "urn") had a stylized picture of an acoustic guitar on it -- grandpa made hundreds of guitars throughout his life. At the end of the ceremony, the box was carried back out, and all of us in the family pews followed one by one, pew by pew -- before we were followed by the rest of the town back out of the church and into the rain.

I was in one of the back family pews, so my turn to go was following everyone else in the family outside. By the time I got outside, they'd placed the wooden box inside the back of the hearse and had strapped it in, and were closing the door. 

Y'all gotta be kidding me, I thought. They're going to take this wooden box of ashes up to the cemetery and bury it?

That's exactly what they did.

In the rain and the mud of the cemetery, they lowered the box down into the grave unceremoniously (well, there may have been some words spoken, but I didn't hear them as it was raining and they were already lowering the box by the time we got up to the grave, which was on top of a hill). Grandpa's ashes were laid to rest in what appears to be a family-style plot, next to his daughter who had died of cancer in 2010. They're together again 12 years later, I guess. 

I didn't get a good look at much else. The family, for the first time I'd seen since my arrival, was pretty distraught. The grandchildren were crying, as was Mama. I tried to keep my head down and not look on most of them in such a vulnerable state. I helped Daisy take care of Mama, who can't get around that well anymore, and just focused on the group instead of the individuals. I wanted to take a picture of the grave, but Daisy said not to. 

Then we silently got back into the car and returned to the family home. 

Grandma did not come to the memorial service or to the cemetery -- she stayed at home alone. Word is that she'd told her husband when he was alive that she wouldn't be going, which to a certain extent I found extremely amusing and to a much larger extent I found incredibly sad. 

Still, I can't imagine what Daisy's reaction would be were I to tell her "yeah, when you die, I'm not coming to your funeral." Probably a divorce. 

Anyway.

Daisy and the parents would leave shortly thereafter for a lunch and sit-down with some old family friends in their house near the cove. That left at and inside the actual family home nobody but me and grandma for some time. Once she saw we'd all returned safely, she went to go lay down and nap for a while, and said I could do the same if I were tired. 

I was sitting on the sun porch, in a very comfortable chair. I was indeed tired -- it felt like I'd been running since I got on the very first plane in Omaha five days before. I tried to play a game on my phone and couldn't do it long before I conked out.

Daisy's uncle came in a few minutes later and I had a brief conversation with him before he did the same thing in the chair next to me. I was told later that the fiance of one of Daisy's cousins came up to the porch to hang out, saw both of us passed out asleep in the chairs there with nobody else around, and then quickly turned around and headed back from whence he came.

In the early evening hours, it was decided so that everyone could eat something a little different, both pizza and takeout Chinese would be procured. Of course, Daisy and the parents were still out visiting friends, so I ate this food, being careful to remain vegetarian in my diet (which was not hard, given what they all ordered). It was a rather subdued, quiet evening that was spent with the family, and I think everyone was emotion'd out from the funeral earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, while all of this was going on, we had to begin plotting our trip back home. And by "we," I mean, well, me and Dad. Mama stated that she wanted to remain there as long as she could, at least through the wedding celebration that we would've originally visited for, and to help take care of her mother once everyone went back home from the funeral as well as that. Daisy, on the other hand, had enough PTO at work (because she so rarely ever takes any real time off) to stretch out her trip through the end of the month and fly back on the original return date.

That left me and Dad.

I am a homebody, yes. But if there's anyone who's more of a homebody than me, it's Daisy's father. He does not like to be away from his house, his cats, or his garden. As a retired man in his 70s, that's where he's comfortable and where he wants to be, and I don't blame him. I, on the other hand, could never extend my time off that long, and in fact was not entirely sure at that juncture where my actual time off ended, and I also wanted to get home to my cats (who had not been without one or both of us around for more than a few hours in over a year). Also, the hotel bed was killing my back and making it seize up every once in a while when I would try to get out of it, sending rockets of pain through my body so hard that I think a few times I actually blacked out for a split second. I wanted to be home as well, if only because -- as much as I love all of the family and walking on the beach every morning -- I was traveled out and spent. I wanted food that wasn't convenience food, I wanted to sleep in my own bed with the cats. I wanted to use my normal vapes again, since I was down to my last disposable (the Vuse thing I mentioned above), and -- to top everything else off -- I was out of clean clothing, having worn my last pair of clean underwear the day after the funeral.

[EDIT: I was given the opportunity to do laundry at the family home, but the dryer was broken and it would have to dry on the line. That makes clothing stiff and rough and uncomfortable, and without my detergent and fabric softener there I didn't know if I'd like or be allergic to the stuff in Canada, so I declined.]

Dad expressed a desire to drive back to Bangor in his rental car on Friday (reminder, Daisy had ours, so it's not like she and Mom would be stranded there) and then fly out Saturday morning. I agreed with him. Even if I hadn't, I didn't have much choice -- we had to return together or I would be stuck there until Mama and Daisy decided to return -- it's not like I could be like "yeah, I'll stick around a few extra days," no -- it was one or the other.

So, Daisy updated my ticket to fly out Saturday and got a ticket for Dad on the same flights, which I believe she put on my card. She also booked us a room in the Bangor Quality Inn, again, also on my card, so that we would have somewhere to sleep on Friday night before dropping off the rental at the airport as we hopped the flight on Saturday morning. Dad noted that he'd square up with me for that once the girls were back home, but honestly, if he doesn't, I don't really care. The parents have done so much for us over the years and are on a fixed income, while I am not. 

Once that was settled, it was also settled that Mama and Daisy would remain there until the 30th before making the same trip back that Dad and I would make, with them arriving home on the 1st. Roughly. I didn't know the exact details at the time. 

Thursday the 18th was our last day all together in Nova Scotia, and all of the family knew it would be. Just as they all filtered in during the earlier part of the week for the funeral, all of them were beginning to filter back out and return to their respective homes and jobs. The first were a few of the cousins, one of whom took Daisy's sister back to the Halifax airport on her way so she could return home to the family. Other cousins and family followed, slowly, until the core family around the houses were about fifteen people total -- with four of them being us and the parents. 

With grandpa in the ground (well, I mean, figuratively), Daisy wanted to show me some sights of the area we hadn't gotten to see in 2015. Thursday would be the last day we'd be able to do that before Dad and I went back to Omaha, so she asked me if there was anything I really wanted to do or see.

"A lighthouse," I told her. "I want to see a lighthouse. Like an actual lighthouse."

As much as you see lighthouses in artsy photos on calendars or on merchandise promoting maritime areas, there...aren't really any around their part of Nova Scotia (or anywhere I traveled in Maine on this trip either, for the record). And to be fair, the notion of a lighthouse is pretty outdated in the 21st century. Sure, they do see use in a lot of areas, and I'm sure on the side of the maritimes facing the wide open ocean all the way to Europe and Africa, there are a good number of them. But on the inland side of Nova Scotia? Yeeeeeeeah, no. 

Daisy said that she wanted me to be able to touch the ocean while I was there, not just look at it as I walked around the cove every morning when I woke up. I agreed to this and was happy to do so, but the thing about Nova Scotia is that a lot of the beaches are beaches in the widest scope of the word only -- they're not so much sand as they are rocky shorelines:

And, while they are beautiful, it's not like you can go out on them and enjoy the water without breaking a leg or foot (or worse) when -- not if, but when -- you slip and fall. 

That being said, there are a few beach areas with sun and sand, you just have to know where they are and how to get to them. When we were there in 2015, we went up to Mabou Harbor, which had a gorgeous little beach. This time around we went to Port Hood (seen in the photo on the top of this post) which has a very similar, longer beach. We went with the parents and Daisy's cousin (who is roughly my age) along with his two daughters who are in their early 20s. And yes, I did get to put my feet in the sand and into the ocean. 

The next morning, Dad and I would leave on the road for Bangor again. How did that trip go, and how did I eventually get home? That's a story for Part III.

The Call of the Isle'd: A Canada Story, Part I

 Hello all.

I have gone to, and returned safely from, Canada. Nova Scotia, to be precise, where I spent eight days. 

I wanted to get that out of the way now so that people reading this could settle a bit. 

As I've mentioned here numerous times over the past year or two, Daisy's cousin is getting married (at this juncture it's already happened twice, with two different ceremonies and a third, celebratory gathering coming up this weekend). Daisy and I had long planned to attend the third celebratory gathering, and had booked our travel times for August 21 through 31, returning home just in time for Labor Day weekend -- which would have given us several days of recuperation time and some breathing space before we had to return to our respective jobs business-as-usual the following week.

I want to stress this -- the trip was already fully booked and paid for -- hotels covered, rental car covered, flights covered. It had been planned out. I'd gotten a new suitcase and carry-on backpack. I had ordered multiple disposable vapes for the trip because I couldn't take my real ones on the plane(s). I had an entire Canada-centric wardrobe, including colder-weather clothing and extra everything, planned out and mostly packed. I was excited to go on this adventure, which would have been me, Daisy, and Mama -- Dad was staying at home to take care of the houses and cats, and also because they'd just gone to and from Nova Scotia earlier in the summer. I put in the PTO at work, set calendar invites to my team, and made sure all were aware this trip was coming up weeks in advance.

On August 10, Daisy's grandfather died, losing his battle with cancer eleven days before we would have left for our trip to see him and the rest of the family for the wedding celebration.

The parents -- both of them -- flew out the next day. 

Daisy and I, after an incredible amount of finagling and rescheduling/rebooking flights and rooms, and replotting the trip, flew out the day after.

This is the story of that trip, of a vacation turned into a trip of necessity, and our (as well as the rest of the family's) attempts to put the "fun" back in "funeral."

***

We knew Daisy's grandfather was bad off. Daisy had booked changeable tickets for our vacation (at some extra cost) to be able to swap flights at a moment's notice. When he first started going in and out of hospital, I let my leadership at work know "hey, this is gonna happen and it's gonna happen probably sooner rather than later, so when it does, I won't be able to give y'all much notice before I'm on the plane." They understood. It also helped that I had the PTO time to cover it all.

I called my boss the night it happened, told him that I'd likely be leaving ASAP and that I'd edit the time off and take care of everything I could before leaving. 

It was always understood between me and Daisy, as well as with my workplace, that if he died before our trip, I could make one trip or the other -- I couldn't go for the funeral, come back, and go back for our planned vacation for the family wedding stuff a second time. My (limited) PTO and money was enough for only one shot here. When he left this mortal coil, it was go time. 

Within 24 hours of his passing, our bags were packed, the house was prepped for the cats (Daisy's best friend would be stopping by both houses, ours as well as the parents', to take care of the animals and keep an eye on things a few times while we were gone), and we were on our way to Canada by approximately 36 hours afterwards, give or take. 

Well, sort of.

Because we had to change the flights, our options had changed for a lot of things, including lodgings and the rental car. It also meant that we were flying from Omaha to Atlanta, Atlanta to LaGuardia (NYC), and LaGuardia to Bangor, Maine -- with some layover time at each of the middle stops. It was a 12+ hour trip of nonstop travel, and that was before we'd even cross the border to make the long drive up to the little town Daisy's mother's family is from. 

The flights were fine. Daisy and I were both tired, stressed, and sort of grumpy, but none of the flights were delayed or canceled, and weather was wonderful when we flew out the morning of August 12, after taking an Uber to the airport. 

Everywhere we were flying I'd never been to before. I'd never been to Atlanta, and had never traveled to or through Georgia before. Same goes for New York, and New York City in particular. The approach to LaGuardia was breathtaking, as we flew right by the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the new World Trade Center. Even on the plane, the city was enormous and awe-inspiring. 

The same goes for Bangor, as well. Yes, I've been to Maine twice before, and have been through a large chunk of the beautiful state. But, I'd never been to Bangor and had never flown into Bangor before. The last time we flew in and out of Maine, it was through Portland. 

Bangor was...an experience. It was even more of an experience on the way back, but I'll get to that.

For those of you who don't travel often, and who haven't traveled to or from Bangor, Maine in particular, I recommend it. In fact, I highly recommend the travel plans we took if you ever need to go to the maritime provinces of Canada. Find some way to fly into Bangor and book a room there at the airport Quality Inn for the night to get some rest before beginning your journey. You're an hour or so from the border at Woodstock/Houlton, Bangor is a neat little city, and Bangor International Airport (I still chuckle a bit at calling it that) is tiny and the easiest airport ever to get in and out of. No joke, you can be off your plane, at the baggage claim, and out the door in less than ten minutes. It was a mindblowingly easy experience. 

We landed in Bangor around 11pm Friday the 12th, got our giant suitcases from the carousel, and went to pick up our full-size rental car at the Enterprise counter.

They...did not have a full-size car for us. Despite the fact that we reserved one in advance. We needed something with four doors and (ideally) a trunk. SUVs cannot be rented and driven across the border into Canada anymore per their regulations (apparently they're hardcore theft/chop-shop targets), and while I would've loved to have been able to rent one of the numerous Challengers or the odd Camaro I saw sitting around the rental lot, it would not have been exactly practical.

What they had for us was an "upgrade" to a brand new 2022 Nissan Titan V8 monster truck. 

It had four doors, yes, and it was indeed permitted to cross the border, so...that's what we were given.

Daisy was not happy. The Titan would cost us double the amount of gas money to take to Canada and back.

"If it's what they have, it's what they have," I told Daisy. "It's not ideal, but I don't necessarily really mind paying the extra gas money if we have to."

We did have the money. It wasn't something I wanted to spend it on, as gas in Canada is sold by the liter (metric system, remember?), but it was what it was.

Daisy, frustrated, got the rental company to give us a $300 credit to accept the truck, which would cover most of, if not all of, the gas for the trip. They also agreed to let her call in the morning before we began our drive to see if any cars -- like the one we had booked -- were available. 

I found the entire situation a bit amusing instead of frustrating. This irritated Daisy, who remarked that I get all stressed out and flip out over the small things, but the big things like this I was go-with-the-flow on. 

She's right, of course.

Still, it didn't really matter much to me. A truck is simply a vehicle. I owned a truck once, for a few years, as you may recall. It's fine. I don't stress about things I can't change, and especially not things which would only minimally impact our trip. So, we got in, fired it up, and drove it to the hotel.

It wouldn't turn off.

Let me rephrase. The truck's engine and lights would turn off just fine, but the interior dash/speedometer/tachometer lights and infotainment center dash display would not. It kept displaying "no key detected" on the screens and even after locking it and walking away for 10-15 minutes, we could come back (without the keys, mind you) and still find those internal lights on. 

At this point it was after midnight, Daisy is frazzled and in tears, and all three of us -- me, Daisy, and the sweet lady running the front desk at the Bangor Quality Inn -- were googling how to fix this on our phones. Apparently, it's a common problem and a known issue. Daisy called the rental company, who told her yes, come back in in the morning, swap it out for safety's sake, and we'd still have the credit -- etc. No harm, no foul.

Without, say, the headlights/taillights on and continually drawing power, the battery wouldn't likely drain enough in the six or so hours we'd be sleeping. I also mentioned to Daisy that there was probably a setting on that we weren't aware of that would keep those systems on longer than usual, and they'd probably turn off on their own in the night once the truck put itself into sleep mode or whatever, after not detecting the key in the nearby vicinity for a while. Giving up, we went inside and checked into our room for a quick night's sleep. 

When I woke up in the morning and went out to vape (disposably, of course) and then get some breakfast at the continental breakfast bar, the lights in the truck were all off. When we checked out of the hotel and tested the truck, turning it on and off a few times, everything turned on and off normally. 

We still took it back to the rental kiosk, parked it in the lot, and exchanged it for a beautiful, brand new silver 2022 Chevrolet Malibu with less than 2000 miles on the odometer, and we were on our way.

The Malibu was an entirely different driving experience. The car was immaculate and comfortable, smelled like the showroom, got an average of 37 miles per gallon, and had a wonderful heating/cooling system. Daisy and I liked it so much that within two or three hours of driving it we had already begun contemplating an eventual purchase of one to replace Daisy's aging Hyundai -- which, compared to the Malibu, was a dinosaur. 

When you travel to Canada these days, you have to plot the trip in advance with a phone app called ArriveCAN. It basically does everything they'd do at the border crossing for you -- you scan your passport with it, you pick the day you're entering the country, at what crossing, and for what reason, scan your vaccination card, and tell them where you're staying while you're there (my guess is so that they can track you and check up on you if there's any suspicious activity happening there), and give an approximate return date. It gives you a QR code via the app and via email for the border officers to scan and verify everything.

The ArriveCAN app must elude some travelers, however, as we waited in line for probably half an hour at the border crossing. Some cars and an entire fleet of motorcycles were through the crossing in about 30 seconds each, while others took five minutes or more. 

When we got to the gate, they asked us the standard questions and (I assume) checked the answers to our data via the app database.

"Where are you coming from?" the lady asked us.

"Nebraska."

She looked at us funny, then looked at the car. "Please take off your glasses so I can see your faces. This is a rental car?"

The car had Maine plates. No lady, we stole the car. There's ten kilos of coke in the back and a small Mexican child hidden in the trunk.

"Yes."

"Where are you going?"

Daisy told the lady, who obviously knew maritime geography by the perplexed look on her face, and knew it was something like a ten-hour drive.

"...why?" the border agent asked.

"My grandfather died two days ago," Daisy said, her voice cracking a little.

Her look changed immediately. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Here's your passports. Looks like your ArriveCAN stuff is all good. Welcome to Canada."

And with that, the gate raised and we were across the border into the Great White North.

As an aside, though it's not like she has the documentation (or the passport to prove it on the fly), Daisy is a Canadian citizen. She has dual citizenship, along with her sisters and her sisters' oldest children, who were born before the rules changed and were grandfathered in -- no, ahem, pun intended of course.

***

The drive from the border to the little town where the family is takes about seven hours or so, give or take, not counting stops to pee and refuel at gas stations where this sign is posted on every pump:

I wish I were making that up, as it's possibly the most Canadian thing I've ever seen.

During this drive, I learned a few things:

1. My Discover card -- the card with my highest limit that was freshly paid off a week before the trip down to a zero balance -- is not accepted in most of Atlantic Canada. Gas stations do not take it. Restaurants do not take it. Most retail establishments do not take it and have no idea what it is. Discover does not have a true presence in Canada, despite my personal Discover card having the picture of the Canadian flag on it. 

2. You will almost never see a Starbucks in Canada, and if you do it's a one-off location, a novelty of sorts. Almost as soon as you cross the border it's nothing but Tim Hortons as far as the eye can see; every single Petro-Canada gas station has one attached to it.

3. Unlike the states, where options are plenty, in Atlantic Canada there are only two gas station chains -- either Irving or Petro-Canada. Smaller locations are just gas stations, while larger ones from both chains incorporate truckstop facilities or include multiple small restaurant storefronts on the inside. 

4. Canadians like pineapple and fresh mushrooms on their gas station baked footlong veggie subs.

We crossed into Nova Scotia from New Brunswick in the late afternoon/early evening hours, and finally arrived at our destination around 10pm Saturday the 13th. We checked into our motel -- which was on the ocean in a little area called Havre Boucher.  The family home was about a ten-minute drive away, so we went up to say hi to everyone gathered there -- which included the parents, some of the extended family (uncles, aunts, and cousins) before going back to the motel and passing out.

There's a lot I'm glossing over here, of course, for brevity's sake -- I could write a series of ten or more posts about this trip if I wanted to, but I'm going to try to keep it to three or four at the most. I did want to mention, however, that I did finally see a moose in the wild -- it was on the side of the road in a wetland marsh area while driving through New Brunswick. So, I guess I can mark that off the list of things I needed to do in life. 

It's Really a Lot, Part III

 So, picking up from where we left off...

I did not want to waste the Covid tests. We had a finite number of them and only had one order left of the free ones from the government that I could request. Ordering the exact same tests (and I mean the exact same tests) from Amazon is close to $50. No, seriously. I checked. 

So because of that, I wasn't about to waste tests when Daisy was testing negative and when I was feeling fine. On Sunday, because I was awake and had some energy, and because it wasn't 100 degrees, I went out and mowed both the front and back yards. Daisy's mother, in the interim, had called in a prescription for Paxlovid, which Daisy masked up and went to pick up for her, leaving it at the house for them while I did the mowing. 

It would be the last time Daisy left the house for the entire week.

Well, most of the week.

By the time Sunday night rolled around, I was beginning to feel achy and really tired, and had a bit of chest congestion that was actually noticeable. I did not feel sick, though. I figured that my lack of quality sleep plus the yard work and allergies from being outdoors was the likely culprit. By the time I got off work on Monday morning, I was really exhausted and was feeling a bit out of it, and I felt like I had a mild chest rattle. Again, possibly/probably allergy related, I didn't think much of it.

Daisy, however, felt like hell. She'd gotten a sore throat (which was the primary symptom her mother had) and a slight fever, both of which were not good signs. She tried to shy away from much physical contact with me when she could.

"[Daisy]," I said, "we're in the same house, the same enclosed spaces. We're breathing the same air, sleeping in the same bed. If you have it, I will have it. There's no need to be all separate or standoffish. I don't care at this point, I've been as exposed as you have. If it happens, it happens."

Some may see that as a sort of defeatist viewpoint but at that point we didn't really have any other options -- if I was going to get it there was no way out of it after the exposure I'd already had. Might as well just hunker down and deal with it.

I probably felt the worst on Monday; just tired and achy, and sort of foggy. Meanwhile, Daisy had acquired a low grade fever that was sticking around. Generally, her temperature runs a degree or two lower than the regular 98.6 -- she tends to be in the high 96s or low 97s. I actually do too, for the most part. This in itself is weird. But, y'know, whatever -- I don't think everyone has the baseline 98.6 widely looked on as the standard. Anyway, Daisy's temperature began hovering around 99.7, 99.8 almost every time she took it. I never bothered to take mine. I wasn't exactly sick, just felt a little off. 

On Tuesday morning before bed, I received a text message from the eye doctor's office -- my re-lensed glasses had arrived and were available for pickup. Well, I thought, that's nice, but we ain't gonna be able to pick them up for a while. This troubled me on some level because my prescription changed by a bit and I wanted to make sure it was going to be, well, correct and comfortable before I took the time, and money, to order a few spare pairs from the websites I normally get my glasses from. After all, it takes a few weeks to get those glasses in the mail, and the last thing I wanted was to not know how the prescription would be, order a bunch of spares anyway, and then find out when i got my new ones that oh, the prescription was way off and/or would need to be redone -- leaving me with multiple new pairs of glasses that were useless.

In the afternoon, I was awakened by banging and yelling. 

Now, it's not uncommon for me to be awakened, at least a few times and always lightly at worst, by Daisy cooking something, shutting a door, using the bathroom or talking on a work call while she's working from home. Most of the time my brain shuts it out and I either mostly sleep through it or fall asleep again quickly thereafter. However, there are times when I'm awakened and cannot get back to sleep, at all, no matter how I try. 

Well, Tuesday, with the banging and yelling, was one of those days.

Apparently, while I'd been sleeping, the refrigerator repairman had come (since that was happening whether Daisy had Covid or not) and he was having a hell of a time with our fridge. Daisy had masked up and taken her laptop downstairs to continue her work as well as supervise while he worked on our fridge, but he had been taking forever to get it fixed and in the interim, Daisy desperately needed to take her machine back upstairs to use both of her giant monitors and actually do the work she needed to get done -- she couldn't just sit downstairs on her laptop all day; it was like working with one arm tied behind your back. She asked me if I'd go downstairs to replace her on watch. 

I'd like to step back for a minute to note that no matter who is working in our home or on what -- and we've had a large number of repairmen here for everything from the washing machine (three times) to the oven, garbage disposal, plumbing/toilets (also three times, probably more), overhead microwave, wiring/electrical (at least four times) -- etc. Every time we're always there, in the room, monitoring the situation. It's not that I don't trust these people inside our home, it's that if they fuck something up, you bet your ass they're going to own that fuck-up and make it right, because I'm going to be there to witness it. 

Anyway, Daisy said he'd been down there for at least an hour, as had she, and in that time the electrician who fixed our wiring over the weekend had come back, opened the door and just walked into our home without calling or knocking first (while the other repairman was there in the kitchen, so the front door was already open) and put the cover on the wall over the new box/hole he'd cut to rewire the line, then thanked her and left. When Daisy told me that I was stunned; she said she'd just been sitting on the couch working on her laptop when the dude just walked into the room. Like, holy shit. That bothers me on multiple levels. I can't imagine what that dude was thinking. 

So, I went downstairs to replace Daisy, and took my phone with me. The refrigerator repairman had to be in his late forties, was tall and lanky, and swore like a trooper at our fridge. He apparently hates our model of fridge, hates working on that run/model line of them, does not understand how they have to be so difficult to repair, and generally was yelling at the refrigerator the entire time he was there -- except for when he fielded a personal cell phone call from one of his buddies and they had a full fifteen-minute-long conversation about elk hunting in Nebraska and how the restrictions are too tight because "the animals belong to all of us" and how the landowners of hunting areas shouldn't charge so much money to access them...

I wish I were making that up. It took all of my self-control not to tell him that the animals don't belong to him, the human population of Nebraska, or to anyone/anything else -- they are free and wild and have lives and families, and don't deserve to be shot by meat-eating barbarians like him and his friends just because humans think they taste good.

I didn't, though. I showed some class. I do have some class when it's called for. But man, was it difficult.

Anyway.

The fridge got fixed. That was the last thing on the list of pending repairs for the house. It needed a new ice-maker motor and door flapper assembly. It works fine now. Well, fine for a twenty-plus-year-old refrigerator, anyway. It does the job.

I returned upstairs after the repairman left to find that, finally, our lab results from our physicals had been uploaded online so that we could see them.

I have...experienced zero changes to my A1C. It remains steady at 6.7. In the past year it has remained at about the same and hasn't really changed. In July 2021 it was 6.8. In January 2022 it was 6.7. In June 2022 it was 6.7. So, the diabetes is being controlled, and it's not getting worse...but I am not yet making leaps and bounds of improvements either. so it is what it is, I guess.

My other test results and labs are normal. They're slowly seeing my cholesterol rise, and when they called to discuss my test results with me, they recommended that I start on Lipitor. I told them to go ahead and call it in, sure -- I may or may not use it. I may not even pick it up from the pharmacy.

Daisy found this to be ridiculous. "I could see them wanting to put you on Lipitor if you had like, 800 cholesterol or something like that," she said. "But not for your numbers, not at all, not yet. it may be an eventuality at some point, but not yet."

She's right. My bad cholesterol is simply a little higher than they'd like to see. It's not high and it's nowhere near off the charts. It's like 20 points higher than the "standard range." 

What's worse, two of the main side effects of Lipitor are raising your blood sugar and making you gain weight, which...again, I thought those two things were goals we were actively working against doing? 

So I dunno. I had the pharmacy fill it, but I don't know if we'll actually pick it up. The doctors want me to come in for another fasting blood draw in six weeks to check the cholesterol levels again, and at that juncture we'll see where I am and if it's changed. In the interim I'm going to be more active and take high levels of inositol every day, which helps to lower cholesterol. If they tell me that there's no way out of it and I need to start the Lipitor at that point...okay, fine, I guess. I'd really rather not do it but if it keeps me alive and healthier than I am now, then I'd probably be stupid not to take my doctor's advice. I don't know yet. I do not want to be on any more medications than absolutely necessary. My overall goal is to get healthy enough to get off the ones I'm currently on, and that's going to be the focus of my next doctor's visit -- what do I have to do to my body to get off the allopurinol and the metformin? Because I am really sick of taking pills every day. I want a pill-free existence. 

Meanwhile, Daisy was getting more sick -- or at least feeling more "off" as the week went on. For me, I felt normal. Daisy took a test every other day or so, always coming up negative. 

On Wednesday at work, I made sure to gather all the data necessary for who would be working the July 4th holiday weekend. I had volunteered for it many months ago, as...well, they needed someone who could actually be reliable to be management on shift for it. I plotted my days carefully long ago -- as I usually work New Year's Day, and did this year, July 4th was another day I could pick and say look, I not only worked one holiday this year, but two and start getting off the pattern of working on New Year's Day. New Year's Day 2023 is a Sunday, a night I'd normally work. My goal is to be able to (hopefully) leave work on the morning of December 23rd and be off until January 2, and only need to use 32 hours of time for it (four eight-hour shifts). I don't know if this will be possible given the trip this summer and any time I use around Thanksgiving, but I'm readying for it as much as I can now. 

So, whether I'm in the office or not, as I have the bulk of the overnight team reporting to me, the duties fall mostly on me to make sure that holidays, especially holiday weekends, are well-staffed. I put a call out for volunteers at least a month out, and generally get at least five or six volunteers to work on the holiday. Because most holidays are dead in my job (except for Christmas 2020, when a bomber took out most of Tennessee and some surrounding states on Christmas morning -- thanks, dick), the workloads are usually very light, the help is plentiful, and it's a night there I can just supervise in the foreground and read the news or play a phone game in the background. But, because I was working the holiday this year, I would get a "comp day" for it -- meaning, an extra day off for volunteering for the coverage. 

I was planning to take that day on the 7th, but our director is OOO next week, and will need the rest of us in management to be ever-vigilant for escalations and/or other issues. So I gave the team a choice -- I could either take it on the 7th and maybe have the team be a bit short on coverage, or I could take it June 30, the Thursday prior, and work straight through next week on normal shifts. I eventually decided, after discussion with the team, that I'd just do it on June 30. However, this wasn't decided until the very late overnight hours of June 29, when Daisy was already in bed.

The next morning, when she awoke and began her work day, I asked her if there was anything off the top of her head that I could do to immediately make her happy and put her in a good mood. When she couldn't think of anything, I asked her if me having the night off would be something along those lines, and she agreed. It was very cute.

Daisy was still running a slight fever and was feeling very out of it. Meanwhile, her mother (who had taken the Paxlovid) was much improved. Dad had gone to the doctor to get an official test for him, and he also tested negative. Both parents are fully vaccinated and fully boosted, and were in good spirits (well, good spirits for them, anyway). Daisy, however, was getting worse.

When I finally woke up in the afternoon and evening hours, Daisy asked me if I'd be willing to run into the local urgent care with her to get an actual, bona-fide Covid lab test, as she was hot and dizzy and seemed as if she was fading fast, and her fever really wasn't subsiding -- it was either remaining steady in the high 99 range or would fluctuate by a tenth of a degree. I didn't really want to go, but she needed me there -- and while I was there, I also wanted to see if I could get a test done just to rule everything out. After all, I could have it too, and could just be mostly (or completely) asymptomatic. 

Our two urgent care visits cost us $70 total to get looked at quickly and a test for each of us. It was a really painless procedure and relatively fast, too -- we were in and out in about half an hour. The new, more accurate tests don't require you to stick the swab all the way in anymore to tickle your brain -- instead, the doctor (nurses in this case) just swabs the tip and insides of the nostrils, and doesn't even go in that deeply. I've done more vigorous cleaning of my nose with a tissue than with the test. We were told the results would take 24 hours or so, but to check online (in the system where we get all of our other test results) in the morning or early afternoon. 

I'd taken the night off for my comp day; it didn't matter to me how long it took to get the results -- I had the entire weekend ahead of me for doing whatever needed to be done, and Friday for me was payday. I was perfectly fine sitting around at home and getting some true decompression time -- time with which I could finally get a little breathing space and not have to go anywhere or be obligated to do anything. Daisy, who wouldn't be going anywhere or doing anything outside the house for any reason until she got the doctor's test results confirmed, was working from home on Friday as well. So, I got some decent sleep, decent rest, and devoted all of Friday to laundry and light chores. I washed load after load of towels, bed sheets and blankets, stripped the bathroom of its mats and shower curtains and washed them, washed my own laundry, paid a bill or two, balanced the bank account and placed an Amazon order for household items, and (at Daisy's insistence) did some light exercise. Meanwhile, Daisy worked as per the usual on Friday, from her office across the hall from my own.

By the early afternoon hours, we both got emails that our Covid results were in. We both checked, and thankfully, both of us were negative. 

So, whatever was making Daisy feel ill, or making her run a slight fever for several days on end...well, per the doctors, and per our home tests, was not Covid-19.

"I still think I had it earlier in the week," Daisy said.

She'd talked to her parents during the day -- her mother was feeling better but was still not 100%. Mama said we could come over to hang out and eat foods with them. As much as we love the parents, that was a hard no from both me and Daisy until the Covid is completely out of that house. I went online to the USPS website and ordered the very last set of free tests that were available to send to our household. They'll arrive sometime within the next week. Better to have them and not use them than need them and not have them.

That evening, after she got off work, Daisy said that she thought our upstairs bathroom was disgusting and couldn't stand it any more, and wanted to clean it before I put the newly-washed shower curtains, towels, and mats back in there. I told her to go for it, if she felt like it; it was up to her how and when she wanted to do that. So, she did -- after she got a little decompression time, she went to work on the bathroom, bleaching it down, scrubbing the tub, scrubbing the sink, etc.

Some of you may be asking why I let her do this when she'd been sick and/or why I didn't do it myself if it was bothering her so much...and that would show me how little you know about our relationship. First of all, I don't "let" Daisy do anything -- she doesn't need permission from me for general life tasks and let me tell you, try telling that woman what to do or what not to do and you'll get a rude awakening really quickly. Secondly, when Daisy says she's going to do something, she will do it -- but she will do it her way to her standards. I don't have any say in how it gets done. If I were to go in there and clean the bathroom my way after she said she was going to do it, she would likely have been furious with me and I would not have done it the way she wanted it to be done, or in the same timeframe.

Also, I'd been awake since 6am, had done a ton of other things around the house, and I was tired; the last thing I wanted to do was clean a bathroom at 9pm -- I wanted to eat something and watch Stranger Things, which had premiered that day. My day was winding down and I wanted it to be over. 

So, Daisy cleaned the bathroom, we ate, and we watched Stranger Things. The first of the two finale episodes, at least.

As we wound down for the night, Daisy said that if she was feeling good enough and everything else was okay, we could go pick up my glasses from the optometrist on Saturday. She said this was fine because she wouldn't have to interact with anyone (even if she still felt sick) and that she knew I would want them to check my prescription/make sure it was correct for the July 4th sales on the glasses websites we use (Payne Glasses and Zenni Optical) to get some new pairs. 

My prescription apparently gets updated a little here and there every time I get my eyes checked. The eye doctors say this is normal. I mentioned this before. My major concern was that the prescription would be accurate in the new lenses I paid a lot of money to have inserted into my older frames. Mind you, I could've gotten at least one brand new pair, if not two brand new pairs, of glasses directly from the optometrist for the amount of money I paid to re-lens the old ones. But I really, really liked and missed my old glasses and I absolutely wanted to give them at least another year of life, if not more. 

In the afternoon hours on Saturday -- after it had rained violently out of nowhere for a good hour in the morning, we went to pick them up. Daisy dropped me at the door and grabbed a parking spot, and I'd gotten there in the last hour they were open for the day, meaning I was the only person there other than the nice lady who was working there who I'd originally handed off the glasses to in the first place. She presented me with my new old frames, which had been immaculately cleaned and had the new lenses installed into them, and I very apprehensively put them on.

Hoo boy, HD vision, gooooooo.

The prescription was, fortunately, perfect. I could see everything very clearly and crisply again. It was a noticeable difference, but not too noticeable -- meaning, the prescription I'd just gotten was very good, but the older one I'd had for over a year was also just fine too and still is.

I debated on getting any new glasses at all from the websites I order them from; after all, I have the two new sets of lenses now, and my older prescription is still fine...but I did want to see in HD vision all the time; my vision is so important to me. I decided that I would relent and get a few pairs of new ones, and that they'd be generally higher-quality pairs than the simple plastic square frames I wore a lot -- I'd get a few different styles, and wouldn't let overall price be a deciding factor. Having worn glasses for a large chunk of my life now, I know what styles I like versus the ones I really don't. I know which ones will irritate my nose or temples and which ones don't, and began planning accordingly.

Because of Payne Glasses' 4th of July sale, I was able to get eight pairs of new glasses for about $125, and with shipping, it came to $140 or so. I also found that both Walmart and Goodwill take glasses donations of older, outdated pairs, and I already have a giant Goodwill donation bag in my closet. So I'll swap out most of the pairs that I've acquired this past year (the ones that aren't absolute favorites, anyway) and will replace them with the new ones -- donating the lesser-favored old ones.

The new ones are in a variety of styles. I got a few square, plastic frames like I generally favor for everyday use, but I also got a different pair of aviators, some lower-rimless squared browlines, a round browline, and a few other stylistic odds-and-ends that I may or may not end up liking but was worth the few bucks just to try out. Half of the frames I've loved over the years have been discontinued by one manufacturer or another, and it's not worth spending $100 or more to put new lenses in a $15 frame. Those, sadly, are the ones that get donated and eventually replaced with something different. 

So, no pun intended, we shall see.

Daisy has not yet ordered new glasses in her new prescription; it may be a bit before she does. She is far more particular about colors and styles than I am -- I am old school and don't deviate much from my own likes and patterns. She is avant-garde and tends to gravitate more towards odd shapes and colors, with the drawback of that being she may not end up liking the fit or quality of them once they arrive in the mail. I've only been disappointed by the fit and/or quality of glasses I've ordered over the years about two or three times, total, and that's generally just been because of the style or fit isn't what I thought it would be, or it hurts my nose/temples to wear them because the size ended up being smaller than expected. Etc. It is what it is, I guess. I've learned the sizes that I need now and have adjusted my likes and dislikes accordingly to match, and haven't had an issue in years.

Anyway.

As soon as I got home I swapped out my frames for the new lenses in the oldest frames I have -- my $400 Chesterfield pure titanium frames from 2015, and have been wearing them ever since. There's  just something about a simple, elegant pair of wire-rim glasses that feels so spartan, so utilitarian. I also barely feel them when I wear them because they're so light. I made the right choice in getting new lenses in them. 

And, really, so ended our week. We finished Stranger Things, work seems to be dead (at least by looking at my email, anyway) and Daisy is off until Tuesday -- she will finally return to the office on Wednesday. I return to work tonight to work a normal, full week. But it's been a very long, very stressful and hectic last ten days or so, and as we enter the high days of summer I really hope that everything remains quiet and even keel. There are a lot of things coming up over the later summer and fall, but for the moment, I want -- and need -- the peace to continue. 

It's Really a Lot, Part II

 So, let's pick up where we left off. Cool? Cool.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday morning infuriated both me and Daisy. Millions of words have been said and written on it in the four days since, and as I am a white CIS male without children, I am the last person anyone should ever be coming to in order to hear an opinion on the subject...but, as this is my website, y'all are going to hear my thoughts on it anyway. 

Suffice it to say that I vehemently disagree and am very pro-choice, always have been. I am very pro-body autonomy in all people, in all genders, in all social classes and walks of life. It's also probably not a stretch for you to believe and understand that my wife is as well. 

I believe, even though at times my faith in society is tested, that society is mostly good. I believe that given right and wrong options, most people would pick the right option and would choose to be a good person over being a bad one. I am not religious, but I do understand the religious right's viewpoint on their moral grounds that it's essentially premeditated murder. I do not agree with that, of course -- nor do I have to, and nor should that belief be forced on anyone via law or otherwise. From a purely practical and pragmatic viewpoint, this country has far too many unwanted, neglected, or otherwise uncared-for children already. Our population is already close to being larger than can be sustained. Inflation is sky-high and child care costs will be affected too, and they still think it's a great idea to bring every pregnancy to term and birth? I think that's a bullshit argument that falls flat when they won't answer the question of, if every child will now be forced to be carried to term and delivered, how those children will be paid for, cared for, raised, fed, clothed, and given healthcare. Don't even get me started on pregnancies that aren't medically viable, or the concept of being able to arrest and prosecute someone for having a miscarraige. Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense.

That's not their concern, of course. Not their job to raise the kids or see that they're healthy and taken care of, just to see that they're born. The Christian Right's goal in this country is to create more Christians. Their mindset is don't want a baby? don't have sex then, and that is (quite obviously) extremely toxic. Many others have pointed out that none of these people who are "pro life" seem to be lining up to adopt any of the thousands of children currently in the foster care system as wards of the state. It's not about the babies and really, it's not about life in general at all. It's about control. It's about religious white men wanting to control every aspect of a woman's sexuality by taking all sexual autonomy away from women. It's about religious white men wanting to say when, how, and who a woman can have sex with, and why. It's about turning women into objects for men to fuck, and if they get pregnant from it, oh well, that's her problem, she had the sex.

I...I can't believe this is what we've become as a country. I am a 39-year-old atheist, liberal, anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-religion, anti-Republican with a brain who uses said brain, and I am just stunned and disheartened. So many are angry, violently angry. And I have anger, too, but it's mostly just sadness. Twenty years ago we were at the precipice of becoming the society that we were always meant to be -- kind, progressive, always moving forward and upward. Now we're a short few steps away from losing the last of our freedoms and democracy as a whole. How long will it truly be before all of the violent uprisings start? Before we truly do have a second Civil War?

So, all of this was running through our heads on Friday morning as we supervised the work of the utility teams installing our new gas line. As mentioned before, this was an arduous task, as it involved drilling holes through two walls and through the side of our house. It also involved turning our house into a goddamn mess, because we store a lot of things in that closet where the gas meter was. 

So, after drilling through the side of the house, the inside wall above our couch (a two-inch wide hole that you could see light through, the tech on the inside of the house drilled through the opposite wall behind our TV, and hit the house wiring. Suddenly our rooms downstairs were without power as the breaker got kicked. 

"Huh," he said. "I didn't nick it that hard, but I still nicked it."

The tech, with his boring drill (the one drilling the two-inch wide holes through our walls) had hit one of the bigger/thicker wires inside the walls...the wire that apparently distributed power to a good chunk of the house. He had barely nicked it, but it was enough to blow the breaker. 

The crew quickly assessed and told us they'd reported it to the claims department so that an electrician could come out and fix it free of charge. They said they'd be out in an hour or so. Okay. In the interim, they were on a schedule and had to finish the gas line installation and move on. 

I got a call from the claims department confirming the report, and confirming callback with appointment details by noon or so. At that point it was a little before 11, so I was fine with it. The wire nick appeared to take out the downstairs bathroom light and the light in the living room (as well as the single bulb in the closet where they were working) but the other electronics and lighting in the living room -- my work computer, the router, my large lamp, the TV/game systems, etc -- were all fine; they run on a different breaker, I guess. The kitchen was fine too, as was all of the upstairs.

Daisy and I watched them snake the big, ugly black gas line along our support beam, drill brackets around the line to hold it in place, and then caulk up the holes in the wall around it on all sides once it was fully hooked up. It is very ugly. It is very noticeable. It is obtrusive. It sucks.

"We recommend you just paint it," they said, "to make it blend in with the rest of the room. It's fully paintable, and we used paintable caulk too."

I am not sure whether we have the same shade of paint for that room anymore. We've not changed the paint since we moved in -- we left it what the last homeowners had it. While there are multiple cans of paint they left us for rooms and touchups, I don't know for certain we have the living room wall paint. Oh well. Daisy wants to repaint the downstairs eventually anyway. 

They finished up their work and finally left, but not before getting up on our roof to run a scope down through our entire water/sewer system to make sure they hadn't done any damage to our lines when digging and laying the new gas line -- apparently for a lot of homes and a lot of neighborhoods, there's been some significant damage done when they were doing that. We were incredibly lucky -- no damage to ours. Additionally, our water/sewer lines are clean, no blockages, no problems seen -- all drainage is good. Always good to get confirmation of that, I guess. 

So they left, and I waited on the call from the electrician. As they were leaving, I also noted that the breaker ran the front dining room as well, our front window security camera, and the outside porch light -- all were out/offline. So, that was at least half of the downstairs that ran off that breaker. 

By 1pm, I'd received no call from the electrician. I called the claims folks back and told them this. They said they'd get the electrician to call me, and he did -- he said he had his tech out on a job at the moment, but he would have him call shortly.

3pm rolled around. Still no call. I called the electrician back again to tell him this. Said electrician told me to be patient (definitely not the right thing to say to me). I responded that half of our downstairs was without power and that I would need this to be taken care of. I was polite, but I was also firm. He said if I hadn't received a call by 5, to call him back again.

In the interim of all this, a large protest against the overturn of Roe v. Wade had materialized and was set to take place at Memorial Park (on the outskirts of the college campus a few miles away from the house). Daisy said she wanted to go and be part of it no matter what. 

Now, mind you, at this point my anxiety and anger levels were running very high. I was angry at the Supreme Court, I was angry that I had a giant, ugly black gas line running through my living room, I was angry that most of the lower half of the house had no power, and I was angry that it was late afternoon and I was still waiting on a call from an electrician that the claims department had told me five hours previously that I would only have to wait an hour for. Add to this that Daisy knew I was stressed and angry and needed her support and she was telling me she wanted to potentially put herself into harm's way for a pop-up protest when a LOT of people had emotions running high and were likely to riot -- Omaha protests can very quickly turn into riots, after all, as we saw in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests. 

I asked her if there was anything I could say that would prevent her from going. She told me no. My anxiety was super-high because the protest was along the most heavily-traveled road in Omaha. Nebraska is a red state. For the most part, it is a very red state. It was nothing, given the propensity of mass shootings recently, for me to imagine a redneck white guy in a giant truck just sticking an AR-15 out the window as he drove by and mowing down protesters with it. 

As a further aside, I understand the irony of being pro-life and still performing a mass shooting. But mass shooters don't make sense, they don't have logic, they just want to kill large groups of people.

I couldn't have gone to the protest if I'd wanted to -- I was stuck waiting on the fucking electrician to call me back and come fix the wiring.

When Daisy had gotten dressed and tried to leave for the protest, surprise, the garage door got knocked out by the breaker/wiring too. So the car was trapped in the garage. Her/our friends who were also going to the protest came to pick her up, and she left. 

It was nearing 5pm. I was angry, I was anxious, and I was completely alone. A thunderstorm was rolling in. I went downstairs to look to see where the wire had been nicked, as if it were a "small nick" as the guy had said, I could seal it off with electrical tape myself -- that's what electrical tape is for -- and then kick the breaker back on. 

I opened the closet door and shined my flashlight up to where the damage had taken place, and....nothing. As in, there was no wiring there. The new gas line was installed/hooked up, and the gas people had completely caulked the wall closed. The wiring was completely inside the wall, between the closet and our living room, sealed in there to where it couldn't even be accessed. The electrician, whenever they would come, would likely need to cut a hole in the wall to access it.

It was somewhere around this point where I completely lost my shit. It was a Friday night, when I knew there wouldn't be an electrician coming out that night because nobody would fucking call me, Daisy was gone, I can't see in the dark -- which it was rapidly becoming because a storm was rolling in -- the house was a mess, and I was just at the end of my goddamn rope with things not going right. 

It was also around this point where Daisy texted me to let me know that while the protest was peaceful, she also very nearly got into a physical altercation with some guy who was going through the crowd filming everyone there and like, brushing up against women and generally being a creep. I told her about the wall and the wiring and that I still hadn't gotten a call (she thought, when I told her about that, that the electrician was already here) and that I was about to call the electrician back and lose my shit on him. She said no, give her his number, as she was already really angry about the incident at the protest and angry in general, and that she would do that instead.

Again, another further aside -- when Daisy gets angry, which isn't incredibly often, she goes full tilt on it and leans into it. However, if there's a way she can channel that anger into getting something done, even if it's something unrelated, she will do so. It's like aiming a cannon at a target. Daisy is the most strong-willed, bull-headed person I've ever met, and she has no real problems in unleashing (fully justified) fury on someone to get something done. I've continually been impressed with her ability to get people to do whatever she wants them to do by using anger and logic. She is not subtle about it.

I gave her the numbers. She first called the claims people, to relay that no, we had not yet heard anything from anyone and that we'd been waiting all day since they originally called. She then spoke to the electrician who I'd already spoken to twice, who told her to be patient as well, and that if we hadn't heard anything at this point we likely wouldn't before Tuesday. Tuesday! 

Yeah, that was the wrong thing to say to my wife. 

Daisy told him in no uncertain terms that 3/4 of our downstairs was without power, we couldn't get in and out of our garage, we needed someone there at the house tomorrow (which was Saturday), as we'd originally been told "an hour" at 11am, and his guy who he told us repeatedly would call us to take care of it had never done so. She said very clearly that Tuesday does not work for us. 

Remarkably, this worked -- he said he'd hire another electrician who would be at our house between 8am and noon on Saturday, and that he'd be sending over techs who would be able to show us how to get in and out of our garage manually. 

"Why do we need people to show us how to get in and out of the garage?" I asked. "Do we plan on going anywhere before the wiring is fixed anyhow?"

Daisy wanted them to show us simply because if we messed with undoing the garage door opener ourselves, or if it broke when we disengaged it, that would be on us and not on the utility company. If they broke it or otherwise fucked it up, that was on them and we'd get them to replace it for free (just like the wiring repair). 

So, Daisy got dropped off here at home and shortly thereafter, two biker-looking guys showed up to look at the garage door. They unhooked it and showed us how to do it, and found that a) it would not stay up on its own, at all, without the opener...and b) that it would not close all the way on its own without the opener making sure it was sealed, either -- there remained an inch or two of space under half of the door because the chain of the opener, and the latch on it, is what held it down in place. They could not get it to re-engage with the opener once it was disengaged, despite their trying.

"So how are we supposed to get in and out?" Daisy asked them.

"Open the garage manually, hold it up while you back the car out so that it stays open and doesn't fall on the car, then let it close, engage the security latch, and go out the front door."

Daisy and I were stunned. That meant that exiting the fucking house just became a two-person job, because the door wouldn't stay up on its own -- someone would have to hold it. They just slid closed the security latch on the side (which still left the gap under the door), shrugged and said "it is what it is," and left. 

We were not impressed. The entire day and experience of dealing with all of these idiots had been maddening. Idiot after idiot. Person after person. On one of the most politically inflammatory days ever. Oh, and we still had no lights or power to most of the downstairs of the house. 

I don't remember much else about the night or about what we did. I know I ate something, eventually, and took a shower (finally) before I went to sleep. I was emotionally and spiritually drained, and the entire day had been wasted and stolen from us. I let the parents know via text that we had no idea when we'd be able to be over there on Saturday for Daisy's birthday celebrations, as we had no idea how long it would take the electrician to correct the issue the next morning or when he would arrive. 

The next morning, after some fitful sleep for both of us, the electrician finally arrived around 11. He was a young guy, really nice, and obviously very smart. He took one look at the situation, after we explained it to him, and was like "yeah, there's no other way to do this, I'm going to have to cut a hole in the wall."

He ended up needing to cut a hole up near the ceiling about the size of a wall outlet -- he stripped out the old damaged wiring, cut it out, replaced it with new wiring and hooked it all up, and then flipped the breaker back on. Success, everything worked again. Daisy unlatched the garage door and got it to re-engage, and we were completely back in business. There was still a hole in our wall with wiring inside a small, outlet-sized wall box, but everything worked. 

"I'll come back in a few days and put a cover on that," he said. "I don't have one with me today."

The entire process took about half an hour from start to finish. It was something that could have very easily been done during business hours the day prior, and not a complex repair that we needed to wait over 24 hours to get taken care of. 

Yes, I understand, first world problems and all that. I'm just sick of shit breaking or having wrenches thrown into plans for what was supposed to be a fairly easygoing week/weekend with a few errands involved.

With the wiring fixed and everything working, Daisy and I let the parents know and we went over there shortly thereafter so that we could celebrate her birthday with them, even though her actual birthday had been a few days prior. That was fun. That was peaceful, for the most part. We spent several hours there -- it had been some time since we really had a lot of time with the parents, since they'd been in Canada. We had spent some time with them on Thursday as well, when they got home, but Saturday was far more relaxed and we were able to just be. We discussed our upcoming travel to Nova Scotia and how that will play out when it happens, because it'll either be when Daisy's grandfather dies or it'll be at the end of August. We are not sure yet (because, well, he's still alive), but it will be one of the two. Either way it'll be a logistical headache to plot the trip, submit PTO for it for our jobs, and budget for it. We have not yet booked the flights because (no pun intended) a lot of things are still up in the air.

That night, we returned home -- and with stresses lessened a bit after the gas line had been done, the wiring had been fixed, and with most bills paid/groceries obtained...it looked like we were finally able to get some peace. I went to bed as per the usual in the dawn hours, and planned to sleep throughout most of the next day to reset my sleep schedule for the coming work week, which started Sunday night (as per the usual).

At 10am, Daisy's mother called and woke us up. She had just tested positive for Covid and felt horrible.

Now, mind you, Daisy and I are fully vaccinated. We're actually both able to get a second booster now, and will be doing so as soon as possible. However, we haven't done so yet. And Daisy already wasn't feeling great. 

Me? I felt fine. I felt normal, aside from being awakened at 10am. 

This, of course, did not matter to either of us -- exposure for hours on end, in close quarters, breathing the same air and hugs and kisses and all that -- that was all a very bad thing. And it threw, again, a very large wrench into many plans for the entire following week.

Daisy made sure her job knew ASAP, and was given permission to work from home for most, if not all, of the entire week at that time (she still planned to be in the office on Friday, based on the isolation period now being a recommended five days if you test negative). Because I'd had the foresight to order the free tests from the government, Daisy took one and tested negative. I made the decision that I would not test myself unless she had a positive test, as I had zero symptoms of anything. 

How did that go? Well...