Into the Wild Blue Yonder, Part II

 I darkened up the hair over the weekend with the "Blue Panther" blue-black dye, and it is now much darker and looks far better than the original electric "Voodoo Blue" color. I've also noticed that while the Voodoo Blue had a very high level of rinse-out -- meaning every time I showered I would see a lot of it washing out -- the Blue Panther does not. It did the first shower/rinse, of course, but I've seen very little rinse-out or dye transfer ever since. That stuff seemed to lock in and bond with my hair way stronger than the Voodoo Blue did.

I don't really have any great pictures of it, honestly, but here's one I just snapped with my phone:

Again, it is darker than it looks. This is pretty close to the shade I actually wanted when I originally dyed it. Over the course of the next few months I'll probably re-up it a few times until I'm out of the Blue Panther dye, and then will just let it grow out until spring when I tell the local SuperCuts (or whoever it is that does my hair) just to cut off all the color -- and then re-do it anew with new bleach and a new shade. 

No, I haven't decided yet what the next shade will be. 

Daisy mentioned to me this afternoon that she plans to re-do her own coloring in a few weeks' time, shortly before we leave for NC. Actually, I asked her first if she planned to do so, because her hair has really faded out over the course of the past month and now looks mostly dirty blonde with some green and blue in it here and there. Her hair also tends to grow faster than mine, so she already has a quarter-inch of roots showing (part of why I wanted to make the blue darker was so that when my roots grew out, it would blend in better). 

In other news...

I have reached the middle of my work week and I am weary, my friends. It's not just that I'm tired, or that the temperature outside has been nearly 100 every day -- we are in the middle of a heat wave here in Omaha -- it's not even that my allergies are going bugshit as well. It's that after a decade of this, I've reached the point where I'm seriously beginning to have creeping thoughts like yes, I know I'm good at this, but I do not know how much longer I can do this same bullshit day in, day out. 

Of course, I am not in a financial spot where I can just up and quit -- take a self-imposed run of unemployment and get a break -- and I likely never will be. But as the days go on and the people I deal with get dumber and dumber almost by the week, I feel the box closing in just a little bit more every day and I feel more trapped than ever. I've applied for a few jobs over the course of the past few weeks and months, but nothing that I have high hopes of getting a callback on.

To be fair, this is mostly my own doing on several fronts -- for one, I am not a particularly high-demand person for prospective employers. I was a decade ago; I am not now. I am a poet, a creative writer, a guy who used to be a newspaper reporter for awhile and a college professor for a few years after that, and I've now worked in a very dead-end and mostly thankless office middle-management position for ten years and have had all the motivation to learn new processes and new skills beaten out of me by multiple corporate overlords for multiple companies. 

For two, I have stuck around doing that for ten years. That means I've become very specialized in my particular field but have little to offer of value in any other field. My brain doesn't work now like it used to ten years ago -- it is very difficult for me to learn and retain new procedures, new programs, new training and new things in general. I used to be able to pick up new things, learn them quickly, and master them before almost anyone else I knew. Now, I am reticent, easily confused, forgetful of some of the processes that have been thrust upon me even within the past year, and am just trying to skate by on what of my knowledge base I still have that's still applicable to the job at hand. I do very well at this most of the time, but because I can't pick up on all the new stuff, I have a hefty sense of imposter syndrome and mental fatigue.

I manage people very well; I am a very good leader of people and all of my underlings (a term I use lovingly) would very likely agree. But I don't want to do it forever. I don't want this to just be my life.

It is not lost on me, of course, that 2024 marks the 15-year anniversary of me leaving the grocery store job I was working when I started this website -- the stories I heard while working there are what led me to start this site in 2007 in the first place. Those of you who have stuck around with me for a very long time -- I'm talking about my lifelong friends, the ones from high school and college who do still read this -- know that everything prior to 2011 on this site was removed, edited, and turned into a 400+ page manuscript for a humorous book that I sold very briefly self-publishing on Amazon. It needs an extensive re-edit and reformatting, and one day it will see the light of day again in some form. As always, time and motivation is a factor in all of this. Energy is too. I only have so many hours of every day that aren't devoted to sleep or working my current job.

I did reflect on this mentally a few days ago, though -- I do not know where almost any of the people I worked with at that grocery store are now. I am sure some of them have since died (I know for a fact that two of them -- older folks -- indeed have). I'm sure many of the others have retired or have since moved on, moved away, etc. And yet, I am almost certain that some of them are still working there. I don't know for sure as I have not stepped foot in that store once since I left that job, moved back to Kansas City, and then to Newton later that year. I have not even been in that city in fifteen years. And most of the people I worked with there were either kids -- my age at the time or far younger -- or were on their last job before they retired anyway. There were a lot of what I call "transient" employees -- people who would be hired and would work for a few weeks or months, then get fired for doing something stupid or would just up and leave and never come back. We likely went through close to 100 cashiers/stockers while I was working there for three short years. 

During that time the store also changed ownership, changed its name and its colors, changed some of its management, and changed its hours. I don't even know if the store still exists, to be honest with you, or if it's now owned and operated by yet a different company with a different name. Again, I've not been there in fifteen years.

There are but three people I worked with there who I am still friends with on Facebook. Two of them were fellow night-shift employees who were far younger than I, and both of them now have 2-3 kids and are working in completely different fields. The third disabled his Facebook profile some time ago and hasn't been online since, but he also left the job before I did -- like, a year before I did. 

Likely some of my best regular customers are now dead as well -- at this juncture most of them would be in their 70s or 80s if they are still alive, and if they are alive they're likely not stopping at the grocery store every night after work like they used to. 

People come into and leave our lives in waves, it seems. I can't remember the last time I talked to anyone I went to grad school with, and some of those folks were in my wedding. I try to keep in contact on a regular basis with the few close friends I still have, and even at times that can be difficult if my social energy -- or energy in general -- is low. It got to the point that during my last two visits to West Virginia there were old friends I didn't even bother to contact because I knew they wouldn't respond or wouldn't want to see me while I was there, or they wouldn't have time to see me, or they now lived in different parts of the country (much like myself). 

No, I don't know when I'll be back to WV again. With my grandmother now long dead and with my parents living in North Carolina full-time, I don't really have any reason to go back aside from for nostalgia's sake -- and nostalgia itself is not enough to fly back home for a "visit" given airline prices.

Just for funsies, I looked up the price of the same trip to NC on the same days, but flying from Omaha into Morgantown instead. Round trip economy is about $475-600+ per person. Yeah, not planning a trip back home anytime soon, but it's fun to look at. 

I honestly don't know what I'd even do back home. Sure, there's family still there that I could see, and there are a few friends still around the area -- all of them are Trump supporters and if he wins in November that would be a very uncomfortable visit for both Daisy and myself. My parents aren't there anymore. There's some shopping, restaurants, and touring of Morgantown I'd love to do with Daisy but we did a fair amount of that when we drove out there in 2017. I just think it would be a very lonely, very hollow (no, ahem, puns intended here) trip to make. My best memories of West Virginia are better left in the past. 

Anyway, I've gotten far off track.

My point was, circling back to it now after a few relative pages of inner thoughts, is that I need to find a focus in my life and something to center myself that isn't work-related. I need to get away from the job I currently have and need to get into something new that isn't too difficult to learn or acquire yet will pay me the same amount or far more than I'm making now. I need to get out on the open road in a vehicle of my own, preferably something old and fast. I need to get out of Omaha before I can no longer climb out of the rut this city has put me in and get to a coastline somewhere, permanently. I turn 42 this year and I may be finally entering into my "midlife crisis."

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

 A few weeks ago -- perhaps a month now -- Daisy decided to color her hair.

Mind you, she'd gotten a haircut in Nova Scotia. She always does now if she can (Mama did too, the next day), because she really likes the stylist there up on Cape Breton Island, and as everyone in rural Nova Scotia seems to know each other, whether by familial relation or by being friends or friends of friends, the two gentlemen who run the salon have a long history with a good chunk of the family. For the past few years, that history has now added Daisy into the mix -- so when we're up there, she calls them and makes an appointment. 

Also mind you, Daisy has had a few different hair colors over the years -- even since we've been together. She took it very red for a while (and I mean, Irish red) and also took it completely black for a while. Her normal hair color is medium brown, like mine, with some grays here and there. 

I mean, we're getting old; I have a lot more gray in my hair than Daisy does. Well, I used to. I'll get to that.

This time around though, Daisy wanted to do something wildly different. So, shortly after we got home, one day while I was asleep she went to Sally Beauty Supply, got three different colors of Manic Panic dye, and a bleaching kit.

She did of course tell me she was going to do this beforehand, so it wasn't a surprise or anything.

That night, she bleached out her hair -- which even after her haircut, was still impressively long -- and dyed her hair dark blue, green, and pink to achieve a sort of rainbow effect. She touched it up here and there over the course of a week or so and let some of the pink fade to be replaced by more blue (which gave it a bit of a purple sheen). 

It honestly looks really good on her. It's very girl-power, punk-rock and I think all she needs is a vegan leather jacket, some black lipstick and some black nail polish to really pull off the look, were she to want to do that. It's also on the cusp of hippie, as it looks like tie-dye as well. I'm not a huge fan of the green in it (I think it's too light and ends up looking like green-tinted blonde) but the way the colors mixed together are gorgeous.

Now, mind you, I have wanted to color my hair something wild for years. I wanted to do it in high school and college, and I never did -- well, in college I did bleach it and have blonde hair with frosted tips that grew out over a year or so.

The early 2000s were a weird time, okay?

I remember a few years back where I mentioned to my boss -- even well after we began working at home -- that I wanted to dye my hair a wild color and get even more tattoos (at the time, I only had the Starfleet tattoo on my arm, I believe) -- he told me that would likely not be a great idea because sooner or later, we would return to an office setting where that sort of wild hair likely would not be allowed in any form by the corporate overlords.

Fast forward to 2024 when our company has closed down all of its buildings and offices in Omaha and most of its workforce is fully, and permanently, remote -- at least stateside, anyway. Including me. 

Anyway.

I was particularly drawn to the blue in Daisy's hair. If I would have colored my hair anything over the years, it would have been blue. Aside from black, deep/dark midnight purple, and forest green, dark/navy blue has always been my favorite color. I didn't want black hair, and after seeing how light/faded the green in Daisy's hair got really quickly, I didn't want green hair either. I'd look like the Joker. Dark purple was an option but I also did not want it to fade out quickly to look more like a pale lavender. This left me with blue. But I didn't know what blue I wanted. Daisy's blue was a little dark, but vibrant -- not exactly the shade that I was looking for. I looked up a darker shade, a blue-black variant called Blue Panther, which I was very interested in but was afraid it would end up looking too metallic or too black.

Daisy was all-in on this idea, and was thrilled to help with it. I ran some colors by her, asked her which bleaching kit she'd gotten and used, and about a week later I pulled the trigger on a bleaching kit and a single jar of Manic Panic's "Voodoo Blue" hair dye. "Voodoo Blue" is a medium blue -- not sky blue, light turquoise or teal, but not dark midnight blue or ocean blue. It's a straight up middle-of-the-road blue. Smurf blue. 

Over the course of an hour or so, we went through the process of bleaching my hair, making me look like Guy Fieri for a short time:

And then applying the blue dye to it. Thickly, meticulously, and letting it sit to absorb for another hour or so. During this time, I shaved off the beard because I was concerned, at the time, of how different it would look to have a beard of my normal hair color(s) with "Voodoo Blue" hair. I was afraid it would clash badly. And there's no way in hell I was going to dye my beard blue. I'm not a weirdo.

The final result, after washing and rinsing?

It is darker than the photo makes it look. Or at least it was at the time anyway, over two weeks ago now. In certain light it looked much darker, and in certain light it looked much lighter. Maybe that's why it was called "voodoo" blue. 

So far, I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out -- though I did learn some things in the process.

The first thing I learned is that when you color your hair a weird, unnatural color, you should absolutely wear shirts that are a similar color for a while, and I truly hope your pillowcases are a color that it blends with. There will be color loss and color transfer, and it will be a lot for the first few days after you do it. 

Similarly, it will wash out, a lot, with every shower for about a week. My tub has been lightly tinted blue for some time now. I've been using blue or dark blue towels and nothing else ever since. After that first week, it does not wash out a lot every shower, but more slowly and gradually. 

It also fades. It is a semi-permanent hair color, which means that as your hair grows out and you wash it and it is rinsed out a little more here and there, the colors will indeed fade and lighten. Mine has since faded out quite a bit over the course of the past 2-3 weeks where it's a much lighter, almost sky-blue color now (well, perhaps a little darker than that). 

I expected the process to wreck/fry my hair and make it feel like straw, which it did when I bleached my hair in college. It thankfully did not -- my hair still feels normal. Daisy says that's because there are a lot of conditioners in the bleach/dye process now to help prevent that while coloring. 

Here's a photo from a week ago today:

It's a bit lighter than that now, but you get the idea. 

I planned for this, of course, and a week after we dyed my hair I went back on Amazon and I did order the "Blue Panther" blue-black jar of dye. I also ordered a jar of "Ultra Violet" to mix in a bit when that fades, and so that Daisy can go purple too. 

I can't believe, looking back on it now, that it took me forty-one years on this planet before I pulled the trigger on dyeing my hair a wild, punk-rock color. 

Something else I learned -- dyeing your hair covers up all the grays. Who would've guessed?

Um, probably anyone of age who's ever colored their hair for that exact reason?

I never even thought about it, really. 

Today or tomorrow, depending on time and/or energy, we're going to put the "Blue Panther" in my hair on top of the rapidly-lightening blue. I think the mix of colors will go really well, and I'm excited. I also want to make sure that it's in there and fully-bonded to my hair (read: not washing a lot of color out and staining the tub every day) before we go to visit my parents in North Carolina next month. The last thing I want is to stain their tub blue when I shower there, and I think a month or so is a good amount of time to have that not happen, a good amount of time to have it not end up leaving a blue tint on the pillowcases in their guest room we sleep in, etc. 

That trip is indeed coming up soon; I have alerted my team at work to it and have calculated the PTO I need. Plane tickets are purchased and confirmed, rental car is reserved and confirmed. My bag is already most of the way packed (because that's the person I am). One more month and I can finally leave this state for a few days of quiet decompression time with my family as we make the headlong rush into fall and into the holiday season.

The Recovery Cycle

 We returned home on June 29. Today, as I write this, it is July 27. 

Obviously, a lot of things have happened since we returned home.

The first -- and likely most important -- is that we did get the air conditioner fixed. But it did take four days after we returned home, in sweltering Omaha July temperatures, to get the tech to do it. In the interim, Daisy could no longer take it and went to one of the stores in the area (Lowe's, Home Depot, somewhere like that) and got a portable air conditioner unit. Not the kind that you install in a window, but one about the size of R2-D2 that sits on the floor in a room and vents to a window. It was not cheap, but instead of it being 85 in our master bedroom at all times, it made the room a comfortable 65 at almost all times. She took it downstairs and hooked it up in the living room too, when we were both down there. 

Our actual air conditioner? Compressor blew out on it. It was a fix that took less than an hour, and Daisy had the repairman install a new wall thermostat for us as well -- one that works far better and actually has pressable buttons that you don't have to jam with a butter knife to get them to register (yeah, that was our old thermostat). We were going to get one anyway, and I'd actually gotten a Lowe's gift card as a credit card reward perk to go get it with -- Daisy was able to use that for other things, fortunately. Since then we've had a comfortable, live-able house again. But I will say that those four mid-summer days without AC were no joke -- it got above 90 in my upstairs office every day and never got below 80 in the downstairs at night...where I was forced to immediately return to work as I was now fully out of PTO to use after the trip. 

Since our return, we've noticed a sea change in the cats' behavior; Empress has become much more lovey with both Daisy and myself, Mable has become far more rambunctious, violent (like Pete was as a kitten -- it's a black cat thing) and independent, and Hank has formed a sort of kinship with Sadie and checks on her when he can tell she's not feeling well, hides with her when she's scared (fireworks, etc -- the 4th of July happened right after we came home of course), and lays with her or next to her far more now. Not cuddling or anything, but they're definitely closer than they were before. He will give her little kisses on her head or nose, and it's really cute.

Pete, unfortunately, has had a massive spike in his anxiety levels. I'm sure part of that is because we were gone so long, but part of it is because he cannot be left alone by the other cats when he goes to the pan -- the kittens all act like they're the potty police or something. They do it to Sadie too, and she does not like it at all. Pete has sprayed on doors and walls and Sadie has had accidents because of their potty-policing, which isn't every time they go to the pan(s), but is enough to really mess with them at times. 

Pete also developed a large abscess on his inner front leg that we had to take him in for and get drained/antibiotics and pain pills given to him for it. It looked like a hot spot at first, but his incessant chewing at it (again, anxiety) did not help it and it became a big open wound that swelled up around the spot in question. It didn't seem to hurt him or keep him from walking/moving around normally, but we wanted to make sure he would heal and that it wasn't something more serious like cat cancer or something, so Daisy took him in. It has completely healed up now, and aside from the small bare spot on his leg, you never would've known he had it. 

Sadie, I am afraid, is on her last legs and last few weeks or months of life. She seems very lethargic and not all there a lot of the time. She eats like a hog and drinks like a fish (so her body/digestive system is still working at least) but she has somewhat frequent diarrhea and vomits up what looks like saliva or bile several times a week. She is still a very loving, wants-to-be-with-you cat, and snuggles up to us, Pete, and occasionally Emmy every day, but it's becoming very clear that -- like Maggie -- her time is coming soon. Could be another few weeks or months, could be a few days. We don't know. When she takes that turn for the worse, as Maggie did, we will know that it's time, and as painful as it will be, we will do what must be done to end her suffering. Sadie is 17 and the second-oldest -- only Pete is older -- and she has lived a very long, good life. I knew once Maggie went that it would only be a matter of time until her sister and Pete followed suit. It's a sad reality to face, but we'll have to do it with all of these cats eventually. 

And yet I feel conflicted on all of it. I love these old cats -- Pete and Sadie -- and I've had them their entire lives, I will be very sad when they go, but I can't say I also won't be relieved. Pete's anxiety and his spraying is very stressful for both Daisy and me and he can be an absolute menace when he incessantly howls for no reason, or goes after Sadie hard for no reason, or decides that he wants to beg for food or treats from us and when we don't give him anything he will lock eyes with us and piss on something -- or threaten to. I don't like having to keep the old man drugged at almost all times (gabapentin and melatonin, and sometimes CBD for cats) just to have him act like some semblance of a normal cat. Similarly, Daisy doesn't like having to steam-clean the living room carpet multiple times a month because Pete attacks Sadie and Sadie's defensive response is to spray piss, a lot of piss, everywhere while she's under attack. The three kittens may be goblins, but they don't do any of those things and are actually quite normal -- relatively speaking, of course.

So, yes, there will be a lot of relief and stress lifted from us, even though there will be a lot of sadness. And it feels really bad, really mean and cold to say that, but it's still true. Pete is Daisy's baby and Sadie has always been my shadow -- I am very much her person -- but it's still true. 

Pete and Hank went in for their yearly checkups/shots on Thursday, and we found out definitively how much heavier and really, larger Hank now is than his aging, anxious older brother. Hank is now the largest, heaviest cat in the house -- built like a dumptruck and still as lovey as the day we brought him home. He is 13.5 pounds. Pete is 11.5 pounds. Both of our boys are healthy as expected. Pete's still old and is still in kidney failure, but he's still doing well enough health-wise. Hank, who has an enlarged heart and had a bad allergic/asthmatic reaction to something back around Christmas, has not had any incidents since and the vet says his heart is strong, normal, and with no murmurs. So there's that.

We have now had Hank for well over a year -- his adoption day anniversary was July 15.

Meanwhile, Empress is catching up to him in size (though not yet in weight) and it seems like Mable doubled in size while we were in Canada, as she is now almost as big as Sadie. There are times when I will confuse her for Pete because she's getting so big. 

Anyway.

I returned to work the day after we came home to find that July at my job is miserable; I have hated nearly every day since returning from vacation, and many mornings I have found myself stuck working up to almost an hour late because of the sheer idiocy that has to be dealt with by someone, and if I don't do it nobody else will. 

I have mentioned only to my very close and trusted friends and coworkers -- all three of them, out of a group of nearly fifty -- that my goal is to be out of this job and on to another one as soon as possible. If not by Labor Day, then definitely by the holidays. I will cross my ten-year point in this job in less than a month, and for almost eight years of that I have been in the same position doing the same thing every night with no hope or opportunity for advancement or betterment of myself, my station in life, or in my position within the company/program hierarchy. I am making $18,000 more now, per year, than the day I started back in 2014... and honestly, that being the only benefit does not feel like nearly enough after one-and-a-half promotions, three schedule changes, and the fact that my presence can at times literally keep the program together and keep it from collapsing. My company is making a lot of changes behind the scenes, shifting some work outside of the country and moving a lot of long-time employees to other programs or groups. I have been assured by my higher leadership that I am fine and am not going anywhere, but have also been told in a thinly-veiled way by that same leadership to save every hour of PTO that I earn and don't use, and not to put in for some days/times I do use because I work far longer and harder in that place than most others do, and in Nebraska if you lose your job it is state law that all earned/accrued PTO gets paid out to you.

On one hand it is definitely reassuring to know that I'm appreciated and highly valued, while on the other hand -- make no mistake -- being told that bit about PTO so nonchalantly is highly frightening. Do I expect to lose my job? No. Do I expect it to possibly, with or without much warning, to change from one position to another internally and for me lose all the experience I have for the past decade to shift gears into something I may hate way more and start over on? Yes, eventually. At this point my place of employment really does seem like it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic more than it ever has felt like that before. I could be wrong, but for a multitude of reasons I cannot lose my job right now. If I get a whiff that something bad is coming down the pipe, I need to jump ship into something else and fast.

I could be wrong, though. Who knows. All I can do is login every night, do the best I can while I'm on the proverbial clock, and live through it all day by day.

Now, I told you all of the above so that I can now tell you this, with the deepest irony possible -- before I had that PTO conversation with my higher leadership, I had already booked plane tickets for us to go visit my parents in North Carolina again next month.

I booked the tickets a week after we returned from Canada. I will have more than enough PTO to cover the several-day-trip down there to see them by the time it rolls around. I just won't have much PTO for anything else for the rest of the year -- maybe a couple of days around Christmas/my birthday and/or if I get sick.

This wasn't a decision made on a whim -- I wanted to plan a trip to see my parents again back in the spring, as you are aware. However, Daisy was sick and we had, ahem, a series of unfortunate events happen one thing after another (see the run of "2024 Can Suck It" posts from earlier this year) and we never got around to figuring out a schedule for it. By the time the spring rolled around, we were already through it and into the summer, and then we were in Canada, and now we're here.

I cleared it with my parents -- I wanted to make sure the time we would visit would also be good for them, and that they wouldn't be up in West Virginia or anything like that during the one stretch of days I could get cleared to make the trip. They won't be, and they're excited to see us. I told Daisy I would take care of the bookings of flights and that since it'll still be summer and we'll only be there a few short days, all we need are a couple of outfits in our backpacks -- she could focus on that and book the rental car, which she has a deep-discount corporate code for.

With me dealing with everything else, I picked the best seats possible on American Airlines (boo, hiss) because to fly Delta it was double the price, picked the best arrival/departure times, and booked a flight directly into Wilmington, NC instead of into Raleigh (which would require a few hours of driving). Wilmington is less than an hour from my parents' place. I also made sure we locked in a seat-selection guarantee so that I don't have sore knees/joints the entire trip, got trip insurance, and made sure the tickets were completely cancelable with a full refund in the event something were to happen between now and then. Our flight from Omaha takes us into Charlotte for a short layover, and then to Wilmington. Our flight home takes us from Wilmington into Chicago/O'Hare for another short layover, and then back to Omaha. We leave in the middle of the day both times and arrive in the early evening hours both times -- no super-early mornings, no arriving-home-at-11pm bullshit this time around. 

These options weren't cheap. But, comfortability, peace-of-mind, and not needing to check bags because we don't need anything extra when my parents have a washer/dryer is immensely helpful. I do not need souvenirs or more t-shirts from North Carolina, I got enough of them last year. We're not taking food with us there or back, more than likely (with the exception of, maybe, some Utz chips). We just need us, some light toiletries, and a couple of outfits to cycle through. Beach clothing. Flip-flops. It'll still be summer in North Carolina -- very much so. It was in the mid-90s every day when we were there last year and I do not expect that to be much different this year. Luckily, my parents have good air conditioning.

Daisy was not thrilled when I told her how much the tickets were. They were a few hundred dollars more than she would have spent on them, to be fair, and a few hundred more than I originally quoted her (prices change). But, I was organizing this trip, I was and am in charge of it, and I don't want to fly out of here at the asscrack of dawn or arrive home way after dark. I don't want to fly through certain airports, have multi-hour layovers sitting in an airport where I can't vape or afford to get something to eat, or spend hours driving in the dark before we even get to our destination -- once I get off the plane I want it to be the shortest time/distance possible before I'm inside my parents' house on the island. I don't want to check bags or carry more than we need, or make grandiose plans we don't get the time to follow through on (and certainly don't have the energy to). I wanted to guarantee we'd get the most comfortable seats possible on the planes so that I don't hurt for the several days we'll be there, as they will be active days -- beaching, stairs, lots of walking, etc. More than anything else I wanted to make sure that in case of a crisis or emergency that I would be able to cancel everything and get a full refund put riiiiiiight back onto my credit card, because I 100% know how shitty our luck has been this year.

So, everything's set, and in a little more than a month we will venture to North Carolina once more. Daisy was able to get a great deal on the rental car -- no, we did not get another Spaceship Van™ this year because there was no point to it -- instead she got us a simple vehicle, which will likely end up being another Chevy Malibu or something along those lines. We only need it for a few days and it's not like we're hauling cargo or anything with it. 

I am excited. Well, relatively so. Being on the island with my parents does allow me some decompression time. 

I honestly just need some time for everything to stop bending us over the table and fucking us. I don't mean to sound crass when I say that, but it's really how I feel this year. Can 2024 stop fucking us, please? Daisy and I both have had what I would call an exceptionally shitty year, with both of us getting railed by life in many, many ways. We've had to deal with or otherwise overcome more problems this year than in any other year of our relationship or marriage -- not between us, really, but in general. Something will come along and fuck me, then something will come along and fuck her, and then something will come along and double-fuck us both, and then the cycle repeats. And it's all just getting so tiring. I just wanted something nice and relaxing. The Canada trip was fun, but it was decidedly not relaxing. And it was incredibly expensive -- to put it into perspective, between groceries, gas, and the clothing and other items we brought home, I put more on my credit card than it was to get the plane tickets to North Carolina. By a lot. It's not going to break us financially but I wanted a trip that I was in control of, that I had a say in the timeframes of and the travel schedule for, to a destination of my choosing to see my family. 

Canadian Rustic, and the Return Home: Canada 2024, Part VI

 We had two nights spent in Cavendish at this little motel called the Boardwalk. Its name was accurate -- there was indeed a boardwalk leading from the small parking lot up to the building and its rooms. 

The Boardwalk was a very basic motel -- but, for what it was, it was fine. It was, shall we say, Canadian Rustic. It had a heat pump mounted on the wall, two queen-size beds, a small cramped bathroom, a refrigerator, TV, and microwave, and that was it. Cedar paneling on all walls, wooden floors. Very basic, very rustic, nothing fancy. It resembled a furnished wood cabin. 

The entire first day we were in Cavendish -- the day we went to Green Gables -- it was cold, windy, and raining like hell. It wasn't the best day for us to go to Green Gables, but time was of the essence and we only had two nights on PEI before we were closing up shop to fly back out of Halifax. While the rest of the family (read: Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five kids) were sticking around on PEI for a few more days, and we'd had a "beach day" with them after we'd gone through Green Gables, we had now separated from them for the remainder of the trip and would thus focus on Charlottetown and some food before we would have to head out the next morning.

To put this into perspective, this all took place on the day of Biden's disastrous debate with our now bullet-wounded former president, if that further sets the scene.

Let me tell you again, Charlottetown is gorgeous. It's full of shops, its downtown area is very metropolitan and big-city style -- but, like, Canadian big city style. Think of the "old market" area of your closest city. Meaning, the hipster area of town, the shops with apartments above them, laundromats and convenience stores inside the same little corner bodega, etc. It is very Bohemian and populated by what appeared to be fairly normal-looking people. The parts that weren't functioning "city" with its shops and restaurants and the like was very much either touristy areas or business/coast guard-controlled areas around the harbour. We tried to avoid those areas (we'd seen enough of them already) but there was one thing about Charlottetown -- and PEI in general, I guess -- we all universally hated.

The streets.

The road system in PEI, in general, is convoluted as hell -- lots of back roads, long winding drives going up and down hills to get you from point A to point B, drives that seemed to take three times longer getting where you were supposed to go than they should have, given the relative size of the island. There are almost no stop signs or stoplights on PEI -- everything is done via traffic circles (or, as some call them, roundabouts). Sure, the larger cities and heavily trafficked areas have stoplights and signs, but everywhere else has the roundabouts. Everywhere. Like, every few miles. 

Mind you, I've seen a lot of them in Canada -- far more than here in the states -- but PEI takes the roundabout to an entirely new level. 

So, once you get that part down, if you go into any of the actual cities/towns -- I'll use Charlottetown as an example because we spent a good chunk of time navigating it -- the city roads and streets are not mapped out in any logical way. In fact, they look like they were designed by drunken sailors, which...well, as we were on an island with multiple ports and harbours, that is quite possibly the case. Omaha is at least laid out in a sensible grid; you know where you're going and as long as you know direction and street names you'll get wherever you want to go just fine. Charlottetown seems built in a way that is hostile towards visitors, tourists, and people not from the area. It also turns out that the Spaceship Van we rented wasn't great for navigating such narrow streets, parallel parking, or doing much of anything but straight-line, bumpless driving. It was great when we rented it in North Carolina -- it was not the best choice for us navigating through three different provinces in Atlantic Canada. 

We'd had several options for food that Daisy had looked up and wanted to try. Mama isn't a huge fan of vegan cuisine, but she's far more open to it and open to trying new things than Dad is -- so Daisy's particular brand of "food tourism" (her term, not mine) usually works pretty well for her when we're traveling together. One of the options was a fully-vegetarian Chinese place, which I was 100% down for. Another was some burger-bar like place that I didn't really get many details on and was dismissed almost as soon as it was mentioned, and a third was a European-Mediterranean-Asian-fusion place where you could get a ton of vegan things, including pizzas and sandwiches and burgers, falafels, fries, wraps, soups/ramens, etc. Because of the variety, we ended up choosing that one.

To be fair, the menu looked great -- the photos and the absolutely insane amount of variety to choose from was quite impressive. Our goal was to order dinner, a second dinner we could eat later (or for breakfast the next morning if we so chose), and some snacks. So, I ordered a full-size pizza with vegan sausage, a vegan chicken wrap, mozzarella sticks, fries, and I can't remember what else. Daisy ordered a second full-size veggie/vegan pizza, vegan poutine, and some desserts; Mama ordered a falafel wrap and possibly some other things, I really can't remember. It was...ahem...expensive. 

We were not there late-late; we were there during prime-time hours and the three of us, along with one to-go order and one other sit-down customer were the only patrons in the restaurant on one of the most gorgeous days I've ever spent in Canada. That should've told us something off the bat.

To be fair, I thought it was fine -- the pizza was quite good, the mozzarella stick things were fire, and while they weren't the best fries I've ever had, the fries were good too. I saved the vegan chicken wrap for later to take back to the hotel. However, Mama and Daisy were not impressed at all and were vocal about it once we left the place. Mama said it was the worst falafel she'd ever had (which surprised me because I thought it looked good at the very least), Daisy said her poutine was lacking and that she should've just gotten the pizza and nothing else, and -- when we had them later, we realized the desserts were quite good too. My vegan chicken wrap, when I reheated it the next evening, was still actually pretty decent. But, and I had to agree with them, it was overall the worst meal we had the entire time we were in Canada. Mama went as far as to say it was one of the worst restaurant meals she'd ever had.

Can't win 'em all, I guess.

I would've been fine with the vegetarian Chinese place.

Anyway. 

To save the day (and we'd found it the day before, too) we went back into the Charlottetown downtown area to find a "rolled ice cream" food truck that served -- you guessed it -- rolled ice cream. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's like thin sheets of ice cream...rolled up, like ice cream taquitos, and stuffed somewhat vertically into a small paper bowl. I don't know what advantage this gives over, say, normal ice cream by the scoop, but they had a lot of vegan options and it was phenomenal. It was also expensive. 

Almost everything on PEI is expensive.

The next morning, we checked out of the rustic motel and left PEI behind -- crossed the Confederation Bridge again -- and confirmed (though Mama had told us before) that while it is free to drive onto the island, if you want to get back off it, it costs $55 per car.

Fifty-five dollars. Per car. To leave the island.

You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave...

Our plan for our last day in Canada was pretty clear -- leave PEI, make a loop back through the edge of New Brunswick, and get back into Nova Scotia. Drive to Truro (where as you may recall, we were stranded for a while on the drive up) to get fish and chips for Mama at her favorite place there she's been going to for many years, then head back down into Halifax to check into our hotel for the night, drop off the rental car, and fly out very early the next morning. This is a relatively simple plan, right? 

Well...

Look. Nova Scotia is much smaller than Nebraska. I'm aware of how long it takes to get places and do things in both places, and at this juncture the only Maritime province I haven't been to is Newfoundland and Labrador (but it's on my list). But it can take a lot of time to drive around up there given the Canadian highway system. Here in the states, there's generally ten different ways to get wherever you're going. In Nova Scotia, it's the Trans-Canada highway or bust. If you go off it, your GPS may just shrug and be like "I dunno" when you ask it to re-route you, as it did the night we arrived and we had to ask directions from the guy at the gas station. So, anywhere you go will be as efficient as the Canadian healthcare system and will take just as long (that's an inside joke for anyone who has ever dealt with the Canadian healthcare system).

We arrived in Truro in the mid-afternoon hours and first stopped at the Giant Tiger (where we parked that first night when we were stuck there). This was a much nicer, more expansive Giant Tiger than some of the other stores up there I'd been in, and in the fat guy section I found rack upon rack of metal band t-shirts in 4XL. I was stunned. 

First of all, do you know how hard it is to find metal band t-shirts in my size? And I mean high-quality, officially-licensed tees? It's hard. It's really hard. Yet this store had rack upon rack of them, all sorts of different designs from wild art to album covers to tour shirts. 

This presented me with a dilemma -- on one side, I'd spent an ungodly amount of money in Canada already, and I did not need any of these shirts. I also had my suitcase and backpack stuffed to capacity to the point where my suitcase was 47.5 pounds (the limit for checked baggage is 50) and my backpack was already dangerously close to splitting a zipper here or there. However, to my knowledge there's no weight limit on carry-on items, which the backpack was. 

We were also on a timeframe; we needed to get Mama her fish and chips and then make the rest of the drive back down to Halifax, drop off the van, check into our hotel, shower, eat, and sleep fast because that flight left very early the next morning. Daisy also wanted to stop at the local Walmart in Truro because she wanted a black Canada hoodie like I'd purchased several days before in Port Hawkesbury, and the Walmarts were the only places that carried that brand (Canadiana; it's like the Walmart store brand for Canadian clothing).

I scanned through everything quickly in Giant Tiger; I ended up getting two Metallica shirts, two Iron Maiden shirts, and a Megadeth shirt -- the latter of which I am actually wearing now as I write this.  I also got two, more classy, plain solid-color V-neck shirts in blue and gold. Daisy also picked up a few items, including some socks, and I got some Canada sticker packs (after all, Canada Day was coming up at the time). It was over $100 and I had no idea where I was going to put all these things in the luggage -- Daisy and Mama were also dangerously close to having their luggage be overweight. It had also become clear by this juncture that we'd have to leave most, if not all, of the prepackaged food behind in the hotel room or in the trash, because there was just no room for it.

As we drove to get Mama her fish and chips in the downtown area after leaving Giant Tiger, I somehow, with near-scientific levels of precision, was able to fit every new item into my already stuffed backpack and still get it to zip closed. I don't know how I did it. I don't know that I could do it again today. And I did it in the uncomfortable backseat of a moving minivan as we went around hard twists and turns (for the city of Truro seems to be designed almost as drunkenly as Charlottetown is).

After Mama's lunch, we went to the Walmart, where Daisy had a great idea -- Mama didn't have a carry-on bag. She didn't need one; she checked her suitcase and walker and she had her messenger-bag-like purse for everything else as a "personal item." You're allowed one carry-on bag and one personal item per person -- I've never used the "personal item" allowance, which is generally reserved for purses or laptop cases. I've only ever flown with a laptop once and believe me when I tell you it's generally not worth the hassle. So, technically, between the three of us we had two extra items we could take on the plane without having to check -- one would've counted as my personal item and another would've been Mama's carry-on. 

"What if we just...get another piece of luggage that's carry-on sized, or another backpack?" Daisy asked.

This was ingenious as it was pragmatic -- Daisy would not have the space for the hoodie she wanted, and we'd be able to take home dirty laundry and maybe some of the food items in this extra piece of luggage, whatever we got. 

So, that's what we did. After debating over a couple of small hard-shell suitcases, we ended up getting a nice, sturdy backpack (with Canada on it, also made by the Canadiana people) and Daisy got her hoodie; we stuffed it with everything we could and screwed a luggage tag onto it with Mama's name (in the event we were questioned). And off to Halifax we went.

We stopped at the hotel first -- which was five or six miles from the airport -- to lug in all the luggage, check in, and clean out the van. We left Mama in the room while Daisy and I went to return the van.

Returning a rental vehicle at the Halifax airport is one of the simplest experiences I've ever seen. There are large signs that direct you right to where you need to go, you pull into a special section of the parking garage where there are legit attendants waiting for drop offs, you park, they inspect the vehicle visually (and quickly) and then they scan the code on the car and the receipt is emailed to you...and you're done. I don't know if I've ever seen anything so efficient and fast. 

Remember this, it'll be important later.

The airport has a shuttle that goes between the terminal and a few hotels around the area every half hour or so. You go through the labyrinthine maze to get back outside to the pickup/drop-off area and walk all the way down to the end of it, and then the bus comes and you hop in and in ten minutes or so, you're back at your hotel. It's rather convenient. 

I'm likely not describing anything that a lot of you who travel far more than I do (or have in the past) haven't done before so many times that it feels like a chore, but we did a lot of new things on this trip and the shuttle bus is one of them. When we flew through Halifax last year, we stayed inside the airport hotel -- and when I say that, I mean that the hotel is literally inside and attached to the airport. That allowed for views like this from our hotel room window:

And no, the noise is not as bad as you'd think, especially not in the overnight hours.

As that hotel is really fucking expensive we did not opt to go that route this year, though for several reasons I really wish we had.

For one, I smashed my head into the overhead rack on the shuttle bus when we were getting into it. It hurt so bad I saw spots, and while it didn't break the skin or anything, I had a headache there for a few hours and a large, sore bump under my hairline for about a week after we returned home. 

For two, the hotel we stayed in -- it was a Best Western or Ramada or Holiday Inn or some shit like that, nothing fancy -- looked nice, but it wasn't the cleanest it could've been, and the staff were all foreign and hard to understand and were somewhat less than helpful. It had the look of a very well-used, heavily traveled hotel that wasn't bad, but the cracks were beginning to show in all of the wrong places, if you will.

We settled in and all of us showered -- honestly that was the highlight of it for me, as it was the best shower I'd had on the entire trip (and that counts the AirBNB we stayed in too, whose shower wasn't great), and laid down to sleep fast to get up by 3-something to get back to the airport.

And then the noise started.

It was the AC unit in the room, which was about eight feet from my head. It rattled incessantly.

Now mind you, I wasn't really bothered by it. I'm used to sleeping through most noise -- I work overnights, and Omaha is loud during the daytime hours -- but it drove Daisy nuts. I got up once and kicked the machine and it stopped, only to start again twenty minutes later. Daisy got up to kick it too, and it stopped again....before starting again a short time later.

We were, I believe, finally able to get it to stop -- and then the fridge in the room started rattling/buzzing. Daisy also addressed that, and then...the AC started again.

Cue this cycle for the entire six or so hours the three of us were desperately trying to get some sleep in that room. 

I will tell you this -- I sleep pretty well and pretty easily when I'm really tired, and once I'm out, I'm out. If I can get comfortable enough to sleep, it's game over; I've slept through tornado sirens, heavy thunderstorms, firetrucks, the cats wailing downstairs, alarm clocks, music playing, the television on, etc. And I generally only sleep about a maximum of six hours at a time. Daisy is used to far more than that and I'm sure Mama is too. So, when I woke up around 3 feeling fully rested (for better or for worse), Mama and Daisy looked and felt like zombies.

From there we gathered our things and made our way to the airport via the shuttle, checking out of the room as we did so...

Me, of course, in a fresh new Iron Maiden shirt.

The flight out of Halifax went smoothly. We landed in LaGuardia and went through a simple customs process and then were back on a plane to Omaha, with a gorgeous view of the Brooklyn Bridge as we were taxiing down the runway to lift off.

The flight from NYC to Omaha is long. I don't know for sure how long, but I know we were crammed into a plane that seemed so much smaller than it actually was, and the girl in front of me -- who weighed less than my left leg -- kept trying to recline her seat directly into my knees. Every time I would see her reach for the recline button, I would stiffen my legs and knees and make them as firm as possible, as I was already squeezed into the seat barely able to fit as it was. This made my knees and joints ache for days afterwards, to the point where it was hard for me to get up and down the stairs in my house until I got used to it again. 

Add to this that there were multiple very loud and annoying children on this flight -- some of them right behind us and some of them about seven or eight aisles up. And their parents weren't parenting them; they were kicking Mama's seat and screaming loudly and watching videos on their tablets without earbuds at high volumes and...this was an economy flight, there was no TV screens in the backs of the seats, no in-flight magazine for reading, nothing but the headrest of the seat in front of you to stare at and maybe, if you weren't flying through endless seas of nothing but clouds, a bit of a view every once in a while. My seat was so tight that I couldn't have gotten my cell phone out of my pocket to play a wifi-less game even if I'd wanted to. More than anything I just wanted the flight to end and to just be back on the ground in Omaha -- it was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had on an airplane, and over the years I've flown a lot. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity (and many nicotine mints later) we were back on the ground in Omaha, picked up our luggage quickly, and Dad picked us up. It was 90 degrees outside, and when we returned to our house -- after a long more-than-two-weeks of traveling -- it was 90 degrees inside the house, because no air conditioner.

But, we'd made it home safely. We had survived. The cats were all fine (though hot) and were, eventually, happy to see us after they stopped being mad about us being gone. 

And so ends the story of the trip. I made a vow with Daisy that the next time we do this, we are not doing it for this long. One full week, maybe a week and change, is more than enough before I start climbing the proverbial walls and want to be home. 

Green Gable'd: Canada 2024, Part V

 There is a part of this story I haven't mentioned yet, and it joins the long list of things that have gone wrong and that I would list under the category of "2024 Can Suck It." 

Halfway through our trip, Dad called us when he was over at the house to take care of the cats to tell us that it was 87 degrees in the house. Our AC unit had stopped working.

While it had been in the 60s in Nova Scotia on most days we were there (aside from the brief heat wave), in Omaha it had been in the 90s every day, and some days had approached 100. I'd set the AC unit to 75 before we left -- normally, when we're home, it's set to 66 or 67 in the summer, and 70-73 in the winter -- so that the AC would not run 24/7 while we were gone. The cats didn't need it to be ice cold in the house, just comfortable. This is done on every trip we take -- the thermostat is adjusted accordingly not just to save energy, but because we're not there and the cats are fine.

Well, it apparently did not work this time.

Add to this that a few weeks before we left for Canada, we'd had the AC unit cleaned and professionally serviced, and they told us that even though it is older than I am (by several years, actually), it was in perfect working order. And honestly, it always has been. I've never lived in a home with a better air conditioning system. 

At some point after we left, within a week or so, it blew out. Dad said it felt hot in the house when he'd been over the previous visit too, but he didn't think much of it as he knew we'd turned up the thermostat. However, after a few days of no air it was very apparent that it wasn't working once the temperature outside had skyrocketed. 

We had Dad troubleshoot it via phone, to no avail. Our furnace fan (which propels air through the house) was on and running, but the actual AC unit was, for all intents and purposes, dead. Daisy opened a ticket with our home warranty people to get a repairman out to the house, who immediately told us that because of the heat, no repair people were taking on new jobs and it could be a while before we could get someone to the house. Dad volunteered to go over once they assigned a tech and would let them in, monitor the repairs, keep the cats sequestered, etc -- but we let him know it likely wouldn't be anytime soon. In the interim he turned off the unit, turned the house fan to "on" to circulate air, and turned on all the ceiling fans to try to keep the house, and cats, as cool as possible. It was all that could be done, really. 

Fast forward to us, two days before we'd fly home and while sitting in a parking lot in the van on Prince Edward Island in pouring rain, to be told by the repair company via a very choppy phone call that the repairman's soonest availability to fix it would be the Wednesday after we returned to Omaha -- four days after we arrived home. 

It is what it is, I suppose.

We had to accept that appointment as it was the soonest availability. Mind you, we were still in Canada at the time -- in another province of Canada, but still Canada nonetheless -- and we didn't even know what was wrong with the AC unit. Without hands and eyes on it back home, I didn't know if it just needed to be reset, or if it had just overheated and needed to sit for a few days before being ran again -- or if it had really and truly blown up and needed to be replaced. 

But, we'll get to that.

The last two days of our trip would be spent on Prince Edward Island -- PEI, as it is known -- with the goals of exploring a bit of Charlottetown's vegan restaurants and going to see Green Gables in Cavendish. Charlottetown and Cavendish are on opposite sides of the island, with Charlottetown being on the south shore and Cavendish being on the northern shore. Mama was with us, of course, as she was traveling with us for this trip (as you know). 

As PEI is a full blown island, there are only two ways to get onto it -- there is a ferry outside of Truro on the north shore of Nova Scotia, and there is Confederation Bridge -- a seven-mile-long bridge from, essentially, New Brunswick to PEI. Mama was a bit wary of getting seasick from the ferry, so we chose the bridge option. Neither one would have saved any time, honestly. The rest of the family chose the ferry.

PEI is very pretty, but it reminds me a lot of backwoods West Virginia, just on a much smaller island. Outside of Charlottetown and the other little small towns scattered around the area, it's very much rolling hillsides, farmland, and winding roads that stretch on for many miles. There are no deer or moose on PEI, nor are there any other particularly exotic forms of wildlife. Yeah, there are eagles (a lot of eagles, actually, but they're also scattered all through Nova Scotia too), rabbits, raccoons, foxes, and apparently a thriving skunk population there, but not really anything else aside from eagles and seabirds. So it's like driving through West Virginia when it's rainy and foggy, with the occasional broad view of the ocean or a small lighthouse/cove and then BAM, you're in a town or larger city like Charlottetown.

Make no mistake, Charlottetown is gorgeous. It is a beautiful coastal city of about 40,000 people, and its harbour (because there's a U in it) is giant and breathtaking. When we pulled into town, a giant cruise ship -- like, a tourist cruise ship -- was pulling out of the harbor to continue its journey. I got video of it. It wasn't the largest ship I've ever seen; that honor goes to the absolutely massive cruise ship that was docked in Portland, Maine when I was there in 2015...but it was big. 

We'd gotten onto PEI in the middle of the day on a Wednesday and were in Charlottetown by 3, 4pm-ish. There was a restaurant that Daisy wanted to try called the Stir It Up Vegan Kitchen (or something like that) that was supposed to be right on the harbour. Well, apparently it was -- but it was inside a big mall-like food court building that housed many restaurants and little boutique shops/kiosks. At 4pm on a Wednesday, the place was almost completely deserted inside, so we had no trouble getting food. I don't exactly remember what the girls had, but there was a shop famous for its poutine next door, so I (of course) got a poutine. That was #3 of the trip, and would end up -- sadly -- being my last. 

It was very good.

PEI is known for, and is apparently quite famous for, its potatoes -- similar to how Idaho potatoes are the gold standard here in the states. Well, PEI doesn't fuck around with its potatoes:

Like sweet holy jesus they are serious about their potatoes. But there's a reason for that, and it's because those potatoes are great.

I am not sure I've had better fries on this planet than the ones in that poutine above. Daisy got fries from another place up there and they were also just as good. I got fries from another restaurant in Charlottetown the next night and they were really good as well -- not the best but leaps and bounds better than what I could get in Omaha. I don't know what it is, if it's the right soil, latitude, altitude, climate, whatever -- that makes these potatoes so good, but it's like Canadian cheese and Canadian flour (I'll even throw in there Canadian tea, too) -- they're just better, and leaps and bounds better at that. 

Also, don't think I didn't notice the backward N in "poutine" above in the baked potato picture. I don't know if that was a typesetting error or was somehow intentional.

Anyway, see that I <3 PEI POTATOES sign in the corner? Yeah, you can buy t-shirts and stickers and keychains with that on it. It's a thing up there. 

There is one other thing about PEI that I really didn't know anything about until I got there, though I'd heard a little here and there -- the dirt there, the soil there -- it is red. And I mean really red, like bloody maroon red. I guess it's something about the clay composition in it (similar soil exists in South Dakota, for example) but they fully embrace it, and you can buy t-shirts dyed reddish brown by the PEI mud as it, apparently, has a composition that makes it excellent for mud-based tie-dyeing -- the color does not go away or come out, it's permanent and bonds with the fabric. 

I was told there would be a place to dye your own shirts when visiting, so I packed (again, foresight is everything) three plain white t-shirts into my luggage. Well, the "place" is the island itself, anywhere you could find a mud puddle or a muddy beach, basically -- or you could just buy the pre-dyed reddish-brown shirts in a shop, most of the time with logos/text on them that stated they were dyed with PEI mud. I thought this was pretty neat, actually. The shirts sat in my luggage and we never dyed them anywhere, so it was sort of a waste to bring them, but I did think it would've been cool to find some red muddy water somewhere to do it in. I also did not purchase any of the pre-mudded shirts, mainly because the two shops I saw them in did not have them in fat guy sizes. Oh well.

Anyway. 

Our motel -- and it was, make no mistake, a motel -- was in Cavendish, about five or six miles from the Green Gables complex (I'm estimating) and about two miles or so from where Lucy Maud Montgomery herself is buried. 

If you're not familiar with Anne of Green Gables, I wouldn't be incredibly surprised. I'd known of it by name only before Daisy and I got together, and had never seen any of the television or movie adaptations of the original series of books -- nor had I read any of the books either, of course. However, in Canada it is likely the most famous of Canadian literature, and outside of Canada the 1985 TV miniseries and its much later three-season Netflix adaptation Anne with an E have also become wildly popular and have helped to make the character of Anne more universally known -- I encourage anyone interested to watch both series, as they're great. The entire series is set on Prince Edward Island, and focuses a lot on the Cavendish and Charlottetown areas (in the books/series, "Avonlea" is based very much on Cavendish in the early 1900s). 

But, Green Gables is a real place. It is a real house, purchased by the Canadian government about 60-70 years ago and refurbished/maintained to look like the house as described in the books (not as depicted in either series, but definitely the books). And ever since I watched both of the miniseries with Daisy, I have wanted to see it with my own eyes, in person, on a trip to Canada. Daisy and her sisters, with the parents, had seen it many years ago. Most of Daisy's Canadian family has been there to see it once or twice. I never had gone -- PEI is a long haul of a trip and it can't be done in one day, unless you wanted to start at 4am and not get back to the family homestead until waaaaay after midnight. 

In 2015, while we were there in Nova Scotia for a good long time, we never went.

In 2022, Daisy's grandfather had died and that's why we went on the trip when we did -- there wasn't really any extra time to galavant off to PEI.

In 2023, we could have gone and considered doing so, but we were there on our own and for a much shorter period of time than we would've had to really enjoy it -- and cost was a factor.

2024 was the year -- we were there for two weeks, we had Mama with us, Daisy's sister wanted to take their five kids to see it, and Daisy's cousin and her two kids were coming up from mainland Nova Scotia to join us all for the adventure as they lived considerably closer to PEI than to the family homestead. We'd made plans and booked the motel in Cavendish well in advance of the trip, and as it was a week or so before the summer tourist season would really start, I think there were only three different rooms in the motel actually in use when we were there. All of it was planned out for us to spend two nights in Cavendish and then hit the road back down to Halifax to get our flights back to Omaha. 

I was told that Green Gables wasn't much to see, that it was basically the house and a little gift shop, surrounded by a huge tourist-trappy area. None of that really mattered to me. Being able to see the house, being able to touch the wood and steel and be where all of the magic happened -- well, where it was "set," so to speak -- was a very important experience for me. 

What I did not know -- and apparently none of the family really knew either -- is that five years ago, in 2019, a giant complex was built on the farm next to the house. This complex housed a very detailed museum, huge gift shop, cafe, and AV area all focused around Anne of Green Gables as well as the life of her author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. $12 got you into the museum, which you went down through to see all of the exhibits, and then it led you out the back door and up a short gravel path to the barn and to the actual Green Gables house itself. There were other paths too, hiking paths and a "haunted forest," but...of course, as it's Atlantic Canada, the day we were there it was pouring rain. 

But...

There's the house, with Mama and Daisy heading towards the entrance in the front.

The house itself is not that impressive, really; it's just a green-and-white house that looks old on the outside. But the inside, which is roped off and immaculately-kept, is a time-capsule of the early 1900s, and is very much meant to be such.

I took a pic of Anne's room too; yes, of course, I was in the house:

The museum complex itself is beautifully designed, but of course, it is geared very strongly towards tourists. Green Gables is the big tourist draw of the island itself and tourism is the biggest part of PEI's overall economy as a province. So, everywhere you go anywhere around the northern half of PEI, it's Green Gables this or Anne that. It's so much of a novelty there that it feels fake and hollow, and I'm sure the people who have lived there all their lives, for generations, are sick of hearing about Anne. The town of Cavendish, while cute, is just littered with tourist gift shops. They're not bad gift shops -- they're actually pretty nice ones -- but because thousands of tourists stream through there every year, prices are heavily inflated.

Because I wasn't leaving PEI without some sort of souvenirs, even though my luggage was near-bursting anyhow, I did end up getting two different t-shirts (one with "Cavendish" on it in beautiful script, and one with a map of the Maritimes) and a long-sleeved PEI shirt while there -- in addition to some candies and taffy and potato-based soap based on the Anne characters. To be fair, the shirts are really nice, the taffy was...questionable, and the soap left me unimpressed once we returned home. 

Anyway, that was the Green Gables Adventure™. It was fun, but all three of us (me, Mama, and Daisy) agreed that we never need to do it or see it again -- I've now checked it off my bucket list of places to visit and see and I'm happy/satisfied I did it, but it is what it is. I'll likely never return to Cavendish or the Green Gables area in this lifetime.

However, we hadn't left the island yet -- we had one last blast before we left....

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.