In Preparation, Part II

 The suitcase is very green. It is basically what you saw in the picture in my previous entry here, no real differences. It is ever-so-slightly smaller than my old one, but its hardshell sides are thicker and more durable. 

So the packing and real preparations can begin now, I suppose. 

I talked to my mother on the phone for a while on Monday afternoon, and she is thrilled about us coming to visit. She always is. I think somehow she knows how important it is for me, mentally and spiritually, to occasionally get the fuck out of Nebraska, and she doesn't question it because she's always excited for us to visit. There was a long period of time after I moved out of the house that I was not able to visit, for both responsibility and financial reasons. Between 2006 and 2016 -- a ten year span -- I only visited home four times, each time for a brief period of time only, less than a week at most. 

Since I've been married to Daisy, we've made it a point to visit as often as possible when we've been able to, and for the past four years that's been a yearly trip. The only thing we have not done yet is celebrate a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving with my parents (though I did fly into WV for Christmas in 2012). I don't know if that will be in the cards anytime soon as, well, Daisy's parents are a few miles away across town and mine are not. 

We're not in the greatest financial space right now; because of the holidays and our trip to Canada in the fall, we've been stretched a little thin at times. The $4,000 new furnace isn't helping that much either. We're in a period of rebuilding, so to speak. It's not like we're destitute or scrambling to cover bills or anything, but we are a little more paycheck-to-paycheck than the usual. It comes with being homeowning, multi-job-household adults with six cats, I guess. There is an ebb and flow to a lot of it. Because of this, though, we're doing some budgeting and some creative cooking, cutting back on a lot of spending to cover the essentials and the occasional small luxury, and we're getting by just fine. As I've mentioned here in the past, I don't need anything special -- you give me enough money to pay the bills and keep the basics of food in the house for us and the cats and I'm fine; I learned to survive on far, far less when I lived alone and only made $8,500 a year as a professor.  We are lucky and blessed that the trip to my parents won't be incredibly expensive and will let us have some relative peace and downtime.

I have contacted my aunt, who was in town to see us last fall when we visited the parents...and had to leave 12 hours into our trip. I wanted to let her know we would be back down there in March if they wanted to try a do-over and actually get to see us for more than ten minutes. Both my aunt and uncle are technically retired at this juncture, so it's not like they're really busy, but I know cost and time is a factor. The house they rented last time, two doors down from my parents, is not available in March -- but the house directly across the street from them is. My mother is trying to work out the details to see if they can rent it for some of the time we're there. Whether that will pan out or not remains to be seen, of course, but it's a possibility at least. I figured I would have been a supreme asshole were I not to tell my aunt we'd be back down there, as my aunt adores me and barely got to meet Daisy for more than a few minutes -- we have a lot of catching up to do. Not to mention she just sent me and Daisy "Cat Dad" and "Cat Mom" t-shirts last week out of the kindness of her heart, and we share reels and memes back and forth on Facebook on a daily basis. It would be in very poor taste were we not to tell her we were going to be back down there. If it were me, I'd find it inexcusable.

Anyway.

I got a message from my dad this afternoon saying that a bunch of comics arrived in his mailbox yesterday -- comics he didn't order and that I hadn't sent him. It turns out that Marvel, in their transition to a new subscription system, changed the address of all of the books I subscribe to and sent them to him instead of me. Why? Who the fuck knows, I didn't ask them to do that. I had to go into my account and manually change all of them back to me, save for the ones that are supposed to be going to him anyhow. 

"I can send them to you if you want," he told me, "or you can get them when you're down here in March."

I found this very sweet, especially when I explained to him that they were all series I was bringing down there to him anyway and that he can hold onto them. In reality, I really just rent my comics now -- I get them in the mail, read them, and then box them away so that I can take them down to North Carolina on our yearly visit (and mail any stragglers at Christmas). I don't think there's a single series now that I don't take down there to him, as I've pared back my subscriptions by about half of what I was previously getting. This is also part of the reason that getting the new suitcase was so vital -- I'll need the space in it. I already have one sealed box to take down there and will have a second by the time we're wheels up from Omaha and on the way. 

Tonight is my last night of work for the week, and it can't come soon enough. I am exhausted; this week has been really hard on me for some reason, even though most of it has not been awful at work. I think part of it is January in general, my most low-energy month. And, while I've been mostly okay energy-wise, I am absolutely looking forward to Nebraska climbing out of the depths of cold, dark winter where everything is not gray all the time and there's not a constant layer of light snow or ice on all the grass and sidewalks. I am also looking forward to taking Dolly on walks in the stroller to see if she enjoys it as much as Pete did. 

Speaking of the children, Dolly and Emmy had their vet appointments yesterday and both appear to be very happy and healthy. Dolly is 3.4 pounds and is expected to be around 5 pounds when we take her back in for her final appointment on February 28, and Empress is 15.4 pounds (up from 13.8 this time last year), looks absolutely great and apparently has perfect teeth. 

Savor this photo, it may be the only time we see Emmy this calm around the little chaos goblin.

We will have a few more appointments for the other cats going into the late spring and early summer; Mable, Gary, Hank, and Charlie will need to go in at different times for their yearly checkups and rabies vaccinations. Daisy has a calendar she keeps for when all of them need to go in. Depending on the schedule we may be able to add another cat to the docket for Dolly's next appointment just to get it out of the way. 

Dolly has adjusted really well to the house. She does not get into anything, she is not destructive, and she is getting along really well with the other cats. She loves to play with Gary and Charlie (and she and Gary actually go pretty hard on each other). Mable still remains a mostly quiet observer, as do Hank and Emmy. It always takes them the longest to warm up to new kids in the house. They all show curiosity and are gentle with the child, though. None of them try to attack her or dominate her, and if she gets too hyper and they don't want to play, they will back down and shy away kindly. Mable really seems to like her miniature twin, and they spend a lot of time together, but she doesn't mother her like she did with Charlie, and I am kind of surprised by that. Dolly has also started cuddling up with Charlie here and there. Charlie is such a sweet boy and he never shows any real aggression towards her -- just playful wonder more than anything else.

But, ultimately, Dolly has absolutely become a true mama's girl and spends a large amount of her time with Daisy -- on her lap, curled up tight with her in bed, on the pillow on the couch with her, etc. She loves me too and is always excited to see me, but it's very clear where Dolly's loyalty ultimately lies. In contrast, possibly because she may feel like she's being spurned or replaced, Mable has become much more of a daddy's girl and spends an inordinate amount of time with me. The other dynamics in the house remain mostly unchanged.

In Preparation, Part I

 On Friday morning, Daisy and I finalized plans to visit my parents this year -- in March. We are less than two months away. 

I checked with them first, of course, to make sure it was an okay time to visit. It was. 

The tickets have been booked, the rental car has been booked, and we have spoken with our catsitter, who appears to be able to make it work over the course of the trip. We'll be gone six days total -- a travel day at each end of the trip and four full days there with my parents in North Carolina. Since Pete has now left us, we'll likely only need her there every other day or so, and she can come every day if she wants.

The entire trip, save for the rental car and food/incidentals while we're there -- is covered by our airline miles. It is, essentially, free flights for us there and back. We will both put in the requisite PTO today at our respective jobs.

So begins the preparations. 

March in North Carolina, per my parents, is still relatively chilly. But, it's not Omaha chilly. In Omaha, we're likely to still have the chance of snow and temperatures in the 20s and 30s in March. On the island, that's generally not the case. Lows in the 40s at night, sure. Highs in the 60s and maybe brushing with 70-80? That is what we're looking for. 

It's a gamble, though -- the Carolinas get tornadoes, they get severe storms, and it can get really rough there when those things happen. It's the spring, it's the changing of the seasons, and the atmosphere can get somewhat volatile. Then again, the same is true for Omaha. Generally in Omaha though the weather waits until a bit later before it gets terrifying -- April, May, June, July -- those are the sweet-spot months for severe weather in Omaha. Tornado Alley is starting to shift further south and east of us, too, based on the trends of the past decade or so. 

None of this means anything, of course -- it's all pure speculation. I told Daisy that the latest I wanted to visit my parents this year was March or April, primarily because of weather concerns both here and there, and because I wanted to avoid the heat of summer on the island -- the oppressive heat and humidity that drains all of our energy from us and turns us into toads when we're there, heat we can't escape from even in our sleep at night. 

So, here's the question -- what do we pack? How do we pack?

March is likely too cold for much oceanic exploration, but truthfully it would likely be one of the best times to spend on the beach -- no tourists, not a lot of out-of-towners clogging up the roads and beaches, just the locals. It's way outside of the tourist season, which generally begins on Memorial Day weekend and lasts until Labor Day weekend. 

I can and usually do travel light when we go to visit my parents -- and I have no need to purchase any more souvenirs or the like. But, chillier temperatures mean warmer clothing. It means hoodies and maybe sweatpants -- actually, likely sweatpants -- and normal shoes instead of flip-flops. And strangely I am okay with this. I know it should be leaps and bounds warmer than it is in Omaha during that same time. So let's see what happens.

Then there's the question of suitcases.

As you may recall, upon return from our trip to Canada last fall, my giant hardshell suitcase got shattered on one of the lower corners -- coincidentally, right in the wheel well for the spinner wheel. So, because of that, under any load (read: if there's anything in it at all) it will crush in on itself and topple over. That makes it useless, and this morning I wrapped two large trash bags around it and unceremoniously gave it a burial within my giant trash can. 

On that same trip, Daisy's handle ripped off her own suitcase -- the one she's had since before we got together, a giant softshell suitcase with cherries all over it that her mother bought her when she was in college because "a girl needs good luggage." Well, after about thirty trips to and from Canada, to and from West Virginia, North Carolina, Chicago, New Orleans, South Dakota, etc...it's finally worn itself out and it's time for it to be retired and trashed. 

So, both of us were in the need for new luggage.

I'm going to pause here for a moment to state that I do have another suitcase, a smaller (but still nice) black one I purchased for $40 or so before our first trip to Canada in 2015 -- and Daisy has a very similar one as well that used to be her Grandfather's. However, those aren't exactly the most mobile suitcases. They're good for making "let's get the fuck out of here" emergency luggage, like if we have to drop everything and leave the country (something that, sadly, is still at the forefront of my mind) but aren't good daily suitcases. Her Grandfather's doesn't even have wheels on it, and mine only has two dragger wheels -- it's not a spinner. 

As you may have realized if you've been following this page for some time, Daisy and I tend to travel a lot. A lot for us may not be a lot for you, but I think 2-3 trips per year, especially if one of those trips is  usually out of country, qualifies. Therefore, we need some actual quality luggage that is going to hold up but isn't going to cost us $800 per suitcase. 

Okay, well, here we gooooo...

That is the new suitcase I ordered. For $79, if it doesn't hold up more than a couple of years, I am strangely okay with it. I got the lime green because it also matches my luggage tags and because it'll be easy to spot when it comes down the chute at the baggage claim. Also, I love green things. Lime green and seafoam green are two of my favorite colors. I don't exactly know why. It arrives Tuesday.

Daisy has not yet selected a new suitcase. She wants a softshell, not a hardshell suitcase. I told her she could always wait and see if she likes the design of mine, and if so, we could get her one in another color and we would have matching luggage. 

I told her not to stress about it. We have time. She doesn't have to find something today, tomorrow, or even next week. She just needs it before March.

After all, it's not like she'll pack until the day before we leave anyhow.

As you all know, I am not that person. I've already begun putting together the to-do list and to-pack list of things I'll need. It's how I hype myself up for an upcoming trip; I am, as you may know, a meticulous planner. I can confirm with you, however, that I have not packed anything yet. I also do not know if I will need the suitcase or if I can just make a go of it with my big canvas backpack as I've done for previous trips to visit my parents. Because of our AAdvantage status and our airline miles/having the AA card, we do each get a free checked bag. I also am the person who doesn't like to carry more than he has to, though -- especially just for a trip to visit my parents. It's not like the Canada trips, where a suitcase is absolutely necessary. 

In the end I'll likely take the suitcase, primarily because I'd like to be able to bring back a big Carhartt coat from Gabes if they have them in stock when we're in Wilmington, and because the suitcase will allow me to take all the comics I need to give to my dad. But do I think I'm going to be coming home with a lot of souvenirs and stuff like that? Psh, no. 

Make no mistake, this is a trip that is to primarily be spent on soul-soothing times -- quiet time with my parents in the spring, a nice getaway to the island and tropical weather fully away from Nebraska -- an escape, in essence, from Nebraska for a few days to a place where if I could remove myself from routine and news and politics enough, I could enjoy living for the rest of my life. I am so weary of the world that I need an escape. I need somewhere to go where I'm not feeling crushed by the headlines or the stress of my job or our household debt. Every bit of this trip is psychological for me. It is, essentially, something I can look forward to so that I can stave off any sort of psychotic break. The fact that I get to spend it with my wife, the parents, the dogs, and we get to go visit our favorite restaurants while we're there are all, simply, bonuses. It also takes care of one of my New Year's resolutions that I posted here earlier this month.

I feel sort of bad about it actually; my parents were sort of blindsided on us coming. I asked them if they had anything going on in March, and before my mother could even fully answer, Daisy was already booking the trip. Luckily there's no conflicts with our timing, though my mother did suggest that we come later in the year. I told her, frankly, I did not want to -- I don't want to be killed by sweat and heat and we can't make the trip in the fall this year -- maybe next year -- because we have plans (more to come on that, here, eventually). Still, my parents are always very happy to have us whenever we come in, and to be fair, most of the time it is really inexpensive for us to make said trip, because...well, think about it -- we stay with my parents (which eliminates a lodging expense), we get maybe $100 or so worth of groceries and supplies when we come into town, get a rental car, and spend less than $500 on out-and-about things while we're there before we pack up shop and fly home. The flights are covered by our airline miles this time around, making it even cheaper. All around in-and-out, beginning-to-end, we spend less than a grand for the entire trip. We're not really people of means, but spending less than $1k total on a week-long, cross-country vacation is pretty damn good.

In comparison...you do not want to know how much it costs when we go to Canada to visit the family up there. It's not cheap. It will be cheaper than it used to be going forward, since Daisy's grandmother mentioned that she wants us to stay with her when we're there, but still...it's a lot. 

A trip to Chicago and back, which is also on the docket for some point soon (hopefully) is overall far more expensive than it is to go visit my parents. Seeing my parents is by far the most inexpensive travel experience we have available to us. 

Anyway.

I believe I've entered a sort of manic phase as of late, where I will get a lot of energy and feel really excitable and creative, and I have to burn that energy off somehow -- so I dive into cleaning and rearranging things, taking care of chores and tasks that have sort of fallen to the wayside. When I run out of energy and crash out, I rest really well and really cleanly. For example, today I:

• Got 3/4 of the way through my "shred box" of papers and mail to be shredded
• Stripped the bed, washed the bedsheets and blankets, dried them and replaced them
• Did two other loads of laundry -- one was Daisy's clothing and the other was towels
• Rearranged my office for maximum efficiency
• Fed the cats, pilled Mable, gave Hank his eyedrops, and fed the snails
• Disposed of my old suitcase
• Boxed up approximately half the comics I plan to take to NC for my dad
• Vacuumed the entire house
• Backed up my HDD
• Listened to three different podcasts
• Added some notes to my short stories and came up with an entirely new idea
• Spent time with the wife and had dinner with her
• Took a short nap with Gary and Dolly
• Got up, began writing here

I don't even do a third, or a fifth of this on most days. But, because I had today off because of my comp day for MLK Day, I was able to hunker down and focus on a lot of tasks I would not necessarily would have been able to do otherwise. Yes, I'm still tired and rather stressed. Yes, it's still -6 outside and I still haven't left the house. But, this weekend was able to give me a bit of a reset and a lot of breathing space that I desperately needed to center myself. 

The rest of this week is likely not going to go as smoothly. Tomorrow I am backing up my boss as he is out of the office traveling on his own winter vacation. Tuesday morning we take Emmy and Dolly in to the vet for their next scheduled appointments, literally as soon as I get off work. A week from tomorrow I have an 8am teeth cleaning at my dentist, an appointment I've been dreading for a while because, well, I don't like going to the dentist at all -- and doing it after I've worked all night the night before is one of my personal versions of hell, and on Groundhog Day at that. 

There's actually a lot of things coming up in the time between now and the trip to see my parents:

• Dolly and Emmy's vet appointments
• The Groundhog Day dentist appointment
• The 13th anniversary of when I proposed to Daisy (Valentine's Day)
• Mable's 2nd birthday
• Daisy's Dad's birthday

And I'm sure there's some other things I'm missing as well.

However, that about does it for what I have to share at the moment. I am tired again, and it is time for me to reset my sleep schedule for the remainder of the week so that I can become a cog in the corporate telecom machine again for the next few days.

More to come.

The Daughters of Darkness

 Well, we almost made it through January without incident.

As mentioned previously, the furnace was replaced last week and a good time was had by all, he said, sarcastically. 

That furnace is wonderful and has been a great help to us, and we have gone from wearing layers and shivering to being, dare I say, sweaty sometimes. It seems pretty energy-efficient, and despite it sounding like a 747 taking of every time it runs, it works very well.

This is good, because if you haven't been paying attention to the news, the United States is currently getting one of the worst winter storms ever seen (or, that's what the media would want you to think) across a full third, or more, of the country. 

The temperature yesterday morning in Omaha was -7. It struggled, greatly, to get above zero all day. Right now, per AccuWeather, it is -1. It is currently snowing, and we already have a layer on the ground. It is not going to get above freezing again until at least Wednesday.

We are not, however, getting the worst of it. That has gone south of us, cutting a massive scythe-shaped storm all the way across the country to the Appalachians and to the east coast/southern coast in some places -- again, a full third or more of the country. All of the places I used to live -- all of them -- are fucked. Newton, Kansas is getting an ice storm with snow following it. Kansas City is getting the same. My home in West Virginia is getting up to a foot of snow, and even more in the higher elevations of the area. My parents, in North Carolina, aren't necessarily getting away unscathed either; they will likely get the winds and some ice, and probably a 20-to-30-degree temperature drop from their normal, mostly comfortable tropical beach temperatures. 

As I type this, it is -1 in Omaha. It is 39 degrees in Oak Island, NC. Yes, I am slightly jealous.

Anyway, the wife and I have hunkered down for a long weekend. Neither of us have to exit the house again before Tuesday morning, when Emmy and Dolly have a vet appointment that we'd scheduled in advance. Dolly has three appointments total at the vet before she's good for a year or so; this will be her second. She gets different vaccinations at each one based on age. Emmy is going in for her yearly checkup and rabies vaccination. We will not be putting them in the same carrier, as at this juncture Emmy is still the one cat in the house who is still slightly uneasy with our newest chaos goblin. 

I guess I should, as an aside, talk about that for a moment. Empress is a very confrontational cat. She is incredibly protective of territory, is really skittish, and is the least receptive to any sort of attention, love, or play unless it is her idea. I have always said that Emmy is sweet, but not kind. I think that is a very apt description of her. She wants love on her terms only, and she can be very sweet and loving, but she is not a kind cat by any means to anyone but me and Hank. She tolerates the Double Trouble Boys™ and Daisy, but Dolly has become an all new variable to the house equation. There are times where she shows curiosity and sort of wants to play, and there are other times where she will growl and hiss and swipe at her. Thankfully, the latter times are becoming less and less prevalent as Emmy gets more used to Dolly toddling around the house, but she's not completely at ease yet. 

Of course, Mable and Empress do not get along and haven't for some time; Dolly has proven a welcome distraction to their almost daily, ongoing spats. 

Still, they're not buddy-buddy enough yet to put them in the same carrier together for a vet visit. Really, we could only do that for Empress and Hank, or the boys, or maybe Gary and Dolly. I dunno. We'll cross that bridge eventually, if we need to, I guess. We do need to do some research and get at least one or two more carriers. 

Anyway.

We have hunkered down for the weekend to keep warm and safe. We have nowhere to be and nothing to do outside of the little bubble of our home. We have sleep and TV to catch up on. I ordered a Walmart grocery delivery yesterday morning (and tipped very well because of the cold) and made sure we had our vital supplies in stock. I have no desire to leave this house for any reason, nor do I have anywhere to be but here in my upstairs office, in bed, or on the couch. A bonus for me is that since I worked the MLK Day holiday last week, I am taking tomorrow (Sunday) off as a comp day -- giving me an extra day of weekend. It gives me some extra time to rest and reset, and allows me to disconnect from the noise of work. Daisy does not get this luxury; her job does not give her any comp days off and her new schedule has her working all of Sunday now as if it were any other weekday.

But Brandon, you may be thinking, wouldn't that make your extra day off meaningless if she's spending the whole day working?

Well, yes and no. No, because it gives me some time to get some chores taken care of, to do some writing, some cleaning where necessary, some decompression time and leisure/rest time with the cats, that I so, so very psychologically need. But also yes, because I'd much rather be spending a lazy Sunday with my wife instead of her needing to work through it. There's also a certain factor of feeling trapped inside the house when it's this cold and snowy. Do I want to go anywhere or do anything? No. But it's the fact that it would be painful and uncomfortable if I did want to, and that I would hate every second of it, that's the psychological rub. I have appreciated that since we've let Dolly roam free, and since the furnace was replaced, little of note has happened. Work has sucked, but when I'm not there and not on the clock, I don't think about it. Daisy and I both appear to be pretty healthy and aren't suffering from any post-holiday illnesses, and we're on track to, hopefully, have an okay year financially and stability-wise. 

The only thing that is slightly concerning at the moment is that Gary's intestinal issues seem to have flared up again; he is having some issues with constipation here and there, and we're doing some trial and error with foods to see why he's having such issues -- if he has a food allergy or if it's environmental or what -- or if he's just going to have the cat version of IBS or colitis for his entire life no matter what we do. Trial and error elimination diets are not overnight fixes -- they take time to see if he can adjust or if his bowels respond well. And there are five other cats in the house who respond differently to different foods and food changes, too. So far we've eliminated corn from their diets (as a food filler) but that does not appear to be the issue. We're seeing if chicken is the culprit, essentially, by seeing if chicken-based food makes it better, worse, or no change. So far, it's not really any positive change. Eventually we may have to eliminate chicken and see if he responds better to seafood or beef. If no change or he has worse issues there, then we have to try novel protein diets that don't include any of those things, and...those are very expensive. 

"I wish they could just give him an allergy test like they do humans," Daisy said last night. "Just give him a test and see what he's allergic to and we can eliminate that."

"I think it's bullshit that they can't," I said. "And I mean by saying that I think the vets are lying to us."

To a certain extent I think that's the case; you can't tell me in 2026 they can't take a blood sample from a cat and run it against common food allergen strains. I can map my cat's entire genome with a cheek swab via a mail-in service, but I can't take my cat to a veterinarian and have them tell me via a blood test what foods he's allergic to? Horseshit. Oh, he's having an allergic reaction to something in his environment, either food or dust or pollen or whatever. Again, horseshit. Is it a test that's deemed too expensive for most pet parents and that's why they don't want to do it or tell people about it? Okay, cool, we have a pet health credit card -- we paid for Mable's surgery on it. Do it. Because I can tell you, it's more expensive and takes way more time to do trial and error with multiple types of food ordered from Chewy or picked up at PetSmart, and if he has a reaction to those foods it sucks for him and we are powerless to fix it. Both Daisy and I are starting to get frayed at the edges over this and we just need a solution for the little guy. We also can't torture the other five cats in the house with multiple different foods for multiple months -- I want to keep their foods as stable as possible, especially for the little girl who has now forsaken kitten food (not that we can give it to her anyway without all the other cats  running to the bowl and absolutely crushing it) for the normal food in the house.

Anyway.

Dolly has adjusted quite well to the house environment. The first day or two she was out, she hissed at everyone and was afraid of everyone and everything except for us humans. She is an easily spooked little girl and is especially afraid of sudden movements or noises even now. But, over the course of a few days, she made cautious friendships with the boys and Mable. Hank and Emmy, who were originally very opposed to the little kitten in their midst (they always are) mostly dropped their defenses and became more curious than anything else. Emmy is still a little apprehensive, but they coexist with her just fine. Do I think she'll ever cuddle with Hank or Emmy? Psh, no. At least likely not, anyway. But do they mind having her around? Also no. Hank likes to sniff on her and kiss her head, and Emmy also likes to sniff and examine her, but they otherwise don't really interact with Dolly that much.

Dolly very much seems like she's going to be a people cat, not a cats' cat. She has bonded extremely hard with Daisy and rarely wants to leave her side. She sleeps on Daisy's lap or shoulder when we're watching TV or eating dinner. She sleeps with Daisy on her pillow or chest every night. She is always in sight of Daisy (or me) when she can be, and when we're sleeping in bed together she's always either between us or on the cat tree with us in full view.

Who does that sound like to you?

Pete.

These are all things Pete did, and excelled at, down to the sleeping positions with me and Daisy. Dolly will make sure she teddybears up to Daisy, as Pete always did with us. She also has bonded to the boys like Pete did, though I think that's happening a little more slowly than with Pete. Still:

However, the cat she spends the most time with -- by far -- is Mable.

I mentioned before that Mable was very curious about Dolly. She was never really scared of Dolly, but was intensely curious about the tiny fluffball that looked like a miniature version of her. When Dolly was still being sequestered in the bedroom, Mable would intensely stare in curiosity at the child through the baby gate, and they would smell each other, Dolly would paw at her through the gate, etc. Mable was always the observer.

During the past six weeks or so since Pete died, there's also been a sea change in the personalities of the cats of the house. For some it's been subtle -- Hank will now get up on the couch with us a lot more, and has no qualms about sleeping on my desk bed with me while I'm working, and Emmy only very rarely sleeps in the middle of the couch now (read: where she used to cuddle Pete). Gary is now much more intentional with both of us when it comes to love or cuddle time, and Mable...has become much more of a Daddy's girl.

Daisy is bitter about that, by the way. She says I "stole her cat." In reality, Mable has been getting closer to me for months, and the catalyst of Pete dying and us adopting Dolly a few weeks later has likely  been somewhat traumatic for her, even if she's not really showing it outwardly. On the other side of that coin, she always knows where I am, she knows I am safe and would never hurt her, she knows I will protect her and give her treat sticks. On another level of that I also think she is trying to show Dolly possession, as in "you can have the mom, but the big man is mine." This would also explain why, every day now, Mable will sleep on me when I'm in bed during the work week. Safety and comfort, yes, but this man is mine is also the message she's sending.

Currently, as I type this, she is snuggled up on top of my right foot.

Here's the thing, though -- Dolly also adores Mable, and loves to jump and run and play and spar with her...to varying degrees of success. To her credit, Mable is exceedingly patient. Mable will never start shit with Dolly, but also won't really be like "oh, so you wanna go?" when Dolly starts play fighting with her. Dolly also doesn't have the shutoff switch yet, which means even when Mable is like "okay, come on, stop, I don't want to play anymore" Dolly doesn't understand that. It'll come in time, of course.

Over the past week or so, if she's not been our shadow, she has certainly been Mable's shadow -- her Mini-Me. I will hear Mable cry at my office door to be let in, and I will open it to find my daughters of darkness sitting there together, with the same posture, waiting to be allowed entry into my office.

First we had the Double Trouble Boys, now we have the Daughters of Darkness™.

Mable likes being around the little girl, but I'm not sure it's in a motherly way -- more like a big sister sort of way. She is very much an observer. I have not yet seen the two of them cuddle together, but I only assume it's a matter of time. Mable isn't much of a cuddler with anyone anymore but us humans, not since Pete died -- something else that's changed. I am hoping she warms up to the little girl more and more as time passes, because Emmy's certainly not going to be that patient role-model cat for Dolly. If Pete and Mable had a daughter, it would be Dolly. Dolly is their spiritual daughter personality-wise at the very least. 

Dolly isn't destructive. She doesn't even really seem to be incredibly curious, to tell you the truth, about most of the house. The wild, unhinged energy she had when we first brought her home and had her sequestered in the bedroom has all but dissipated. She likes to toddle around the house and run around with the boys and play with Mable, but she's a much more subdued cat than I expected her to be. I guess that wildness was something that was a very young kitten thing and just with us. She still has her moments, but I think it's great that she's finally fully integrating into the house.

Two Years Gone

 

It was two years ago today we lost our Maggie to kidney failure at the age of 16. 

I miss that sweet, vocal, cuddly girl every single day. She was our first cat to leave us. 

Craving Any Semblance of Stability

 2026 has been...interesting for the household so far.

We are, just now, finally getting the normal Nebraska January cold. Highs have been in the teens and lows in the single digits, brushing with zero some nights, with at least one or two wind advisories or high wind warnings every week. We have not, thankfully, had any horrific snowstorms or temperatures plunging down into the -10 to -25 ranges yet. As Wednesday marks us being 1/3 of the way through winter, I am more or less okay with how it has treated us thus far -- I so rarely have to leave the house in winter that it's far less of a concern for me than it used to be. 

However, that does not mean there hasn't been difficulties this year already.

On Wednesday afternoon, I woke up and was freezing. I could hear the furnace running but the bedroom itself was cold. Daisy, who was (of course) awake and working, I texted and said "It's cold AF in here" or something to that effect. She appeared in the bedroom a couple of minutes later and informed me that the furnace was somehow broken, as it was blowing cold air.

It was around 25 degrees outside, give or take. This was bad news.

We immediately opened a ticket with our home warranty, who routed us to our normal HVAC people. Within two hours, they had a guy out to the house to examine the furnace -- a guy who couldn't have been more than, oh, twenty years old. He informed us that the control board had blown out. They could order another one to replace it and restore the furnace to perfect working order, but as our furnace was 27 years old, it wasn't something they readily had in stock, and could take a couple of weeks.

"And what are we supposed to do until then?" I asked. "Our pipes will freeze. Is there not some sort of band-aid fix that could get it running normally until the control board comes in?"

When I asked this, I was essentially asking "can you not hotwire this fucking thing?" Like, I understand the furnace is 27 years old, but it's not like that is ancient or anything like that. Stick some part in there, bypass something, and make the heat flow.

Again though, this kid was twenty-ish and the furnace was older than him. I tend to trust the older, more seasoned and experienced HVAC guys who have come to service our stuff way more than these trade school kids who are probably Trump supporters. 

"Well, sometimes the home warranty will cover reimbursement for space heaters..." he said. My heart sank and my anger flared up, but I kept very outwardly calm.

I'm not sure whether it was he or Daisy who brought up what replacing the system outright would look like, with costs and timeframes involved. I was stressed and very frustrated. But, that was the other option. We have a service plan with this HVAC company outside of the constraints of our home warranty. I'm not exactly sure what it entails, but it seems to include priority VIP service on some things, yearly checkups on HVAC systems, etc. We'd just had the furnace checked out before Christmas -- on Christmas Eve, in fact. 

He began drawing up some install plans on his iPad and looking into options regarding the size and power we'd need for the new furnace, specifications and the like. After a few minutes, he said that if we wanted to go forth with the replacement, it would be just over $4,000, with a payment plan involved and they could have a crew there the next morning to do it as the first stop -- it would be about half a day's work. 

"Do it," I said. 

Before I go further, I should preface the rest of this story by saying that we were planning to replace the entire HVAC system within the next year or two anyway -- they'd quoted us something like $9k to do the whole thing; new furnace, new actually-well-working AC system, vent and duct cleaning, etc. The works. As you know if you've been reading here for awhile, the AC unit is from 1976 and is original to the house, and after all those years it is finally dying. We've had repairs to it every year for the past three years and it's getting to the point where it's not worth the cost of the repairs anymore. We'd had repairs done to the furnace a few times too, but generally it had been holding up pretty well, until now.

"Let's just do it," I said. "Let's set that up and do it tomorrow."

We went through all of the paperwork, and I had to sign a bunch of things, apply for the financing, go through a lot of legal stuff basically saying that yes, I would pay them the $4,000 on time and by the end of the financing, etc. Minimum payment was $68 a month for eleven years or something like that, one year 0% interest, auto-debits from checking, etc.

I am not good with finances. I am in a broad sense, as in I know how to budget for things and keep things balanced, but when it comes to specific terms or terminology, payment plans, interest, etc -- I am not. I am just not that person, and I don't have that mathematical or statistic mind. And, honestly, most of the time I could not care less about that sort of stuff. You tell me how much something is and give me the broad strokes on it, and I'll give you a yes or no. 

That being said, I know how much furnace systems are, and I know that I would not get a better deal on a new system, parts and labor, and next-day installation. So I signed on the dotted line, the HVAC kid left, and we immediately got bundled up and went to Lowe's to look for space heaters to keep the house warm.

Let me tell you, space heaters these days are no joke. Gone are the little metal ones that had the glowing wires and grills, likely because they'd start a fire if they were knocked over. Now there are tabletop models that can heat the better part of the downstairs of your house, ceramic heaters smaller than oscillating fans that can keep a room so warm you sweat, and giant entertainment-center-sized models that yes, you can use as a TV stand, complete with cabinets on each side.

Welcome to the 21st century, I guess. 

We got a tabletop model for the kitchen and a larger, small-fireplace-sized model with legs to sit on the tile in front of the French doors in the living room. The HVAC kid had told us that we could still run the blower on the furnace fan -- that was not dead, obviously -- and as long as the heater was there in front of it, it would suck the hot air into it and warm the house through the vents normally. This sounded rather logical to us, so that's what we did -- we put the bigger one in front of the furnace door and the smaller tabletop one on the kitchen counter.

Almost as soon as Daisy turned on the larger one, it blew out and refused to work or get warm. It was defective. So, frustrated, she boxed it up and took it back to the store to exchange it for something else. 

By this time I was exhausted, had to get something to eat, and had to get ready to work an entire shift in a freezing house. I cooked us dinner in a rapidly-warming kitchen (thanks to the tabletop heater) while she did that. She returned with an oscillating ceramic heater that worked wildly well for the entire living room.

We also found via some research that turning on the house fan to try to get heat throughout the house was a bad idea -- all the articles she'd found said all it would do would make the house colder, because by the time the air circulated through the vent system, it would be cold again. 

Within an hour or three, it was 70 degrees in the downstairs of the house -- which really was the overall goal -- keep the downstairs of the house warm enough to where the pipes wouldn't freeze. 

"I can be cold upstairs," Daisy said, "I'll be fine."

The temperature in the bedroom got down to 51 that night. It was 55ish in my office in the morning when I got off work. In the overnight I also ran a couple loads of laundry -- the couch blankets, towels, etc -- to keep water flowing in the single-digit overnight temperatures, and ran two dishwasher loads, one being a cleaning cycle. Truthfully it was all stuff that needed to be done anyway, maintenance things, but things that I had an excuse to do in the middle of the night at that particular time.

They told Daisy the furnace install guys would call her around 10:30 or so when they were on their way with the new furnace. For a half-day job, that would mean they'd be there for at least four or five hours after that point. This, of course, presented a dilemma for us -- Daisy works during the daytime hours now, and her PTO is precious and sparse, and she couldn't be down there to supervise or make sure the cats were okay. I had to work all night Wednesday night -- usually and historically my busiest night of the week -- and still be awake and lucid when these guys got there, and stay awake and be there for them while they were working to literally tear our old furnace out of the wall and wedge in a new one.

"I guess I'll have to try to sleep as soon as I get off work and just sleep until they call you and say they're on the way," I said. It was all I could do.

That. Did not happen.

As soon as I got off work, Charlie decided he was going to be a little asshole and sprint through the house for goblin time, tearing shit up, and generally just be a little menace. I laid down on the couch and tried to get some rest, but it would not come. It also didn't help that I had to chase Charlie away and out of things, Mable was upstairs howling to either get into my office or into the bedroom with Daisy and Dolly, and Hank and Emmy also decided it was the perfect time to run around and play too. The couch, which I normally find quite comfortable to nap on, was hard and lumpy and hurt my body. I'd been awake since 2pm the previous afternoon and all I wanted to do was get some, any rest. It would not happen.

They did call Daisy around 10:30, but didn't show up until shortly before noon. We closed Gary, Charlie, and Mable -- our three most social, get-into-shit cats -- in the upstairs bathroom. They did not like this at all. Hank hid in his play tunnel and did not move. Emmy hid under the couch blanket for some time, until they began making too much noise and she then slinked out from under the blanket and leapt behind the couch, where she would remain the rest of the day. Dolly, of course was still being sequestered in the bedroom and didn't seem to give a single shit about the men in the house.

I don't know how many of you have had a furnace replaced and I certainly don't know how many of you have been able to watch such a replacement in real time as it happens and unfolds, but I can tell you that it is very much a "this is adulting" experience. Our furnace is crammed into a utility closet off the back of our bathroom and stuffed in there behind the water heater. It is ungodly difficult to work on because of this. The first thing the two men did was remove the door to the closet; I carried it into the kitchen and rested it against the stove. 

During their work, they found that the house humidifier wasn't even hooked up correctly (which explained why it never worked) and that the wiring to our house doorbell was just...hanging there in the utility closet -- also explaining why the doorbell never worked. They couldn't fix the doorbell -- it's not in their scope and they're not electricians -- but they said they'd hook up the humidifier correctly once the new furnace was in there.

Removing the old furnace was an absolute pain in the ass for these guys -- even though they were very polite and said they'd seen far worse over the years -- I could tell that it was not easy for them. They had to take out a bunch of ancient insulation and heat tape, unhook all sorts of wiring that was haphazardly done by whoever installed the furnace in the first place, rewire multiple sections to the breaker to ensure that not only the furnace would have power, but the busted-ass AC unit would too when we kicked it on, etc. It took them probably two hours to get the old furnace torn out and the wiring fixed, and then another hour to get the new one in there and carefully hooked up to everything -- and then an hour or so of testing, configurations, and hooking the humidifier up to make sure everything was going to work.

Mind you, I am awake and sitting on the couch throughout all of this, being so exhausted, tired, and sleep-deprived that I'm physically getting sick and feeling like I'm going to vomit.

On her lunch break, Daisy got the call from the vets -- Dolly was completely clear of parasites and was free to join the rest of the house whenever we wanted. Daisy came down to watch a bit of the work being done, and then checked on the cats. When she did, Charlie busted out of the bathroom and sprinted downstairs, where he did two very panicked, full-speed runs around the house crying out in stress and fear, and then bolted back upstairs. He refused to go into the bathroom again with Mable and Gary, so Daisy tossed him into the bedroom with the Dolly Monster and shut the door behind him. Here Charlie, meet your new goblin sister.

We thought this would be good for both of them -- Charlie had been so curious about Dolly and the feeling was mutual. Well, after a half hour of relative silence, Charlie began wailing to be let out of the room with the little fur goblin. This whole situation was hilarious, prompting the HVAC guys to chuckle softly at it and have one ask the other "do you hear the cat?"

"That's Charlie," I said. "He is a character and does not like to be locked up like a common criminal."

In reality, I was sure that her little furry goblin ass and her hyperactivity had been too much for him and he was like get me away from this vile beast, I am the big man of the house and I refuse to be locked in here with this creature!

Etc. 

They finished the installation by around 4pm -- again, me being awake the entire time and downstairs with them -- and began final testing. During this final testing, they broke our thermostat, rendering it non-functional, right as they were getting ready to leave. They had to go out to the truck and install one they kept on hand for situations like this -- and it was a much nicer, better model than what we'd had before, with a full digital screen and backlighting and fancy buttons. The younger of the two HVAC guys seemed bitter about this because they implied that this was an expensive, though not top-of-the-line, model versus the old one we had that we'd paid $30 for last year when our old one needed to be replaced. 

Finally, everything had been tested and adjusted, the new furnace worked great and immediately got the house up to 75, and we bid them farewell very shortly before Daisy got off work for the day.

At this juncture I had pushed through sickness and fatigue waves multiple times, and was on my fourth or fifth wind. I don't remember much after they left. I remember I tried to wind myself down here at my computer for a while, and once everything was situated, Daisy finally let Dolly out of the room to interact with the other cats. I would have no idea how that went, because by around 7pm or so, I was in bed in the bedroom and passed the fuck out.

I was awakened around 11pm by Dolly hissing at every single cat who came near her, even the gentle ones, and Daisy trying to soothe her as quietly as possible. I was able to doze off a few times here and there again, but by around 1, with Dolly finally mostly settled and sleeping between us in the bed -- despite having free run of the entire house -- I got up and moved to my chair in my office, where I slept a few more scant hours.

You see, even before we had to deal with the furnace, we'd already had an appointment for 8am sharp on Friday morning for the other home warranty electricians to come in and replace both of our bathroom vent fans. On any other, normal Friday morning, I am awake and alert and well-caffeinated by 8am -- especially now that Daisy has Fridays off and we get to use those days as errand days or "let's watch TV and eat something and maybe visit the parents" days. 

But I was not feeling it on Friday morning because of the disjointed sleep and the prospect of yet another repairman coming to fix something new. I grow weary of shit breaking or otherwise going wrong around the house and I really grow weary of having strange men in my home for multiple hours to fix those things.

The electrician guy was nice, pretty quiet, and was in and out in about half an hour. We now have two new bathroom fans that both work very well. I dealt with him even though Daisy had previously said she would, so that neither of us would have to worry about it. 

Once he was gone I could finally try to have some semblance of a normal weekend -- exhausted, frazzled, and sleep-deprived, and another $4k in debt for another home repair, but a normal weekend. 

Dolly went from being the boldest and most interaction-craving cat in the house to the biggest scaredy cat of all of them. Anytime one of the other cats would come near her to meet her and interact, she'd spit-hiss and run away -- again, even the gentle ones. Mable just wants to exist with her and observe until she feels comfortable enough to play or mother her, and she ran from Mable. Gary crept up to her to sniff her and say hi, and she hissed and ran off, leaving Gary looking sad and rejected. Even Charlie, who she spent hours with in the bedroom while the furnace guys were here, she hissed at when he approached her for play and sniffs.

Hank and Emmy were sleeping peacefully on the couch, cuddled up together. She ran up to them and they barely lifted their heads to acknowledge her in their sleepy haze, and she spit-hissed and ran away.

I think to a certain extent, that first day out was frightening and really overwhelming to her. She finally had access to five other grown cats and a giant house to explore, and she was in sensory overload. She knows how to go up and down the stairs, and she knows how to use the pans (at least the one upstairs; I haven't seen her try to use the downstairs ones yet) and she knows where and how to find the food. I told Daisy she'd come around; all of the cats had some variation of this reaction when they were introduced to the house.

Dolly prefers to spend most of her time upstairs in the bedroom -- her territory -- despite having a wide-open door and access to the rest of the house. Mable also prefers to spend her time in there, being silent monitor over this young child. Gary likes to lay under the bed and observe her. I've long suspected that Gary really loves Mable and wants to be around her, but he is also very curious about the little black smoke pocket princess who is the only cat in the house smaller than he is. 

When Saturday rolled around, we had a few morning errands to run -- Daisy had to get a minor repair done to her new Meta Glasses, and we had to get some light groceries because one of our friends was scheduled to come over for friend time and dinner in the evening. By the time the evening rolled around, Dolly was playing with Gary and Charlie, had no problems with Mable and was attempting to play with her as well when she wasn't spooked by her, and Hank and Emmy were close, silent observers of the little child. She allows Hank and Emmy to approach her now, and Hank and Emmy no longer growl or hiss at her. She is beginning, finally, to coexist within the family. She's getting more comfortable and more bold. Anytime she sees me or Daisy, she stops whatever she's doing and bolts to us for love and attention. She knows she's safe, seen, and very loved with us. And she has bonded incredibly hard to Daisy. She has bonded really well with me too, but Dolly is 100% Daisy's cat. She absolutely sees her as the Mom. She also sees me as the Dad and loves me a lot too, but it's different with her and Daisy. She has that Pete-like relationship with Daisy. It's beautiful to watch, to see that bond forming more day by day, slowly helping to heal the hole in our hearts from Pete's loss. 

When our friend was here on Saturday night, she was therefore not scared of her at all -- she was very cuddly, played normally with the others, and then curled up on the couch next to her and settled in with everyone -- like she was comfortable and knew she was meant to be there with all of us. 

She is so loving and so sweet. I love little Dolly so very much. Daisy certainly knows how to pick perfect cats. 

All of this is a distraction though from everything else going on in the world.

If you are reading this from outside the United States, speaking as a normal and sane American, I am so sorry. We don't all support him. We don't all support the government or everything happening with it right now. A lot of us are suffering and victims of this administration, prisoners held captive in our homeland. I once again beg the rest of the world to understand that we the people are angry and sad and frustrated, and that the people are by and large generally good -- it's the administration, the government, that's the problem. People like me and Daisy, and most of the others we know who are also disillusioned by everything happening, just want to live in peace. We want normalcy and stability again. We don't want Greenland. We don't want to make Canada the 51st state. We don't want jackbooted thugs roaming the streets of Minneapolis -- or any other city, and we didn't want to invade Venezuela, abduct their president and his wife (no matter whether they were good or bad people) and steal their oil. Everything going on right now is absolute insanity and we want off this crazy merry-go-round. 

I wish I was one of those people who doesn't follow politics or world affairs, one of those people who just gets up every morning and lives their lives and remains unaffected both physically as well as in their personal lives, jobs, etc. But as an adult, I've never been that way. When I was a kid, I didn't care about any politics whatsoever; it didn't affect me, I didn't care what happened, and aside from being fodder for some occasionally funny jokes, who was blowing the president and when was completely inconsequential to me. It's wild to look back on those simpler times, the times before 9/11 -- even the eight years of Obama, honestly -- and realize we didn't know how good we had it or just how bad things would get later just a few years down the road.

I know that everything going on right now must be a right-winger's wet dream, a doomsday prepper's fantasy scenario come to life, and gives every militia out there a hard-on, but I can tell you that I am absolutely terrified. Statistically, I shouldn't be -- I am a middle-class white male in his forties who was very provably born in the United States as a citizen -- but I happen to care about what happens to other people and I happen to care about what my country is becoming. 

I told Daisy yesterday that it is coming, and it is now likely passing the point of if but when, we will eventually have to leave the country. There are only a few scattered scenarios where we'd be able to breathe a sigh of relief and not have to somehow eventually have to figure it out and pull the trigger. I don't need much -- I need her, the cats, fast internet, and a way to get grocery or supply delivery (like Amazon, etc) and nothing else. I'll max out every credit card, I'll scrounge for any money possible to feed us and the cats and keep the lights on wherever we end up, but it's rapidly reaching the point where we are going to have to get the fuck out of the United States if we don't want to live under the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany. That thought is daunting and very scary, but it's also no longer just a passing fancy but something we need to solidify and make plans for. 

We just don't know what the catalyst will be. Insurrection Act being invoked? Military invasion of Greenland? Midterm elections being suspended? The actual election being suspended or cancelled? ICE in every city as bad as they are in Minneapolis? What will be the trigger? Any of these would likely be enough for me.

Worse than that, if we wait too long, we'll be doubly trapped -- how many countries do you think will be willing to take American refugees if we suspend our elections or if the US invades Greenland, making NATO collapse and causing a domino effect that destroys our economy and fundamentally changes the entire world, possibly throwing us into World War III or worse? Do you think Canada is going to want American refugees after that point? Because I don't. Canada is the shining beacon of hope in the northern and western hemisphere -- if they close their doors, it's all over. 

So, yes, I am terrified. I listen to The Tragically Hip for hours and fantasize about a peaceful life in Canada. I think back to all of the trips we've taken up there over the course of the past several years and curl up into a ball of sadness because each time, I had to come back to this waking nightmare that is the United States, despite how much I desperately wanted to be Canadian, to live, and to love in a much more peaceful, slow-going country on a coastline, in a little town where nothing ever really changes and the news isn't so scary. A town where everyone knows each other and respects each other, a town where I can go get a coffee for $2 and eat a giant poutine for dinner and watch the seagulls waddle through the Walmart parking lots. 

I wonder, and worry, if I will ever be able to return, even for a visit -- if the world is going to take such a bad turn in the next few months to where we'll never be able to go back to my wife's homeland, my mother-in-law's homeland, and the land that calls to me to come home -- to see the family who love us so much and want to get us out of here. I've never had these fears or thoughts before. They are paralyzing to me. Do I personally feel safe in the states? Yes. For now, at the moment, I do. I am white and nonthreatening, a citizen with no criminal record or history of civil disobedience. But, do I want to live here? No. I no longer want to be an American. I haven't wanted to be an American for a very long time. 

But I have American bills. American debts. American friends. American cats. An entire American family who will likely never leave this country no matter how bad it gets. Is the cost of freedom and safety absolutely abandoning everything we hold dear, down to the smallest comforts and luxuries? Does it have to be? I am leaning towards yes for the answer to that last one. And only time will tell if I'm proven right.

Resolutions, Just Resoluting All Over the Place

 I have, over the course of the past several days -- in between taking care of a new kitten, and working/sleeping disjointed hours -- begun making a checklist in my head of what I would roughly call New Year's Resolutions. 

I don't always do this; some years I don't have a set list or even really think about it. But, for the sake of some goals and some mental clarity, this year I'm going to write some down here for posterity. It's not world-ending for me if I don't reach these goals, and I don't think any of them are life-changing outside of the positive outcomes for both myself and Daisy if they come to pass, but I feel that they're worth writing down at the very least. So, let's get started.

1. Continue to work to get to my second goal weight (which is 275).

I reached my first goal weight before we visited my parents this past year; that goal weight was to be under 300 pounds. I was 299. I've remained around that ever since; I dropped to 296 a few weeks ago, and am currently at 298. If I continue the trend I started way back in 2018, by the end of this year I hope to say I'm 275 or under, and at that point will have lost more than 100 pounds from my starting weight in 2018, which was the fattest I've ever been at 376. I also set this goal on myself knowing that it will likely be one of the hardest to accomplish. Getting below 300 was hard and took forever. Getting down to 275 or lower will take much harder discipline and focus, more than likely. My third goal weight, after 275, will be 250 -- something that I haven't weighed since, oh, early high school? Something like that. I'll remind you all that I'm 43 years old now. 

2. Unfuck this house.

This one encompasses a lot of things and will likely be just as difficult to accomplish, if not more difficult than the weight loss. We moved into this house in 2018, and ever since we've been slowly filling it with stuff. Most of this stuff we don't even need, it's just things we've acquired over the years and a lot of it is junk and trash or was once useful to us, but is no longer. So, my goal is to systematically go from room to room, section to section, and gut as much of it as possible. This doesn't mean throwing everything away, but it does mean organizing, rearranging, cleaning, and paring down a lot of possessions. The garage needs completely cleaned out, swept out, and the vast majority of excess shit in it just needs to be trashed. Daisy's office needs to be completely gutted, reorganized, and deep cleaned so that the cats can go in there and have more space/territory. Our bedroom closet needs to be gutted, reorganized, and anything we don't need needs to be donated. The kitchen and dining room need to be cleaned out and reorganized. The living room needs a new cat tree, a deep cleaning of the carpets and couch, and the TV stand and plant stand need to be reorganized. The downstairs of the house needs new paint, and we have been agonizing for months -- if not years at this point -- the color(s) to do it in. I don't know how much of this we'll get to this year; we are notoriously slow on goals like this, but both of us are going to be putting in the best effort possible given our time and energy levels.

3. Get a new tattoo, possibly honoring Pete and/or the girls.

This one is pure want and not necessity, of course, but I'd like to get my next tattoo this year. I don't know what it will be, where, or how large, but I am leaning towards it being a black cat tattoo or a simple line art tattoo of three cats to honor the ones who have passed in the past two years. I haven't researched designs, I haven't even thought about it more deeply than this, but it's been there at the back of my mind since around my birthday or so. 

4. Pare down my wardrobe yet again and only keep what I really need.

I have slacks I haven't worn in close to a decade, jackets and hoodies that rarely grace my body, coats and button-up shirts that should have been donated years ago, and far far too many t-shirts that I thought were cool at the time but now never get worn more than once or twice a year. With me continually, slowly losing weight, it's time to do a purge and eliminate a lot of stuff that I didn't necessarily want to get rid of in years past, but now will be fine with saying goodbye to. This is always really hard for me, as a lot of my wardrobe, even the ordinary stuff, has some sort of sentimental value to me. A lot of it doesn't, but much of it does. My overall goal here is to get rid of about half of what's currently in my closet and only replace it piecemeal with things that I actually want to wear and will wear in the future. We shall see how this goes, as this is likely not a one or two day process, but a year-long process in the making.

5. Visit my parents in the spring.

I want to visit my parents in the spring because it won't be hot yet in North Carolina and it will be outside of the tourist and hurricane seasons. I want to see my parents in their natural habitat, so to speak -- without dying of heatstroke during the visit or having the oppressive heat and humidity sap all of my energy from me. I'd like to be able to sit on the porch with my dad, to enjoy the beach without worrying about being flash-fried by sunburn or hurricanes churning the water quality to "so toxic you shouldn't touch it or go into the ocean," and I'd like to be able to have some quality quiet time with my mother and the dogs. My parents won't be around forever, and while I've had some differences with them in the past (mainly my mother) I am grateful that they are still around and want to cherish them while I still can.

6. Visit Nova Scotia in the summer.
Every year I look forward to our trips to Canada, as you know. Summer is the best time to visit, as it's generally not as hot as it is here in Omaha and the family generally has more wiggle room and time to come into town and catch up with us. I have always wanted to be there for Canada Day (July 1) but have never been able to make that happen -- when we've been there before we've always missed it, sometimes by a scant few days. I miss our family up there and given that we're all getting older, plus the political climate in the states, I feel a stronger connection to them all now more than ever. However, our Canada trips are expensive and time-consuming; being able to stay with Daisy's grandmother makes it a lot cheaper and cuts down on laundry and packing, but it's still not inexpensive to make these trips.

7. Visit Chicago for a long weekend in the fall.

It has been almost three years since we have been to Chicago, and I miss it greatly. I miss the food, I miss the sights and sounds of the city, and I miss the adventures we can go on while we're there. Both of us have lamented in recent months about how much we miss Chicago, and I don't just want to go there without reason -- there needs to be a catalyst, an event we want to go to and/or see, to give us the most motivation to plot a trip. When that happens, we'll likely make the plans. Chicago is generally the cheapest trip of the three here I've mentioned, but it is by no means inexpensive when we go. I'm okay if we don't make it to Chicago this year, but man would I like to.

8. Find and purchase a new vehicle.

This is a big one, and likely the least feasible item on this list. I want us to get a new vehicle. I want us to retire Daisy's old car that will only become more of a money pit as time goes on, and I want us to be in a sturdy, reliable, goes-well-in-the-snow SUV, sedan, or crossover that is big enough for both of us and what we do, is fun and comfortable to drive for both of us, and still fits in the garage. I specifically do not want it to be fancy -- I adored the Ford Bronco Sport that we had as a rental in Nova Scotia this past fall because it was utilitarian, comfortable, and spartan in design, yet had many features we loved. I have loved other vehicles we've gotten as rentals as well, things like the Chevy Malibus we've had on a few trips now. I don't want the latest and greatest of technology or bells and whistles -- I want stone cold point-A-to-point-B reliability and simplicity, and I want it to last 20 years. Give me decent gas mileage and easy-to-figure-out controls and drivability any day of the week. And yes, I know you may be asking "didn't you love the Pacifica minivan you two had on two different trips?" Yes, I did, we both did -- however, Pacificas are one of the most unreliable vehicles in America, we don't need something of that size for everyday use, they're not high enough off the ground to be good in snow, and they are incredibly expensive if you want anything outside of the barebones base model, which we don't -- were I to get a Pacifica I would want the hybrid and/or the all-wheel drive version, and yeah...those start around $50k. Start. I'm not in the market to spend that much money on a vehicle, and if I were I'd already own the Trans Am of my dreams. 

9. Return to the gym on a regular basis.

Yes, almost everyone will put this on their resolution list every year. But, Daisy starts a new working schedule on Sunday that will more closely match mine, and suddenly all three days I'm off every week will match hers. Therefore we will have the time together when neither of us is exhausted and have a little breathing space...so the plan is to return to the gym at least once or twice a week to begin rebuilding our athletic stamina again. It's only going to get harder as we get older...so, may as well get cracking now. 

10. Keep all the cats on Frontline year-round and never, ever lapse on it.

Of all the items on this list, this will likely be the easiest. I never want to see another living flea again.

11. Prepare the Christmas cards well before October/November.

This one should be fairly easy as well, as long as no unforeseen complications arise. Last year (feels weird saying that now, but it is what it is) I waited until after we got home from Canada, then Pete got really sick and it got delayed further, and then I finally made them and he died before, oh, probably half of the recipients got them.

12. Pay down debt.
Simple enough of a resolution -- it essentially boils down to bringing in more money than we have going out, because doing so lets us pay down more debt. Part of this is also budgeting and narrowing down our purchases of items and services to only what we really need.

13. Fix or otherwise successfully treat Gary's digestive issues.

Gary, as you may know, tends to alternate between being a poopy boy or a constipated one. Our vet says he very likely has some food allergies or some environmental allergies. We can't do a lot about the environmental, but we can change up the foods and try to narrow it down via process of elimination to find something that works for his gut health. We've been so frustrated by this because we just want him to be comfortable and happy, and sometimes that's harder than others.

And...

14. Finally, survive all of the horseshit happening right now.

Look -- our country is fucked. We know it's fucked. I cannot personally change that, nor can I change that half of the country thinks it's the greatest it's ever been and that the government and our president can do no wrong. 

My final resolution is that we survive it.

Anyone who thinks that we're not already under a dictatorship in the United States is simply wrong and grossly misled. It's not quite as bad as it could be, but it's slowly moving more towards full totalitarianism every day -- worse than ever before. I would say that I don't know how people can see this happening and do nothing -- and in some cases fully support it -- but I'd be lying, as I have seen over the past decade just how fucking stupid a lot of my fellow Americans are, and I am continually, daily, becoming more and more frustrated and disappointed with the populace. When you have intelligence, compassion, and empathy, the events going on around you are that much more biting and you become that much more disillusioned.

So yes, the resolution is to survive. By any means necessary. 

If that means sell the house and move to Canada, then that's what it means.

If that means flee the country, crate the cats and take our documents and prized possessions, and then flee to Canada, then that's what it means.

I told Daisy I am open to either option if it gets to be that time. I have a feeling if it gets to be that time, we will absolutely know it is that time -- as will about ten million other Americans.

I am very upset and have been for a very long time. Living in a very red state doesn't help. I'm now in my mid-40s, old and gray and low-energy (but high-stress, so figure that out); it's very clear my best days of health and vitality are behind me...and they were never that great to begin with. While I am very smart, I have limited skills outside of a few very specialized fields and the skills taught to me by two liberal arts degrees. At the same time, I am nearing a mental breakdown because of my job, which I've now done for almost twelve years -- I do not want to work anymore. It's not that I want another job, it's that I do not want to work anymore. The fact that I have to is the problem, not the job itself. 

My mental health is therefore degrading horribly, and I can almost track it by the day.

But then again, isn't everyone's? I personally don't know how much longer I can wake up every day to things being worse than they were the day prior before I legit just snap and lose whatever fragile hold I have left on sanity. 

For those of you outside the United States -- I know what you see on the news is bad. Believe me, it's way worse for the people who do not support our president than it appears. We are essentially trapped here, being held hostage by a lunatic dictator we don't want, but the other half of the country did. And no, this isn't just political rhetoric, this is no longer hyperbole -- we are trapped, we are struggling, we are finding it difficult to feed ourselves, pay bills, and find housing and healthcare. I used to be so proud to be an American. I used to have a great jingoistic patriotism for our country -- the land of the free, the home of the brave. It is no longer either of those things. I now feel a deep, great shame and disgust in being an American. So, please, those of you outside of the US, please do not take out your vitriol on those of us who hate what's happening -- and there are many, many of us who hate what is happening. We are sad and we are drowning. We want to change things but keep getting stomped down by proverbial jackboots at every turn. When we finally start coming to your countries, we are refugees -- we want to live in a better world, and -- especially when it comes to Canada, we want to be Canadians. 

And it's coming. Please don't be upset by that and please don't turn us away. It's coming. Maybe Daisy and I won't be able to personally go when it's time -- we may remain trapped here due to circumstances outside our control -- but make no mistake, millions of others won't be. I used to think that it was an if. Now I am older and wiser and know that it's a when. Could be six days from now, could be six months from now, but it is a when.

My boss at work, who I have known and known very well for over a decade, thinks that anyone who flees shouldn't be allowed back when the crisis ends and everything is getting "fixed" -- he thinks that everyone should stay here and fight from within, and if you leave, you give up your American privileges.

I think this is, sadly, a very American viewpoint and part of what is problematic with society. Get the fuck out and don't come back goes against everything America is supposed to be. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity -- it is not that anymore, but even those of us who would leave would likely, eventually, want it to be that again, and would eventually want to return to help rebuild it if possible. 

I am unsure of my own mindset on the matter. I don't know if I'd ever want to come back were we to leave, and if we ever did return, I'm not sure I'd want to stay. 

These are the sorts of thoughts that can keep you awake in the night, and I know because we (meaning, both myself as well as Daisy) have been having them for some time. 

I don't know what the future holds. I know we own our house, we both have steady jobs, and we have six cats. I know we're both constantly overwhelmed all the time. I know my mental health is rapidly deteriorating. I know that, eventually, there is an endgame to all of this, good or bad. I don't know that I want to see it. I just want to survive.

So there you have it, I guess -- there's my resolutions.