The May of Discontent, Part II

 Over the weekend, I posted -- and then quickly deleted -- a message about how I can no longer write, nor did I have the desire to do so anymore, and that I would figure out what I wanted to do with this site in the coming months.

May has been incredibly difficult for me. Getting off nicotine has been awful. It's not something I can accurately describe to anyone who has never had to do it. I don't even know how to describe it, actually. It feels as if you, as a sane human, are slipping into insanity in real time...and you can see it happening but you cannot stop it. 

Over the course of the past several weeks I have felt like a spectator, a passenger in the car with myself as I'm going through life, and a horrified passenger and spectator at that. I have not been myself. I have not been a person I want to be, or a person that I like and identify with -- it's like looking into the mirror and seeing a twisted stranger or an evil twin staring back at you. I have not felt safe in my own mind and body, and at times I have absolutely, without a doubt felt that I have been a danger to myself and others.

And it's all because of a lack of nicotine.

Some of you will laugh at this, or make jokes that if that's all it took to push me over the edge, then I must've been closer than anyone realized, har har har, etc. And, maybe -- maybe -- there's a little truth in that. But, the much larger truth is that when you have had a substance in your bloodstream for over 25 years, you don't realize how much that substance takes over and what it regulates or otherwise controls.

Like it or not, nicotine regulated a lot of things in me. It gave me a creative drive, it sharpened my mind, and it was an appetite suppressant as the larger things -- but it also let me manage my stress and anger, it regulated my sleep and bowels, it changed my senses of taste and smell, and apparently -- among other little things -- kept my mouth bacteria under control.

I mentioned before that as soon as I quit vaping, my mouth broke out into blisters, sores, and swollen gums. This is apparently a side effect experienced by something like 30-40 percent of people who quit smoking or vaping, and I have never heard it mentioned or talked about before. Because nicotine is a natural disinfectant, your mouth biome goes nuts when it no longer has a constant flow of nicotine being inhaled through it, and it takes some time for your body to regulate it and get your mouth back to normal. Most people overcome this within a week or two at most, but for others it can take up to a month.

Guess who has been fighting it for nearly a month now? Me.

It has only been within the past several days where it seems -- seems -- like the mouth problems are finally starting to go away and heal. As recently as last weekend the mouth pain was so awful that it awakened me out of a dead sleep. Nothing really helps it -- brushing multiple times a day would make it feel a little better for a short time, and mouthwashes were absolutely brutal as they would amplify the pain tenfold. Daisy got a few different mouth sore soothing mouthwashes for me to try -- one of them had the consistency of NyQuil and did absolutely nothing, and the other had hydrogen peroxide in it and hurt so bad that I screamed and almost blacked out from the pain.

Yeah, I'm not kidding, the mouth stuff was awful. 

I couldn't eat a lot of things -- anything that had sharp edges or would crunch felt like I was chewing razor blades. Because my tongue was covered in blisters and so irritated, my sense of taste almost completely disappeared. I would taste vague hints of whatever it was I was eating, but that's about it. Anything that was overly salty or acidic (except, interestingly enough, coffee) would bring a torturous pain that was unreal. This extended to the blandest of things at times too -- ketchup, for example, when I ate some on fries. The acid in the ketchup was brutal and I just couldn't do it. Anything vinegary, peppery, or spicy at all was a no-no too. Carbonated beverages would feel like they were attacking each and every blister personally.

What finally made it go away? Eh, I dunno. Time and Advil?

It's not all the way gone yet. My sense of taste is still very dulled and it feels like there is a film coating my mouth and teeth that just won't go away. But most of the pain is gone. Most of the sensitivity is gone.

What remains at this point, almost a month in?

My patience and reason are slowly returning. My kindness is slowly returning. My body is relearning how to regulate its own sleep. Muscle memory for vaping is starting to go away. My bowels are starting to completely re-regulate themselves. 

My desire and ability to write are slowly returning. I told Daisy that if I lost that, I'd rather blow my brains out than continue to live without that drive. 

My stamina for, well, life is slowly returning. My skin looks clearer. My breathing is clearer. Even my back spasms and pain have mostly gone away. I don't know how much of this can be attributed to a lack of nicotine, but, well, I'm not going to complain.

So, as I slowly crawl up out of this haze, I am able to poke up my head and look around at everything else going on without being blinded by a chemical dependency.

This coming weekend, Daisy and I will celebrate twelve years of marriage. I worked over the Memorial Day holiday in order to be able to take our anniversary off work in exchange. Daisy took the day off as well, and we are extending our weekend by an extra day. We have lunch reservations at a local vegan restaurant that will likely be outlandishly expensive, but eh, it's our anniversary. 

On Thursday, we're ordering pizza from our favorite local place, and it is one of the very few times -- "rare and appropriate," so to speak -- that Daisy will get a full gluten crust, a full gluten anything, as she tends to avoid wheat when possible. However, it's our anniversary weekend, and I haven't vaped for a month, so...it's celebratory.

Last week, we went to see The Mandalorian and Grogu on its premiere-night-before-release showing of Thursday at 9:20pm. As you folks know, I do tend to book those premiere night tickets these days, primarily because there's almost nobody in the theater on those nights and because it lets us see the movie essentially before release. For some movies I really want to see them as soon as possible, and for others it's just a fun night out with the wife. Neither Daisy nor I work on Fridays, so a Thursday night date night is a little treat.

For those of you who expected a full-on, in-depth review of The Mandalorian and Grogu, you're going to have to go somewhere else for that. I thought the movie was fine -- it was fun, it was well-acted and the production value was great (read: it was pretty), but honestly it's skippable. It's a nice little bottle story that could've been the first 3-4 episodes of the next season of The Mandalorian on Disney+ and nobody would've batted an eye, and I think that is its main flaw -- if you're going to move this to the big screen, either do something mindblowing and universe-changing for the characters, or don't do it at all and just make it, again, the first 3-4 episodes of the next season of the show. Putting that into theaters seems a little...cash grabby. And this is Star Wars, owned by the Disney Corporation -- they have more money than God and no reason to be cash grabby about any of their properties. 

Am I glad I booked the tickets and we got to see it in the theater? Sure. It was fun. Daisy enjoyed it, and she is not a Star Wars person. But it's not something we had to do that was a non-negotiable thing. I do like seeing Star Wars stuff on the big screen when I can, though. 

Next week, we already have our premiere night tickets booked for Masters of the Universe, and I am appropriately excited for that. He-Man has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and the trailers I've seen make the movie look fun, which is something the franchise has needed for a long time. 

In other news, I have now become allergic to...something. 

Let me explain. About two weeks ago, when I was awake in the night playing games or writing here or who knows what, I ate something that gave me what seemed at the time to be a mild allergic reaction in my mouth -- my lips and cheek swelled up and my mouth became numb for a few hours before the feeling, eventually, subsided. With my mouth sores/pain still going strong at that time, I am not sure how bad it was because my mouth was already in pain and feeling raw and numb all the time anyhow.

Well.

A few nights ago I experienced the allergic reaction again, and it was stronger this time -- now that my mouth is healed up and like 95% normal, I could way more easily feel the swelling starting, the numbness and tingling forming, and this time...my throat began to close up.

Now, mind you, the one thing that I thought I had that was different than my normal foods was a new pack of sour blue raspberry Extra chewing gum...purchased, ironically, to give my mouth something to do because I'd quit vaping. I'd used it the night I'd had the mild reaction (and never thought anything of it at the time) and I'd had several more pieces of it the night that I had the strong reaction and my throat began to swell up, so -- this had to be the culprit, or so I thought.

That ruined our night, by the way -- we were supposed to have a quiet relaxing evening watching the new season of Married at First Sight on Netflix and eating dinner, leisurely, and my throat began closing up.

I will say that I have never had a food allergy before, to anything, to my knowledge. I have gone 43 years on this planet, closing in on 44, with relatively few allergies to anything. I have seasonal allergies to pollen, ragweed, etc -- and I have weather-related allergies to pressure changes and storm fronts and the like -- but never anything food-related. Randomly developing allergies to foods or flavorings or colorings, artificial colors/flavors or anything like that -- it has always been one of those back-burner paranoid fears. I've watched Daisy's mother randomly develop horrible allergies to foods she has eaten her entire life, just...out of the blue. Daisy's mother cannot have simple things like quinoa, bananas, walnuts or almonds, cinnamon, apples, and a long list of other things -- those allergies are all new, within the past several years. I have also watched nephews from both of Daisy's sisters have allergic reactions to foods so severe that they'd had to be rushed to the hospital or administered liquid Benadryl, epi-pens, or all of the above.

Good lord I do not want that at all.

So, there I sat on the couch, with Daisy getting more and more concerned with how the reaction was increasing (mind you, this was hours after I'd chewed this Extra gum). She kept asking me if I needed to go to the ER.

"No," I said. "I can breathe fine--" I took deep breaths in and out to prove it to her. "It's my swallow hole that's closing up, not the breathing hole."

"It's the same throat," she said.

"Yes, but it is two different tubes," I said. 

Which is true. It wasn't my trachea that was closing up, it was my esophagus -- it was very difficult to swallow. 

I took two Benadryl -- which, because of paranoia, we always have in the house -- and within a half hour I felt the reaction stopping and I was beginning to get drowsy. I told Daisy that I needed to go upstairs and crash, because the Benadryl was not giving me a choice in the matter. I apologized for ruining our evening. 

I immediately threw the two unopened packs of gum I had left directly into the trash. Not risking that again.

I went upstairs and sat at my computer for a bit, catching up on Youtube, to give the Benadryl some time and to confirm that it wasn't just stopping the allergic reaction, but was actively reversing it -- fighting the sleep that it was trying to pull me into the entire time. When, after about an hour, I was actively feeling the reaction subside, I logged off my machine and settled into my chair -- fully clothed, sweaty, but near unconscious already, and passed out.

Daisy told me that she came in about an hour later to check on me to make sure I wasn't dead, and I told her I was fine and to go away, because I was sleeping. I do not remember this. 

I next awoke approximately four hours later, at which juncture I desperately needed to pee, but my allergic reaction was completely gone as if it had never happened. I used the bathroom and checked my messages to find a message from Mama asking if I was okay -- to which I replied I was -- and then I passed back out.

I awoke another hour or so later with horrible diarrhea (because, of course I did) and texted Daisy from the bathroom that my stomach was going nuts and I just needed to rest, so please let me do so -- and if she heard me struggling in the bathroom to try to ignore me. She was still downstairs and was talking on the phone, at length, to one of our mutual friends who is currently going through a messy divorce and needed some moral support. 

When I finally awoke, it was almost dawn. I had slept for what my Fitbit had declared was almost nine hours, had gotten up to use the bathroom twice, and had a very deep, sweaty sleep in my chair while I dream-battled Benadryl demons (figuratively; I just remember having some really bizarre dreams). But the reaction was over, and as a side effect I'd gotten some great sleep because of it.

Well, for the moment.

Later that morning, as we were getting up and starting our day, I had some chips to put something on my stomach. They were the Walmart-brand, Great Value cheddar-and-sour-cream ripple chips -- chips that I have eaten, no joke, probably 500 times from Walmart over the course of the past 30 years or so. I had four bags of them in the house and they tend to be a go-to for me for cheap chips when I do a grocery order. 

Immediately after eating, eh, maybe 1/3 of a bag of the chips -- mostly finishing the crumbs at the bottom of the bag that I'd been eating, in my office, off and on for a week -- my mouth began to go numb, lips and cheeks began to swell, and my throat started to close. 

My first thought was what the fuck, I'm allergic to the chips too? and then I realized that the days I'd eaten the chips up to that point -- including the fact that I'd eaten a bunch of them the day before -- had coincided with the days I'd had reactions. However, I'd eaten some of the chips in the middle of the night too, between reaction one and reaction two, and had not experienced any side effects. 

This reaction wasn't as bad as the one the night before, but it did seem to come on far faster. I immediately took a single Benadryl and it made the reaction subside quickly, but I was now left with a dilemma. Was it actually the chips? Was it actually the gum? I don't know. I didn't have anything out of the ordinary otherwise, and it seems strange to get a spontaneous allergic reaction to something in the potato chips that I've legit been eating on a fairly decent regular basis for the past 30ish years. 

The other factor is another gum, interestingly enough -- Big Red. I got a case of Big Red when I stopped vaping, because I like Big Red (it's about the only cinnamon-related thing I can stand). I chewed Big Red on all of the occasions I also had the allergic reactions -- however, I've also chewed half the case of it before those reactions with no effect whatsoever, so....who knows. 

I still have an open pack of Big Red in front of me and I am not going to risk chewing any more of it until I don't have to be on the clock for work anymore for the week and don't have anything else to do for the day, because I need a controlled environment. I still have the Big Red and I still have two unopened bags of the chips -- we're gonna find out for damn sure which one is the culprit.

So...yeah. Onward into the rest of summer, I suppose. 

The May of Discontent

 So, here we are. May.

It's been a few weeks since I last wrote here, so I should probably update everyone on what's going on in our lives. I should start with the good things, I suppose:

1. The AC is working great when we've needed to use it, the cats are all in good health, and all of our bills are paid for the time being. 

2. We have, thus far, avoided severe weather this year. That's not to say it won't happen later in the season, but avoiding it this far along into the season is great and legit what I'd like every midwestern spring to be like. 

3. Mama's dental surgery in Denver went fine and she is now back home in Omaha.

4. Plans for the trip to Canada next month are progressing, and we're now able to start plotting who will be around and who won't be around during the days we're there.

5. Both of us have re-dyed our hair, as planned, in advance of the trip. Daisy has gone neon green and I have gone black-purple. Part of doing it this far in advance is so that it stops bleeding out by the time we're there.

6. Hank turned three years old:

But there are some really frustrating things going on as well, of course. Because of course there are.

I am now eight days nicotine-free. My last nicotine vape burned out and gave up the ghost last Saturday night, and I've been on my own since then. No nicotine gum, no nicotine mints, no nicotine anything -- I am fully nicotine free for the first time in twenty-five years. I have a lot of regular chewing gum to support me (though it makes my jaw ache, badly) and I've been trying to stay as hydrated as possible to wash any and all nicotine remnants out of me.

I feel fine, mentally and psychologically. I will tell you that it was way, way harder to stop smoking cigarettes, and when I did that I had the help of vapes. I will also say that yes, I have been far more irritable and my anger will go from 0-100 super fast, and I no longer have any patience whatsoever for stupidity or waiting on any people or situations.

No, because I know you're going to ask -- I do not have actual nicotine cravings. This surprises me on many, many levels because I have had that substance continuously in my blood for the past twenty-five years, and to suddenly be without it should be sending my blood, and my brain, into absolute shock. It's not. In fact, I feel really...normal. Like, I feel a bit more unhinged (like I mentioned above) but I am not feeling any mental or psychological symptoms of a chemical dependency withdrawal.

However...

In case you were not aware, there are some major physical changes you'll quickly notice when you just up and quit nicotine after two and a half decades of daily use. And I didn't know any of these were coming, at least not offhand. 

For one, my stomach has become a bottomless pit, for the most part. This is not stifled by the Mounjaro nor is it stifled by staying very, fully hydrated every day. Nicotine is a well-known appetite suppressant. It's part of why I've been able to keep weight off as I've lost it over the years -- the transition from tobacco to vape likely helped me lose the close-to-eighty pounds I lost a few years back and definitely stopped it from coming back. For two, because my stomach has become a bottomless pit, I've gained like eight pounds since I've been off nicotine. I'm the only person I know who has actually gained weight on Mounjaro rather than lost it.

I have developed sores and blisters throughout my entire mouth, and my whole mouth feels...well, infected and raw. I initially thought I was having a cold sore flare up and began pounding the L-Lysine pills to get it to stop, but that's not it. Did you know what smoking/vaping nicotine, the nicotine constantly in your mouth acts as a strong antibacterial agent? Well, it does. Did you know that when you stop smoking/vaping nicotine, that antibacterial agent is no longer there and the bacteria in the mouth are like muahahahah, after twenty-five years we're FREEEEEEE and basically flare up and cause multiple infections in your mouth?

Yeah. Not kidding, that happens. I didn't know it was a thing until my mouth started hurting and blisters formed on my tongue, my lips and gums got swollen, etc. My lymph nodes on my neck are so swollen up that they feel like they could burst at any given time. Daisy did some research and apparently this is very normal and it is not a new infection, just a surge in what's already there until the body can re-regulate itself naturally -- this takes about a week or two. A week or two. Of agony every time I try to eat something that isn't bland. 

I don't know how I can describe the pain and discomfort of my mouth to you, so I'll attempt to give you an example. This is Mother's Day weekend, and as part of Daisy's gift to Mama, she wanted to make a big dinner of falafel salad, tortilla chips, and hummus for all of us. She made her own lemon-based salad dressing and made her famous homemade garlic hummus, with lots of lemon and olive oil in it. It was wonderful and extremely delicious...and the acidity of all of it put my mouth into screaming pain because of the sores and blisters. I couldn't even finish my meal because each bite was agony.

So...yeah.

To combat this, I have been using mouthwash (to kill the germs, essentially) like, four or five times a day. It helps, and my mouth is slowly starting to heal, but holy hell I never knew about any of these side effects before.

And, of course, not to be outdone, one of the other side effects of quitting nicotine is...diarrhea. 

I really wish I were making this up, but I'm not. I'm doing better now, a week later, but for the first several days of giving it up, I had nothing but diarrhea. Like, a lot of it, 5-10x per day, no matter what I ate or didn't eat -- and no matter whether I took probiotics to help regulate things or not. It also did not matter whether I took the anti-diarrheal, "stop pooping pills" or not -- no real change. I am thankful to say that this side effect has subsided and my bowels have returned to normal at this juncture, but those first few days were very rough.

Finally, my sleep has been an absolute wreck. I sometimes can fall asleep and sleep for multiple hours, or there are times where I'll be exhausted and will only sleep an hour or two. Or I alternate between being fully alert and awake to needing to crash and my body not taking no for an answer within a five minute period, going to power-nap for 20-25 minutes, and then being good for several more hours before the process repeats. When I get off work in the morning, I'm either asleep by 7:20 or so, or I'm awake until like 9 or 10, there's no gray area. It also usually does not help that Gary, my beloved youngest son, takes great delight in coming to bed around noon or 1 every day to knead on me and chew on my fingers or toes to make sure I'm awake for the day.

Yeah, that's the one.

Every day it's all a little bit better, though. I find it weird that I have all of the other physical symptoms, but when it comes to actual psychological symptoms I have basically none. Daisy would disagree with that -- she'd say I was far more combative, rude, and overall angry, but...honestly this is the wild west for me, I am not sure that's just not who I am as a person and have always have been, and the nicotine was just a mask or veil over that -- an insulator, a buffer. I don't know this because, again, there's not been a time where there wasn't nicotine in my system for more than 24 hours or so for twenty-five years.

So, there's all of that I've been personally dealing with. I don't like it. I don't like any of it. But it's slowly going away and getting better by the day. I guess. I couldn't really tell you for sure, honestly. 

Canada Prep 2026, Part II: The Summer of Evolution

 So we're in the last week of April now, having thankfully dodged a number of severe weather threats and most other crises, and it's time to get back to the grind and to continue plotting the next big event on the horizon, which remains...the Canada trip. 

It's hard to believe that two months from now, we will have gone to Canada and will have already returned home, but it's true, and it's coming up faster than we think. There are a lot of items on my to-do list that still need to be accomplished, and a lot happening in the time between now and when we leave that is unrelated and/or otherwise completely separate from the trip itself, yet still needs to be done before we leave.

I mentioned here that the Great Closet Purge of 2026™ is done, at least on my part. I now have an astounding amount of closet space compared to before, and my final three bags of donations are set to be dropped off at Goodwill this coming weekend. All in all, I cleared out roughly half, maybe a little more, of my entire wardrobe. If I hadn't worn it in years, it was donated. If I would never wear it or wear it again, it was donated. If it didn't bring me joy at the same levels as my favorite clothing, it was donated. I am evolving as a human when it comes to possessions -- if I don't need it and it's simply something I've acquired over the years, it gets sold or donated. I don't have time or space for all of the stuff I've gathered over the years, and it all must go. Tough choices were made. Things I loved but couldn't see a use for were gotten rid of. Things I may want or need in the future, I gave a long hard look to, and decided if I ever have a use for a particular item again, I'd just buy new. 

I cannot tell you how many pairs of winter gloves I came across in my purge, or how many Covid-era hand-sewn or otherwise purchased cloth face masks I found. These were all laundered and set aside in storage. I can't tell you how many pairs of socks I've acquired over the past several years, only that about once or twice a year I will purchase a new pack of socks and rarely clear out the old ones. Well, now all the old ones are cleared out. 

I cannot tell you how many pairs of flip-flops and sandals I donated or outright tossed, as I get probably ten or so new pairs a year to help cycle out the old ones that wear out. Some of the newer ones I end up wearing once, hating, and then donating. This probably sounds wasteful to you, but I'm sure the people who shop at thrift stores will appreciate some new sandals. I have no need to buy any new flip-flops or sandals for years as of right now -- I still have some that are barely used and a few other pairs still in their packaging, pairs that I know I love since I have the same ones in other colors. 

That being said, I'm always on the lookout for new, good sandals.

As for actual shoes, I mentioned before that I'd found a lot of old pairs of shoes that I'd either never worn or had worn once or twice and never again. Those all got donated -- even my black combat boots. I haven't worn those boots in at least five years, probably longer. They're a pain in the ass to get on and off and if I need new boots I'll be looking for a more comfortable, practical pair. I made sure to keep a few pairs of actual shoes that I really love wearing, and the rest were donated. 

That being said, I'm always on the lookout for new, comfortable and breathable daily shoes, too. I've got a few pairs, but my Hey Dudes are my go-to pair these days if I need to wear shoes somewhere. 

I'm down to my last three vapes. I told Daisy over the weekend that by the end of the week, I will be off nicotine completely, for better or worse. I'd like to try just going without, cold turkey style, if possible, to see how I feel, before I go on the Chantix. If I don't need the Chantix, I don't need it -- if it becomes very apparent that I do need it, I have it at the ready, of course. 

Any nicotine mints and gum I had in the house has already been thrown out so that I am not tempted, along with any and all of my other vape-related things -- at great cost to myself -- so that I can commit to this. I am a bit nervous and apprehensive, but I want to be done with it. I want to know what living without a chemical addiction is really like. I want my brain and body to normalize, completely without nicotine, for the first time since I was in college. Since I was a teenager.

Truth be told, since the pandemic or so it has been a nightmare to be a vaper. Ten years ago it was a vaper's paradise, where you could go anywhere on any website and get anything you wanted, juice in any flavor, any tank or device you thought would work best for you, and you could go to one of many shops in pretty much any city or place you lived in and get supplies. Companies were hosting "cloud competitions," where you won prizes for blowing the biggest clouds of vape. It was a wild time.

However, all sorts of regulations kicked in, most shops began closing their doors, flavors were discontinued, and almost every single website I ever got anything from shut down, most of them very quickly and unceremoniously. The ones who didn't close up shop moved heavily to disposable devices that fell into regulation loopholes, and because of that they could jack prices through the roof as they were now the devices of favor. My own local store struggled heavily and probably still does, though I have not been in there for probably two years or more now. I found one site, one site, where I could get a lot of what I wanted or needed, and used that store a lot all the way through, oh, probably Christmas or so, before I realized that I was spending so much money on this shit for very little return and I just wanted to be done. 

So, I'm down to my last three disposable vapes. It is what it is. Once I'm done, I'm done. I don't want to look back, I don't want to crave nicotine anymore, I just want it all washed out of my system and to be done. And yes, it's likely going to be hard for those first few days or weeks. Daisy is aware of this and asked me to give her warning, asked me to let her know when I was totally done so that she could steel herself against the attitude shift I will almost certainly have, but that's it. And I may or may not use the Chantix. I have a wait and see approach to it and I'd like to do a little research on it before I stick it in my body and hope for the best. 

Anyway.

I mowed the front and back yards on Saturday for the first time this year. They still look awful, but they look considerably less awful than before, as they were basically a jungle before I mowed. There are a ton of tall dandelions that are still sticking up that the mower didn't get, but I can go back over everything again this weekend and make things look good, and likely do the string trimming too. I did a little of that on Saturday as well.

Mama is in Denver right now; she has gone out there for a surgery on her tooth by a dentist Daisy's sister is friends with, as he was able to get her in without waiting another month. She flew out there on Friday and will be back home sometime this next week, likely. The procedure was successful and she's recovering in the home of Daisy's sister at this time, and getting some family visit time in before she comes back.

Work has been...trying. I've mentioned before that we're constantly understaffed and every night is a struggle -- well, that's always been the case to one degree or another. However, over the past few weeks, we've had some leadership out on vacation or otherwise out of the office for a few days' worth of time, and that tends to throw everything into disarray. It means I tend to do double or triple the normal amount of work on any given night and I am...fairly bitter about that. Part of the reason I stay at my job is that it pays me well for what I do and generally as long as I perform the basics of my job's functions, I'm mostly left alone. All this extra accountability and responsibility when other leadership is out of the office is honestly for the birds, man.  A decade ago, I jumped at any possible opportunity to prove myself -- now, older and wiser, I'm tired and am very much like "let the kids do that shit, I'm done going above and beyond, just give me my fucking paycheck and leave me alone." I think they refer to this sort of behavior as "quiet quitting" -- doing the job just well enough to not get fired. I'm not quite all the way there yet, but I feel myself getting to that point, slowly, I'm already at the point where my answer to the question "why was this missed" or "why did this not get done" is "because I'm one person doing three jobs, and I have three people under me on overnights now when I used to have eight." I'm no longer sugarcoating things to our higher leadership with my responses when our current situation remains untenable. 

It also just comes down to, as I've mentioned here many times before, being done wanting to work at all anymore. I've been working pretty nonstop for the past 25 years in one form or another, and I'd really like to be done now. It's no longer fun, it's no longer fulfilling, and I've given up every dream I've had in order to just be able to pay bills. It's a pretty miserable existence.

April Showers, Part VII: Air'd Out

 Well, hello.

The new AC unit is installed, and the storms mostly missed us. 

So, let's get into the story.

On Thursday morning, I had just gotten off work and had gone to sleep for a couple of hours before the guys arrived. Daisy was able to get up and take care of them, letting them in and letting them begin their work. I attempted to go back to sleep for a few more hours, but that was not, apparently, in the cards as Dolly and Gary were both wildly curious about the HVAC guys, and Daisy had to close them up in the bedroom with me.

Do you know what that means? It means that as soon as they were locked in the bedroom with me -- mind you, I'm in bed, still in my underwear, still mostly asleep -- they were on me, crying, like "Dad! DAD! There are men in the house!" Etc.

Well, there was no sleeping through that. 

There was no way I was going back to sleep. And I'd slept a little less than three hours or so, give or take, before they'd arrived -- so I was mostly okay. Tired, yes. But, mostly okay. So, at 10am, after working until 6am, taking a shower, and going to bed...I was up and mobile for the day. 

Within twenty minutes of me being up and out of bed, I looked out of my office window to find the old unit already in the yard and disassembled and the new unit on the slab being installed. They were moving fast. Apparently, according to Daisy, one guy was outside and the other was on the inside in our utility closet, feeding wiring through the wall conduit and setting up the new inside-the-house coil, working in tandem. They had to build an entirely new metal housing inside the closet above the new furnace and install some sort of control mechanism that they called a "dragonfly" on the wall of the new part of the system inside the house. It was, apparently, a lot more complicated than "unplug old unit, remove old unit, place new unit, plug in new unit" because it's not the 1970s anymore and these new systems are way more high-tech than the 50-year-old shitbox we had attached to our house previously.

So, at this juncture, what was I to do? Daisy was downstairs keeping tabs on the cats and essentially supervising the workers (she would tell them "I'm not hovering, please don't think that, I'm just trying to keep the cats away from the doors and the closet and make sure they don't bother you or get into your stuff") and I was awake when I didn't want to be. 

So, I caught up on some of my Youtube channels and kept a close eye on the storms that were rolling in. I didn't have much of a choice. It was gearing up to be, as mentioned, the "nightmare scenario" of these techs racing the clock, trying to get this done so they could go home for the day and take shelter. Mind you, Daisy takes this stuff in stride, with a very "whatever will be, will be" mentality -- she's downstairs on her phone on the couch, browsing through vegan recipes and I'm the one who's up here plotting out the possible paths of storms based on the radar, and trying to calculate timing. 

What started out as a beautiful morning gradually got darker and darker. This did not seem to faze these HVAC guys, who as far as I saw did not even take a break while they worked.

Daisy texted me from the downstairs around noon, telling me that she wanted me down there by 1 or so, as she would be starting her work for the day at 1:30 and wanted a little decompression time. So, shortly before 1, I went downstairs to observe and report. She hung around for a bit and then went back upstairs to do her work for the day.

I should mention that all this time, the cats were terrified. The work had been done outside for the most part, and they were now focusing on working in the utility closet to finish up the wiring and connections. They also had to build a new aluminum housing for, I guess, some of the new components that were installed in a sort of stacked configuration above and on top of the furnace, and that involved a lot of banging and drilling and impact-wrenching. I don't think I have ever seen Hank so scared in his life. Emmy decided to just hide in their play tunnel and ignore the world. The others would venture out every once in a while when the noises stopped out of sheer curiosity, but any sudden movements or loud noises would send them flying back out of the room and upstairs. 

I had brought down my tablet, my phone, and my vape to sit on the couch for observation. I thought it would be rude were I to put on Netflix or something, but if I was bored I could at least play some games on my phone or read a book on Kindle. Throughout the next hour or so, the sky got darker and darker, to the point where it began to look like nightfall was coming outside. Eventually I relented and turned on the local weather on the TV, and kept the volume as low as possible (at like, 1 or 2), so we could have some warning if the storms were moving in. The storms at that time were all around us, but weren't close enough to hit us. Numerous severe thunderstorm watches, warnings, and tornado watches and warnings were popping up all over the area, but none of them within 30-40 miles of us -- so it was a morbid curiosity at best. 

By around 2:30 or so, they were mostly finished, and started gathering their tools. They turned the system on and immediately the house began cooling down -- by a lot. The new AC was far quieter than the old one and it seemed to work wildly well. They wrapped everything up, took their stuff out the back door, and I was expecting them to come back in to have me sign paperwork or something like that -- but I looked out the window about five minutes later and they were gone -- they had vanished. So, uh, I guess we were done? I thought I'd have to sign off on something like I did with the furnace, but apparently not, and I was left downstairs with the cats and a rapidly-cooling house.

I let Daisy know they were done, the system was running and working, and then unhooked the portable AC unit upstairs in the bedroom we'd been using to stay cool at night so that I could go back downstairs and focus on the incoming weather.

By around 3 or so we had our first thunder and rain -- hard rain, with a little hail. Not bad hail, just barely pea-sized. Some of the thunder was loud enough to rattle the windows and doors, but I wouldn't call it severe by any stretch of the imagination, just a normal spring thunderstorm. It was short-lived and moved off quickly.

When you live in the midwest in the spring, local weather coverage for severe events pre-empting normal programming on network TV for a few hours at a time, commercial-free, is not anything new. To an extent, it's kind of exciting, especially when they have live cameras stationed around the city and reporters driving around through it giving real-time live-feed coverage of certain parts of the area. When I lived in the Kansas City area many years ago, I wasn't anywhere near as anxious or as focused on the weather as I am now; it didn't concern me because while I'd been through some nasty storms at that point (including storms while I lived there), none of them had caused damage to anything I'd been around or inside of. Of course, at that time, I also didn't have any property to damage -- I didn't own a vehicle, I didn't own a home, I was just there. So yes, bad storms -- pretty godawful ones at times -- would roll through, and I didn't really pay them much mind. 

When I moved to Kansas and lived there, I began to pay a little closer attention -- I was in my own rented house at that point and I did own a car, and Kansas should be called "the tornado state" given its association with how many roll through there every year. That is when I started paying closer attention to tornado forecasts and potential outbreaks, as well as other severe hazards. Yet, the entire time I lived in Kansas -- five years, from 2009 to 2014 -- I think the closest any tornado got to me was maybe 15-20 miles away? Something like that. I used to say 30 miles away but as I've gotten older I realize how close some of those little towns that got hit were to where I lived at the time. Newton would get torn up here and there while I lived there with severe thunderstorms and softball-sized hail -- still the largest hail I've ever seen in person -- but no actual tornadoes struck that little flat town in the time I lived there, and I can only remember the tornado siren going off a handful of times during my tenure there.

Even when I moved to Omaha in 2014 -- during one of the more active stretches of severe weather I've seen, from 2014 to about 2017 or so -- I wasn't incredibly concerned with the weather and both of us lived in an apartment complex and parked outside with no cover during those years. I was in an apartment, my car (and later, the truck) was beat to shit and 20 years old even then, and I remained mostly unbothered. I remember the few days after our wedding, I was sitting on the parents' back porch smoking and watching the storms roll in, and went inside and asked "it's probably a bad thing when the storm clouds right above us start rotating pretty strongly, isn't it?"

No, what really ramped up my storm anxiety was when we lost the retaining wall in 2019, and then in 2021 lost both of our giant silver maple trees in the front yard in separate storms, then in 2024 when 80mph winds ripped part of the cowling off our garage and took out power for multiple days. Now I am terrified of severe weather, because apparently we're just one bad storm away from needing to spend thousands of dollars we don't have on repairs and cleanup. It's no longer a novelty for me; I've paid far too much money I couldn't afford to spend on bullshit storm damage just because Nebraska weather wants to be an asshole sometimes. 

So, I sat there in our freshly-air-conditioned living room and watched the storm coverage with a morbid curiosity. Even by the time the HVAC guys left, I knew it wasn't going to be a major event for us, just by the way the storms were tracking even then, but I do have a scientific fascination with weather and the forecasting of weather, so I languidly watched the reporting as different storms rolled over different parts of the area. The first round had rolled through shortly after 3, and the second rolled through around 3:45 with a bit more heavy rain and thunder, and then...it was gone. The local weather said as of 4:10 the severe weather had finished for us and they were resuming normal programming, and as soon as they said that I gathered my stuff, turned off the TV, and went back upstairs.

So the vast majority of the severe weather missed us yet again. Yes, there were a few minor tornadoes around the area, 50 miles away or more, but nothing close to us and I don't think anything above a EF-2. I could be wrong there though as I didn't pay much attention to it after the fact. I was just glad that my stressors for the day had ceased, I had air conditioning again, and I still had two more days of my "weekend" with which I could decompress. 

In the evening, after Daisy got off work and we had dinner, it had finally cooled down enough to where we could ease off the AC and turn it "up" so it wouldn't run constantly. I did so, and the system wound down and shut down as per it was supposed to...and the furnace fan kept running.

Hm. That's interesting.

I waited twenty minutes, the fan kept running. I turned off the system completely. The fan kept running.

Hm. That's not good, that's not right. 

Now, we had this happen a while back a couple of times, with the old furnace and the old air conditioner. Those times, a relay had blown or the system had needed a hard reset. So, I performed the hard reset on the new system -- that means turning off the breaker, waiting a bit, and then turning it back on. I did that, and...in five seconds, the fan kicked back on and was blowing again. Sigh.

I tested it once more, using the actual AC. The AC would kick on, run its cycle until the house was cool enough, and then the thermostat would turn it off and the fan....kept going. Again. We didn't need the AC that night -- it was getting down into the 40s after the storms and the cold front blew through -- so I just left it off at the breaker and left the system off. I told Daisy she would need to call again in the morning to have the guys come back out and fix whatever was wrong with it.

Friday morning rolled around, Daisy called, and the original tech who came to examine our system came back out to the house. He messed around with it a bit, did some troubleshooting, and found that upon installation, the dip switches (whatever those are) weren't set correctly. He set those, tested a few more things, and essentially performed a hard reboot of the system, and the problem was fixed. Our AC has worked normally since, and has kicked on and off normally when we need it to run. He did, however, tell me two things I didn't know:

1. Whether it's on heat or cool, depending on the season, always leave the system on. As in, with these new systems, they don't need to be turned off unless absolutely necessary. Leaving them on reduces wear on the components, etc. If they don't need to run all the time, set them to temperatures where they won't need to and adjust as necessary. 

2. Some people hate it and don't want to do it, but it's recommended (by whom, I don't know) that the house fan on the furnace is just left on at all times. That more evenly circulates the air in the house and keeps the components of the HVAC system from being overworked.

...I don't think that last one is accurate. Seems to me that if the fan were running constantly, it would wear out and blow out the fan motor much more quickly than normal use. Add to that we'd likely need to change the very expensive (like, $40 each) filters every month or so instead of once every eight or nine months because they'd be constantly pulling in dust, dander from the cats, and dirt from the air. So, no, we're not doing that. I also don't want a part of my house to be constantly on, nor do I want constant airflow from the vents at all times.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is a new thing that's really true and really recommended, but I somehow doubt that. 

So, anyway, it's all done. Life has returned to normal within our household, even if it feels like "normal" equates to "waiting for the next big appliance to decide it no longer wants to work."

April Showers, Part VI: The Nightmare Scenario

 The new AC unit was $5500. It was paid for via credit card and we are now that much more into debt.

It could not be avoided. It's stupid to sink almost $3k into repairs of a 50-year-old unit that may die a week later, or may live another year or two before the next major repair or replacement is needed, so we opted for the replacement and for an upgraded two-phase unit for the house that will run normally during somewhat milder temperatures and will kick into mega cold when it's like 90-100 outside. 

It has not yet been installed. It was paid for last night and the parts were ordered. Our HVAC guys said it could be put in rather quickly -- as in, it could be installed this week, likely.

"That's going to be interesting," I told Daisy. "It's Tuesday night, we're expecting near-certain severe weather on Thursday, and I'm sure there's more than a 24 hour turnaround for this stuff. So that leaves...Friday? I guess if they're doing it this week that would be the best day anyhow since we're both off and I don't have to be asleep all day."

If it's not done by Friday, it would be until at least Monday. These guys don't work weekends. Seems to me that they're missing out on an extra two days of revenue stream there, but whatever, I don't make their rules. 

I texted Daisy this morning before I went to sleep that with the terrible weather possible tomorrow, if they called to set up the appointment, set it for Friday and not tomorrow -- I have to sleep at some point and she shouldn't have to take off any more work than necessary, and the last thing I want to do is for the technicians to race the clock on this:

So of course they call, say "tomorrow," and Daisy says "yes."

I am so incredibly mad and frustrated. 

"Call back and tell them Friday," I said. "Full stop. I can't go 27 hours without sleep again like I did for the furnace installation -- I just can't. I also can't do that only to crash out just as the worst weather of the season and possible tornadoes are getting ready to hit us."

She called back. Friday appointments are full. It's either tomorrow morning or some nebulous timeframe of "next week" that we wouldn't have a date for or any real control of at the moment. 

It is somewhere around this point where I began to break and lose my mind a little.

Look, the past few weeks have not been great. Work has been fucking awful, I can rarely now get more than 4 hours of sleep at any given time (it used to be six, and boy do I wish I could still sleep six hours straight without interruption; that sounds like a dream) and both of us have been constantly running. The AC blowing out and putting us further in the hole financially and the debacle with Daisy's windshield isn't helping matters much, nor is the cost of gas, groceries, vet appointments, and everything else skyrocketing over the course of the past month. Add Daisy's almost two-week sickness that started in NC to that, and basically, everything's been pretty shitty ever since we returned from my parents and has steadily gotten worse day by day. I am hot and sweaty as well as really sleep-deprived and angry at the world, and I've just been told that everything I did not want to happen tomorrow is, in fact, happening tomorrow whether I want it to or not.

The technicians are supposed to be here tomorrow between 8am and 10am. 

"They said the guy has one appointment before us," Daisy said.

"...so that means they'll be here at 10am or after," I said, sighing and rubbing my temples.

The removal of the old AC unit and installation of the new one will take, approximately, 5-6 hours. If they get here at 10, that would mean they'd be here until around 4. If they get here at 8 on the dot -- which will not happen -- they'd be done by 1 or 2. 

Storm chances increase the further into the afternoon hours we go. It's possible that they could start firing up before 3pm or it's possible they could wait until 5-6. The main threat window is apparently 4pm to 10pm "with all hazards possible" before the storms quickly exit the area. Tomorrow is the highest threat of tornadoes, wind damage and large hail that we've had predicted for the better part of a year, localized to our area more specifically than some of the surrounding areas. The local weather folks I follow think it's going to happen sooner rather than later, and have all threats move outside of the area and be done by 8pm. 

None of this fills me with any sort of hope. This makes the entire day tomorrow essentially be a game of "race the clock" for these guys, which is exactly what I did not want. Weather aside, when I pay $5500 for an appliance, I want it installed carefully and with precision, with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. I don't want HVAC guys scrambling to do it before tornadoes strike because they don't want to postpone it or get caught in awful weather while trying to finish and have to stop halfway through. 

I also don't want them to get it done, thank them, have them leave and for it to run for an hour or two of sweet new AC bliss only to have the power get taken out by the storms, or for violent storms to roll through and damage the house or the new, freshly-installed AC unit. I have less control over that, of course. 

I know a lot of this is anxiety talking, too. I know how I get when I'm stressed and sleep deprived and awful weather is predicted. I also know that I can't control it and can't change it, so it's a big shit sandwich I have to take multiple bites of. I can already see anxiety robbing me of a third of my weekend, robbing me of sleep and relaxation time and downtime, and it really can't be avoided. 

People without anxiety do not understand the concept of it; it's like it's a foreign entity to them. Their knee-jerk response is along the lines of "why stress about something you can't change or control?"

They don't realize the other side of that coin is "oh, so only be stressed about things I can change or control? If I can change or control it, why would I be stressed about it?" If you can fix a problem, it's not a problem. If you can fix a problem and choose not to because you'd rather suffer and be anxious, that is stupid, and that's on you. 

I've talked about this here before.

The second knee-jerk reaction is "if you can't change your situation, change your perspective," which generally makes me want to punch the person who says it before the sentence is out of their mouth. But, for the sake of argument, let's follow this logic for a moment and do a "perspective change."

Okay, perspective changed. Nothing else has changed but inside your mind. Changing your perspective does not stop the storms and possible tornadoes. It does not stop the sleep loss and necessary time spent to take care of the AC; both of those things will have physical effects and take a physical toll both internally and externally no matter my perspective on it or how I personally feel about it. 

So what does any of that help, exactly? "Change your perspective" is disrespectful to the person suffering from anxiety about anything; it's essentially saying "suck it up and get over it" because it does nothing to solve the problem. Therapy and medications wouldn't remove the tornadoes or change time frames or the like either, so get outta my face with that horseshit too. 

Anyway, I'm getting off track.

Daisy is taking the morning off tomorrow so that I can get some sleep; she will make up the time on Friday morning (when she would normally not be working). The working plan is that she'll handle the guys when they get here and make sure the cats are secure and not in the way, and when I wake up it'll be like "halftime, switch sides" and I'll monitor the rest of the work through completion. This also means I'll be at least somewhat rested to handle whatever's necessary as well as be alert to monitor whatever storms are coming in, as Daisy still works until 5:30 -- well into the window of when these storms should be hitting, if they actually come for us. 

Again, we've had some forecasts for nasty weather multiple times over March and April already, and we got nothing or next to nothing as the storms formed up either south of us or east of us. I really hope that will be the case tomorrow as well, but in the back of my mind I'm also like well, we're due now, since we haven't gotten anything yet this year. 

Yes, I understand that's like standing in front of a slot machine at a casino and being like "well, I'm due now because I haven't hit the jackpot in 5000 spins, so this machine has to be ready to pay out to me" and yeah, that's not how chance works, it's random and fickle and why gamblers usually lose all their money and end up betting their homes and cars and losing them too. 

More than anything, I'm just tired. I just want to wave my hand like it's a magic wand and have all this shit be done so I no longer have to stress about it. 

I keep telling myself that a 2 is essentially "meh" on the scale here, and there have been times where we've been a 3 or 4 and we haven't gotten more than a normal, quiet thunderstorm and some rain, if that -- but there are also times we've been under a 1 or 2 and all hell has been unleashed. So, it is what it is. 

In my head I'm also like look, if the storms are gonna hit and do their worst, just end me or do nothing -- either kill me so I don't have to worry about it or completely bypass us and do nothing, but don't just damage the house or the roof or other parts of our property to where it's something that will stress us out more and cost us more money to fix, because I will wish at that point that I had been killed rather than have to deal with it. 

An extreme viewpoint? Maybe. I am so sick of "dealing with it" for everything these days. I'm in my forties and wanted to be done dealing with shit by now. I'm rapidly losing the ability to not have a complete mental breakdown/meltdown over things these days, and that mental barrier I have is getting thinner by the week. 

So, I'll let you know what happens, I guess. It's about all I can do. 

April Showers, Part V: As Predicted

 As predicted, the AC has died.

I awoke Friday morning around 2, to feeling it blowing/moving no air whatsoever, and I went downstairs and turned it off. It took a few minutes for the system to shut down, but it did finally turn off. I was sure it was out of refrigerant, as even Thursday afternoon and evening I didn't think it was blowing that much cool air. 

Luckily, the weekend was much cooler than normal and we were perfectly comfortable. The past two nights we've had the furnace running, even, since it's been so chilly.

Our HVAC company came this morning to take a look. After much discussion, we're likely going to go with a new unit and bite the financial bullet on it. Our home warranty will cover some of the repairs to it, were we to choose repairs -- a new coil and refrigerant refill, and not even all of that -- but it's a 50-year old unit and the home warranty will not cover a replacement, despite an AC being part of what we have a home warranty for...similar to our furnace. No, this will be all on us, just like the furnace was. 

Both of us are very bitter about that. While the home warranty has saved us a lot of money on a lot of things over the years, stuff like the furnace and AC, which were supposed to be covered under it, were the main reasons we keep renewing it every year. To have neither of those covered and to have both of them fail in the span of four months is really frustrating and disheartening. It's supposed to be 85 degrees tomorrow and we have no AC to help mitigate that. Daisy will likely need to set up the portable AC we have just to make the upstairs of the house bearable while we wait for the plans for the new unit to be installed.

Yes, that's a thing. The HVAC folks are getting back to us either tonight or early tomorrow morning with a few options and cost breakdowns. We were told that were we to just get it repaired, refilled with refrigerant, and left as-is, it would be something like $2800 all inclusive. To get an entirely new baseline unit without any special bells and whistles (it's not like we have a giant mansion or anything, this is a small two-story house) that would suit our needs, it would only be about $1k more. Costs go up from there for the higher-end models, of course. If I were confident that a major part wouldn't blow on the old unit again I might have been tempted for the repair and refill of coolant, were it a lot cheaper. But it's not, and if we can get a new unit installed and set up for a bit more, then all the better. So that's the option we'll be going with -- one of the new units of some sort. The tech said even the low-end models would be a major upgrade to what we have now, so that sounds promising at least.

So...once they get back to us, we'll pick our option and will go forth with everything as possible. Our HVAC tech was confident they could get someone out this week at some point to do it. The problem is that I do still have to sleep, and have to be able to sleep during the day every day -- that can't be avoided and I certainly just can't be like "well, guess I don't sleep today before I work my eleven-hour overnight shift." While the AC unit is, of course, outside, it's not like them ripping out the old one and putting on a new one will be fast or quiet, and I believe they still need to change out a coil on the inside of the house too, in the furnace closet. Daisy has the option to take VTO -- voluntary time off -- unpaid time, and she may end up doing that just so she can supervise and so I can try to sleep. 

Sleep today is a wash; I was awakened around 11-something when the HVAC guy arrived and was not able to get back to sleep since. So, I have a grand total of about 2.5 hours of sleep in me for the day, and I just have to suck it up and deal with it tonight as I work.

This is not the only stress we've had to deal with over the past few days, by the way.

I mentioned earlier that Daisy had a rock fly up and hit her car windshield, sending a big wide crack slowly creeping across it -- and that we had an appointment to have the windshield replacement people come out to put a new one in for us, right in the driveway.

Well...

When said people arrived early on Friday morning, they examined the car and weren't sure they would be able to replace said windshield. Why? Because there is a lot of surface rust on our nearly 20-year-old car, especially at the edge of the roof where the windshield meets the roof, and if that rust had penetrated deep enough, it means the windshield is unsafe and while he could take out the old one, he could not install a new one. 

That's right, y'all -- we were told that a dime-sized rock that cracked our windshield could essentially total out our car. If a new windshield couldn't be put in it after the old one was removed, the car would be useless and we'd have to sell it for scrap, because (obviously) you can't have a car without a windshield. 

So imagine this scenario -- you haven't slept much, the AC in your house has died, and at 7:45 in the morning there's a glass technician in your driveway telling you that you may need a new goddamn car because a pane of glass in it may be irreplaceable -- and, of course, you also have about five important errands to run that day where, ahem, a windshield is goddamned necessary.

Luckily, the rust was cosmetic only. The glass technician was able to grind it off and seal it (I'm guessing with Rust-oleum or something similar) and he put the new windshield on without issue. So, that's one crisis averted, at least. Had we been forced to essentially go get a new car I am sure I would've lost about 30% of the hair I have left due to stress. 

"You watch," I told Daisy, "the first time we take it out after it's been fixed, another rock will fly up and break it again."

This has, thankfully, not happened.

Anyway.

The great purge of 2026 has completed. This afternoon, I finally finished sorting everything and putting it all away in its new places (might as well do something if I can't sleep) and wrapped up the last three bags for one final run to Goodwill. In the end, I believe there were 11 or 12 total full 30-gallon Glad bags of donation clothes that I filled, and I cut my wardrobe roughly in half. There are legit hundreds of hangers scattered around the closet, some of which I will still use and some of which will likely be donated or recycled with everything else. 

Through all of it, I looked back on the person I once was compared to the person I am now. So many pairs of shoes and flip-flops were donated, some I'd only worn once or twice and some I had never worn once, still with tags on them. Some of the shoes, especially the unworn ones, were essentially fossilized -- canvas shoes that had become hard as a rock just sitting in storage. I was sort of stunned at that. No, I'd not worn them before, and the ones I had I hadn't touched in ten years or more -- but they felt like they'd turned to stone. I'm sure they could be reworked and softened up again, and I'm sure they'll get a decent home with someone, but that was fascinating to me.

I found two giant packs of tank top undershirts, unopened and unworn. I vaguely remember getting them off Amazon when they were on a deep discount sale many years ago, citing at the time that I'd never not have a use for them, as they're the one item of my wardrobe that wears out faster than any other -- but for the life of me I have no idea how long ago that was. The fact that they've sat there stuffed into a corner, still in their plastic packaging shows what a hoarder of clothing I really was.

Not to be outdone, I found an unopened pack of black thermal (long john) undershirts and an entire unopened 12-pack of the Dickies socks I like as well. I don't remember buying either of those either, honestly. I know I did at some point, but I absolutely do not remember it. 

No, I'm not donating any of those, by the way -- I will, eventually, get to them. They were socked away (no pun intended) into the storage tubs with all of my winter clothing, which has now been swapped out for summer shirts in the closet. 

As I was going through a lot of my stuff I remembered the person I was when I procured a lot of it, and pondered on how much I have changed since those times. I got rid of some stuff I've had for well over a decade -- not just the shoes but pants, shorts, hoodies, t-shirts. Especially t-shirts. I could not tell you who the man was that purchased all of those things, because he doesn't exist anymore. He existed once, he wanted those things once, and now...he doesn't.

I remember in grad school, easily 15 years ago now, how one of my colleagues said that once you turn 30, it's time to get rid of the band shirts and the comic book t-shirts and cargo shorts, the flip flops and hoodies, and by age 30 how you needed to look more put together and adult. This man, at the time, was I think older than I am now -- he was the oldest member of our graduate studies program and the only one who was on the nonfiction track -- he wanted to be a travel writer, a nature writer. I think I've mentioned this story here before.

While he was a genuinely nice guy, I disagreed with him then and I disagree with that sentiment now. You're going to get older no matter what; how much you choose to "grow up" as you age is entirely up to you. My dad will turn 76 this year and has an incredible comic book and music collection, as well as a large cache of nerdy t-shirts he actually wears. Daisy's father is 78 and almost every time I see him, he's wearing some tie-dyed clothing that he's either acquired over the years or that I've personally made for him. Our mothers, both mine and Daisy's, love the tie-dyes I've made them and wear them all the time. Daisy's mother is older than mine by a considerable degree, and she has purple hair right now, as well as a giant Grateful Dead record collection that I digitized for her last year. 

You do you, I say, to one and all. Every year I get more music t-shirts that I adore, on purpose, and wear with pride -- the latest have been the Tragically Hip shirts I've collected over the past year or so, but some others I've acquired recently are shirts displaying Kiss, Ghost, Nirvana, The Traveling Wilburys, Gordon Lightfoot, AC/DC, Poison, Motley Crue, Willie Nelson, The Smiths, and The Beatles -- just to name a few I remember off the top of my head. 

Every year now my hair is at least three or four different colors depending on the month and its length. 

Every year now I tend to gravitate more towards comfort than fashion. I think I've worn jeans maybe twice over the course of the past year or so -- it's been sweats all other times.

Every year now I care a little less about what I'm supposed to be looking like or dressing like or the attitude or demeanor I "should" be exhibiting for someone my age. 

What's important to me is that I have what I need, I am what I need to be, and I am happy. 

As the days pass, I'm looking more and more forward to getting to Canada for a week. Yes, I know it's expensive. Yes, I know that travel -- especially international travel -- is long and arduous and takes so very much energy out of me, out of all of us really. But I have fantasies about being in a bed in a basement in a house in another country and knowing that I have zero things to do at that moment aside from play on my phone, read a book, or watch something on my Kindle -- that I am free to eat and sleep and just sink into my environment without having someone else's schedule or responsibilities forced upon me. Five full days of family, togetherness with Daisy, and peace. Days where the rest of the world stops, days where my job will find me inaccessible and out of the country, days where I will sometimes eat authentic Canadian poutine and drink Tim Hortons coffee in the span of only a few hours between them. 

Elon Musk says he wants to be the first person to die on Mars; I want to die in Canada. There's a difference.

Not this trip, of course, but when it's actually time for me to kick off this planet, I want it to be up there. I feel more home there than I've felt anywhere, anywhere, in my life. I can't tell you why. I don't know why. I certainly don't have any ancestry (that I know of) from Canada. But, it has a pull on me. It calls to me again and again, and has always called to me more with each visit. Sometimes when I dream, I dream that we're driving those familiar roads around the family homestead and up on Cape Breton Island. I've memorized every turn, every view. I know what the air there smells like, what it feels like. I long for the misting rain on my skin and for the low rumbles of thunder as a storm sweeps over the sea-facing hills. Nova Scotia is the only place I feel I have ever truly belonged. 

It also seems like we may be getting a taste of similar weather on Thursday. We've been told by the weather people that Thursday has, at present time, the best chances all season so far for severe weather in the Omaha area.

Now, I take all of this with a grain of salt. We've had severe storm chances multiple times this season already, sometimes significant ones, and it has all gone south and east of us every time so far. But, this is Omaha in April, and in April anything goes for weather here. We've had some of our worst storms and tornado scares in April, pretty consistently, since I've been living up here. So far this year we have been really lucky, but I'll remind you that almost exactly two years ago this week, there was the tornado outbreak that tore up a good chunk of this town, especially north and west of us, that was bad enough to where cleanup crews worked for a few weeks to get all the debris and tree limbs taken care of and to get power restored for those people in the area that got hit hard. 

So, we'll see I guess. 

Canada Prep 2026, Part I: Semi-Locals

 I am about, ehhhh...60% packed for Canada.

Now, mind you, we don't leave for over two months. That's a long time, all. So much will be different in the next two months. 

I generally pack for most possible eventualities when going to Canada, though this time around I'm trying to be a little more frugal and conservative in my packing. I don't like to travel heavy when I go up there, especially when we have access to laundry and a fridge and it's summer. I say this because inevitably I will find some new clothing whether I'm looking for it or not, I will be able to remain entertained and have food I want and can eat and I will be comfortable without issue, so my needs are light. I also do not expect to be vaping anymore by that time, so I won't have to worry about packing vapes. 

As for weather, ehhhh, all bets are off generally. June can be iffy and/or volatile both here and in Canada. I've been up there in June when it's been 50s-60s and rainy every day, and I've been there in June when it's been in the 90s and unbearable (the family homestead does not have air conditioning). I packed my thin and light Columbia rain jacket, originally purchased for last year's trip up there but never used, and I may or may not pack a hoodie and/or a pair of actual shoes. To be fair, if I need a hoodie or actual shoes, the Walmart in Port Hawkesbury, ten minutes from the family homestead, will readily sell me either of those items at a very reasonable price, so we'll see and perhaps play it by ear. 

I also have to keep in mind that I know who I am as a person, and I will need to reserve space in my luggage for as many bags of ketchup chips and Canadian candy bars that I can cram in to carry home. 

Don't look at me like that. Again, I know who I am as a person. 

There is a set Canada-centric wardrobe I tend to wear when I'm up there, and it is very mindfully chosen. As I mentioned last year, the last thing I want to do is stick out as a very obvious American, and that mindset is absolutely even more in play this year than it was last year. I also walk a fine line in trying not to look like a tourist, too. We will be up there during "tourism season" for the first time in a couple of years. Now, mind you, I am and am not a tourist at the same time -- we have family there, and at this point it's not like we're looking around at all the sights and sounds, oohing-and-aahing at everything. We're not locals, but we're semi-locals at the very least, anchored there by the family. 

At the same time, I also have a torrid love affair with Atlantic Canada and all of its mystical, non-American wonders -- its foods, its Tim Hortons, its culture -- but I am much more silently awed now, and I just embrace it like a warm hug from an old friend. 

Anyway, I'm getting off track. Yes, I have a Canada-specific wardrobe. Generally it's clothing that is unassuming and nondescript, clothing that looks like it would befit the people of the area. Plain shirts and plain shorts/pants where applicable, etc. A hoodie either with no logo on it or a workwear logo from a company like Bass Pro Shops or Carhartt (I have neither of these, so my Columbia hoodies had to do last year). However, because I am who I am, I will always toss some flair in there -- this year that flair comes in the form of a couple Tragically Hip t-shirts and my red-and-white maple leaf swim trunks. I don't even know that I'll use the swim trunks while we're there, but as it'll be June and we're never far from a beach, I'm all for it. 

Most of the time, my goal is to not draw any more attention to myself than I have to. In a few years, when our country's relationship with Canada is hopefully in a much better place than it is now, I'll likely loosen up a bit and feel more comfortable there in my normal clothing (tie-dyes, baggy board shorts, etc) like I used to do in the old days when I wasn't necessarily concerned about being singled out as American. Until then, though, I try to make myself blend in and look as Canadian as possible. Around the homestead it's not necessarily a problem -- but if we leave the immediate area I have to double-down on looking nondescript and camouflage myself into looking like a local. Sometimes it's harder to do than you think. 

In preparation for Canada, as this is the whole point of me writing here at the moment, we have tried to take care of everything we can beforehand -- the pressing, important stuff, anyway. For example, making sure we have travel insurance (especially for Mama) and making sure that we have wheelchair assistance for her. Wheelchair assistance is needed for her because she can't exactly sprint between terminals, and traveling takes a lot out of her -- but also, it's a huge benefit for us because it means we board first (priority boarding, etc). 

As an aside, on at least one of the flights, apparently I'm seated in the back row of the airplane. Like, the very last seat in the back. I...actually kind of like that idea, to be honest with you. It means I don't have anyone behind me and I'm guessing there's at least a little more room to stretch out and relax. I don't remember which flight it is, though. Truthfully it doesn't really matter. I think it's the final flight home into Omaha when we return, but maybe I'm wrong. 

The Catsitter has blocked off the needed time for us for the trip, so we've already got her ready to roll. We will of course have to pay her and prepare for that, but we have time.

We have scheduled our next doctors' appointments for about a week and a half before we leave. That will give enough time to see whether my doctor wants to increase my dosage of Mounjaro or adjust anything else, and then get another refill of it accordingly. 

We have scheduled our AC tuneup for early June, which was the earliest available date -- but I am sure our AC will not last until then as it was running out of refrigerant last summer when we had the last tuneup done. So we will likely have to change that up somewhere, somehow, or have the guys come out to pump some refrigerant into our system to limp it along until our scheduled tuneup where we plan to assess the cost of a brand new unit. It's an inevitability anyhow, eventually. We know almost for a fact that the AC is going to die this summer, and my money is on that it will die sooner rather than later, especially if we keep having 85+ degree days in goddamn April. 

Mind you, when I say "die," I don't mean it'll die in the sense that it blows a major part again -- all of those parts have been replaced piecemeal over the past few years -- I mean it'll run dry on refrigerant and will freeze up/won't work anymore until it gets more or until we get an entirely new unit. I know we are eventually going to get a new unit, very likely this summer, as the old one is from 1976 -- but there is a massive cost factor there. So, we have to plan for that as possible, and it is what it is.