Various Sundries

I see the SAVE Act is out there in the news again (or so it seems from the ranting I was assaulted with when, against my better judgement, I opened up Faceplant to try to check a group.) I am pro-voter id - seems like a non-brainer to me. I'm also pro-people having a passport. Which would solve the problem. And our passports are not really any more (or less) expensive than the other countries in the world. (A quick google says there is basically nowhere that you can get a passport for free.) (And honestly I spent very little time on this because I just don't think my opinions on things in politics matter anymore. I live where the elected people of any ilk are all fundamentally on the other side to a huge extreme, so even calling/writing them is pissing in the wind. I do it. But that's more out of obstinacy than thinking it actually matters.)

I recall in one of my books, the heroine commented that she didn't even have a passport and my Kiwi editor remarked in the margin "How very American."

If the majority of the world requires its citizens to have a passport, why is that considered an undue requirement here?

Anyway, moving on.

We're in the throes of college registration details for the eldest and it causes a rather significant, and somewhat painful, clutch just under my heart. How did we get here?

I'm excited for him to spread those wings and fly, but I think it's not untoward that I'm also worried and nervous and just...a little melancholy. I'm gonna miss him. Even though I know he won't miss us - and he shouldn't. Just the times they are a-changin'.

Speaking of changin' - the extension for Dad is basically finished (final inspection done, tweaks thereafter have been made (still to code, just avoiding bureaucracy b/c changing midstream is hard)) and we're meeting with a moving company on Monday for an estimate to get him over here. It's getting real.

Betwixt the two, is it any wonder that the school days nightmares have started up again? No. No it is not.

Yay, stress. Or something.

Anyway, twill all be good in the end and I'm focusing on that rather than on the impending 2 year anniversary of losing my sister. I don't want to be that person who, in a very maudlin fashion, memorializes the death of her loved ones. But the fact is, two seems harder than one (I feel like maybe that was true with Mom, too) and I hate it. 

Grief. She is a b*.

Let it...sleet?

We got a lot of inches of...something Saturday night and all day Sunday. I think it might have started as snow, but by the time I was up around 6:30, it was already pinging as it fell. Our little electric snowblower, that I bought on a whim for $99 back when Woot was a fun website with interesting daily deals rather than yet another entry in the Bezos-sphere, still managed to do a reasonable job of clearing the driveway.

Of course, the poor thing was much more suited to our driveway in suburbia than the tenth of a mile we now have out here in the forest. But I much prefer the living out here, so there's that.

Regardless, we were able to get it clear, ish. Of course, it then continued to sleet or freezing rain or whatever thereafter. So we woke up this morning to an additional inch or so of impenetrable coverage on the driveway. So that's fun.

The boys and I were able to dig us out up at the street (amusingly, it was easier to get rid of the part we weren't able to clear with the blower because we didn't have an extension cord long enough than the part that we cleared yesterday. That part's still got the covering. And will until it thaws, I guess, because we're not sure how to get rid of it without a chisel.) So, should we need to get out, we can.

Every time this happens, I think we need to invest in a better snow removal option than we have. Then I remember this really only happens every five or so years, so it's not as though we're seriously inconvenienced every winter. Dunno. Since the primary clearing seems to always fall on me to assist and organize, and I'm not getting younger, I might push the issue a tad harder.

And of course, they're eyeing another storm for this coming weekend and throwing around words like "blizzard."

Snowpocalypse Watch

Whelp. It looks as alllll the weather prognosticators agree that we'll be seeing 6-10 this weekend, possibly more.

Hubs is still betting on nothing. And, to be fair, he has a point. So often around here they scream that the sky is falling and then, in fact, nothing at all falls out of the sky.

Even so, I did my grocery shopping early this week (they started the doom and gloom on Tuesday, I think, so I went to the store Wednesday. Seems like it was a good plan, since I just saw photos over on Faceplant of the line to get in Costco wrapping around the building.) (I wonder if people will actually find anything on the shelves when they get to the front of the line.)

If we DO get the 6-10 (or more), then everything will be shut down for at least a week. Possibly 2. Especially as, at least right now, I'm seeing more snow predicted for the middle of next week. 

We'll see what we see.

I'd be happy with snow. I'll be less happy if it turns to sleet after the 6-10, which is what they're saying might happen. That's no fun for anyone. Except, I guess, Vanilla Ice, since he'll rake in royalties again for everyone deciding they need to play Ice, Ice, Baby like they're the only people who thought of it.

Happy New Year, etc.

Round about these parts, we jump from Christmas, to New Year's, to a birthday, to undecorating and it's all rather a lot of whirlwind that leaves me breathless. (Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is, it's a lot all one after the other.)

This year was particularly whatever word I'm using to describe this time of year, because eldest turned 18 and has set his toe firmly into adulthood.

Or so one imagines.

In reality, not a lot has changed (because one doesn't instantly mature, for all parents might like that) (and honestly, the young man is not immature for his age - in fact, I'd say he's more mature than many of his peers. I'm not disappointed, is the point.) 

I guess that's not entirely correct: he's flexing his muscles some and asking for things like taking off the parental supervision on his phone (which isn't a big deal because we hadn't really been using any of it for the last year or so - he's a good kid. But I did say I was fine with it provided he considered sharing his location with me. I told him I'd be happy to reciprocate. I don't stalk his location like some helicopter moms, but he's not great about texting when he gets places, and sometimes around here ...you just want to be sure he got where he was headed. He was fine with that.)

Now that that's past, we're staring down younger boy's 14th birthday in a few short weeks and...why must they grow up so quickly? (On the flip side, this one could use a little of that overnight maturation.)

The building project for bringing Dad here is nearly finished. We've hooked up most of the sinks and such - the countertop guy will be out on Monday to do a field measurement and once we get the kitchenette finished we should be good to go with the final inspection. I think (touch wood) that we should be able to get Dad in by the end of January. That gives us a solid month to get all the junk out of his other house and get it prepped to be on the market.

Doable.

Probably.

What is it they say? God willing and the creek don't rise.

And that's our new year kickoff in a nutshell. I can't complain (well, I'm me. I totally can. But it's pretty unfounded in the overall scheme.) And I'm cautiously optimistic about the year ahead. (Check back soon for when depression comes back like a thick blanket full of lead. Although the meds are, I think, finally where they need to be. So that's something. I guess we'll see how the 2 year anniversary of my sister's death goes. Because that's coming up fast as well.)

Merry Christmas

Still here, just nothing exciting to report.

The stocking are hung. There are gifts yet to be wrapped. All that.

I believe I've settled on doing filet mignon this year, with mashed potatoes, rolls, and then some kind of veggie that we'll pretend people will eat. Maybe green beans? They'll eat those. Or just a big salad. Sometimes those go over. We shall see. Point being, a stripped down meal and just a quiet day with family.

Which, honestly, the older I get, feels like a better thing anyway.

Still, sending out wishes for you to have a fabulous Christmas with you and yours.

The Unmitigated Gall

Last Friday, as I was crawling into bed, I felt the stirrings of what I presumed would be another painful, but short-lived bout with my gallbladder. I think I reported here in May(ish?) when I had my first ER trip because of the dang thing.

Since then, I'd had an attack here and there - but not so many that it was impacting life overly and I learned what foods to avoid such that I was doing all right, by and large.

Of course, I had a pretty terrible attack whilst driving back from my weekend in South Carolina for a friend's daughter's wedding. Nothing quite more fun than having that occur while driving. And then, the following week another two, shorter, attacks.

But then Friday hit. And nothing worked. The meds that usually kept things at bay, did not. (Probably owing to the fact that I could keep zero things down. Within moments of anything hitting my stomach, the revolt began, and I was rushing for the nearest basin-shaped object to catch its volcanic expulsion.)

I white-knuckled it through the night, finally crawling back into bed around 5 a.m. Saturday exhausted enough to sleep despite the pain. And I tried to gut through the day when I awoke.

A three, I finally gave up and made the hubs take me to the ER.

Sweet, sweet pain relief.

And an ultrasound and some bloodwork and other tests and...oh hey, we're going to admit you for surgery tomorrow (Sunday.)

I'm sorry, what?

Yeah. Good stuff. 

At that point, I'd had enough pain meds that I seriously considered just heading home and calling it good. They did give that option, with the reminder that choosing it meant next time, I'd be starting over.

And there was no hesitation that there'd be a next time. In fact, they were reasonably confident "next time" would be on or before Thanksgiving.

So. I pondered. And they went to check on something. And it lasted long enough that the pain started to work its way back through the good drugs and I realized that the pain wasn't actually gone, it was just hidden. And I said, "Sign me up for gallbladder donation."

Hubby went home when I got to my room (shout out to the hospital for that not taking all night - honestly, I was very pleased with how fast things moved). They kept me happily drugged up and let me sleep (! I didn't know you were allowed to actually sleep more than two hours at a time in the hospital. I think they only woke me once?) And I dozed off and on most of Sunday as I waited for my sweet, sweet surgery.

And it pretty much says it all that the post-op pain is a laugh compared to the pain that sent me in in the first place.

Came home Monday mid-day. Friends showed up to take over Thanksgiving for us. So I have been parked on the couch watching everyone handle everything with aplomb and doing very little for myself. And really, I could get used to it. (No. No I could not. It's driving me mad. But I did NOT take it easy like I should have after my hysterectomy and I have learned my lesson.)

Fast-forwarding to today, I am feeling very well indeed. Down to Tylenol a couple times a day. Still resting quite a lot and listening to my body say when it's time (again, annoying, because the plan was to lay tile this weekend. But yeah, no.) And if I never have pain like the gallbladder attack again? It will be too soon.

It's beginning to look a lot like what now?

I suppose it really is a sign of age, but I can NOT grok the fact that Thanksgiving is next week and thereafter we are on the slippery slide into Christmas and 2026.

Where did 2025 go?

It is entirely possible that some of the year zooming by is brought to you by GriefFog* because that's still very much a thing. And when I sat down to write this year's Christmas letter I had to really think hard to figure out what happened from January until ...August? Because it was just kind of vaguely gone.

I'm sure I missed something monumental in the letter, but I can't as yet figure out what that might be. Hubs will be reading it over, so it's possible he'll clue me in, but let's be real. He doesn't pay attention on a good day. So unless it's truly monumental, it's gone for all time.

I suppose one could argue that means it wasn't all that monumental to begin with.

I'm working to figure out gift-buying. The kids are dang near impossible these days and I'm tempted to just throw a wad of cash at them (well, really, it'd be a visa gift card, because who even knows what cash is anymore) and be done with it. Except eldest would spend it before he'd finished unwrapping it and then start looking around for more, and youngest would lose the card and then wonder why he didn't get any gifts.

So, yeah. That won't work.

I find myself for the first time ever pondering the "something to read, something to wear, something they want and something...I forget what the fourth thing was meant to be." It was, theoretically, a useful rhyme to help you keep it straight, but I think we can all see that I've lost the plot there, as well.

I miss my brain.

Not enough to go see Wicked part 2 tho. (Follow the train of thought - it's not hard.)