Tag: Family

Wardrobe Reboot

My exercise is done for the morning. I only faux ran for 30 minutes. Just giving my old and tired legs a break. I have so much to do today. It’s raining again so raking leaves is pretty much out of the equation until tomorrow. My primary goal for the morning is to reboot my wardrobe. I’m thinking two pairs of jeans, two collared shirts, two t-shirts, and a pair of khakis. That should get me through the wake and the funeral this weekend, and four work days in the office between now and the end of the year.

I need to take a shower before I do any of this but I made the mistake last night of trying to rewatch the last four episode arc of Andor (one way out!) and I still have about 15 minutes left to go so I really can’t stop watching at the best part, right?

I want to make short visits to both parents today too. That’s the second most important thing. After that, it’s spend time with the love of my life, who is attending a virtual conference today. Dinner and a movie tonight, maybe? That will help me avoid feeling sad about the rest of the universe. For a while at least.

And that’s the state of the world right now.

Last Five Minutes of Lunch Break

There are only a few minutes left in my lunch break and I feel like I should add to the internet noise, you know?

3.5 hours left until the weekend. That seems like such a long time. On Saturday there will be rain in the morning, assuming the forecast I read today is correct. I need to rake some leaves, but that will need to wait until later in the afternoon. I need to go and buy clothes. My jeans are too big and need to be replaced. Almost all of my shirts, both work appropriate and otherwise, are also too big and need to be replaced. I am going to try going to a normal person store instead of a tall and fat person store. I expect I’ll have to go to both, but I really forget how to shop at normal people stores.

Dad has been moved from the hospital to a rehab. He moved last night and my sister was with him this morning. It sounds like he’s not in a very happy place. He’s not having a good rehab experience. I need to visit him tomorrow, if only for a few minutes. I also need to visit my mother, again if only for a few minutes. My aunt’s wake is Sunday afternoon. I hope to sneak a little more raking in before that, but we’ll have to see how far I can get. I expect that when the weekend is over we’re still going to have a front yard full of dead leaves. My aunt’s funeral is Monday morning. I took the day off from work so that I can go. There is a reception afterwards, but I don’t think my covid fear is going to let me attend. I’ll go to the church and I’ll go to the cemetery, but I think that’s all I can muster. I hope that’s enough.

The band has been talking again. Our singer has been the hang up, as he travels to Maine every weekend. We need to figure out how to get all of us into the same room at the same time. It will likely be a week night. We’ll see. I need to play at an obnoxious, obscene volume and I need to do it soon.

I am starting to get psyched up for Thanksgiving. The dinner itself isn’t a big deal anymore, as I can’t eat most of it and what I can eat won’t amount to a lot. No, the weekend after turkey day will see the kids coming home. That’s going to be awesome. Sure, we’ll start decorating for Christmas and I will bitch at how it’s too early, but that’s okay too. I don’t mind losing that fight. Not that it’s even a fight, you know? The weird thing is that I have this strange urge to start putting together a Christmas list. Insert demented laughter here.

Okay, lunch break is over. Back to work, red head.

Off Track Morning

I threw off my morning routine before I even went to sleep last night. I forgot to start the dishwasher. The little blender I use to mix my protein shakes was in the dishwasher. That means I couldn’t have half a shake like I’ve done every morning for the last two weeks.

To further the fails, I started doing my 45 minute trotting in place thing. After 30 minutes I stopped. I did the 5k, I did the whole exercise ring. I did not finish the calorie ring and I did not hit the five miles. I had actually told Jen this morning that I was going to close the exercise ring by walking over the weekend because my legs are hurting and I thought they could use a break. I decided on the fly today to start that break a smidge early.

Changing the subject, I’m saving this for later. It’s my Aunt’s obituary. I’ve already saved off the service information somewhere else, but I want to keep it all here too just in case.

Change of subject again, it is Friday. I could really use an easy day today. Fingers crossed. Happy Friday, everyone. It is also Veteran’s Day. I tip my hat in thanks to all who served and serve. It’s also a date that can function as a math problem. 11/11/22. 11+11=22. Get it?

Rest in Peace Aunt Joan

My godmother passed quietly in her sleep just after midnight today. She had been ill for a long time and was suffering through dementia, just like my mother.

Her pain is over now. Rest in peace, Aunt Joan.

At our wedding reception. My mother and her three siblings. Left to right, Aunt Joan, Aunt Nancy, Uncle Jim, and my mother.

Sick Day Tomorrow

I will be calling out of work for a sick day tomorrow. I actually scheduled it with my boss today, but I’ll send him a message in the morning to verify.

Dad is still in the hospital. Visiting hours are 10:00am to 6:00pm. I’ll probably leave here at 9:00am and get home by 7:00pm. I should be able to have a real breakfast before I go, and a real dinner when I get home. Only lunch will be a variety of protein bars and protein snacks. I’ll be able to hit my food and drink goals, I am sure.

I am worried about my father. I think my fear is that this hospital stay represents the snowball that is going to become an avalanche. I have no rational reason for thinking this, I am just gun shy after all the shit that has gone down in the past two years. I need to embrace the power of positive thinking. You can bet your sweet as I will do so when I’m with him, but when I am alone with my thoughts? I’m nervous.

I am not sure how this is going to effect our plans for the weekend. We don’t really have any plans, outside of hanging a couple of shelves in the kitchen and replacing some cabinet door handles and drawer pulls. I am just hoping to spend some time with my wife. I’ve been stressing out like crazy over the last week or two and I need to focus on her a little extra. I’d like to go away for a few days but with a huge trip coming up in less than 10 weeks and Covid still making us nervous I don’t think weekend travel is in the cards. Maybe we’ll just sit on the couch and watch whatever reality TV shows catch her eye. As long as we’re together it will be time well spent. A weekend in San Diego would be pretty sweet too. I’m trying.

I’ve been wanting to wake up very early all week this week and I keep waking up at exactly the same time. Wouldn’t it be nice to have my walkies/joggies and my breakfast done before Jen gets out of bed?

Okay, enough of my yappin’. It’s time to sit up in bed watching the last 70 minutes of Casino Royale. Talk to you later, universe.

Two Recent Items of Note

Two things that I have been wanting to post here just so that I could find them if I need them in the future. One music related, one marriage related.

First, the music one. I plugged one of my USB audio interfaces into a USB-C adapter and then into my iPad. It works perfectly. I can bring up the mic input in GarageBand, pick an available channel from the interface, and record without lag or errors. Sigh of relief. Now I actually have to have a song to add guitars and vocals to. Maybe I can still sneak in a Record Every Month Challenge song for October. There’s NaSoAlMo next month to think about too. Also, I haven’t played guitar in ages and I am starting to get the shakes from guitar withdrawals. You know how it is. I still haven’t tried GarageBand on my MacBook since taking the last OS top off update. It shouldn’t make a difference. I don’t think anything audio related was included in the update. I am still thinking about wiping the whole thing and restoring from a backup and seeing if that fixes whatever crap was wrong last month. Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yes. Have you tried killing everything and reinstalling it? Not yet.

That’s the music thing I wanted to write down. What’s the marriage thing? My wedding ring is in the shop. I took it back to the jewelry shop we bought it from back in 2009 to get it resized. It was a size 14. It will be a size 12. I mentioned the cause of the weight loss and asked if it will be okay if I need to get it resized a second time. They said sure. We did that on Saturday, October 22nd. They said I could expect to be without it for a week or so. Jen also dropped off her engagement ring as one of the clasps that holds the diamond in place is broken. Hopefully they will both come back at the same time. I seriously miss my ring. I keep absent mindedly reaching for it and being surprised that it isn’t there. I am looking forward to not having to wrap yard around it to make it fit better though. I won’t miss that annoying little thing.

There. Now we’re all up to date.

I’ve Screwed Up This Post Twice Now

I wrote a post about Patches’ adoption anniversary, realized I screwed up the date and deleted it, then wrote a second post and published it, then realized I screwed up the date again and deleted the second post too.

Friggin’ Moron.

I thought today was the 12th anniversary of Patches coming home from the shelter with us. Then I thought yesterday was the 12th anniversary. Then I dug deeper into the blog’s history and found the 12th anniversary was two days ago.

What a friggin’ Moron.

Sorry again, cat. Happy belated (by two days) adoption anniversary.

Here’s the post that first mentions Patches, whose name was still Panache at that point.

Here’s the post from 10/18/10 that spells out the first night, even though it was written the next day.

Here’s the picture of Harry trying to coax Panache/Patches out from under the bed that made me think today was the anniversary but it must have been uploaded to Flickr on the 19th and it’s showing in the Camera Roll for that date instead of the day it was taken which would have been the 17th and I am such a pathetic Moron.

photo

Busy Monday

It’s been a busy morning. I’m wrapping up lunch right now and I feel like I haven’t had a minute to get my head straight today. I also had like five typos in the previous two sentences. What’s up, Robert?

I’m tired today. I didn’t fall asleep until almost 1:30am. I was then awake at around 7:00am, which is much later than I had hoped. Oh well. I’ll make it through the day and hopefully get to bed early tonight. Maybe. Who knows.

This weekend was busy as well. I spent most of Friday out of work on sick time so that I could stay in the ER with my father. He had massive back pain come up out of nowhere on Thursday. My brother took him to the ER where they waited for nine hours before seeing a doctor. The hospital was 100% full so they couldn’t admit him for the night. He ended up staying in an ER room. I relieved my brother at around 7:00am after his heroic night without sleep. Dad’s pain seemed to fix itself somehow and he was discharged in the mid-afternoon. I got home around 5:00pm or so. Maybe a smidge earlier than that.

From there the weekend of home improvement kicked off. Jen and I made about 650 trips to various Home Depot and Lowes locations. We installed a new cabinet in the kitchen, thanks to huge help from Jen’s step father, Sherman. I installed a wire pull out shelf system which almost killed me. Sherman helped me fix a small issue I was having, and then he installed a counter top onto the new cabinet. It looked great. Jen and I did the finishing work and then started rearranging things in the kitchen. We got some new cookware and saved off the old stuff for when a certain college student graduates and potentially needs a kitchen of her own at some point over the summer.

We were actually thinking about adding three cabinets and a great big pantry and a set of four shelves, but we scrapped all of that as possible overkill. Outside of home improvement, I was only able to get to my mother once. She had a brief moment of awareness when I got there. She asked me to get her a drink. That doesn’t sound like much, but compared to how she normally acts when I am there, that little interaction was huge. A nurse brought her some ice cream too and she devoured it. Normally getting her to eat is a struggle. Not then. She dug in and went after it. It was literally heart warming.

Other than that, there was just a lot of together time with me and my love, Jen. There was a lot of television watched, too much. The Walking Dead and House of the Dragon and Rings of Power are all up to date. Tonight I will go grocery shopping. Tomorrow I have a doctors appointment in the morning. Wednesday we have tons of television to watch. Good stuff.

For now though, lunch is over. Back to work, Robert.