Gift, Food, & Snow Delivery

It’s a bit before 2am as I start typing this, so it’s technically Christmas. 🙂🎄 Yesterday I bulked up on my sleep, apparently needing it, so it was something to wake up in the late evening and see that we got almost a half foot of snow while I was conked out. A friend sent me some videos of a power transformer sparking and flashing from the snow on it, and even though it was on my road it was far enough away where I thankfully didn’t lose power. It does seem to have knocked out the internet for the night though. 😒

But we live in the future, so this is less of a big deal than it might have otherwise been. I’ve been using my phone to broadcast WiFi to the Roku, so I haven’t lost my TV yet. (Not sure how long until my cheap-o data plan reaches its limit though.) I think there’s some kind of account perk thing though, where certain streaming services don’t count towards my data cap, so maybe it’ll work out. But that’s how I’m able to punch out a blog on the laptop as well… just plugging up the phone via USB and letting the laptop feed off of its signal. Even out here in the semi-boonies. 🤓 I’m honestly surprised it works as well as it does.

I slept most of the afternoon and evening away yesterday, but I was awake for the first part of it – where I was able to grab two deliveries off of the front porch. First one was a last-minute Amazon gift delivery from Genesee, and the second was an Olive Garden meal delivery… also from Genesee. 😄 Four entrees, four salads, two things of mozzarella sticks, a bunch of bread sticks, and a piece of chocolate cheesecake. So I’m obviously gonna be hooked up for days, when it comes to painless meal prep. 🤤 And believe it or not, it was one of the salads that really “hit the spot” first for me… just because I’ve been lacking on fresh fresh stuff around here.

It was around midnight that I was talking with Amy, as she and Santa Claus were making sure that everything was all placed and ready to go, for in the morning when her hubby and all the kids wake up. She’s wagering that she’ll get to sleep in until 7am, but I think that might be optimistic. I still had the curtains drawn, so it wasn’t until she sent some pics from out her front door that I realized how much snow had fallen. 😯 Poking my head out at midnight, especially being in a level 2 snow emergency, the snow just muffles all the noise and makes the whole area seem so quiet. 😊 If I was a little more motivated, I’d be tempted to go out for a short walk in it… since it’s the first thing that really makes today seem as Christmassy as it should. Meh, it could still happen.

Okay… I just figured doing a blog entry would help me kill a little time while I hope for the regular internet to maybe come back, so I’m gonna go and reset the modem and router and mess with stuff to see if there’s anything I can do to encourage it. 🙂

Merry Christmas, all.

Feels Good

Being only a couple of days before Steven, Cassi, Athena, and their mom start moving, Cassi asked if I’d wanna come visit one more time in the afternoon yesterday – since she knows that once the process starts it’s unlikely that I’ll be making any appearances until it’s over with. 😕 It’s just that I’ve already told her that I can’t risk trying to help them out, possibly hurting myself in new and exciting ways. And just hanging around while they all hustle about… yeah, no need to emphasize my uselessness in that situation. 😒

But since things are about to get pretty crazy for them, I figured I should go up for one more chill visit (and my last time at that apartment) to serve as a distraction for both of us. 🙂 After hanging out for a while, I remembered that I had a little bit of free play on my casino card. And since money is obviously gonna be tight as they move, I figured I’d go over and play $100… twenty bucks at a time, cashing out any time that I’d double my money, and then whatever “winnings” I ended up with – I’d share with her. 🤔🤷🏻‍♂️🙂

Maybe it was karma paying me back for helping Jim out with a little money this month, and then offering to share my winnings with Cassi… but the very first machine I played, I hit for over $500. 😯😃 Hell, if that was all that I won during that trip I would have been happy, but then the same machine – just a few pulls later – hit again for over $300. 😁 Since I was way, way ahead, after that I decided to try a few different machines that I’d never really played before, just as a change of pace.

If I wasn’t hitting decent little wins, they at least kept me “even” so I could keep playing. I eventually left not because I was losing, but because it was getting later and I wanted to spend a little more time with Cassi before it started to get dark dark. After all was said and done, I ended up going home with $700 (including my original investment) and was able to give her $400 to help with moving expenses. 😌

It always feels good when you can win enough that you can plop down a wad of bills in front of someone, and go “Here.” 😅😎 (Especially when it’s legitimately helpful and appreciated.) And in times past when we’ve gone to the casino, I’ve noticed that she breaks down her winnings into five dollar bills before leaving… so I even went to the cashier and had him count out $400 worth of fives for me. 😏💵 (I did give the guy a tip, ‘cuz that was admittedly a slight pain in his ass for him… heh)

So that definitely made yesterday better than average. Didn’t anticipate things turning to shit overnight and waking up feeling like I do today, but I keep reminding myself that other than the lack of sleep and awesome new neck pain – nothing else has changed since that “goody” feeling of yesterday, so I’m trying to get the feeling of this day turned around. 😏🤞🏻 It helps that the weekend is essentially here, so I can recover without any obligations hovering over me.

Crazy Cat d00d

She’s probably one of the very few things that have kept me sane lately… 😏

Be warned, there’s almost 18 minutes of clips in this video, but it’s actually a good representation of how we usually get on. I should have gotten a couple more clips showing her actually enjoying her grooming, because she actually does, but yeah… life would be a lot different here without the spoiled beast. 🙂

A regular entry will possibly be coming later this evening…

Carry On

Well, Genesee made it home safely a little bit ago, so now officially starts the time of “carrying on” I guess. When all the condolences have been given, everyone’s concern has been shown, etc… so now it’s just back to normal. As much as I appreciated the company, I’m glad that I’m gonna have a couple days and nights where it’s just me and the cat. I can feel crappy if I want, I can feel good if I want, and I can talk out loud to Mom if I want. I could have done all that with Genesee here, but you know how it is when you have company… you want it to be the best experience for them, and right now I’m definitely not the person to be around for the best experience. Meh… I know it sounds weird, but she understands.

In a way it was difficult to make myself do it, but yesterday I took Brianna to her “4D Ultrasound” appointment. She’s approaching 32 weeks, I believe, so she wanted to see if they would be able to get any good pictures of her yet-to-be-popped-out baby. At first he had his hands (and a foot) blocking the view, but after a little poking he moved around and the technician was able to get a handful of really good shots. It’s pretty remarkable… you can actually get a decent idea of how his features look, with his Brantley-like ducky lips, Brianna’s chin and nose, and the daddy’s brow line. She has already been ready to squeeze this kid out, and seeing the pictures in such detail only made that feeling even stronger. I think he needs to cook for a couple more weeks… but she’s right, the time is definitely getting closer. I’m glad that I went.

Meh… I dunno… I just felt like typing something I guess. Not really planning to socialize much for a few days. I just wanna be here in my thoughts, feelings, and memories. Of course I’ve got a doctor appointment tomorrow, so that kinda craps up my isolation plans a bit, but it’s one where I don’t really have a choice. Not really sure what I’m gonna do other than that, but after the weekend I’m probably gonna go in and visit Dad. I’ve got that new batch of scanned photos on the iPad, and rather than just e-mailing them to him, I figured it would be nice to look at them together so he might be able to tell me stories relating to them that I haven’t heard before.

Okay… checking out. Wish me luck. (Sorry for the lack of emojis… maybe next time)

Written Word

Let me start by saying that yeah, I’m pretty messed up right now. 😞 My methods of dealing with my depression and anxiety might not be the greatest, but I’m doing what I can – and so far I’m hangin’ in there. Also, there was a point in time not too awful long ago that I wasn’t like this at all. 😳 Having said that, logic might say that since there was a time when I wasn’t this way in the past – there’s a pretty good chance that there will come a time in the future when I’m no longer like this. 🙂🤞 I just wanted to put that out here for folks that don’t really know me, and who might be assuming that I’ve just been a mess since birth or something. 😏 Not so.

Today was actually decent, helped in great part by the 15 hours of sleep that I got last night. 😧 My body finally won, fighting against my brain – which for some reason thinks that it doesn’t require any sleep at all to function. 😵 So catching up on sleep was step one, beautiful weather was step two, and then adding some frivolous stops while I was out doing my required errands was the third step that made “facing the humans” more tolerable today than I expected. 😎

Ollie’s has now been in our town long enough that I could actually take a leisurely look around the place without a thousand people and their carts getting in my way. Lots of stuff for home improvement… painting stuff, carpeting stuff… a thought which has been bouncing around in the back of my mind since I moved in here. 🤔 Decent prices there, which makes the idea of perhaps doing something in that arena less painful.

When I walked down the “office stuff” aisle though… there was a section with a bunch of little hard-cover spiral-bound notebooks that immediately shouted out to me. It’s probably been a couple of years since I’ve kept a proper journal, something which has been proven to help with my sanity, so I grabbed two of them – being optimistic that I could force myself back into the habit, just as I’ve done with this blog.

But I bought the stuff that I needed to buy, and then I picked up a few extra things like those notebooks just to add some “not meh” stuff to all my bags. And yeah, this probably sounds like the most non-interesting shopping trip / day in the world to most folks, but for me to just have a day that didn’t feel heavy… to me it was worth making an entry here. 😏

We’ve now reached the point where I’m hesitating to wrap it up here, because I’m looking over at a week-and-a-half’s worth of mail that is sitting on my couch that I absolutely have to get to tonight… and I just have a feeling that there’s gonna be one or two things in there that will try to remove my internal smile and kill my mood. 🤨 Oh, and regarding (perhaps) resuming my journal writing… if that ends up happening, at least y’all won’t have to put up with seemingly-pointless entries like this anymore, since they’ll be going in the book instead of up here. It was just a thought, for better or worse.