Happy whatevereth of January

I miss the sun. I miss being on the world's third-largest ocean liner with nothing to do except relax and soak up the sun, miles and miles away from this cold and snow and cold.  

Seriously, why did my parents have to settle so far north?  They got married in Oklahoma.  Right now, the weather in the town where they got married? It's 50ºF with a "feels like" of 66ºF and a 70% chance of rain. 

Where I am right now, it's 35ºF with a "feels like" of 28ºF, mostly cloudy,  and a cold front is moving in. I mean, a COLD front. As in, on Monday the high is supposed to be -4ºF.  Did you see the negative sign in front of that 4?  That means four degrees below zero.  Zero means nothing; how can the temperature be less than nothing?!

And on the same token, this is what we call Bragging Weather. I'd rather have sub-zero weather than 10 feet of snow.  Sub-zero weather is what the Midwest is known for.  We just throw on another layer or two and go about our lives.  Of course we complain, because we don't like living where the air hurts our faces.  But we deal with it and move on.

Anyhoo . . . next week I'm finally taking my car to the shop to be repaired. Or didn't I tell you about that? Right before Christmas, I hit a deer on the way to work.  I'm fine, just mad.  The deer was fine, it lost some fur and ran away.  My Equinox has a big gaping wound and I'm super embarrassed to be seen driving it.  Alright, maybe not a "big" gaping wound, but it's missing part of the grill and I really am embarrassed to be driving it the way it is, but it really was right before Christmas and then after that we went on our trip, and since we got back we've both been sick with this upper respiratory crap, and it's only been the last day or two that I've started feeling human again so yesterday I finally made the appointment to take it to the body shop.  Is it weird that they want me to take all of my personal belongings out of it before I drop it off? I have a lot of personal belongings in there.  Is it weird that I have a lot of personal belongings in my vehicle? I spend a lot of time there, I guess.  I know what I'm doing this weekend.  

And another thing! This whole nonsense of being sick every time we get back from a big trip -- that has got to stop.  8 years ago after our trip to Hawaii, when I came back with strep and bronchitis, I chalked it up to 12 hours straight in an airport and then 8+ hours in an airplane.  But now? Coming back from an awesome, relaxing cruise and being sick for 2 weeks? No. Ain't nobody got time for that.  Ain't nobody got PTO for that, either.  I wanted to start 2025 being rested and relaxed and ready to kick ass in the new year, not hacking up a lung and being dead on my feet after 4 hours of work, then coming home and crawling into bed at 6pm every night.  Thank God I'm starting to feel better, and also Thank God the house was clean before we left because I have not had the energy or motivation to do anything since we got back! All my Christmas decorations are up still.  I don't care, I'll probably leave them up for a while now.  Or I might take them down this weekend, too, once I remove all my personal belongings from the Nox.  

But seriously.  I guess, besides drugging myself up to avoid motion sickness on our next trip, I'll have to throw in some immune-boosting crapola, too.  

I might be in a cheerier mood today if the sun was shining.  Or I might not be, because it's Friday and I don't like Fridays.  Still.  It's been almost six months, and I still don't like them.  Is that ever going to change? Rhetorical question.  You can't answer it. I can't answer it. No one can answer it.  I would guess that Fridays will probably never be the same for me ever again, although even now some are worse than others.  

I have really been missing my horse lately. I know I have another horse, but, her and I don't click like Nicker and I did.  I think I've talked about that in here before and, anyway, it makes me sad to think about so I'm going to change the subject now.  Also, I can't ride Shasta, and that's part of what I've been missing, which is funny because even if Nicker was still alive I probably wouldn't ride her because she'd be like going on 32 years old and I hadn't ridden her in a few years anyway.  Oh, well. Next topic!

I should write about my sister one of these days.  How she hasn't talked to me in person since about, what, 2012? I have replayed that last interaction in my head so many times, trying to figure out what I did wrong.  It was after her oldest son's graduation party, we (my hubby and son and I) were leaving and as we were walking out to our vehicle, she asked me -- and forgive me because I don't remember the exact way she worded it. It was an awkward question and I didn't know it would be such a turning point in our relationship.  But she asked me something along the lines of what I thought of her boyfriend or if I approved of him, or something like that.

Now, let me explain something here.  Her boyfriend was at the party.  Let me explain something else: my brother-in-law was also at the party.  My brother-in-law meaning her husband.  We had all ("we" meaning me, my husband, and my parents) been told ahead of time that the boyfriend would be there but under the guise of being a family friend or something like that, because my sister didn't want her husband to know he was her boyfriend.  Totally and completely awkward and just...weird.  All of it.  

So when she asked if I approved or something like that, I told her, No.  Which was obviously not the answer she wanted.  Up until then, she had been wanting me to meet her boyfriend so badly. She even said she wanted my approval.  Up until then I did as I had been taught and just ignored it and pretended it would go away if I didn't acknowledge it...but then I broke.  I couldn't do it anymore.  No, I told her.  I don't approve.

And I didn't.  I didn't like the guy. He was creepy.  I didn't like lying in front of my brother-in-law and my whole family.  Even if "everybody knew anyway" (except my brother-in-law, or maybe he did, IDK).  If she wanted to date, fine; get divorced first! Don't effing use your kids as pawns (which I knew she was doing to some extent but wouldn't find out until much later that she was doing this to such a degree, it makes me feel horrible for not being a better person and rescuing my nephews)  For weeks after that we "discussed" this over emails and texts, she kept saying I didn't understand and we should get together so she could explain and I kept saying OK, let's do that, then, but she kept coming up with reasons why she couldn't get together at the days and times I'd suggest, and then pretty soon she just started blocking me and . . . here we are.

And I have to go back to work now. HA! I'll write more about this saga later. Because there is so much more I need to get out of my puny human brain...

I thought of something funnier than 24.

Where were YOU when it flipped from 2024 to 2025?

I was on a boat -- one of my happy places.  Next to my hubby.  Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.  Technically not even in the United States, I believe.  I probably would have slept right through the official changing of the new year, except we heard the cheers of several thousand people a few decks below us, and we were both half-awake enough to mumble, "Happy New Year" to each other before we rolled over and went back to sleep.  

Okay, so it was more than "a boat".  It was a 17-deck cruise ship that was once the world's largest passenger ship, the Allure of the Seas.  And we were likely sailing somewhere in the Bahamas at that time.  Our first cruise, our first time out of the country, what a way to ring in the new year, I tell ya!

This was kind of a test.  See, all of my life I have been one of those "prone to motion sickness" people.  I can't do amusement park rides.  I always had to call "shotgun" because I couldn't ride in the backseats of cars.  Sometimes even standing on docks would make me nauseated.  We went to a waterpark once, and I got sick after going down a freaking slide.  I had pretty much figured I would never ever get to go on a cruise ever in my life because there would just be no way. 

Then we got our little fishing boat.  And I love fishing.  I love going out in boats.  I really do.  And I used to get nauseated at first, but I just kept taking the medication and using the Sea Bands and everything until I started not needing them anymore.  And we started flying more places, and that started being alright, too.  I mean not completely alright -- but manageable. Instead of needing to take three meds just to handle a short flight across the country, I can do it with just one now.  And it's more prophylactic than anything.  I haven't actually thrown up on an airplane in over 27 years.  Go, me!

Fast forward to last year, we started talking about what to do for our 50th birthdays and also our 30th anniversary (50th birthdays were last year, 30th anniversary will be next year).  The hubby suggested a European cruise for our anniversary, and then he suggested that we take a "test cruise" this year to see if I could handle it.  Sure, I said.  Let's try it.  Yeah, I was less than enthused at the time; to be honest, I was less than enthused about anything in 2024.  I wasn't sure if I'd actually be able to handle a cruise, and I have never actually thought about going on a Caribbean vacation, so when he booked us a cruise to the Bahamas, I was feeling way more out of my element than anything else.  

But oh my gosh. It happened, and I was armed with scopolamine patches and ondansetron tablets and sea bands and diphenhydramine and it could not have gone better! The only time I felt nauseated was the night before we set sail when I ate too big of a deli sandwich for supper and then layed down to sleep almost immediately afterward.  Not once on the ship did I feel an iota of motion sickness.  I didn't even wear the sea bands most of the time, and I only took the Zofran when we were actually moving.

I feel like I'm over-reacting but this is also huge for me.  I'm not going to go out and start hitting up amusement parks or anything, but...it's pretty freaking awesome not to be motion sickness' bitch anymore.

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Oh yeah, and now we've traveled to another country, blah blah blah. But it didn't really feel like it. The Bahamas is very touristy and we didn't go very far away from the ship or the pier.  We didn't sign up for any shore excursions, just in case I wasn't feeling well.  And honestly, we both needed to just chill and rest and do nothing anyway.  I got a nice tan, that I now have to hide under layers of clothing because it's freaking cold here in the tundra, but that's okay. It was so nice to have nothing to do but just lay in the sun and warm up like a cold-blooded reptile.  There were way too many other people but at the same time, it was nice to be anonymous among them. Except for the fact that we were all packed together in the same relatively small area and now I've got this nasty cough that I can't seem to shake, and an odd rash on my arm that reminds me that the loungers I loved so much were definitely not disinfected between users.  YAY!

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In other news, not much. I'm back to work full-time now, no more day-off-during-the-week-to-spend-with-Mom.  Feeling bittersweet about that.  It will be an adjustment for all of us, but, it wasn't meant to be a permanent arrangement anyway.  I'll still go over and help her out, and spend the night at her place, but after I'm done with work or on my WFH days.  

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Don't think I missed the fact that the 5-month milestone passed while I was gone.  It's weird.  Almost 6 months.  Almost half a year.  That seems like so long and yet, not.  I've never gone this long without seeing my Dad before.  Most of the time I feel numb when people ask "How are you doing?" and things like that, but if someone were to ask me a specific question about my Dad, I would absolutely lose it.  I saw a meme on FB that said something like, Don't ask me how I'm doing, ask me to share one of my favorite memories with you -- or something along those lines.  And that made me think -- No, don't do that! I will definitely break down in front of you if you do that.  

I unjoined all the "grief" groups I had joined on FB because it was just too much, seeing all that on social media all the time.  I don't know if that's avoidance or protection or healing or none of the above, but it just gets so depressing seeing those kinds of posts all the time.  Dad wouldn't want me to sit around and be depressed because of him.  

Dad's birthday is at the end of this month.  I'm not looking forward to that.

Gotta get back to work! TTYL