Merry Christmas!

I'm still not sure about the future of this sad and neglected little blog, but I did want to share the cutest little boy meeting Santa at school, and share a brag from his teacher. 

 

 

She wrote to his mom with a picture of him doing a color matching game, and reported to his mom that after she showed the kids the colors a couple of times, he matched every color without any mistakes, said all the color names, and also added the signs for the colors. Because his school also teaches sign language. 

We were at Epcot for the festival at the end of Thanksgiving weekend. The weather was not our friend, and a lot of the Christmas Around the World presentations were rained out, including my favorite, Father Christmas. We did see La Befana, so all was not lost. And The Kid got her first ride on Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind.  Henceforth called "Guardians" because all long descriptive Disney names are quickly given a shorthand name or an acronym by hardcore Disney folk. It's Guardians. Anyway...

When we do rides with the Little Prince along, we rider swap. The Kid and I rode Guardians first, and...the ride broke down while we were in one of the pre-show rooms. Guardians is an elaborate experience. If you haven't done Disney, there are often "pre-shows" that get you prepped for the ride experience, and it's timed so the enormous Disney crowd moves through the rooms to balance the crowd until it's time to actually get to the final show before getting on the ride.  At Disney World it gets you out of the Florida sun and entertains you while you move through the very, very long lines. Guardians does it very, very well, and the looong walk in for those who didn't score Lightning Lanes is really very cute and fun, though very, very long. We had Lightning Lanes, so we bypassed a lot of the really cute stuff that introduces those who haven't seen the movies to the basics of who's who and what the hell is going on. Usually, bypassing the regular line is a smooth and easy experience, unless there are technical issues. We had technical issues. We got stuck in a sort of holding pen in one of the pre-show rooms. And we waited. And we waited. 

If I'd been alone I'd have bailed out the side door. People did. But it was her first ride ever, so we waited and waited, for about 40 minutes. I told her I was earning Grandma of the Year for this shit, my feet hurt, but we persevered. 

FINALLY the ride re-started and we climbed on. The Kid did her "Ooh, I'm so scared" performative drama like she was staging a Tik-Tok in her imagination. Grandma and her sore feet pointed out that there were 8 year olds on the ride, it's considered a "family coaster" and you just have to be 40 inches tall to ride, so spare me your faux drama. She rides the roller coasters at Sea World, and Grandma is way too chicken to do those. She laughed. And we launched. WHEEE!!!

I'd been on it once before, shortly after it opened (because wait times for it are insane, and getting a Lightning Lane for is is like winning lotto) and I knew it was wild, but I didn't really remember it that well, because it'd been a couple of years and I think my eyes were shut for most of it. 😂

DAMN! It was very wild. I vowed to not just shut my eyes and pray to survive, so I kept my eyes open while screaming! It is visually stunning, while you're moving way too fast to really fully absorb it all. I love screaming on roller coasters, I swear it resets my nervous system and lowers my stress.  The Kid pronounced it the best roller coaster ever, and she's been on nearly everything in Orlando.

And, as my issue with coasters is 90% whether anything will hurt when I get off the ride, I can report that Guardians is fine for this old lady. It's wild, you do some sideways turns and I had to remind myself not to tense up or try to fight it, just relaxed into it. It's intense, but again, anyone 40 inches tall can ride.

My heart still belongs to Big Thunder Mountain RR and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom, but I'd do Guardians again if I get the chance. It's very cool and nothing hurt afterward. 

Then we found The Prince and his parents, the Royal Stroller was passed, and his parents rode Guardians while we waited. They didn't have to deal with any issues and were on and off in a far more reasonable time, and that was our visit. We headed for the parking lot, said our goodbyes there (I was in a different lot) and we drove home in torrential rain. We got into our cars shortly before the skies really opened up. 

That was pretty much it for Christmas at Epcot this year. It didn't go as planned due to the weather, but it was fun anyway. And the small person was just born for Disney. He already loves Mickey Mouse and is now obsessed with the monorail, and he's just always up for adventure and in a good mood. The sounds of small children melting down were all around us, but he was always, "Okay, what's next?" He does pass out in the car on the way home, but damn, this kid can DO Disney.

For the first time in forever, I'm NOT hosting Christmas. My daughter and FSIL are doing it at their house. We all agreed that the Prince turned loose with Eddie at Grandma's Condo Full of No-Nos would not lead to a peaceful holiday meal, and I'm more than ready to pass the torch of holiday hosting to the next generation. I will show up with presents and a side dish, and I'm delighted to have reached this point where my daughter has an awesome partner I love to pieces and they have a home together. 

The Kid did express disappointment that they wouldn't be going to Grandma's this year, which was both touching and made me laugh.  We live a 15 minute walk apart. They have a nice house in a wooded neighborhood. I have a condo on the golf course. I was touched that she was feeling sentimental about "Going to Grandma's for Christmas" like I'd ever been one of those Hallmark movie grandma's house experiences. Apparently we did make a tradition while I wasn't paying attention. We'll figure out a compromise next year, when the very smart and very active small human will have matured just a bit. 

So that's how I'm wrapping up 2025. I'm not feeling entirely upbeat about 2026, but I do have a feeling that in general things are moving in the right direction. It's going to be a shitshow, but we'll get through it.  Happy Holidays!

Hi there! I Live.

 This blog, not so much. Sorry about that. It's been limping along for so long, and I feel guilty for abandoning it. Blogging seems to have gone the way of cave paintings. 

Anyway, everybody's well here. The grandchildren, aka the Kid and the Prince and the NC girls who (mostly for privacy reasons) aren't discussed much here are all doing great. The adults are too. 

I remain plugged in to the insanity this country is going through, and because this isn't my first recession disaster movie, (though this one is truly the most insane) I have not picked a firm retirement date yet, because yeah. My employer is still paying me, appreciates me, and wants me to stick around, so whee, it looks like I'll still be working full time until I'm closing in on 68, if not beyond. I will never, ever forgive the ASSHOLES WHO VOTED FOR THIS AND FUCKED UP MY RETIREMENT. FUCK YOU. May your children go no contact.  

And that's all I have to say about that.  Well, I have a lot more to say, but blood pressure, etc.

Anyway, I'm focusing on gratitude for all the things that AREN'T fucked up for me and mine.  

The Kid's volleyball team will be playing in New Orleans and I forget what other city in competition next spring, and this and the age of her mother's car means a family Disney cruise in spring 2026 ain't looking promising.  

She's planning her high school plan, and trying to decide between the IB program at the school she's zoned for that offers it, or AP classes at her local HS, which is the school her mother and uncle attended. It was A rated when they went there, now it has a Republican government C. 

Despite that I honestly am leaning AP for her, because while the International Baccalaureate program is certainly something she's capable of doing, between the commute and the course load and her volleyball, it just sounds like too much. High school should be fun and have time for exploration of choices. She could do what her mother did and knock out her freshman year of college via AP classes and still have a life beyond the academic grind.  

IB = a leg up on her dream of an Ivy, but let's get real, she's very smart and ambitious FL girl who probably should focus more on thinking about her future beyond college. Regardless of her choice,  she'll get into a good school NOT in FL, do well, etc. etc., but I want her to choose something she genuinely finds interesting and worth her time.

If I'd had the chance to do that, I'd be retiring as an environmental biologist or a zoologist right about now, instead of a former paralegal who was lucky enough to transfer her previous life into a decent research gig that pays the bills but isn't very stimulating, but hey, pays the bills and I shall be grateful. I AM grateful. 

The Prince is splendid. Truly splendid. Sometimes I think about his birth and the hole in his heart and the weeks in the NICU and all that DRAMA, and about how many things could have gone wrong with him and his mental and physical development. He's not just normal, he's splendid.

He's not just healthy and normal for his age, he dazzled his pediatrician at his checkup. His doctor said the usual height-weight calculations do not do his overall development justice, and his grandma was so glad to hear it.  (He's also developing above average on height-weight etc., but his personality is already way above average.) I am not surprised, because both his parents are very above average humans, but the Drama surrounding his birth did leave us all with fingers crossed that he would emerge unscathed. He did. Case closed. He's just an above average and ridiculously cute little boy. 

I was so happy when they got him into his amazing school. This daycare/preschool has been in business since his mom was his age, and it's one of those legacy places where parents who went there send their kids there, so he was lucky to get in (I didn't get his mom and uncle in). They mixed their own waffle batter and ate their own waffles! I mean, seriously!!  

He has had a haircut at Daddy's barber since these were taken. 

His awesome mommy made the best Thanksgiving plans ever: Reservations! We will be doing Thanksgiving at Raglan Road again. It's been a couple of years and I'm delighted to do it again.  Then we'll do a bit of the Christmas Tree Stroll, and maybe hit my two favorite stores:  Basin and Bowes Candles.  I'm also taking a couple of days off post Thanksgiving. We will hit the Epcot Festival of the Holidays, because the Prince is now getting up to speed on what Christmas is all about (yeah, at 18 months he's figuring this stuff out) and needs to meet La Befana and Father Christmas, our two must visit holiday storytellers. 

 

 

In Other News....

No, I'm not much better. I'll be sad a long time. The house felt so empty today. It really struck me how much Gidget influenced the vibe, the energy, whatever you want to call it. She wasn't noisy or intrusive or anything but a sweet, smart little dog, but damn, she had presence, even when she was snoring in her bed in my office while I worked. Her absence is felt so much.

Eddie went to the groomer today, and the groomer, who has been grooming my dogs for, damn, 13 years? Hugged me, and again I had to try not to cry when she said how much she loved Gidget and how she was truly a special dog. She lost her dog to a random cancer too, and yeah, it sucks so very much. 

Eddie is of course a joy, but he's adjusting too. It's really noticeable in the morning. We had a morning routine - I turn on the coffee maker, the dogs go out for o-dark-thirty morning walks. We come in and I get coffee and they get treaties. 

For the last few days, Eddie was at sea. He didn't know what he was supposed to do at first. Are there still treaties? I had to tell him yes, he gets morning treats! She was his leader, all nine pounds of few teeth and deafness and cataracts, she was small and in charge, and now he has to figure it out. We both do.

Anyway, in other news...

My new bed was delivered last week, while the world came crashing down. I didn't actually get an uninterrupted night's sleep until the weekend. 

Damn, I love this bed! Yes, it was expensive, but the best money I've spent in forever! I have a sleep app on my Apple watch (not the one included in Health, this one is more detailed) and I now have days of evidence that my sleep has vastly improved, even with the sadness and stress. 

My app has a bar graph of sleep, it shows restful, restless, and interrupted. My bar graph was always colorful, basically half restful (darker blue), half broken (lighter blue), with some interruptions (shown in red) - all three colors were always represented, in little stripes. My resting heart rate wasn't restful, it's now much lower. I honestly had no idea how that ancient bed (and then the Fail Bed) was fucking up my sleep. It was bad, and now I have evidence of how bad. 

If you have sleep issues, don't assume it's your subconscious or your diet or your chakras aren't aligned or whatever. They may be a problem too, but your first suspect should be your bed. 

Now I get enormous stretches of restful sleep, with the occasional and totally normal moments of restless, like a flicker here and there. No interrupted sleep, for the first time in forever.  So, definitely money well spent. 

An Awful Update.

 I started to write a fairly detailed chronological account of how this week went but I just can't, I'm too sad and tired.

 Gidget had to be put to sleep yesterday. I'm still reeling. A week ago today she was fine, on the couch eating treats and bullying Eddie for his. The week began with her limping a bit, and I assumed she'd pulled a muscle jumping off the ottoman. She'd done it before. She didn't want to go up and down the stairs so I carried her, again, nothing suspicious in that. She was otherwise normal, and Monday she even seemed to be walking better.  I told myself I'd call the vet if she didn't fully improve by Wednesday, maybe she needed muscle relaxants or something.

Tuesday she had bloody diarrhea in the night and was obviously in pain. I called the vet and they got her in as an emergency. Her doctor and I both assumed it was a recurrence of pancreatitis, she'd had one incident of that last year. It wasn't. In fact, all her bloodwork was fine, other than elevated readings associated with a painful infection. She was given fluids and pain meds and antibiotics for what looked like an intestinal issue.

Then Tuesday night she couldn't use her rear legs more than a bit, hobbling and half dragging herself. Back to the vet Wednesday for additional meds, this time adding a steroid. Again, we assumed this was pain related due to her intestinal pain, until it progressed. She couldn't walk more than a few steps. Now the suspicion turned to maybe a slipped disk from jumping off the ottoman?

Then by yesterday morning she couldn't stand or walk, but worse, she couldn't pee or poop, not just because of the apparent paralysis, but apparently because her body wasn't getting the signals to do it. They expressed her bladder manually twice. She put up no resistance and didn't even notice. 

At this point her doctor said, "I want to do spinal x-rays, no charge."  

I'm not trained to read x-rays, but even I could see a fairly large spot along her spine where the vertebrae looked like a cloud of something around and through the vertebrae.  Her doctor said it was most likely a fast progressing cancerous tumor. It was moving very fast. She had not only lost the use of half her body, but even her front legs were looking weird, she was sitting with her paws facing east-west, not just a little, but fully sideways. She could half sit up, but not pull herself up straight. I think at that point I knew that whatever it was (almost certainly some form of cancer) , it was progressing like wildfire, blocking all the signals for movement and even basic bodily functions.

So her doctor and I agreed that there was no reasonable further treatment. I've had to euthanize pets before, but this one was the most heartbreaking, not just because it was so sudden, but because Gidget was alert and aware and frightened by her inability to move. Her doctor and I were both in tears, and she said, "I'm the professional, I'm not supposed to cry!" and we sort of laughed through our tears. Gidget was a very special little dog, everyone who knew her loved her, including the staff at her vet's office, who usually only saw her for her allergy shot, because she was otherwise a healthy senior dog.

 So, yeah. The bestest little girl is gone. I've been so touched by the outpouring of grief from everyone she knew, from the vet staff who were sad and silent, to her groomer (she'd actually been scheduled for a haircut, I'd made the appointment a week ago) to, well, everybody. I received so many texts and messages about how wonderful she was. It was a privilege to be her mommy for the last six years. I'm so sad it ended too early and so awfully. 

The Great Bed Adventure, Part Two.

 So, it's here, and it's 6:30 pm and I'm ready to go to bed. I can't of course, the dogs will need a bedtime potty no earlier than 8:30, but then we will all go enjoy the new bed. 

I did test it briefly of course, but I had stuff to do so I didn't dare get too comfortable, lest I fall asleep. 

Because last night was not good. And it left me seriously questioning my Apple watch, which claims I got nearly 8 hours of sleep with only two disruptions. It lies. It is a lying liar. 

I was going to sleep on the couch, but when the old bed left, the dogs were deeply confused. I realized that I wouldn't get a minute's sleep on the couch with two small dogs vying for every available square inch, because OMG MOM! SOMEBODY STOLE THE BED! 

So I set up the air mattress I have on hand for the occasional Kid sleepover. Last time we fired it up was the week the Prince was born, when her overnight with me turned into several days.  It has been in the back of the office closet since. 

I dragged it out and set it up in the space where the bed had been, and coaxed the dogs that it was safe to sleep there. At least it afforded more space for none of us to get any sleep.

It's a very nice air mattress, one of those taller ones with the built in inflation - deflation pump, but yeah, I'm officially too old to sleep on an air mattress. The dogs hated it too, because it was noisy! Every time anybody shifted, it softly sighed and/or farted. Even the ancient mattress, though old enough to be haunted, at least was always silent. At one point I rolled over (fart sound) to see Eddie's head up, like he was on duty. I patted him and told him it was okay, that's just this bed, and he put his head down and slept a bit. 

Then I worked half the day. I took the afternoon off because at this point I hadn't had a decent night's sleep in two weeks, and I got a lot of small random house things done while waiting for the bed delivery and setup. Again, two very nice young men wrestled it up the stairs and set up the base and showed me the buttons on the remote, which is truly a no-brainer. 

 I made the bed and gave the settings a quick whirl to be sure I understood it, yes, no brainer. 

And I absolutely hated those legs, and the lack of a headboard. Mostly the legs though. It looked so institutional. 

I knew nothing about what styling things worked with an adjustable bed, so I Googled bedskirts that work with adjustable beds. And I discovered that  I already owned one!  

The ancient bedskirt from the ancient bed was so old, when I removed it I discovered that it was discolored by the sun on the window-facing side. So a few months ago I bought a cheap wraparound bed skirt. It also worked on the old bed frame with the new mattress that failed. When I totally changed plans for the adjustable bed base I assumed that bed skirt was $20 down the drain. But hey now!

The Google told me that a wraparound bed skirt will work just fine with an adjustable base, and I swear it looks better on this bed than the old one. It hangs perfectly, and I've tested it with the bed's motions and it doesn't move at all. I did not stage this photo for the internet because I'm tired and lazy, so the bedspread is uneven and wrinkled, and there's a dog in need of a haircut asking why we aren't in bed yet. It was 4 p.m. His hair will get cut on Friday.

The bedskirt helps so much, but it still definitely needs a headboard. I've ordered the brackets to attach one, and here's a tip: my first search took me to Amazon, where they do indeed sell universal headboard mounting kits, for over $50.

The actual Tempur-Pedic website had the kit for my model base for $25.  It'll be here tomorrow, though I'm still shopping for the headboard. 

And as I'd hoped, the loyal old Ethan Allen bed frame went to a happy new home. 

 

 I put it on the neighborhood Facebook page (we are blessed with a sane and well run FB page here) and had three takers in 15 minutes. I disassembled it myself and hauled most of it to the garage, though my daughter and FSIL stopped by to take the headboard and footboard down the stairs, it took 5 minutes. Today a neighbor showed up with her minivan, put the seats down and had it loaded up and off to its new life in minutes. I will always miss it, but when I elevate my head to watch TV in bed I will somehow get over it.

The great bed adventure has concluded.