Category: Family

Last Friday was a bit hectic. The Brother’s cat has been having some issues. The Brother asked The Wife and I to come up to help him wrangle the cat over to the vet. Plus, The Brother trusts my wife to ask all of the good questions due to her long history of cat ownership – including cats with complicated medical issues. The cat is doing better, but it was a long day.

Sunday, The Wife and I with Brother In Law and Sister In Law traipsed down to North Port to go to their mineral spring. It was an interesting little soak, but we came home smelling of sulfur. What surprised me was the crowd. Generally, in this area, when you hear languages other than English, it tends to be some flavor of Spanish or possibly Haitian Creole. This was the first time I heard more Slavic-sounding languages than Spanish.

It’s been three years since The Wife and I established residence at Ward Manor. It’s kind of hard to believe that we’ve only been here for three years.

Last week, we took our Sphinx Boo to the kitty cardiologist for his eight month follow-up. We got good news. The issues with his ticker aren’t progressing. He’s such a submissive cat, that he didn’t even put much of a fight while getting the ultrasound.

One of my oldest friends and I have decided to start playing City of Heroes again on a recurring basis. When we’ve played before, he’s always been the brawler while I’ve always been the cannon. We started up a couple of fresh new characters and switched roles. It’s very unusual getting used to having to get up in the bad guys’ grills to hack them down.

Friday, The Wife and I set up our new digital calendar. It’s kind of like one of those picture frames where you can upload pics, but this one uploads your calendar events. Yes, we had a white board one, but with the new jobs, we were having a hard time getting that one updated regularly. Let’s just say, this had ended up causing some problems. So, we tried a technological solution. So far, so good.

Saturday was new furniture day. We bought our old sofa, couch, and ottoman from a local furniture chain. Let’s just say after multiple bad experiences, we’re no longer dealing with that chain. The old furniture’s upholstery started flaking off about a year after we moved into Wayne Manor. After a while of picking up black flecks, we put cloth covers. Those helped, but there were still problems. Finally, it built to a crescendo and The Wife and I were just done. We found an inexpensive living room set on Wayfair. Assembly actually went relatively smooth. Getting the old stuff out was much more of a problem.

Sunday was a couples’ day for The Wife and me. We scored a couple of relatively inexpensive seats to a matinee production of Hamilton at the Van Weezel in Sarasota. The Wife has been a big fan of the musical since we saw it on Disney+, and has wanted to see a live production of it. We had good seats and enjoyed ourselves immensely. This was followed up with dinner at The Melting Pot. We had a bit of frustrating in traversing the less than two miles to the restaurant. Because downtown Sarasota has been liberally seeded with roundabouts. I don not understand transportation planners’ fascination with roundabouts for busy intersections. Less busy? I can kind of see it. Anyways, we had a fun time at The Melting Pot and then enjoyed just falling into bed.

This last weekend we had the family over for Easter dinner. We just did it on Saturday because that worked for most of us better than Sunday.

The great-niece and her mom came over early because the community was holding its Easter Egg hunt. The little girl had fun filling up her egg basket. Then there was the craft-fair version of “Build-A-Bear”. Not only Great Niece, but The Wife came home with stuffed animals. Dog and Highlands Cow respectively.

Dinner was crowded but good. Lots of food. During the celebrations, we learned that Shootin’ Buddy and his partner welcomed their first child. Mom was showing around pictures of the little girl. Many congrats were sent. We look forward to meeting her in the future.

Over the weekend, The Wife and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We continued our tradition of going up to St. Augustine. There’s a bed and breakfast about a block off the historic district. The nice thing about going up there so often is that we don’t feel the need to hit every spot. There’s a few places we always make sure to visit.

It’s been an amazing five years. We went through a plague, shifting to full-time telework, job loss, multiple job changes, building a house, moving, moving in her mother with us.

Not quite a rollercoaster, but there are days when I’m happy to be boring. At least we’ve done these five years together – as partners.

Last weekend, The Wife’s boss was down and we moseyed over to Orlando to meet up with one of her coworkers who was running in a marathon at Disney.

The room we rented was on a Holiday Inn resort. Which meant upon checking in, we had to fend off the hostess trying to sign us up for “resort tour and timeshare sales pitch.” Well, that’s not what they called it, but that’s what it was. Okay, the room was good. The bed was actually comfortable, which has not been my experience in the past few hotel stays. The odd part was the layout. The “bed chamber” was at the front of the suite with the sitting room/kitchenette at the back. It made my paranoia ramp up just a bit.

Although there was a plan for everyone to meet up at some point, that didn’t happen. The Wife and I spent all day at EPCOT. Well, to be honest, we spent all day touring the World Showcase. It was The Wife’s first time, and the better part of two decades since I last stepped on to those grounds.

The TLDR is that we had a lot of fun, but felt every inch we walked. I came home with a ceramic parrot from Mexico, The Wife came home with some pink mouse ears and a Hello Kitty plushie. We also came home with a bunch of Pocky, KitKats, and other assorted goodies from Japan.

And traffic getting out fucking sucked.

There are some things you never want to hear come out of your wife’s mouth.

“Derek, what are the signs of a stroke?” is one such thing. We rushed down to the ER.

The good news? It wasn’t a stroke. Not sure what it was, but the docs are pretty sure it wasn’t a stroke.

The bad news? The Wife had to spend the weekend in the hospital. We don’t do well apart. And she had a “challenging” roommate.

Then MIL had to go in for planned surgery. She came home after a couple of nights, but it was a long couple of nights.

The cats were not pleased with all the disruptions to their lives.

We’ve spent way too much time at the hospital.

It’s been another year of loss, gain, and change at Ward Manor – with a smattering of other notable events.

The losses. The Wife’s father passed back in March. In many ways, we’d already said goodbye when he went into the memory care facility. Still, there is a world of difference between saying goodbye to the memory of a person and saying the final goodbye.

On a much more minor note, we also lost the Ward Wagon for the better part of July after I was rear-ended at the end of June.

The gains. In June we welcomed the newest member of the Ward Clowder, Boo. He assimilated into the rest of the cats faster than any other previous. If we could stop him from jumping up on the counters.

Gun-wise, I added a Smith & Wesson FPC to the armory. Due to life getting it in the way, I didn’t get to take it to a range until the last day of the year. This is also where I found the Sig red dot I bought for it wasn’t doing what I wanted. Like holding a zero.

We gained some flexibility in our budget when we paid off the Ward Wagon.

The Wife gained a trophy for winning the Area Humorous Speech Contest.

I gained a lightsaber when The Wife and I went over to Orlando for my first concert since probably 2019.

House-wise, this was a year for doing upgrades. We added a retractable screen door – which The Wife and MIL have put to good use almost all of December – as well as new glass doors to our master shower. Also, we upgraded the robot vacuums. Having the self-evacuating ones is really nice. The Wife was really happy when we upgraded to a double-oven range – particularly during some of our big family dinners. I was really happy when I upgraded the monitors on my personal and work computers. We also upgraded the dishwasher – which leaves the fridge as the last original appliance since we moved into Ward Manor. I’m not sure I would consider our new main television as an upgrade, as it was more of a replacement that happened to be a better model.

Changes. The biggest change around Ward Manor was my accepting a new position at my day job. It was a promotion, but it meant leaving a position that I held for thirteen years. It also meant leaving a team that I helped found a decade ago. It also means having to learn a lot on the fly, which I will admit, hasn’t been the most fun I’ve had this year. It also meant a couple of work-related trips, which was something I hadn’t done in quite a while. At least I got to meet a bunch of folks that I only knew virtually – as well as see some people I hadn’t seen in person since the pandemic.

Familywise, my nephew graduated high school. When it comes to kids, it’s always long days and short years. Those long days were apparent when we had our great niece while The Wife’s niece transitioned into a new work-from-home position. On the blog side, I introduced anime recommendations. I’ve been getting back into anime for the last year or so, and it’s good to share some of what I’m finding.

There were some notable anniversaries this year. First, it was the twenty-year anniversary of my father’s passing. Which was an odd coincidence when we laid my grandmother’s (his mother’s) ashes in the same family plot around the same time he passed. Second, it was the fifteenth anniversary of the blog. It’s been interesting to look back through the archives and see how it evolved over that time. Speaking of blog-related anniversaries, it was also the tenth anniversary of Metal Tuesdays. Perhaps the happiest anniversary was the five-year anniversary of asking The Wife to marry me.

The TLDR is that everyone had a wonderful little holiday and probably overstuffed ourselves on good food. I got some neat toys for my stocking stuffers and have another neat toy coming after using the gift certificate from MIL. The Wife’s niece got me an anime-style catzila t-shirt,

Last week, The Wife and I went to the optometrist. I hadn’t been in a few years and my prescription needed updating. It updated into progressive lenses. Yeah more aging.

I also renewed my concealed weapons permit. So now I have a permit with my current face.

Last week was Mom’s birthday dinner. She came down with The Brother to Ward Manor. Original plan was to order some barbecue from a local shop. Which went awry when I found out that the place was closed for the entire week. Alternate dinner plans were hastily made with DoorDash.

Mom had The Wife for the family secret Santa. The Wife and I couldn’t make the family holiday party, so Mom brought her present for The Wife to the birthday dinner. Two pieces of uranium glass – and a small black light to make them phosphoresce. Dinner was good, and we played a pretty decent card game. Late night, but a good night.

Saturday, the plan was for Mom to come down to join The Wife, MIL, and me to go to Manatee Historic Village’s Old Florida Christmas. So, we came down to for breakfast to find the main television had taken a dump. Refused to turn on. I’m not an expert on televisions, so we consulted The Wife’s niece. Using his advice, a new tv was purchased, and he agreed to come hang it. Still, it was a fucking bit of frustration. And a non-inconsequential sum of money. Thankfully, it’s that time of year for sales.

The Old Florida Christmas was more bustling this year. Some purchases were made. Then we headed to Hobby Lobby. Because of course we did. Lunch/dinner was at Olive Garden after MIL stated she had never eaten in one.

Monday, The Wife’s nephew came over to hang the new television. Pulled the old one down, took off the rails, started to put them on the new tv – and the screws are the wrong size, No, none of my screws will work. Nephew is coming by later in the week to install the new dishwasher, so he’ll bring the proper screws then. I start going through the small parts bag. Huh, Sony has these spacers – just to make it easier to hang the television. So, now we have a brand new OLED tv. The Wife is ecstatic with how it looks.

m

The Wife and SIL trade off who hosts the holidays. This year, Ward Manor hosted Thanksgiving. The TLDR is that we had a nice crowd and lots of food. Too much in my opinion, but I’ve been on a kick to keep leftovers to a minimum. Mostly to avoid waste. Personal opinion, not shared by most of the family.

We did almost lose one of the cats. Freya, our crazy yearling, decided that Thanksgiving meant Ward Manor had to be treated like a rally track. This resulted in her shooting through some gaps in the furniture at breakneck speed. She didn’t always judge the gaps the best – including the one between the couch and sofa end tables. Which had my laptop and fresh cup of Earl Grey tea. The good news is that I didn’t need to shell out a couple grand for a new laptop. The bad news is that I didn’t get a new laptop. Well, that and we had to go through the hassle of pulling up and washing the front room rug.

Just life at Ward Manor – even during the holidays.