All Good Things Must Come To An End

 My daughter’s summer camp ends today. As you read this, we will already be packed and on the road headed home. It’s been a little over two weeks since we arrived, and it has been a blur of work and sleep for me. M&M has been enjoying her last year as a pre-teen camper. Next year, she will be staying in the dorms with the teens and participating in full spectrum of camp activities which includes being escorted to the dining hall by the teen boy campers. 

To say that The Queen and I are prepared for young men to be interested in our daughter would be a gross overstatement. We know most of the boys in the church at least passingly well. Some better than others. I honestly don’t know with which boy I would be comfortable trusting my daughter (as if I have much say in the matter). 

For now, I will let next year’s worries wait until next year. I didn’t get out much this year since I was on kitchen duty again. But here are some photos of my time here. 

M&M at mealtime with some of her friends. 

Sabbath church services all dressed up. M&M is 12. The young lady next to her is 19. Can you believe it?

The camp runs on its collective stomach. The kids and staff burn a huge amount of calories while here. Very few people miss a meal here, and it’s interesting to see people ignore their special diets while at camp. 

M&M had a “cold bore” shot in the yellow. 

Happy camper. 

One of my kitchen staff companions enjoying an early morning canoe outing. 

A nearly perfect omelette. The first few each year are kinda ugly, but we hit a groove where we know how much and how long to make a decent looking folded omelette. 

The side by side omelette station gets pretty messy after slinging several dozen omelettes two at a time with a partner in crime sharing the station with you. I try to avoid the solo station as that’s where the special needs ingredients are (dairy free eggs and vegan cheese). 

Our main dishwasher. She had a lot of help from campers and staffers alike. It’s eye watering how big a mess we can make in a short amount of time. I tried to be a good coworker and rinse my utensils and cookware before leaving it stacked to run through the wash. The kids though…I’m not saying some of them were raised by bears in a barn, but they can sure see it from where they were raised. 

Our main prep and cooking area. It gets pretty tight in there with multiple butts competing for space. The stove and griddle are my main areas of operation. 

The infamous tilt skillet / steam bath. That’s our kitchen staff director doing battle with something. If you embiggen the pic, you can see the steam up around the ceiling lights. 

M&M awaiting her turn on the knee board at the lake. 

240 ounces of li’l smokies. I have no idea how many those are, but we get them up to temp and on the line for hungry folks. My second favorite breakfast item here at camp after breakfast tacos. 

Scrambled eggs but the skillet load. We crack and scramble 22 dozen eggs most days with the exception of the 5 omelette days. That’s 264 eggs that have to be cooked everyday. Those skillets get pretty heavy. It normally takes us five or six batches of eggs to cook them all. 

M&M's Monday Meme Madness

Today's collection of memes is brought to you by M&M. She has developed a keen sense of humor and has been bombarding me with snake and horse memes....because she wants a horse and a snake. Enjoy.

 

A Girl in Her Happy Place

The crown princess, M&M, communing with her riding instructor's horse, Primera. M&M is horse crazy like no other kid I've seen. She's trying to convince me to build a barndominium with a horse stall on the other side of the wall from her bedroom. I asked if she wanted a window into the stall too. 

I'm destined to go broke feeding animals and stroke out while cleaning up horse turds.

Is This Thing Still On?

There are lots of euphemisms I could use to explain my relative absence from this space for the last five months. Suffice it to say, much has transpired since we last saw our hero relocating to the supposed peace and tranquility of east Texas. I’m still looking for the proverbial country record that I can play backwards to get stuff back not the least of which is my sanity. 

So, let’s set the Wayback Machine for early May when we closed on the “new” old house. 

That was supposed to be a happy day. I was really looking forward to moving in and getting settled after all the chaos from the preceding year. 

Sigh….such was not to be. 

Once we took possession of the house and were able to get in a look around at what needed doing, The Queen immediately noticed the overwhelming odor of cat urine. It took a few minutes, but it finally penetrated my nasal passages which are not the greatest sniffers on a good day. A trip to Lowe’s for a UV Flashlight revealed that, yes, indeed, the prior owners cats' had sprayed everywhere all over the house. The worst of it was the living room. A quick inspection of the walls in the living room revealed that what we thought was painted sheetrock was, in fact, painted wallpaper over sheetrock. 

Well, thinks I, that’s a simple matter of removing the wallpaper (in a room roughly 15’ wide 19’ long with 12’ ceilings….I am such an optimist) and painting the walls underneath. 

 Let’s just say that Murphy is a dirty rotten scoundrel who hates me personally. 

 If you were not aware, East Texas is, in addition to being as hot as the rest of Satan’s outhouse in the summer, humid as steam bath. Why is this important? Well, we discovered through careful research that exterior walls that have wallpaper in a humid environment with HVAC will trap moisture and make for the perfect conditions to grow mold and mildew. 

Guess what we found behind the wallpaper in the living room? If you guessed mold and mildew, give yourself a gold star. Guess who has a major allergy to mold and mildew? If you guessed The Queen and M&M, give yourself another gold star. 

 Not happy making for Daddy Hawk. 

In addition to trying to get settled and keep work going, now I have to figure out how to get rid of mold and mildew off of sheetrock and find a place for The Queen and M&M to hide while doing so. 

 To add insult to injury, my boss called 17 days later and let me know my services were no longer required for the company. 

Well, POOP and other assorted four letter words. They claimed performance issues were the reason. I’ve never missed a deadline or failed to respond to matters timely. Yes, the preceding year or two were a challenge with caring for The Queen mum and dealing with the aftermath of her death, but who wouldn’t have challenges under those circumstances. So much for care and compassion and “work / life balance”. 

So, there I sit. Haven’t made the first payment on the mortgage, no job, a major project to deal with and a house that is unlivable for 2 out of the 3 members of the household. I did the only thing a rationale person could do. I called my realtor and asked what it would take to get the house back on the market. 

Over the next month and a half, I (with some help from The Queen), removed all the wallpaper from the living and study, discovered a water leak in the skylights (which were later determined to have been improperly installed in the distant past), hired a contractor to fix the skylights, painted the living room, hired another contractor to texture the study walls and master bath ceiling and did my best to keep up with the lawn care, car maintenance and job searching. 

We finally got the house on the market, and it sold for full price within a couple of weeks. Fortunately, I was able to land a temporary gig starting right before the closing on the sale of the house which allowed us to rent an apartment back in the Dallas area while we get our feet back under us. There were some other trials in the interim which are not terribly critical to our current story. The temp gig lasted a little over a month before I landed a better temp to hire gig with another company that is much more to my liking and pays better to boot. A big bonus with this job is that it is 100% remote meaning I can pretty much work from anywhere. 

Things are looking up overall. The Queen and M&M are doing much better now that they are in an apartment with no mold. My boss is happy with my work so far. So, hopefully the job will convert to permanent before the end of the year. 

So, the saga continues. Just not in the direction we thought.

Shared Pain...Shared Joy

Once upon a time, I did a ride along with a Denton PD officer as part of a college project. During the ride along, one of the things I learned about were “Dear Chief” letters. Anytime an officer made a mistake that warranted the chief’s attention, the offending officer would write a letter to the Chief that started out “Dear Chief, much has transpired since last we spoke….” Also, one of my favorite quotes comes from the Callahan Cross Time Saloon series of books by Spider Robinson. That quote is in the side bar “Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased - thus do we refute entropy.” Well….Dear Readers, much has transpired since last we spoke. Entropy has been getting a workout.

It all started one fine Wednesday evening a month ago after we all thawed out from the great polar vortex event here in North Texas. It had been decided by The Queen and Princess M&M that Miss Tater Tot needed a companion to keep her company. Never mind the three cats, two dogs and multiple fish that were already in the house. I was informed Tater was lonely and needed a friend. The Queen had been in touch with a crazy bunny lady in a nearby suburb who had several varieties to choose from. After much deliberation and handling of many buns including a handsome Lop named Beast, a lovely blue otter colored, female, Netherland Dwarf rabbit came home to join our herd.

 

Thus began the naming saga. Many names were tried on for size and found to be lacking. At one point, M&M tossed out “Death” as a possible name. What ultimately stuck was “Graycie”. Now, you are supposed to keep bunnies quarantined from each other for a couple of weeks so they can get used to each other, make sure no illnesses are transferred, etc. Well, Graycie had other ideas. Despite our best efforts, we consistently found the little Houdini in Tater’s cage to the point we just threw up our hands in defeat and made one large bunny enclosure under M&M’s loft bed. They get along famously and are regularly seen flopped next to each other.

 

Two days later, I woke up Friday morning to an email from my niece and nephew from whom we have been renting/caretaking a house for the last several years. The email indicated that they had decided that they needed house back so that my niece and her friends could move in by early June. I had not had my morning caffeine injection by this point. It was a bit of an eyeopener to say the least. The Queen thought I was joking when I told her. I confirmed that I was indeed honest and true.

So, the hunt began for a house. We, by that I mean me, had been dead set against ever having a mortgage again. We had been making plans to build a house at Mimi’s property; however, that was a multi-step, multi-year project and we were barely in the planning stages due to the care and feeding of The Queen’s parents the last few years. Calls were made and we reached out to a realtor lady we had worked with a couple of years ago unsuccessfully when we were looking for an alternate situation. We quickly determined several key points in this process:

• In the course of two years, the North Texas real estate market went from bad to bat guano insane.
• Renting/leasing was not an option for several reasons
• Houses are staying on the market for less than a week and in some cases just hours.
• Agents are boldly stating “highest and best offer by Sunday”…and buyers are lining up to wave cash at them.
• It is not uncommon for houses to have multiple offers ABOVE asking price.
• As a single income family, our buying potential was limited which put us in a position of looking at the fringes of the market.

With God, all things are possible as they say.

Thanks, in part, to being a permanent remote worker now thanks to COVID, we literally looked at everything in our price range from the Oklahoma border south to Temple, and from Mineral Wells to Canton in a rough hour to an hour and a half circle around DFW Airport. The state of the market in that general area is crazy. Your choices within my budget are ugly small houses built in the 70s and 80s, sketchy neighborhoods, investor “lipstick on a pig” flip specials or fixer uppers. We agreed that, building not being an option, we wanted a house we could be happy with especially since we were going to have to bite the bullet and get a mortgage. So, we spent several late nights looking at the offerings on Zillow, Realtor.com, Craigslist, word of mouth, etc.

Our agent suggested we look at a house in Sherman, TX which was a fixer upper just on the other side of our pre-qual amount. It was in a nice, well established neighborhood that backed up to a wooded area with a creek running through it. The house was built in the 50s and was in desperate need of an update in addition to foundation work as the east wall was trying to separate from the rest of the house thanks to soil shifting. The current owner is an investor who bought it with the intent of doing a “lipstick on a pig” treatment for a quick turn around. The foundation issues put the kibosh on that thought. I was seeing the potential at the first showing, but The Queen was not. We dithered about whether or not to make an offer for a week or two, and we finally asked our agent to go have a second look at it a week ago today. The Queen finally started seeing what I was seeing as well as the potential financial upside. As we sat down to discuss with our agent what to do about making an offer, she called the listing agent who informed her that it was contingent. This was news to all of us as she had checked before we drove an hour and half to see the stupid thing. I said “I’m done” and walked straight out to the car. She apologized profusely for which there was no need on her part.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. Sunday evening and Monday, The Queen was staying up deep into night looking at houses all over North Texas. She located a few possibilities in Sulphur Springs which is an hour and half northeast of DFW. We made arrangements with our realtor to go see them on Tuesday.

The first house was immaculate. It was like a museum from the 1950s. The original owners of the house were a doctor and his wife who had the house built. They added a wing onto the house in 1960 when they started having kids. It had the original wool carpet. They had three sons who all grew up to be doctors. The original intercom/radio worked.  The original 1950 vintage electric range still worked. They had the old console TVs from the 1960s/1970s. They had the blue prints from when the house was originally built. The widow had moved out in 2015 to go to assisted living and died just last year. The surviving sons had kept the house just as she had left it for the last six years. It was jaw droppingly amazing for a one owner house of that vintage…but not for us.

The second house was nice but nothing special.

That brings us to the miracle house. We almost didn’t see if because there were already two contracts pending on it. The Queen and the realtor decided “why not?” and off we went. After a brief lunch stop, we made our scheduled showing time and stepped into the Twilight Zone. Imagine, if you will, a house originally built in Fort Worth in 1868, disassembled and rebuilt with the original lumber in Sulphur Springs in 1874. The house lives through several owners as a one-story farmhouse just a few hundred yards from the courthouse square for just over a hundred years before the current owner bought it. She and her husband decided that it needed full renovation. They added an entire second story including a grand, sweeping staircase. They gutted the walls, double insulated them, added Anderson double paned windows, rewired and replumbed the entire house, modernized the master suite and the kitchen. The house has over 3400 square feet and the asking price was right at the top end of my range. We loved the house. And we walked away deciding not to make an offer on it thinking we didn’t have a chance at it because of the pending offers.

Now, here is where Entropy really started to get a workout. First, at the miracle house, there is a bedroom upstairs that is pink. M&M immediately fell in love with the pink room and claimed it as her own. She then proceeded to have a great old time running around the upstairs playing. This will be important later in our story. Second, on our way home from Sulphur Springs, literally 1 minute from our house, The Queen’s chariot took one on the chin after a driver, whom I shall charitably call “clueless” made a sudden left turn from the middle lane smashing right into The Chariot.

The whole thing felt like it was happening in slow motion until things started flying everywhere. The Queen made a valiant effort to avoid the crash, but there was not much she could do. I was in the front passenger seat (since I was working remotely from the car). Disentangling myself from cords and cups and papers gave me enough time to chase the inner ogre down and put him back on a leash. I got out of the car to check the damage and ask the other driver if she was okay. Instead of answering that question, she said “I had my turn signal on.”  To which I replied, “That does not mean you can turn left from the middle lane.” “Oh”, she said. I got on the phone with 911 to get things rolling. Fortunately, there were three witnesses who stopped to give their information. All had the same story to tell. The Chariot still runs and drives and does not appear to be leaking any vital fluids. It just has the automotive equivalent of a shiner with a few scrapes. Hopefully, the insurance company won’t try to total it. I’ll be getting an estimate from the body shop for my carrier first thing Tuesday morning. The other driver’s carrier has called but not connected with us yet.

Ouch

Physically, we all have soft tissue aches and pains. M&M and I seem to have faired better than The Queen even though the impact happened on our side of the car. The Queen has taken it a little harder. She will heal though. That’s all that matters.

So, Tuesday evening after the accident, we were on the phone with our realtor about whether or not to make an offer on the miracle house. Our realtor told us that the Sherman house came back on the market as the contract that came in under the wire of our second showing had fallen through. The layout of the Sherman house actually works better for our current situation, and there are some other personal benefits to being in Sherman that are unimportant to our story. So, we told our realtor to make an offer.

Turns out that the owner on the Sherman house doesn’t really want to sell the house for what it’s really worth in its current condition and is convinced that someone will come along and pay him his asking price. That won’t be us.

So, I’ll skip the back and forth between the realtors on the Sherman house which took up all day Wednesday and most of Thursday. Thursday afternoon, I get a call from the realtor that the owner of the Sherman house countered our offer by increasing the price to effectively net the same amount as his asking price on clean contract. Our realtor also mentioned that she received a text from the listing agent for the miracle house. Word was that the owner had rejected the pending offers, was pulling it from the market for three weeks to do same minor repairs but that if we were still interested that we could do a deal.

Huh???

So, you’ve heard people say when one door closes another opens? This door not only opened, but it was taken off the hinges.

Our realtor had given feedback to the listing agent including the story about M&M loving the pink room, etc. Turns out the lady of the house, a woman in her early 70s with a serious health issue, decided she didn’t like the investors who had submitted low ball offers well below asking price (one of whom she called a “jerk”) and was tickled at the idea of a little girl playing up there. So, the listing agent told our agent to give them an offer as close to asking price as possible and they would see what could be done. I immediately told our agent to terminate the contract on the Sherman house, and we drafted up the contract on the Sulphur Springs house.

Friday passed with no word. Apparently, the owner was out of town visiting her children. Saturday evening, we got a call from our realtor that they executed our contract with no changes. We were floored.

But wait….there’s MORE!

Our agent says, “So, would you be interested in the washer, dryer and refrigerator that are there at the house?” I had been planning to ask about that as we do not currently have those appliances in our personal possession. So, we said, “Absolutely.” Then our agent drops the kicker. The owner is giving those appliances to us as her gift to us. These are practically new appliances.

Body…meet floor. Floor…body.

I was speechless for several minutes. The Queen and I could not stop tearing up. Our agent sent us a packet with the history of the house which we did not have prior to making the offer. The house is essentially a 153 year old house that was completely rebuilt from the inside in 1983. I can’t wait to share photos. All because a little girl made an elderly woman smile. 

We Have Lost Our Furry Little Minds...Again

No. This is not a post about the election. I'm trying to avoid discussing that dumpster fire until I have time to do a lot more research than I have the ability to do right now. Suffice it to say, I have absolutely no trust in what the media or various government officials are saying. Now, if you will pardon me while adjust my tinfoil hat, we can get on with the main reason for writing this evening.  

So, as attentive readers will recall from an earlier post, M&M's beloved bunny Taco was found deceased one fateful morning in April. M&M was heart broken. Despite that, it was not too many months before hints started dropping and eventually full fledged discussions were had about getting another bunny. Discussions turned into pleas for a commitments on when a bunny could be located and brought home. The pleas were not falling on deaf ears. I loved Taco as much as anyone else. However, the reality of life is a thing that has to be considered, and there were plans in place that had to be worked around. I suggested that a new bunny might be better brought home in during the new year when plans were no longer an issue and we could spend a as much time as needed getting a new bunny acclimated to the house and such. 

God heard my humble suggestion; and, as God is known to do, He laughed. Not only did our plans crash and burn for reasons which are not important, but God made sure that time and circumstance put us on a collision course with a bunny. 

One day in the middle of December, it was decided that The Queen, M&M and I would go out for a day of family fun. The Queen mentioned that she had never been to a local flea market where vendors of pretty much anything sell everything from cheaply made junk of Chinese origin to the finest in merchandise of questionable prior ownership. One of those vendors just happens to sell pets ranging from birds to snakes to baby rabbits.

Guess who wasn't quick enough on the distractions to prevent someone else from spotting the bunnies and immediately falling in love. A gasp of pure joy was heard and it was only dumb luck that the remaining bunnies available for sale were not exactly what M&M was looking for. For the next two weeks, all I heard was when can we go back and get a new bunny. Well, the Sunday after Christmas, I woke to be informed that the plan of the day was to obtain the necessary items to prepare the house for a new bunny. I was also strongly encouraged to make a return visit to the flea market to see the bunnies again.

No sooner did we arrive at the bunny vendor's stall than M&M began interviewing prospective bunnies for inclusion in the Castle menagerie. M&M indicated she had a particular interest in a Netherland Dwarf rabbit. It took several tries; however, M&M fell in love with one in particular. She already had a name picked out. A valiant effort was made to resist the cuteness; and, in a moment of weakness, there was brief consideration of bringing home a SECOND rabbit who had a striking black velvet coat with white accents around the eyes and chest. 

However, in the end, it was decided to bring Miss Tater Tot home to meet the family. She has settled in quite well.

2020 in Review

My Sister…The Devil wrote a 2020 retrospective post; and, not to be outdone, I decided I would take a look back as well.

As tempting as it is to declare 2020 a total loss, a glorious example of Turd Theater writ large, the sinking of the Titanic brought back to life, etc., that is not entirely fair to the actual performance of 2020 as opposed to any other arbitrary time period in history. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for a repeat of 2020. I am just enough of a pessimistic realist to know that history/karma/The Great Spaghetti Monster is out there lurking in the wings waiting to say “Here, hold my beer and watch this!”

So, let’s start off with the really craptacular aspects of 2020 from the perspective of Castle Daddy Hawk.

January – Oma went on Hospice care due to her Alzheimer’s. This was really a good news / bad news situation. On the one hand, it was long overdue. On the other hand, I had to all but force it down Opa’s throat with him kicking and screaming. While I can’t say enough good about the Hospice folks and the things they were able to do for us, I really wish they could have done more for us. We were at the end of our rope by that point (which was no fault of theirs), and we should probably have pulled the trigger on that decision about 3 months earlier than we did.

February – One of our cats, Binky, was not feeling well. So, a vet appointment was arranged; and, silly me, I thought they would give him some antibiotics and send him home. Turns out he was positive for feline leukemia and anemia. The vet really didn’t even offer any other options beyond euthanizing him. He was not even 2 years old yet. So, that was a bit of a downer.

March 1 – As previously written here, March 1 dawned with Oma shuffling off her mortal coils. As expected as it was and as much of a blessing as it was, losing a loved one SUCKS no matter how you slice it.

The rest of March and into May – COVID lock downs and toilet paper hoarding. Need I say more?

Actually, I will say more. Opa, in addition to some chronic physical health issues (which he will do nothing about), has more than a few quirks. His most serious quirk, bordering on mental illness (actually I think he qualifies for full citizenship but I’m not a licensed mental health professional), is INTENSE germaphobia. One side effect of this issue is a profoundly wasteful use of paper products. Specifically, toilet paper and paper towels. He goes through about a roll of paper towels a DAY for various uses including touching anything that he thinks might have germs on it including the freshly washed dishes in the dishwasher, he tears off the first layer or two of toilet paper and flushes that down the toilet before using the next several layers of toilet paper to cover the seat (since he has to share a bathroom with others) not including the unknown amounts he uses to wipe his own bum,….you get the idea. He refuses to shower on a regular basis and instead uses baby wipes by the box full to wipe down with. So, despite repeated warnings that paper products were in short supply, it was a constant battle with him to keep the house supplied with TP and such. So, pretty much anytime we found useful paper products, we were stocking up and hiding it from him. No, I am not ashamed in the slightest for doing so.

One other side effect of Opa’s germaphobia is that he now refuses to go out in public for ANY reason because he is afraid of COVID. He refuses to go to the store, pump his own gas or pretty much anything else. He waits until the last possible minute to ask The Queen or I to get him what he needs and then acts offended when we get frustrated at him or advise him that his lack of foresight does not create an emergency on our part requiring us to change our plans. This will be revisited shortly.

April – if losing Binky was unexpected and unpleasant, waking up one Saturday morning to M&M’s beloved rabbit Taco being unexpectedly deceased was a whole new level of suck. M&M LOVED that bunny. To be honest, we all did. He was outwardly in good health, and it was a complete shock when M&M came in the kitchen sobbing uncontrollably. We all still miss him terribly.

May and June – Aside from the continued insanity of COVID restrictions, the stress of caring for and losing Oma caught up with The Queen causing her health to crash and burn. Among other issues, she developed Tinnitus which drove her absolutely mad.

July and August – DID. NOT. HAPPEN. They were the months that henceforth shall not be named nor discussed.

September – During August, Opa finally went to visit the home of my brother-in-law for an extended stay that lasted most of the month. It was a welcome break for The Queen, M&M and I (In addition to being generally stubborn and set in his ways, Opa has been having quite a bit of difficulty adjusting to life as a widower. That makes for many frustrating situations. He is, in many ways, trying to fill an Oma sized hole in his life and frequently crosses lines he should know better than to cross.). Sometime during that visit, Opa got sideways with my BIL’s wife and harsh words were said. The net result of that confrontation was that Opa, who had originally agreed to go with BIL and wife on the annual fall church festival trip and plans made by all accordingly, decided he was not going after all. He waited to tell us until less than 2 weeks before departure. He also started dropping hints, subtle and not so subtle, that he wanted us to invite him to go with us. Due to his health issues and the ongoing challenges with The Queen’s health, his going with us was simply not an option given the distance we were traveling and the limitations his physical issues put on his ability to travel. So, we managed to prep the house for him to operate solo before departure and bid him farewell while praying very hard that there would be no disasters upon our return.

October to December – more of the same more or less. I’m not going to discuss the election. I don’t even know where to start with that mess, and I’m not even sure how to sort out fact from fiction on that front. 

On the positive side of things, there is still much for which to be thankful.  

First, Oma is finally at peace and awaits God’s Kingdom. She had been gone (mentally) for at least a couple of years; however, her physical shell had deteriorated dramatically in the last six months of her life. As I mentioned earlier, it was a relief as much as it was sad to see her go. The Queen, while sad to lose her mother, has been handling the loss extremely well having had several years to get used to the idea that her mother was dying.

Second, with COVID, my company made permanent what I had been doing unofficially and unsanctioned already: working from home. It started with the company sending everyone to work from home in mid-March. Due to the year’s financial challenges, the company decided to radically reduce its real estate footprint. To that end, all small to medium sized offices in the company were closed including the one to which I was assigned. So now, not only do I get to officially work from home permanently, the company is picking up the tab for my internet too. That’s a nice little benefit.

Third, as suggested by the second, I’m still gainfully employed and didn’t have to miss any work because of COVID. That’s not nothing. The company was strong enough to finalize an acquisition of another similarly sized company too. So, while we missed some financial targets and there was a voluntary separation program offered to those above 55 and with at least 5 years with the company, the company should be around for a while yet.

Despite all the challenges with supply chains and hoarding, we were blessed to never miss out on any necessities. I will count that as a win.

Summing things up, 2020 could have been much better and could have been a lot worse. For 2021, The Queen and I are trying to finalize and implement some long discussed plans which have been on the back burner for far too long. Further updates as events warrant.

Laugh or Cry

It's been said that you generally have two choices in difficult times: you can laugh or cry. Generally, I prefer laughter. Here's a few things kicking over the giggle box the last day or so. 

Back in high school and college, I ate a lot of Taco Bell. If ever there was a marketing partnership made for each other, it's Taco Bell and Scott.

So, yesterday, after we got the "bad news" from the hospice nurse, I took The Queen and M&M for a short walk to our favorite neighborhood coffee shop for a little out of the house treat time. M&M decided to bring her little remote control Jeep with us. When we arrived at the coffee shop, the opportunity to park it next to it's full sized counterpart was too much to pass up. 

Found on FaceBook in one of  the Monster Hunter International groups. The look on that Bucket o' Floof is just too funny. 

So, M&M's long suffering rabbit Taco has learned to use the cat door. This, of course, is a source of great  pleasure for M&M who loves her bunny. Apparently, today was dress up day for poor Taco. I heard shirts were involved but no photos of Taco in a T-shirt were recorded for posterity. Or so I am told. I think the unicorn headband is a nice touch, and the look on his face tells it all.