Last day of 2018.

Let’s all try to forget the heinousness of this year, shall we?

Instead, I will just share my resolutions for 2019: I will be nice and not crap on other people, and, rather than shying away from the different, I will embrace the different. The exotic. The unique.

I will find something to appreciate in our differences rather than trying to make everyone the same.

I will love everybody, and try to treat every single being on this planet as if they mattered to me, rather than being something that is in competition with me for limited resources. We aren’t animals, competing for food. We are human beings, and most of us have plenty of all of our needs. I’ll try to keep that in mind, as I am fortunate enough to have everything I need.

And, finally, I’ll remember that since we weren’t put here to judge each other, I need to learn to be polite. If I don’t have anything nice to say, I’ll keep it to myself. Crapping on other people in public is super tacky, and it needs to stop. I’ll be more dignified in 2019.

These are the things I will be working on in 2019. We have to stop these artificial wars between ourselves. We don’t all need to be friends, but we really need to work on our manners. Because we’ve gotten all kinds of tacky. And I just don’t want to be tacky.

Happy end of 2018, everybody. Thank goodness this hot mess is over with.

Everyone and their dog has been asking me how my Dad is doing. Seriously, the dogs want to know, too. Probably because my Dad is the dog whisperer and they all love him immediately. Whereas they kind of hate me sometimes because I can’t hold back and then I get all up in their smooshy little faces and hug and kiss them because I have no boundaries with animals.

At any rate, I have been getting messages all week about my Dad and how he’s holding up.

In case anybody’s wondering, you are allowed to ask him. He won’t get mad or yell or anything. And he does subscribe to the “messaging and texts are better than phone calls” school of thought, so those are fine, too.

I know, though. It feels awkward.

I mean, it doesn’t to me because he’s my Dad and all, but yeah. I know all about the awkward conversations. Had a few myself with other people. But really, just shoot him a text.

In case you’re wondering, though, he’s great. Well, as great as anyone could possibly be under these craptastic circumstances. And it gets a little less horrible some days, so that’s good, too. Also, we don’t really talk too much about feelings in our family because they’re gross, so that’s fun. We just make jokes about things until we can stand them and then move on.

But it’s going okay. All the Christmasness and things. Everybody’s hanging in there, amidst all the poop that life has flung at us this year. And we are proudly standing, covered in life’s poop, throwing life the finger.

Not literally, of course.

Well, I am.  I’m not sure about everyone else. But that’s how I roll. Flipping life off behind its back.

So, back to the point (if I ever have one, ha ha), my Dad. He’s a champ. Don’t worry about him. He’s got his team of weirdos and we’re all hanging in there together. Plus, he has two Velcro dogs, so that’s also neat.

Sometimes, listening to all of the conversations happening around you in a restaurant pays off with a new family catchphrase. This past weekend, we added “American Classic” to our repertoire.

We went to Albuquerque for the monthly Costco extravaganza, and on the way, we decided to stop off at The Range in Bernalillo for some lunch. We always ate there when we lived in the area, so it’s kind of fun for us to go back and see if they have the same paintings on the walls or the same waitstaff. You know, old people fun times.

So we’re sitting there, looking at our menus, and we notice that there’s a guy with sunglasses and a very expensive shirt sitting at the table next to us, with a table full of people who are obviously his entourage, because they’re all hanging on to his every word and laughing at all of the things he says, even when they’re not that funny. They’re doing quite a bit of filming in this area these days, so we can only assume he is some kind of movie person or something because he is most definitely not a local.

At any rate, they get their order, and the guy goes off about his “f@$&ing BLT.” Seriously. He was mad. So he starts saying things like, “How do they mess up a f@#$ing BLT? This bread is absolutely the wrong thickness!” and other things of that nature, and gestures wildly for the waiter to come over to his table.

The waiter, who was a very nice guy, early 20s, good at his job, gets there and says, “Is there anything wrong with your order?”

Here it comes...

The movie guy goes, “How do you guys mess up a BLT? It’s an AMERICAN CLASSIC?!?”

Then he proceeds to outline that the bread is a fraction of an inch too thick, so that the insides of the bread aren’t toasted (how do you even toast the insides of a piece of bread?), and that the ratio of mayonnaise is wrong, and that the bacon isn’t “the right amount of crispy.”

Yeah. And he uses the term American Classic multiple times.

So the guy leaves, gets him a new sandwich, and all is calm.

Yikes, dude. Those movie guys sure are picky with their sandwiches.

But, after all, we did get to refer to pretty much every purchase we made in Costco as an American Classic, and also pretty much everything else we encountered that day. Even the people on the freeway driving like maniacs. American Classics.

It’s funny. Ha ha ha.

Whoa. This post is super important. I just found out the secret of life.

It’s napping. Ha ha ha...fooled you there, didn’t I? But, seriously, it’s the best thing ever.

So my thyroid is on the fritz again, and I’m a bit tired lately, so I kind of just feel like sleeping all of the time. Okay, maybe that’s just how I’ve always been, but even more so this year, so bear with me.

Two days a week I get to go teach and hang out with my Dad, and since we drive up so early in the morning, I get to nap on my Dad’s amazing couch.

It’s truly the best napping couch ever. I want to write poems to it and buy it flowers.

At any rate, yesterday, the sun was shining through the windows right onto the couch, and the dogs were up there and we all had a big sunny nap on the couch while game shows (oh, yes, you know that’s right) we’re playing in the background. It was flipping magical.

So, props to the couch. The napping couch. I shall call you Theraflu, because you never fail at putting me to sleep. Ah.

As many of you know, I'm working at a law firm now. It's really interesting, especially because we do a lot of cases that involve medical stuff, so there will be pages and pages of books about insides and guts and all of that good stuff for me to copy and put in the computer.

The hard part, though, is that recently there's a lot of stuff about colons.

Now, don't get me wrong, I still think that the word "bowel" is hilarious, and I take a lot of pleasure in naming the saved files funny things that only I will get, so that when I have to pull them up, it makes me giggle and no one else will ever know. The downside is that learning more about how doctors diagnose issues with colons makes me think about my mom and all of the warning signs which nobody put together until it was too late.

I know, I know, I work for lawyers, and some people would've probably looked into legal action, but the thing is, in my mind, there's nothing that can get my mom back for us, so why drag a bunch of people and ourselves through all the poop? It's not like any one doctor just maliciously ignored something that later turned out to be a big deal, like the time three years before her diagnosis when she was hospitalized for a bowel obstruction (which I now know can be a sign of colon cancer), and they saw some spots on her liver when they scanned her which the radiologist decided was nothing, and which we now know were the cancer spreading from her colon to her liver.

I know in my heart that the guy was trying to do his job. No one would purposely ignore something that they had any suspicion was something as serious as cancer cells on someone's liver. But I hate it that I didn't know and didn't stop it before it was too late.

I realize that I'm not a doctor. I just wish I was psychic. And a doctor. A psychic doctor.

Anyway, today, reading stuff that confirms all of the things we now know are true, I wish I could've changed it. I wish I could've saved her. I know that's impossible, and that she's in a WAY better place now, doing all the fun stuff and not having to have cold winters, Grey Poupon, or those terrible shots in her elbow ever again. I know.

But I still hate it.

Also, bowels. Bowels, bowels, bowels.

I'm good now.

I’m not going to make excuses...it’s been tough in my neck of the woods, so I haven’t felt like writing anything. Just the same old business, grieving and all of that, and it’s kind of exhausting. I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel is really, really long, and it’s just taking me longer to figure out how I’m going to keep moving than I thought it would. Just blech.

Anyway, something interesting has happened, so I thought I’d share. I have been on a diet forever. Like, seriously, FOREVER. My first preventative diet started when I was eight, and that’s when I got fat, and I’ve been there ever since.

Food and I are very complicated together. Definitely a love/hate relationship.

So I’ve been on this new eating plan since June, and at first I did well. I lost about five pounds, but then that was it. And the scale was steadfastly holding at around the same weight range. This new way of eating is all about being healthy and not counting calories, but I was still journaling my food, because when I don’t do that, I tend to balloon, and nobody wants to have to buy me new pants. Just, no.

I really want to be healthy. It’s important to me. This whole experience with my mom has shown me how important our bodies are, and if I crap mine up, I can’t buy a new one. And it’s really not that fun to treat it unkindly all of the time.

I follow a lot of people on Instagram who have “unconventional” figures and are just happy with themselves and not full of self-loathing and wanting to be thin above everything else, and it’s making me think that maybe punishing myself for being fat isn’t working. Maybe I should focus on being healthy, whether or not the scale is moving. I can’t just automatically decide that I’m okay with my chub, but I can decide that being punitive with food and exercise isn’t the way to go. Plus, it’s not working anymore. My metabolism is shot.

So when we got back from our trip, at the beginning of this month, I didn’t weigh myself and start right back in at 1,000 calories a day to get back in. I just cut out all of the sugar and ate a lot of vegetables and very little carbs. And for Thanksgiving, I ate what I wanted, plus one piece of pie, and then no more sugar again.

This morning, I woke up and decided it was now or never time.

I pulled out the scale, got on it, and I have lost three pounds this month. I LOST WEIGHT. Holy crap. And it’s my lowest weight in over a year. Not by much; I’m talking by like half a pound, but I really thought I’d get on that bad boy and it would just flip me the bird and tell me I’d gained a gazillion pounds and I needed to go back to counting, plus, not eat the rest of the week.

It didn’t, though. Shocking.

At any rate, it’s interesting, so I thought I’d share. Something good, for a change.

Well, it’s been a crazy month around here. Painting the house, going to Disney World, and actually having some people over. And...to cap it all off...we re-arranged the living room furniture. I know. We are two wild and crazy guys.

I have, however, gotten to witness something that I didn’t know existed: The practice of going to Epcot to get “Drunk Around the World in One Day”.....seriously.

I know it’s an actual thing because there were ever so many large groups wearing t-shirts that said it. At first I was kind of shocked, because I don’t like the idea of getting sloshed around a bunch of little kids. It would ruin my fun, I think. What with all the little people everywhere screaming and crying, and all of the other people everywhere trying to get ahead in line, I actually feel like Epcot would be a terrifying place to get drunk. Not to mention the whole “being a good example for the little guys” thing. I am in the minority, though. Apparently.

Also, who could afford to get drunk at Epcot? With the Food and Wine Festival going on, it’s like $5.00 for a teeny little glass of wine or a taster of beer. It would cost me around $50.00 to get a good buzz going, and I’m a lightweight. A ninety pound college sophomore could probably drink twice as much, and one of those guys in his fifties wearing his “I’m the eighth dwarf—Drunky” t-shirts who looks like he’s been drinking Bud Lights and shots of Fireball every day while watching wrestling and balancing his glass on his enormous beer gut for the last thirty years probably can’t even get really drunk at sea level, anyway. So paying over ten bucks per drink to get drunk seems like a really expensive vacation to me.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m not fun. Or maybe there’s something super fun that I don’t see. At any rate, I will probably never attempt to get drunk at Epcot.

Try all the desserts, though? Or all of the cheese? I’m down.