Since I'm not really supposed to have candy (I save all my allowable carbs for bread and pasta), I try to buy my candy for Halloween as close to the date as possible. This year I didn't do a very good job, having purchased it two-and-a-half weeks ago. Even worse, I picked an assortment with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in it, which is a lethal guarantee that I'll be digging into the bag almost immediately.

So when I opened it one hour after getting home from the store two-and-a-half weeks ago, I was dismayed to find that the candy I purchased wasn't "Fun-Size" like it normally is... it was more like "Bite-Sized." Today I went back to the store to get something more acceptable only to find that it's ALL "Bite-Sized" now. If they still make "Fun-Size" my store sure didn't have it. Oh well. I guess everybody showing up at my house will be getting two pieces.

Not two pieces of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, of course. Those are long-since gone.

   
Well, this was a crappy week.

Last year I slowly came to realize that during colder months my feet were always cold when I'm at home. Even with a pair of socks on, they feel freezing. At first I chalked it up to getting older... maybe my circulation isn't what it once was... but eventually came to the conclusion that it was my floors. When I'm upstairs, my feet aren't cold. When I'm downstairs, my feet get cold fairly quickly.

My guess is that it's because my home is built on a concrete slab. To my knowledge, that's never happened to me before...

• I remember a small home we rented in The Big City and am almost positive it had a crawlspace underneath. I remember being afraid of it because there were spiders under there.
• My family lived in a small attic apartment here in town for a while (assumably while our home was being built).
• My childhood home had a crawlspace underneath.
• From there I moved to an upstairs apartment in The Big City.
• From there I moved to an upstairs apartment back here in town.
• From there I moved to my current home, which is built on a slab.

So upstairs apartments and homes with crawlspaces apparently have warmer floors than homes built on concrete slabs. Which kinda makes sense. The concrete absorbs the cold from the earth and, since heat rises, they are cold to the touch when you walk on them. YEAH SCIENCE, BITCH!

So last year I ordered a pair of slippers for 50% off from a post-winter sale, then tucked them away for when cold days came again. After a week of suffering with cold feet, I remembered that I had them... pulled them out of storage... then put them on my feet only to find that they are too big. Like... a whole inch too big. Unfortunately, it's way too late to return them for a different size.

And so I've been wearing three pairs of socks so the slippers aren't falling off my feet... which, as it turns out, makes my feet too hot. But wearing three pairs of socks without the slippers makes it difficult to navigate stairs since I'm sliding all over the place, and so I guess I fail at life or something.

Making a note to add slippers to my Black Friday shopping list.

Cold floors don't seem to bother my cats at all. Though Jenny is sleeping exclusively in the "self-warming beds" I bought them, and Jake is snuggled up against me on the electric blanket all night now...

I move a lot when I sleep, but he doesn't seem bothered. At some point I'd like to put a camera on us all night so I can see exactly how mad he gets when he has to wake up and move because I've moved. Apparently it's not irritating enough for him to give up the electric blanket, because he's still there when I wake up in the morning.

The things we do for a warm place to sleep and a snuggle buddy.

I was craving French fries when I left the house, so I called in an order at the local drive-thru when they opened.

Best lunch ever.

And yet I saw something disturbing me when I picked up my order.

But first, an interlude...

When I was a kid I LOVED burgers from Rusty's (in my town) and Dusty's (in the neighboring big city). To give you a clue of just how much I loved my local joint, you should know that the last meat I ever ate when I stopped eating it back in 1986 was a Rusty Burger. Yep. When I made the decision to go vegetarian, that's the meat I wanted to go out on.

And it's tough dropping meat from your diet, let me tell you.

For years after I axed meat I would still crave it. I remember driving by Burger King where they blow the smell of flame-broiled beef out into the street and get triggered. Holy crap did I want a Whopper right then. Giving up bacon was also incredibly difficult. Any time I saw a piece, something deep inside me was suddenly willing to kill for it. Pepperoni was the worst though. Going from having an intimate relationship with pepperoni pizza... then downgrading to a cheese pizza... is what nearly broke me. It still might break me one day. Because while there are some pretty great burger and bacon substitutes, I've yet to find a truly great pepperoni substitute.

But I endure.

Partly because the allergies which plagued me as a kid vanished practically overnight when I stopped eating meat. Partly because the meat industry is literally killing our planet. But mostly because I am horrified by the inhumane, cruel, and disgusting conditions under which mass-produced meat is raised. In all honesty, I simply cannot understand how anybody could become aware of the abhorrent treatment of cows, pigs, lambs, chickens, and other animals before they're slaughtered and still eat the stuff. Which is why most people close their eyes to it, I'm sure.

End interlude...

Meanwhile, back at the drive-ins that are in my neck of the woods, Dusty's eventually added a GardenBurger. I was ecstatic at the time, but came to realize that I prefer a Grilled Cheese with Goop (burger sauce and fixin's), so it goes mostly ignored.

Rusty's, on the other hand, always held out. No vegetarian option for you. Fortunately, they have really good fries.

Then today, miracle of miracles, I saw that they are finally adding a GardenBurger to their menu. I was instantly elated because I'm sure it will be fantastic. Until I saw the price... NINE DOLLARS AND TWENTY CENTS?!?? Holy crap! AND THAT'S WITHOUT CHEESE!!! Keep in mind that this is not an "Impossible Burger" which is an expensive meat substitute (but worth it)... it's a frickin' GARDENBURGER! For contrast, a QUADRUPLE MEAT, QUADRUPLE CHEESE meat burger WITH BACON is just $8.75!

WHAT THE HELL?!?

Either Rusty's is jacking up the price to an insane degree because they don't want to sell many of them and only have it available because people ask for it all the time...

...or...

...government subsidies to the "Big Meat" industry are so massive that FOUR piece of meat are considerably cheaper than ONE GardenBurger. If that's the case, this is bordering on criminal. Let's check Google here... and... yep. THIRTY-EIGHT BILLION A YEAR props up the meat and dairy industry. This is despite the fact that the meat industry is literally destroying the planet. It's also widely regarded as unhealthy and should only be eaten in moderation. And yet, here we are. I guess Big Pharma is working with Big Beef to push cheap meat so they can sell more pills (eating beef daily makes you TRIPLE more likely to get heart disease). And we (and, more directly, the children) are paying the massive cost with our health and our world.

But that's our government for you. Killing us for the profit they make from being bought off by industries that don't give a shit about us.

I suppose I should be used to it, but the fact that US citizens continue to sign off on this kind of crap never ceases to amaze me. "YES! KILL US SO YOU CAN GET RICH! DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT TO LINE YOUR POCKETS! BETRAY THE PUBLIC TRUST AT EVERY TURN FOR MONEY! WE SUPPORT YOU!"

Eventually, I'm guessing that I'll cough up the NINE DOLLARS AND TWENTY CENTS that this thing costs just to satisfy my curiosity. I hope it's horrible. I don't have that kind of money to be throwing at a burger. And apparently the government is doing it for me already anyway.

When I first moved into my home, I was ecstatic about having a garage. Not only for the covered parking... but all the extra space available to me. It was a luxury I hadn't experienced before. All of a sudden I could buy stuff in bulk to save money. I could have a collection of tools beyond a hammer and screwdriver. I could store wood and other building materials. I could have my winter tires with me instead of having to beg for space from a friend. It was a Very Big Deal. And I thought I'd never be able to fill it all up.

Yeah, I was adorable back then, wasn't I?

Of course I managed to fill it up.

Which is fine when my garage is functioning as a wood shop... but not so fine when I need it to fuction as a garage. This year I had to shove my table saw, canister vacuum, table router, and a bunch of wood boards and other stuff to the front of my garage because there was no room left to put them anywhere else. Which leaves me with less space for parking, and that's tricky. If I pull in too far, I can't get around my car. If I don't pull in far enough, I risk the garage door coming down on my back bumper.

I thought I'd eventually get a "feel" for how far to drive in. But I still can't get to the right spot consistently. And so I hung a washer from my garage door opener to help out. When the washer hits my windshield, I stop. It works perfectly...

I've already thrown out So. Much. Stuff... and my mantra when I run out of space is to get rid of even more. Marie Kondo's KonMari book has been a huge help in reorganizing the stuff in my life after the deaths of my grandmother and my mom, so it looks like I'll be giving it another read-through before tackling my garage yet again.

Hopefully the next thing to go won't be my car.

I'm an adult and I get to do adult stuff whenever I want... like having a hamburger for breakfast!

Back when I was very young, my family lived within a short distance to the local A&W hamburger drive-in. We didn't eat out a lot... eating out is expensive... but this just made the burgers all the more special. And boy were this burgers special. Sometimes, especially after we moved to a neighboring town and had to drive there, we'd eat in the car. I vividly remember sitting in the backseat with my brother... waiting for the car-hop to attach that big metal tray with the webbed orange liner to the driver-side window... then waiting for my parents to pass back that magical foil bag which had my burger in it... and a big frosty mug of A&W root beer, of course.

A&W had PapaBurger, MamaBurger, TeenBurger, and BabyBurger... and the foil bags used to have a cartoon printed on the front to tell you what was inside. You can still find them floating around eBay for sale...

Photo taken from WorthPoint whom I'm guessing took it from eBay?

I started with the BabyBurger, which had a smaller burger patty on it. Then one day I felt I was grown up enough to graduate to the TeenBurger, so I ordered that. It came with cheese and bacon on it and it was the best thing I had ever eaten. And even though I use a veggie burger patty with soy "bacon" now, I still love cheese and bacon on my burger and I owe it all to the A&W.

Sometimes we wouldn't eat in the car... especially when we lived close-by and could walk there. We'd sit inside the restaurant on a big orange booth seat at one of those wooden-looking laminate tables with the metal edges on it. On those occasions when I was still very young, I wouldn't be handed over a magical foil bag... mom would instead take the BabyBurger out of the bag, cut it in half for me, set it on the bag, then slide it across the table.

I don't know why.

If I could handle a whole burger when eating in the backseat of the car, then why couldn't I handle it when dining in the restaurant? Why cut it in half for me then? Just one of many, many things which will remain forever a mystery.

Isn't it terrible how many things you think of to ask somebody after they're gone and you're no longer able to ask?

This morning when I was an adult and having a hamburger for breakfast, I looked at it sitting there on the plate... took out a knife... and cut it in half, almost without thinking about it. Something I don't think I've ever done before in my entire life...

And suddenly I'm not an adult any more.

I'm just a little kid sitting in the A&W restaurant with my burger wanting his mom.

   
I don't know why some memories are so vivid in my mind where others have faded. I don't know how it is that I am able to remember something that happened when I was so young. I don't know what it is about eating at the A&W that makes it so unforgettable. I guess how our minds choose what to archive is just another mystery.

As is what happened to my old battered A&W mug that was bought for a quarter and sat in my cupboard for... like... forever. Did it break? Did I lose it? Did I throw it out? Did mom throw it out? I dunno. But I do know that A&W has an online merchandise shop where I can probably buy another one.

And, holy crap, did you know that it's their 100th anniversary this year?!?

Boy, I could sure go for a frosty mug of A&W root beer right about now.

   
UPDATE: While I was trying to fall asleep, I Googled for an image of the old A&W that I used to eat at when I was a kid. One photo came up, but it was from an expired Panoramio account and Panoramio has shut down... so I have no idea if this is actually the restaurant, who to credit the photo to, or whom to ask about it. This would be the view looking away from the restaurant towards the drive-in stalls and the parking lot. It certainly looks like it could be my old A&W...

The awning over the stalls... the menu-boards... it all looks much like I remember. What gives me pause is the price on the billboard of $849 (assumably $8.49) for an all you can eat shrimp dinner. That seems high for the era that my A&W existed. The cars also look too modern. I think the local drive-in A&W was torn down before this was taken? Maybe not. Another thing I question is the entrance here... from this direction, I think the entrance would have been on the right side of the photo. And I want to say that our stalls were straight instead of at an angle like this? In any event, this is definitely the kind of experience I so vividly remember, even if it's not the actual restaurant.

Ugh. Where do I even start?

Bad enough that I didn't get to relax this past weekend. Bad enough that the Fall Harvest movie marathon on Hallmark are all movies I've already seen. Bad enough I have to put up with shitty people trotting out "HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY!" not because they care about Christopher Columbus, but because they want to piss off people who know the brutal truth: the guy was a mass-murdering psychopath, sadistic butcherer, serial enslaver, and overall fucking horrendous bastard who didn't "discover" jack-shit.

And, oh yeah, bad enough that I didn't get much sleep last night.

But that was just a warm-up for what was to follow...

Here's my Monday morning, assuming you care to read about my series of misfortunate events...

• At 7:00 I got up and fed my very anxious cats. This is the last good thing that would happen this morning.
• Caught up on Facebook for 15 minutes before starting my morning routine. There was a nasty reply left on a comment I made, but I let it go. Life is too short for Facebook shenanigans.
• Had my beard trimmer battery die half-way through grooming my face. It won't work while plugged in for some reason, so I had to plug it in before hopping in the shower only half-groomed.
• Forgot that I used the last of my bar of soap after I've already shampooed my head. Use shampoo for the rest of my body (as an aside, Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo makes your balls feel fresher than they've ever been!).
• Trimmer still dead. Climb on Facebook for ten minutes until I have enough charge to finish my face. Another two people have jumped on the bandwagon calling me nasty names. ALL I SAID IS THAT EVERYBODY WOULD BE A LOT BETTER OFF IF WE STOPPED FINDING NEW WAYS TO HATE TO EACH OTHER! But apparently they're happier when denying LGBTQ persons basic human rights.
• At 7:45 I go downstairs to take the trash out. Now that it's dark out so early, I wait until mornings instead of at night after cleaning up from dinner. I very nearly step in what I'm assuming is cat puke.
• Worried something is wrong with Fake Jake, I run to the security cameras and can't get a good enough look to know if it's him or not. I adjust the security camera to a better angle, then go looking for him. When I find him in the back yard, he looks okay. He's so happy to see me that he scratches my hand wide open.
• I go to hose the cat vomit off my sidewalk when I see that the hoses I connected together are leaking (when I repaired the holes where my DirecTV dish was, I had to use a double-hose to reach). I let go of the spray-trigger, go to screw the hoses together tighter, then realize that's not the problem. One of the hoses is split. I turn the hose to see how bad it is only to have it bust wide open. The highly pressurized water blows into my flower bed, which ends up throwing dirt and water all over me.
• I decouple the hoses, toss the bad hose, then hook the spray-trigger on the good hose. Turns out the spray-trigger is now cracked and leaking water. But at least I managed to clean off the vomit AND hose myself down so I don't track dirt in my home.
• I take another shower. Of course I didn't remember that I forgot to put soap in the shower, so Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo is once again delighting my balls.
• After throwing my soiled clothes in the wash... AND CLEANING UP THE WATER I DRIPPED EVERYWHERE WHILE CARRYING THEM TO THE LAUNDRY ROOM... I decide to have some toast before heading into work. When I open the refrigerator to get the butter, I see that the bottom has blown out of my sourdough starter jar and it's leaking everywhere.
• It was a clean break on the jar and I have plenty of starter left that's salvageable, so bread in my future is assured. I strain everything through a fine strainer to be sure there's no glass fragments, then start cleaning up the disgusting mess in my fridge. When I get to the bottom shelf, I see that I have no Coke Zero left, and I really need a Coke after all I've been through. I do have beer, however...
• After spending 20 minutes cleaning, I see that I have smeared starter on my shirt. And why not? Doesn't everybody go through three shirts in the morning?
• I pack up my stuff, feed the cats a treat, then head out the door. Half-way to work, I remember that I left my work drive at home. I go back to get it and OF COURSE Jake and Jenny forgot that they just got a treat 5 minutes earlier! They want another one! And because I'm too tired to argue with cats, I just give it to them.
• I pull into work and see that one of my wheel covers has broken. No idea how or when it happened. Probably when I got my snow tires put on and I am only just now noticing.
• I walk into work a half-hour late. Yay.

Guess these jars aren't as tough as they look. I didn't even close the lid tightly...

   
And if you think that this was the end of my Monday woes, I got news for you... it wasn't. Now that it's getting colder, I am getting more and more worried about Fake Jake, who isn't as young as he used to be. I worry that the cold might be harder on him as he ages, so I've been trying to find a door for the igloo shelters I put up for him... thinking it might keep more heat inside. Alas, I haven't been able to find any, even though the shelter has holes drilled for one. This morning I finally got a reply from the company who makes it...

Wait... FROSTED?!? Surely they offer a flap in CLEAR, right? Alas, nope. So I wrote back...

Thank you for your reply. I am, however, dumbfounded that the only door flap you make for the Kitty Kat Condo is FROSTED! It’s already hard enough to get a cat to go into a shelter with only one exit because cats don’t like to feel trapped. The only thing that makes it tolerable is that they can look outside if they hear something out there. Your door flap being opaque makes this impossible, and has me wondering why anybody would buy it when a frosted flap will just make cats reluctant to go into the shelter in the first place! Oh well. Guess I get to try and make something myself.

I suppose I know what my next project with be when I finally get some free time. Assuming I manage to get some free time.

And keep in mind that all this happened before I started work! The rest of my day was shaping up to be no picnic, I tell you what.

Lastly, just because people apparently need a fucking reminder...

And that's a sanitized version of all the sociopathic shit he did.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, everybody.

As usual when I return from a trip, my cats have been taking turns glomming all over me. Poor Jake acts like I've been gone for years, and will sleep on my bed for two or three nights before things get back to whatever passes for "normal" in my house.

Though at some point in the middle of the night, he left me long enough to go downstairs and grab Mufasa and Moose the Mule and bring them upstairs. I went to take a photo of them when I woke up this morning and was surprised that iPhone decided to use the flash instead of Night Mode. The flash washes everything out, so I turned it off and Night Mode kicked in, giving much better results. Apple needs to work on this. Maybe the camera should know how to cut back on flash and create some kind of “Half Night Mode” for cases like this? Just a little flash on top of Night Mode would have cut down on grain, but preserved color fidelity and detail. Oh well. Until that day, I’ll just keep the flash turned off. It just seems to ruin things...

I don't know what's going on with my cats and their toys. When I got home from work yesterday, I walked in the door to this...

I don't know what chain of events led up to it. Maybe Jake did Jenny wrong, so she took Mufasa away from him and was going to ship him back to Africa? Silly cats.

Yesterday I made potato salad (again) and it was the first thing I thought of for breakfast when the cats' feeding alarm went off...

As I was taking my tater salad back to bed so I could go through my email and get some work done, I noticed that my thermostat was glaring at me. Apparently it's time to turn on the whole-home humidifier...

I would have turned it on right then, but all my woodworking tools are piled in front of it, so I guess that will have to wait until the weekend.

When I managed to get back up to my work, my laptop let me know that the final version of MacOS X "Catalina" dropped while I was in New Orleans (I've been running the betas since they were first released)...

There goes my morning productivity. Fortunately Jenny came up after her breakfast and kept me company while I waited...

As usual with Apple, first there's a time to download screen... followed with a time to install screen... followed with a time to update screen. Which not only made it so I couldn't get any work done, it make it so I was late to the office. Yay.

Just another Thursday morning.

Facebook has a features called "Memories" which allows you to revisit posts for the day of years past. Most of the time, it's kinda cool to look back and see what was happening last year... three years ago... five years ago... and so on. Other times? Not so much.

A year ago today I was burying my mother.

It's weird... very weird... to think back to that day.

She had died three months prior, but it took a while for her marker to be made and shipped from the Veteran's Affairs office. I ultimately decided to go with the free marker they provide to veterans because the local funeral home had gone out of business and I just didn't want to shop for another one. Also? I really liked the simplicity of it all...

Placing that marker was symbolic of so many things.

For the previous three months I had been in a constant state of stress and anxiety. Closing out accounts. Paying off bills. Writing thank you notes. Sending out death certificates. Disposing of possessions. — It's a million and one things and it seems like it will never, ever end.

Until the marker is set, you write an obituary, and it does.

Except it really doesn't, of course.

It was never a sprint, it was always a marathon. And as I sit here one year later, I'm really glad I didn't know this back then or I probably would have gone insane.

Though it's early. I still might.

In the meanwhile, I have cats to keep my mind off things...

A job for which they are exceptionally well-suited.

This morning I woke up to a news report that there will be a cold snap in the Cascades starting Friday night. Snow is expected to accumulate anywhere from 4 to 10 inches.

Oh hell no. I am not ready for snow.

Now, usually I don't panic on these things, because any snow that lands will melt in short order this early in the season. I'll be driving over in the afternoon and there likely won't be much of anything on the ground. On top of that, I have been driving in the snow all my life and am pretty good at it, so it isn't a concern. And I have chains just in case things get unexpectedly bad.

But my snow tires expired last year which means I have to get new ones this year. This is a definite cause for concern. If you wait too long, it will be slim pickings or... worst case scenario... there will be a waiting list because they're all sold out. Making matters worse, sometimes you can't get an appointment to get your new tires mounted, balanced, and put on your car because the appointments are fully booked.

So this time I ain't waiting.

I made an appointment during my lunch, and away I went. And now my car has pretty new shoes...

If I drove a lot, I would probably have waited a month to save some tread. But I drive so few miles each season that my tires expire long before the tread is too low to be legal, so I figured I'd just beat the rush so I don't have to worry about getting an appointment when the snow hits.

Buying tires is kinda a weird deal. The advice is always "Buy the best tires you can afford!" because so much is (literally) riding on them. I always followed that advice for my mom's car... buying her the absolute best tires I could get, regardless of cost. When it came to my own car I was far less picky. I always bought mid-quality all-weather tires that were half the cost (and I never bought snow tires). When my mom couldn't drive any more, I donated my crappy Saturn to the veterans and took over the car I got her since it was newer and less crappy. It's a cheaper model 2007 Toyota Corolla, but it's clean, dependable, and in great shape. Since I already had the snow tires for it, I went ahead and had them put on.

And was subsequently shocked at how nice it was to drive through snow, slush, and ice with proper winter tires on!

It's so nice that I don't ever want to go back to all-weathers for winter driving, even if that means I have to spend money I don't have to get new ones. Because not having to brake six feet early on icy roads so you don't slide into an intersection is totally worth it. I remember one time I was driving to the airport at 4:30 in the morning and had to turn around and take an alternate route because my car didn't have enough traction to drive my regular route. At the time I was like "Oh well." But now I know this wouldn't have happened if I had winter tires, so driving my mom's car has been a game-changer.

Especially to my wallet.

In other news...

My cats haven't left tributes in a while. This morning I awoke to Blue Ball, Pretzel, Moose the Mule, the skin from a toy that's been ripped off the cat tree (which they brought in from the catio), and a ball of cat hair. No idea what they are wanting. Maybe it's to turn the heat on? I think it must be to turn the heat on...

I kinda miss waking up to find what my cats brought me in the middle of the night. They used to do it in exchange for food, I'm guessing. Because once they were trained to wait for the Alexa alarm, they stopped bringing me stuff. Surprisingly, they know enough to not bring tributes to Alexa. Smart kitties.

I wonder if Jake and Jenny will appreciate that we'll be riding on awesome new winter tires when I take them in for their annual vet checkup in February?

Probably not.