February felt like we didn't do anything. That's only because, of course, we started the year with a last-minute trip to Holland to visit family.
A very big deal, by the way. A huuuuuuge experience.
The reason we went was because one of my uncles was diagnosed with terminal cancer and this was our last opportunity to see him.
About a week after we returned home, he lived out his last wish to return to the country of his birth: Indonesia. He went with his wife and two "kids" (my cousins who're within a decade younger than me) on an adventure that involves a two-part international flight totaling about fourteen hours in the air. No longer able to walk on his own, it was a wheelchair for him the entire trip. Once in Indonesia, they began doing a greatest hits of family, old friends, places he and my aunt grew up in, lived, knew from childhood and teenage years, and then a bunch of tourist stuff. During the course of three weeks, they moved across the country from west to east by trains, small planes, and cars. It was a magnificent trip we got to follow online through an app called PolarSteps, a real-time travel blog with pictures and videos.
The trip was to last three weeks after which they'd all return home to Holland. Unfortunately by the last week, my uncle's cancer progressed so much that he was no longer able to eat or drink much, he was losing weight losing weigth losing weight...
And then he was hospitalized.
In the end, he traveled the country of his birth from west to east for two and a half weeks, making it to Bali before he could go no further. He died one day after the day they were to return home. He died after his daughter returned to Holland and her daughter traveled the distance on her own to join him for the last two days of his life.
In his final hours, he slipped into a coma...
And then he was gone.
His memorial service was the first of March that's basically the thirtieth of February if there was such a thing as February thirtieth this year. We didn't catch the Livestream because it was too early our time but we did watch the video once it posted.
Of course everyone's speaking Dutch so there's only so much we understand. Fortunately, I have some tasty apps at my disposal so now we have a version that's captioned in English. It's not perfect, I'm sure. But good enough for our understanding.
On the same day as the memorial service, February 30 (😉), there was a Life celebration gathering for my production mentor and friend, Tom Speer, who passed away at the end of November, last year. This day in which we gathered was also, would've also been, Tom's birthday. So yeah. There was wonderfully frosted cake alongside an assortment of food and drink. We sang Happy Birthday. The gathering was filled with a production/broadcast group of professionals whose paths crossed or have crossed. So there's a lot of catching up, filling each other in on our lives. Most of what we did, though, was share Tom stories. In fact the main event of our gathering was sharing Tom experiences as friends, as neighbors, as people who worked alongside Tom during his extensive career as a videographer. That really was the point. We all walked away knowing more about Tom than we knew when we first walked into the room.
It was a gift. It really was.
Continuing this thread of dear life slipping away, I also dedicated time to writing the obituary for Kimmer's aunt Jacquie who passed away at the beginning of November last year.
I wrote her husband's obituary after he died at the top of 2023. It was crazy bittersweet to do the same for his wife who passed away eleven months later. And yeah. It really is a galling thing to reduce someone's life to five hundred words.
Not my favorite thing. Like, at all.
With Jacquie, we didn't get as lucky with her obit photograph as we did her husband. Someone had taken a genuinely iconic photo of him and not long before forwarded it to his son, Kimmer's cousin.
Kimmer wound up going through every photo of her aunt online, in any photo album, and anything on her phone or laptop. What she eventually found was perfect... although it was a photograph of a photograph in an album. And because of the angle at which the photo was taken... and the reflections from the clear plastic covering the photo that obscured some of its details and because Kimmer was also in the photo standing shoulder to shoulder, slightly in front of her aunt...
Because of all that the photo was less than ideal. Fortunately, with an AI/Photoshop/Topaz Labs assist, I was able to scale up the photograph's resolution, pull Kimmer completely out of the shot, and restore anything that was hidden either by reflections or by Kimmer standing slightly in front of her aunt. It was a clever bit of magic these apps performed that produced the photograph we desired. Reminding us all through the process just how much we miss Jacquie.
Intersecting with all this loss on our minds, it felt like we were randomly asked "how are you doing?" more than usually occurs. Even on a normal day the question always gives me pause because there are so many moving parts in our lives and not all of them are awesome all the time. And some of them are. So what do we do? Average those things? Cherry pick? Go with fine???
Well...
The middle of the month was a spread-out Valentine's Day. Spread out because we never celebrate on the day because everyone's out and about celebrating on that day, clogging up all the quiet corners we care to occupy. Day after Valentine's Day, then, we went out to see a movie together, "The Holdovers" at The Crest in Shoreline. A magnificent experience we enjoyed with a humongous bucket of superbly buttered popcorn. The day after the day after Valentine's Day, Friday, we exchange presents and cards and flowers before heading out to dinner at Girardis Osteria in Edmonds for an ungodly amount of delicious pasta to accompany our wine.
Snow made an appearance at our home in late February, dusting our home and yard and cars three mornings running, melting completely for three afternoons running. On the first of those days I took our car—the one that was stolen in December and taken on a wild bumper car smash-up ride to Bellevue—I took our car to the body shop where we're having our next round of work done in April. This particular day, our insurance wanted the interior mold cleared out given that our car spent days in a tow yard with a fully smashed window during a string of relentlessly rainy days. After the drop-off, I catch a charming Uber ride with a gentleman who's incredibly proud of his wife and daughters for the degrees and graduations they just achieved.
Funny thing: one of his daughters works at a local company where one of his Uber customers turned out to be working. They figured it out during conversation that the customer and his daughter work in the same department.
Small world.
And the snow?
While we got a half inch or less, he and his neighbors accumulated two inches of snow on their properties.
Cats were a thing in February. We welcomed into our home a big black cat named Quarter (after quarter note) on behalf of a dear friend who'll be away until Fall. Taking a bit of advice from a cat expert on YouTube, we kept our cat, Dinker, and the new cat apart for a week or so. Each was aware of the other, of course. But they never met in person. Early on, the closest they got was staring at each other through the glass of our family room door. No hisses. No aggressive postures. Just a curious sort of "who the heck are you?"
Eventually, they came to share the same physical spaces with a benign tolerance and trust. Again no hissing or aggressive posturing. Eventually, by the end of the month, they even got to be playful with each other. Tussling. Chasing after each other.
They each have their own individual rituals and habits along with home bases at opposite ends of the house and a shared mealtime that turns into a bit of a race to see who finishes first so they can poach the other's unfinished meal.
February after Valentine's Day also bird witness to our first steps at deChristmassing our home. So far we've got all the garland down inside the house except for Kimmer's office where that bough will grace the room the full year. We've got most of the nicknacky decorations put away including the stockings hung above the fireplace. We've got a number of interior light strings put away even as most will stay up 'cause we like the look. All the icicle lights outdoors along our front gutters from one end of the house to the other are put away. As are the random lights we threw on the bushes. Thankfully, there was time to tag all the lights and garlands with their locations in preparation for the end of this year when they all go up again.
Hopefully, probably, we'll have it all out away before this month of March sees its last day.
The thread running through February that will continue running through every foreseeable month for the next one-and-a-half years is Kimmer and her doctoral program. Thirty-some hours a week of reading, writing, class interactions, lectures, conferences, and research paired with a thirty-hour work week and the never ending charting each such week adds to the pile. It's not the sum total of our daily routines and responsibilities but it is the main juggling act on a high wire that's going on around here along with everything that pops up because yeah. Things pop up that you gotta do or deal with or that you just wanna do as a break from what you gotta deal with.
So this.
Was not a month off. Just a different way to go wall to wall while maintaining a life together in there somewhere: lunches together, walks in the neighborhood, listening to podcasts, alternately streaming Royal Pains and Big Bang Theory, planning adventures, snuggling while the snow falls.
In the end, February was a month soaked in emotional experience. It was a lot of loss catching up with us in different ways that still hurt our hearts, sure. It was everything else as well. All the pieces and parts that add up and color our days. Which, I guess...
Is just what normal looks like around here.
🙂
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simon “i cant do one-night stands because i catch feelings” riley but it’s in an obsessive way.
he realizes how your bodies are so compatible with each other that he begins to track you down to ‘accidentally’ bump into you. but this only ever happens on very specific days—days when fucking sort of becomes the natural next thing to do and who else could be the best option for you when simon, the man who made you cum more than three times within the short hours you two were together, was right there?
and you’re not foolish enough to deny yourself of the razing euphoria that only he could give to you—your bodies locking together, his hand a steady weight on the back of your neck, the other bruising as it gripped your hip, and his cock slammed so far in you that you swear he was hitting places you never knew were your pleasure points—so of course you would choose him. you miss him, after all.
(you miss the way he made you beg. the way he made you cry. he was so perfect. so gentle and kind. but he was also so mean. so dominating and overwhelming.
he was all you ever needed—someone to fuck you right.)
“one more round, yeah?” simon croons, chest heaving as he catches his breath.
your walls clamp down on him at hearing his words, before a garbled whine trickles from your kiss-swollen lips. he watches as your head shuffles against the pillows with your abrupt nods, further muffling your gasped out mewls.
simon giggles, his lips pulled into a grin that is a bite too mean.
seems like he’s fucked you stupid again, huh?
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