What do you mean "I'm Alive"?

I...haven't blogged in almost a month? Good grief. Time got away from me. Strap yourselves in, this one's gonna be a doozy.

Needless to say, "crazy" doesn't begin to define my life since Oct 28th. We bought our house, painted a few rooms, a little cleaning, a lot of packing, and finally, November 12th, moved in. Or that was the plan. Our STUFF moved in. And we did too, for a day. I was supposed to go back to work Monday. Instead, I was up at 4:00 in the morning taking Hubby to the hospital because he couldn't breathe. I spent the entire rest of the day unpacking and tossing boxes faster than I've ever unpacked a house before. It took all day and getting in touch with a lot of people, but after a full 13 hour day, we figured out what the problem was: there was dirt and dust in our ground vents. So we found a vent cleaner and set up an appointment. I crashed early that night.

The next day I returned to work and immediately got shocking news: the night before, my boss's son had committed suicide. My entire office was in shock; everyone was trying to find out what they could from those who knew. As far as I know now, he had suffered recently with depression and my boss's whole family had been fighting it with him. His son was less than two months younger than me. When I got home that night, I had a bit of an emotional breakdown myself as Hubby and I decided we needed to rehome my cat for the sake of his allergies, less than a week after we had agreed to try and keep him for another year. What a horrible day, and yet I couldn't feel sorry for myself because I knew my boss was having worse. :(

We spent the rest of the week on an air mattress in our empty apartment. A grief councelor came and talked to us about what we were feeling and how we could help each other and our boss, and I finally realized thanks to him that I was allowed to grieve for my own suffering. Thursday, a cleaning service came and flushed copious amounts of sawdust, drywall dust, dust dust, and CHUNKS OF WOOD WITH WOOD STAPLES IN THEM out of our air ducts. Apparently someone who did construction in there thought our floor vents were convenient garbage disposals. And the best part? We can't go after anyone for it because we have nothing to show who did it. We're swallowing the cost for the hospital visit, the duct cleaning, and the house cleaning we had to get to get the dust out of all our furniture and carpet, not to mention all the physical and emotional trauma and missed work we were put through because someone else couldn't dispose of their construction debris properly.

Friday and Saturday, my father-in-law came to visit to help with handyman work around the house. Saturday morning, I went to my boss's son's funeral. I just went to the visitation; too much going on with the house. The house was cleaned as well, and on Saturday night, a full week after we moved in, we were finally able to sleep in our own house.

Saturday night, after my dad-in-law left, we had our best man come visit with his (awesome) new girlfriend (I hope he keeps her, we got along better than I ever have with anyone he's dated) and they helped us finish moving out. Sunday we cleaned the place and turned in our keys. Hopefully we'll be getting most or all of our security deposit back.

Thanksgiving was insane. Wednesday morning we packed up all of my cat's things and the cat and drove to my mom's. She's taken him back since we couldn't keep him any longer. After we got him settled, we headed off to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, TN for Thanksgiving. My cousin and a friend of theirs rented a giant 4-story cabin for our families. Hubby and I had a room that was meant to be shared with my other cousin and his wife and kids (2 queen-sized bunkbeds), but they couldn't make it, so we had the whole room to ourselves. On the top floor was a giant game room with 2 air hockey tables, 2 foozball tables, a poker table and a pool table. My cousin (B) set up a helicopter obstacle course in there as well. He bought every family a remote-controller copter and a giant one was the prize for a race that would take place after Thankgiving dinner (which ended up being lunch). There were 18 of us there between our family and the friend's family. I made my grandfather's pineapple kugel recipe (which was declared "better than the original") Thanksgiving morning. The other family was in charge of the turkeys. Two of the men have an annual competition involving deep-frying turkeys and lots of alcohol. Thankfully, no one was hurt. We ended up with 3 turkeys, along with mashed potatoes, an amazing sweet potato casserole, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, my kugel, cornbread, two kinds of cranberries, a pumpkin pie and a banana creme pie. All but one cranberry dish and the pumpkin pie was homemade, and it was all delicious. I wish I'd been able to eat more! We digested and did the helicopter race (the 14 year old son of the other family won), watched TV and relaxed the rest of the evening.

The next day, we went back to Mom's. I said goodbye to my kitty and we hit to road for Hubby's parent's place. They'd had dinner as normal yesterday with their neighbors, which apparently included brisket and lasagna on top of turkey, so we had dinner at a family favorite Chinese place. I got to play with Julia and chat with Grandpa. He had wanted to come see our house, but we all decided it would be better if we didn't rush to get him over there and then back to Hubby's parents (a 7 hour round trip). So instead, we're going to drive down and get him during spring break to bring him up to see the place and stay for a day or two. Saturday night we went to a hockey game for the local minor league team and I finally had the team I was rooting for win. All in all, a good time! Yesterday we said our goodbyes and headed home, where I was finally, after TWO WEEKS able to get my computer set-up and get online.

Oh, right, Hubby and I had our 7th dating anniversary on the 21st. We went out for a nice dinner at our local hibachi place.

So that's been my life the past month. Thanksgiving was the first time things looked up in weeks. My kitty's been doing well at Mom's, getting along with at least one of her other two cats and seems to be attaching well to the new place. I hate that he's not with me anymore, but we couldn't turn a blind eye to how sick he was making Hubby anymore. This is for the best for everyone. At least, I keep telling myself that. It doesn't feel like it sometimes though.

Um, for Day Zero, I haven't done much. I read Terry Pratchett's Strata for #49. One book left. I also watched Analyse This for my "A" movie. Absolutely loved it, great movie. We've got Hubby's clothes ready to donate, we just need to get rid of them. I think that's it. We've been a bit preoccupied to work on much this month. Maybe December will be a bit better.