As many of you know, there is very little about the Christmas Holiday which I enjoy. Usually, during this holiday I am either short on money, time, or good cheer. By the last week prior to Christmas, my stress levels have me passed the point I can breathe. Last year this was caused when I not only got my check two and a half weeks late, but also did not get my usual Christmas bonus. The year before that Rebecca had lost her job and Christmas would mostly be about preparing to buffer ourselves against the problems to come.

When the month began I had already been handed a bit more than I could handle. Wally decided that he could no longer work at the store because he was looking for more work and didn’t feel he could keep up the responsibility. This wasn’t a huge problem, however, since I had been handling the FNMs prior to that with little trouble, the additional Friday gave me time to be able to get some side responsibilities done, however and would allow me additional shopping time this year.

In addition, the two weeks prior to Thanksgiving I floated the store a loan which I was sure would have paid off by now. However, due to the random decrease in player attendance at both the FNMs and the Drafts, income tanked during the month of November and I am still sitting on $800 which will end up being paid back to me in slow installments.

During the last week of the month, I was notified by Rebecca that the custody agreement, which I thought was going to be sufficient, was not usable and would have to be amended. This meant that I would not be allowed to see my daughter for at least another month, and it was especially painful because of the time of year, and my family’s desire to see her again.

However, Teri has been amazingly supportive during this time. It’s a little tougher for her and I really appreciate the attempts she has been making. I feel awful because I know what a mess I become this time of year and the fact that she understands is help on it’s own.

I have new plans for the store next year and so far they seem to be fairly awesome. Tom is going to come on in a more Partner style position and I am still in the market for a few others. I am currently watching one of my clients deal with a nightmare situation and I don’t want to end up there myself.

So where am I going with all this?

Mostly I am just passing out status updates to the world and explaining why the great deal of silence lately. Although it’s not completely responsible I was trying to enjoy as much of my time in November as I could.

To anyone which may feel like I have been ignoring them or not communicating with them as much, I apologize and to those of you who feel I was rude or insincere, I apologize.

Silence is not one of my favorite things in the world; in fact, it’s one of those things that I hate. So being without the ability to communicate with a large part of my universe because I have been moving has pretty much been weird. For me, any time I move it always results in another loss. This move I thought I was prepared for my losses. I was totally wrong.

Yesterday, Pablo, my pet bird, died. I’ve sort of been dreading the day, so in a way, seeing him dead wasn’t as traumatic as I expected it to be. Part of that bothered me though. When I came down and saw him laying there I didn’t cry. At first I was in disbelief, and then I realized it was true. My body, however, reacted as if this was just the usual goings on and proceeded into how to properly resolve this situation mode. Telling my mother, I felt some pain, but not what I had expected. I let out a few tears, but I kept feeling like, well it could have been worse.

In a lot of ways, I am sad to see Pablo go. Hearing him “cat call” was always one of my favorite parts of any given day. Watching him tear up cards and never back down from challenges eight times his size rank high on my answers to why this bird was awesome. That’s part of why it doesn’t hurt the way I think it should. Pablo lived a long life. He was always an awesome bird. He was very old, and everything was starting to bother him. The move was just too much for him.

I know for many people it’s just a bird and even this is a little more than I should probably be going into detail about, but Pablo was a part of my life. He was there through so many stages of it. It’s going to be weird not having him around, but I’m glad we could hang out while we could.