Bye, Tash.

Today is a sad day in the Gressel house.

I had to have my old cat Tasha put to sleep yesterday morning. She wasn't doing very well lately, what with another kidney infection and all. Plus I don't think that the stress of moving did her any good. So when I went downstairs this morning and found her laying on the floor barely alive, I knew that her time was almost up.

Tasha was 16 years old – she would've been 17 in about two weeks. I got her as a kitten shortly after my dog died. She was a good friend, and she certainly lived all nine of her lives. She loved to be petted as much as humanly possible, and then some. "Pet me, pet me" was her cry. But she was also a good naptime buddy; the cat you could always count on to come curl up next to you while you slept.

She also loved to eat anything meat related, preferably turkey and/or tuna, and she could hear a carton of ice cream being opened from a mile away. She would sit and stare at me every morning while I had breakfast, hoping that I'd save her a little bit of whatever it was I happened to be eating. (She also enjoyed frozen waffles with Miss Katie for several years.) She developed a jones for canned cat food a few years ago, and the ritual dance she'd do for us while waiting for me to open the can would put Michael Jackson's best dance moves to shame.

Tasha didn't like to go outside – she had a bad experience with the inside of a car engine when she was young, but that didn't keep her from chirping at the birds from inside the house. She'd just sit on the back of the chair and stare at them through the window, hoping that one of them would find its way inside so that she could have some lunch. She usually stuck pretty close to The Lovely Mrs. G., and every night you knew you'd find Tasha curled up on her lap at some point.

We had a lot of good years with that nutty old cat. She was diabetic, which meant we had to give her insulin shots twice a day – or, as we called it, "Gotta shoot the cat". But she eventually got used to the needles, and usually stood still for her daily medication. The vet told us that the diabetes would shorten her lifespan, and that she'd only have 1 – 3 years left once we started the insulin. That was 7 years ago.

So now we're down to one cat – Uncle Jack. He's still a little freaked out from the move, but he is slowly calming down. I don't think I'll get another cat for a while – Mrs. G. would rather have a dog next, and I'll let Uncle Jack be a single boy for a while. (He and Tasha never did get along well anyway, despite living together for almost 13 years.) I don't want to rush into getting another pet just to replace Miss Tasha – partly because she truly was one of a kind.

I'm thankful for the time I had with Tasha. Not everyone gets to have the same pet for 17 years. She made me smile a lot, and I'm sure that she knew how much she was loved.

My Country For A House

Last Sunday was my last day in Sioux City. At 4:30 Sunday afternoon I officially drove away from our house there, never to return. (The Lovely Mrs. G. and I joked that it was just like Felix Unger being thrown out of his apartment in the opening credits of “The Odd Couple”, except for 1) we’re not separating, and 2) she didn’t hand me a frying pan.)

So for the next 8 days I’m technically “homeless” – a man without a permanent residence. It makes me feel a little bit transient. Maybe I should grow a craggy beard and buy a bottle of Night Train? Thank God I’ve at least got my “box” Value Place room to stay in, and I don’t have to sleep in a genuine cardboard box, especially since it’s snowing and about 10 degrees outside right now.

It seems strange to think I’ll never be in my Sioux City house again. It was our home for 8.5 years – a place where I spent over 3,000 nights of my life. Other than my parent’s house in Seattle (which they bought in the mid 1950’s), it’s where I’ve lived the longest. So while I’m glad to be moving on, it’s still a little odd feeling to know I’ll never be inside that house again.

But all of that will be moot next Monday afternoon though, when we sign all the contracts and forms and promissory notes and other assorted legal docs for our new house in Omaha. Then I’ll have a home again – and a good home at that. I’ll be able to live under the same roof with my lovely bride and my cranky cats again (which will be a nice change), and I won’t have to drive 100 miles each way to visit them.

I’ll also have a lot of room in my new basement to fill with new and exciting crap – more Disney posters, some Florida mementos, and who knows what else I can come up with. It won’t be as tacky as your neighborhood Applebees (I promise you – and Mrs. G.), but it will have that certain je ne se qua that just screams out “Tommy Was Here”.

They say that home is where the heart is, and I’m sure it won’t take long before the Gressels are fully ensconced and familiar with their new surroundings. And since we’ll have 7 days before Christmas to get used to it, I’m fairly certain that the transition will go fast.

So here’s to home – may you always find your way back. But if someone else is now living there, may I recommend that you at least knock first.

Lift and Tote 101

The Lovely Mrs. G. and I will be moving soon – very soon. As in 11 days from now soon.

On that note, here’s my question to you: Have you ever met anyone who ENJOYS moving?

Oh, sure – it’s exciting to have a new home, possibly in a new town. And I’m sure that if you surveyed 100 movers – people who make their living hauling your crap around – a majority of them will say that yeah, moving has been berry, berry good to them.

But what I’m talking about is the actual PROCESS of moving. You know – packing, lifting, taping, hauling, begging your friends for help, renting U-Hauls, unpacking, searching for something you've boxed somewhere… Yeah, that part of the moving experience.

In my 42 years on God’s Green Earth, I’ve never met anyone who actually likes this part of moving. And I doubt if you have, too.

I’ve moved 8 times in my life, all after age 21. The first 6 moves were 20 miles or less; move #7 took me from Seattle to Iowa, and numero ocho brought us to Sioux City in 1999. None of which I’d call “fun”, although it was kind of nice to move away from the X (and not look back) when we left Seattle.

So now we’re now prepping for Move Number 9, from Sioux Cityto Omaha, only this time we’re going to do it differently: We’ve hired movers. Why, you ask, would we be willing to spend the extra dough to have professional movers do it for us, instead of rounding up a rental truck and a half dozen semi-drunk buddies? It’s simple: We still haven’t recovered from our last move.

It was a Saturday in June 1999 when we moved from Cowtown, Iowa (population 800) to Sioux City. June is normally a fairly mellow month weather-wise, but when we moved we must’ve done something to piss off Mother Nature, because it was one of those rare June days when it was 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity. It was me, Mrs. G., and a married couple friends of ours who offered to help us load our rental truck. We started early in the morning (around 7:00), filling the truck with about 2/3 of the way through what was really supposed to be moved. (I thought I ordered the biggest truck available – Mrs. G. recalls that I wimped out and got a smaller one. I honestly don’t remember, so she probably is right. Just don’t tell her that.)

We were sweaty, tired, and out of energy, but the fun had just begun – we now had to drive 55 miles to Sioux City, then unload all this crap. Then – if that wasn’t fun enough – we had to go back to Cowtown, get the rest of the stuff, and then do it all again. All while the heat and humidity continued to climb. We got to Sioux City, showed our friends around our new (still empty) house, then proceeded to unload the truck. Hot, hot, sweaty, yucky, not much fun. Oh, and have I mentioned that our friends bailed on us about halfway through? I can’t blame them, really –helping friends move sucks big time. But c’mon – itwas miserable for all of us! Isn’t it true that misery LOVES company? So Mrs. G. and I were left alone to finish unloading the truck, then going back for the rest.

Long story short, we unloaded the last of the junk into our new house at about 5:00 PM, right at the peak of the early summer heat. We’d manage to bring everything, except for one of our cats who had somehow disappeared prior to our loading the first box. (Ifound her the next day, hiding underneath the furnace. I brought her to the new house, where she hid underneath the basement stairs for a week.) I took the moving truck back, came back and showered,and split a Domino’s pizza with Mrs. G. We then fell dead asleep, exhausted to the bone, on our mattress,which had been dropped in the middle of the living room floor. The next morning? We were soooo sore we had a hard time getting off the mattress. I hurt so badly that I’m surprised I’m still not lying there now.

Yes, moving sucked. It sucked royally. It sucked big time. It sucked so much – that we won’t do it again. (8 ½ years later, and we’re still remembering every box we hauled. It was that bad.)

So here we are – in WINTER – about to move again. Knowing Mother Nature as I do, the day we move it’ll probably be 20 below with an ice storm or something. But this time we’re going to sit it out and pay some poor stiffs to do the grunt work for us. They’ve got the muscles, they’ve got the truck. We’ve got the checkbook.

So here’s to all of you hard working movers – may you always be there when we call. ‘Cause trust me – we’ll be a-calling.

Don't Shoot The Messenger

I’m currently sitting in my little hotel room (“the cell”, I’ve begun calling it, although the Lovely Mrs. G. calls it “the box”) in La Vista, NE – about 5 miles SW of Westroads Mall in Omaha, where yesterday afternoon a 19 year old kid with a plethora of issues walked into the Van Maur department store and randomly started shooting people.

I’m sure you’ve heard the details on the news by now. 9 dead, several more wounded, no happy ending.

It’s an ugly situation all around here today. The local TV stations have talked about nothing else for the last 24 hours, replaying the same half dozen sound bites and survivor interviews over and over again. The phrases “deeply saddened” and “loved ones” are being tossed around so much that they’ve become clichés – you could probably start a drinking game based on every time some reporter on TV calls it a “harrowing experience”. People are really emotionally raw about the whole situation, with the most common response being “things like this aren’t supposed to happen in the Heartland.”

It’s a weird world – when you least expect it, crap like this happens. You never know when some wacko with a chip on his shoulder and his brain out of sorts is going to attempt to go out in a blaze of glory and/or instant fame.

Here’s what I think. (Brace yourselves, NRA members – I’m about to piss you off.) With the prevalence of guns (and the ease of getting them), it’s no wonder that things like this happen. The only surprise is that it doesn’t happen more often. The Unicameral of Nebraska last year passed a concealed weapons law. The police begged them not to. The sane people begged them not to. But they did anyway, thanks to successful lobbying from you-know-who. So any nutball with the proper forms and 3 days to stall can go out, buy a gun, load it up, and then hide it under their clothes. Bang, bang, gotcha by surprise. And then we all stand around and wonder WHY?

I’m not much of a fan of guns anymore. For hunting food? Sure. Used in warfare? You bet. Letting crazed, depressed, hell-bent on destruction trenchcoats have as many as they want, just because they can? Forget it.

There’s got to be a limit somewhere. I don’t know what it is – more background checks, a maximum number of guns anyone can own, more gun safety classes – something. Something that will keep Columbines and Virginia Techs and now Omahas from happening more often.

So there’s my rant for the day. I know, I know. Guns don’t kill people – idiots with guns kill people. But is it worth it? I bet I can tell you about nine families who will tell you no.