Life Lately March 2025

The month started off with a fun little weekend adventure (we went to Pittsburgh to see the Leafs/Penguins game) and it's ending with a fun little weekend adventure (we are headed to WDW this morning)! In between, I don't really know where the time went! We took Avalanche on many walks, which is nothing new, and we also took our niece and nephew to Medieval Times, which was entertaining to say the least! We had a really nice family gathering up in New York, although we missed both C and S1, as they were unable to join to us. C had a terrible cold, and he didn't want to get either our baby nephew or my 95-year old YaYa sick, so he stayed home while I went up to NY by myself for the day.

Beyond that, the biggest news of the month is that we experienced another first with Avalanche - he asked me for pets! He is usually quite aloof, but there was a really loud, booming noise one night this week, and it frightened him pretty badly. I hugged him and reassured him he was safe, and he not only just tolerated my affection, but he seemed rather content to stay in my embrace. That alone was wonderful, but then the next evening, C and I were watching TV, and Avalanche just wandered over and stared at me with his beautiful blue eyes, At first I thought he needed to go outside, but he inched closer and closer to my hand, so I reached over to pet him. This usually results in him ducking his head and walking away to avoid me, but not this time! He let me pet his head and scratch his ears and run my fingers up and down his back, and when I stopped, he looked up at me expectantly and swished his tail (also a fairly uncommon occurrence!), so I resumed the attention and he happily accepted it! We've had him for almost 28 months, so this has been a long time coming and was certainly worth the wait! We love him so much!

my boy

I had this print made for C
for Valentine's Day

we hung it on the side of the kitchen island,
right above his water and food bowls

I love my family!

when C and I picked up our niece and nephew
to go to Medieval Times, this is what they'd written
on their easel...so precious!!!

our absolutely adorable baby nephew

Excited to be boarding our flight to Florida shortly...we haven't been to WDW since last June and we've been looking forward to this weekend!

Happy Tails to you!

Maple Leafs at Penguins!

For the past couple of Christmases, B1, S1, B2, S2, C, and I have done a Secret Santa gift exchange and this year, B1 pulled C's name. When our gift exchange rolled around, C was the lucky recipient of hockey tickets! I know B1 wanted C to be able to see a Leafs game and I do like to think that he chose a game in Pittsburgh because the Penguins are my American team after we lived in PA not far from Pittsburgh for several years many moons ago!

We drove up to Pittsburgh yesterday after dropping Avalanche off at his dog hotel for two nights, then we visited my dad and went out to dinner together last evening. I love spending as much time with him as I can!

The game was today at 1:00 pm, so we slept in, went out for brunch, and then headed over to the arena. This was our third time attending a game in this arena - we went to a game in 2016 when it was called the Consol Energy Center and then a second game in 2018 when it had been renamed PPG Paints Arena (which it is still called).

As I've shared in many posts, we've been to hockey games in 39 NHL arenas - we had caught up and could proudly state we'd been to all of them, but now we're one behind because the Arizona Coyotes were relocated to Salt Lake City and that arena is the only one that we haven't seen a game in. We plan to go to Utah for a game next season to rectify that!

PPG Paints is a GREAT arena! Absolutely in our top ten, and possibly our top five! We'd been looking forward to this game since December and were super excited to wander around the arena before the game began. There was a shocking number of Leafs fans in attendance. So many Leafs fans! I mean, Pittsburgh is having a pretty abysmal year, while Toronto is having a great year, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised? Truthfully, Toronto is only about a five-hour drive from Pittsburgh, and that, coupled with the insane ticket prices and lack of availability of tickets for Toronto home games, makes the volume of Leafs fans at the game completely understandable. We've also encountered Leafs fans LITERALLY all around the world in the course of our travel, so I know Leafs fans are everywhere!

The game was incredible! By no means was it a display of defensive prowess, as a total of 11 goals were scored, but all of that offense made for an amazing fan experience! As far as I'm concerned, things couldn't have gone any better - my beloved Sidney Crosby scored a goal and got three points, and then my favorite Maple Leaf, William Nylander, won the game in overtime! Honestly, if I could have written a script for the game, what actually happened would have been pretty close to my vision!

We are currently on our way home, and we'll pick up Avalanche from his dog hotel tomorrow morning before school! What a fabulous weekend! We cannot thank B1 enough for the gift and all of the awesome memories that came with it!

C wore his Matthews jersey and
I wore my Crosby jersey

perfect metaphor for how I was feeling
because I love both of these teams!

my American hometown team hosting
my Canadian hometown team

I absolutely could not love him more!

my Maple Leafs

Happy Tails to you!

2023: A Look Back

2023...don't let the door hit you on the way out.

There were certainly some highlights, but overall, it was a very difficult year.

The good stuff:

We started the year on the highest of notes by adopting Avalanche on January 1! It's hard to believe we've had him for an entire year already!

Other than Avalanche and spending time with our families, the best parts of the year revolved around travel.

Our domestic travel in 2023 included:

• seven trips to WDW January, August, September, September, October, November, and December.
• a trip to San Diego in February
• a trip to Houston in March
• a trip to Boston in May
• a trip to Phoenix in November
• many driving trips, including five to Canada (which we pretty much consider domestic travel for us)
• a Disney Cruise in May

You may recall that I earned the Southwest Companion Pass and we made as much use of it as we possibly could. Over the course of 2023, we are able to use it for 21 free one-way flights for C! Twenty-one! Even though it expired at the end of 2023, Southwest had another promotion to earn a Companion Pass for two months - early January through early March - so we took advantage of that and have free companion flights booked for three upcoming trips. This will bring our total number of free one-way flights to 27! (In case you're wondering why it's an odd number, we flew on Southwest down to Costa Rica in June, but did not fly home on Southwest.)

Our international travel included our spring break trip to Switzerland, which had long been on our travel bucket list and Costa Rica, Colombia (Cartagena was a bust, but we loved Medellin and Bogota!), and Ecuador for our summer trip.

I must also mention the birthday weekend celebration my best friends planned for me in May as it was definitely a high point of my year!

Professionally, there were major changes for me in 2023. I started a new job with the Professional Learning Department in central office and I'm housed at two elementary schools. My first day of work was only nine days after losing my mom and it was a bit of a rough start as a result. However, my colleagues are wonderful and as I've grown into a position that is so different from anything I've done before, I'm really enjoying this new role.

The not-so-good stuff:

Losing my mom.

The most soul crushing experience of my life.

I'm planning on writing another post in a couple of weeks, so I'll save most of my thoughts for then, but all I can say is that I am not the same person I was when 2023 began. I tell people I'm fine and that I'm doing ok, but I'm not. I get emotionally overwhelmed very easily and as a result, I've been shutting people out. I don't want to socialize. I don't want to have to put on a happy face for people because obviously I have to do that all day long at work. The only way I can describe it is a feeling of being completely disinterested in just about everything. You know in the movie Inside Out when the emotional control panel just goes black? Pretty accurate depiction.

Now that we've moved into a new year, I am trying really hard to force myself to do things that I know will be fun even when I don't feel like it and it is definitely making a difference. I went out with two of my best friends this past weekend and I went to see the Frozen musical with one of them this week. I'm just trying to get myself back on track to live the kind of life I aspire to have and be the kind of person I aspire to be. I am so incredibly lucky to have the best husband I could ever hope for who has kept me afloat for the past six months while I have struggled to even put one foot in front of the other some days.

I have been reading and reading and reading about grief, and one of the things that comes up repeatedly is that it has no timeline and that healing looks different for everyone, so I'm doing my best to go easy on myself when things are slipping through the cracks. It will get better, that much I know. Until then, I am not going to beat myself up for how I'm navigating my grief. The people who matter to me have continued to check in and send me random texts and cute animal pics and funny memes and I am forever grateful to them for sticking with me.

I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, but I started something something last month that I have continued and will challenge myself to continue for all of 2024: I don't check my work email on my phone anymore. Back in December, I was prompted to enter my work email password on my phone and I just decided not to. I'd been having a rough day and I was just not in the mood to deal with it, so I told myself to forget it and just check my email the next morning when I got to work. Then I did the same thing the next day when I was prompted for a password. And the next, and so on. It has been great. Whatever the email is, it can wait. Does that mean that sometimes I get to work in the morning and there are more emails than I'd like to deal with first thing? Of course. But I haven't regretted for one single second not absent-mindedly checking my work email multiple times every evening and weekend. There have been a couple of occasions where I needed to check for a reply or answer to a question I had, but making the conscious decision to log in on my computer only when absolutely necessary has made a huge difference in my life. No more feeling annoyed by things I can't control or things I can't do anything about until I get to work the next day.

Good riddance, 2023 and hello, 2024. We have some fun travel planned for this year and if I'm being honest, looking forward to going away is what has kept me going. I was hoping as soon as the calendar changed to January, everything would be better, but unfortunately, that's not how real life works. However, little by little, it feels like the light and color is coming back into my life. It may be happening at a snail's pace, but it is happening.

this is my favorite pic from the entire year
because it’s from one of my favorite days of all time
#switzerland

Happy Tails to you!

NHL Arena #39

The title of this post should really be "NHL Arena" #39 because while we did indeed see an actual NHL game, the arena was the collegiate rink at Arizona State University. Does that seem odd? It is! Although the Coyotes played in Glendale, AZ for 20 years, the city decided not to renew the team's lease, so their games are now housed at Mullett Arena for at least three years (2022-2025). The whole situation is a mess. Nonetheless, it was a new arena for us, so off we went!

We flew to Phoenix very late this past Friday night and returned home very late on Sunday night, in and out of BWI.  On our way there, the plane wasn't even half full, which was fantastic and something we rarely experience - apparently late Friday night flights to Phoenix aren't particularly popular? The flight home was a different story as it was completely full, but we had a very nice person sit between so no complaints on that front!

We stayed in Tempe so we'd be a short walk from the arena and wouldn't need to rent a car. The hotel was dog-friendly and had a biscuit bar behind the front desk and a sandwich board in the lobby with the names of the dogs currently staying in hotel. So cute! From our window, we also spotted a dog play area on the roof of the hotel's parking garage and the shades were shaped like bones. 5 stars!

The hockey game was at 1:00 pm on Saturday, so we slept in, went to brunch, and then walked over to the arena. Let me say this: I did not have high hopes for this event and I couldn't even imagine how a small college facility would be able to provide a professional hockey experience. Well, it didn't. Not even close. The tickets are difficult to get and super overpriced because of how many fewer seats are available (17,000+ seats at the arena in Glendale and only 5,000 seats at Mullett Arena). The layout of the arena is very strange and our seats weren't chairs - they were benches. Overall, a very poor fan experience. However, all of that pales in comparison to the security nonsense.

I'm well aware of bag restrictions at sporting events and often just carry my wallet/keys/phone in my pockets. However, I purposely chose the smallest purse I have for this trip (the pic below shows how small it is compared to my sunglasses). Well the only bags that can be brought in must measure 4" x 6". Absolutely absurd. That wasn't really my issue, though. I have no problem with rules/restrictions if they are being enforced equitably, but that was not the case. People were being allowed into the game carrying hoodies and jackets and large blankets, bunched up, with no one checking if anything was inside. I could have easily hidden my purse inside the hoodie I was carrying and no one would have cared. However, I did the right thing and got in line for the bag check. The person in front of me had a baby with them, so they had a very large diaper bag that was allowed in (totally understandable), but they also had a very large crossbody bag that wasn't checked (and they were not asked to take it off) and they were allowed to take it into the arena. I didn't think much of it until it was my turn and the "security personnel" held a 4" x 6" index card up to my bag and said my bag was too big and I couldn't take it in. Honestly, I was beyond dumbfounded given what I'd been witnessing while waiting in line. I was furious because I had no interest in walking back to the hotel to drop it off because it would mean missing the warmup and potentially the beginning of the game. What we ended up doing was emptying the purse, hiding it in the parking garage across the street, and carrying in all of its contents. Such utter stupidity. Again, my issue was not with the supposed "rule," but rather with how it was not being enforced for all guests and how the entire security screening was a joke. Why have a rule if it's not going to be applied across the board?!? You're not actually keeping anyone safe if some people can bring in whatever they want without it being checked! Thankfully my purse was exactly where we left it when we went to pick it up after the game. While I acknowledge that I should have just left my purse at the hotel in the first place, the way "security" was being handled was ridiculous.

The game itself was not bad. We were in row E, so pretty close to the glass behind one of the nets, which is far from our preferred seats at a hockey game, but it was cool to see the action happening relatively close to us. There was a shocking number of Winnipeg Jets fans, so there was a lot of chanting and cheering for both teams, and overall, I'm glad we went even though I'd describe the experience as extremely bush league!

Howler is one of my favorite
NHL mascots

On Sunday, we went to the Desert Botanical Garden and it was beautiful. So many cool plants and cacti! They have a butterfly garden and live music and it made for a great afternoon!

they had an ofrenda

I chose this for my mom

I miss her so much

Although it was a quick trip, we had a lot of fun and even a less-than-great hockey game is still a hockey game!

spotted this on the side of a building

was pleased to learn there was a Dutch Bros.
a short walk from our hotel

my sandwich was called a Reading Rainbow

handmade ice cream sandwiches that were so good!

Happy Tails to you!