Post Morbus

Happy Thule rack season to all who celebrate!

Last year I did do some goal setting so I supposed I should follow up on those before I speak about what is in store for 2026.

The condo and work: we said goodbye to our tenant in August (he paid up until the end of his lease) and then sold the condo 9 days after his lease expired. We then bought some new real estate which we will pay for (interest-free!) until November of this year.

Mr. Tucker lost another coworker to restructuring last month, which is infuriating but the writing is on the wall for this company, it seems. He continues to stick it out until the bitter end. With the condo gone, and our savings/emergency/retirement accounts at a good amount, we are less concerned about what the future holds.

Personal Renaissance (formerly known as the mid-life crisis): My medication is still helping me exponentially but I can see myself switching it up, maybe later this year. I still have continued to spend more on personal care than I ever have in my entire life but you know what? It’s nice! My skin and nails feel so much nicer and I like how much I have changed in the last year.

In July I had this reoccurring stomach pain that I just couldn’t shake. One day at the beginning of August I got up and showered and it made me so tired and weak that I found myself in the emergency room. As it turns out, I had kidney stones blocking my ureter and my kidney was mondo inflamed. I got there at noon (I had a fever of 107F!), saw a doctor by 1:30pm, had a CT scan at 2pm, saw the Urologist by 2:30pm and was in surgery for a stent at 3:30pm. The Urologist told me that had the stones actually managed to lodge themselves in my ureter and scrape the sides, I probably would have had full body sepsis. So they put in a stent and kept me in the hospital for FIVE days as they tried to get the fever down. Once they cultured and figured out what bacteria I had, they could target it with specific antibiotics. Meanwhile, I lay in bed covered in ice packs and the only thing that would even touch my fever was 1000mg of Tylenol (why they don’t just say 1g, I will never know). It was a weird time as I was never truly awake or asleep. I think it was also scary to think that it took so long to fight the infection. It was a real wake-up call for me as I came to terms with the fact that as a person turning 50 that year, my body would take a lot longer to heal. I am still reckoning with that knowledge. At any rate, all is well that ends well and once the infection cleared, I had another procedure to break up and remove the stones and I go back this month for another CT scan to make sure all is clear.

Just as a side note, I have often heard of folks saying kidney stones were the worst pain they’ve ever had. But honestly, pre-hysterectomy (warning: graphic descriptions of a medical procedure) I lived through hellacious pain every month for 2-3 days where sometimes I barely could get out of bed. Compared to menstrual cramps, kidney stones were a walk in the park. I think this is also why I didn’t think they were kidney stones? Because the pain was at a level I had considered manageable comparatively, it just didn’t track in my head as a possibility.

This year I also turned 50 and threw myself a banger of a party!

Budgety 2025: What no one really talks about is how just out of sorts you feel when you’ve achieved all of your goals. I have spent most of my life setting goals, vacillating in and out of the spend/save cycle and managing finances that when we finally “made it,” all I could think of was, “well what now?” I still look in our accounts periodically as a metaphorical way of pinching myself to make sure that yes, we really do have savings and investments and I didn’t just dream it. Even if we didn’t save another penny we could just coast to 65 and have enough to support our simple little life.

I will pay the last instalment on The Youngest’s RESP this month to get the maximum grant from the government, so that is a line item off of our budget.

We also paid for The Youngest to get her CASI Level 1 training to become a snowboard instructor, which she passed! She has also been hired by a local company to teach snowboarding one day a week.

The Eldest passed her driving test and can now drive on her own – a fact that she is taking full advantage of! Her insurance as third driver is more than the insurance for both Mr. Tucker *and* I! I only make her pay $30 a month though, mostly to get her used to paying a bill. She also pays her own gas.

The Eldest also got into university and will be heading off to a co-op program in the fall – and she will be staying in residence. Mr. Tucker and I are shocked at how hard this has hit us even though we were the ones who encouraged her to go to residence for the first year! I feel like the kids who lived through Covid probably use the boost of living on campus and managing their lives. So even though she could live at home, I think she will benefit hugely from having the full university experience.

You have to kick at the darkness… Man, what a year politically, eh? I have to say: giving up facebook[1] and instagram is the gift that keeps on giving. I have no regrets about leaving social media at all. I am as informed and as outraged as I want to be, thanks – and in fact, being less informed and less outraged would be even better but WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY, I guess.

I managed to do more trivia nights and more craft nights with friends. We played cards more as a family after dinner and I read more books than I have in a long time. I took an art class and liked it a lot and we did a bunch of one-off, learn-a-new-craft evenings various art businesses in the area. We saw friends for dinner – some friends we hadn’t even seen in years (& it is definitely something I want to do more of!). Also, since 3 people in my friend’s group turned 50 there were also more parties this year – and I am not mad about it! I just did more *social* stuff in general this year and plan to continue this trend into 2026.

Overall it feels like our kids are old enough and mature enough now that we can bring back some more social events into our lives, it’s a giant sigh of relief as we feel like we have more breathing room and more space to pay attention to our friends – and even work on building new friendships. Also, one of my oldest and dearest friends is moving here from the US and the start of 2026 is going to focus a lot on getting her set up and feeling loved and supported in her new home.

I guess the next post will be more about what my goals are for 2026!

[1] I still have an account as I do like having access to community groups, Buy Nothing groups and Marketplace but I legit check it for 5 minutes and my main feed is all slop so nothing encourages me to be there.