Fur Babies, and My Mary

🌼 Date: Saturday, December 20, 2025

⚡ Energy: Low → improving

💔 Status: Alive

🙂 Outlook: Holding steady (with a side of gratitude)

Today feels different — in a good way.

The nausea finally backed off enough that I could eat and keep food down. I actually managed about three times the calories I got yesterday, which feels like a victory worth celebrating quietly. My dehydration headache is gone too, so we’re calling that a solid win/win.

Of course, the universe likes balance.

At 2:30 this morning, after a whole five hours of sleep (luxury!), I discovered that our senior dog Momo — who is 12, blind, diabetic, and gets insulin shots twice a day — had peed on the Christmas tree skirt… and a few of the presents underneath it.

Not exactly what I had planned while still feeling pretty nauseous.

So, there I was, pulling gifts out from under the tree, washing the tree skirt, mopping the floor, and then putting everything back together. The gifts that got hit? I got the special bonus experience of unwrapping them early… only to rewrap them again. Definitely not on my bingo card for the morning.

Somewhere between the mop bucket and the wrapping paper, I realized something else — I’ve never formally introduced you to our fur babies, and they’re very much part of this whole journey.

Meet Momo, our Japanese Chin/Pomeranian mix — sweet, elderly, blind, diabetic, and still very much running the household. And Gidget, our 8-year-old Yorkie, who is pure sass and attitude and clearly takes after her mother. She’s also a big fan of leopard print, as evidenced by her dedication to stealing my blanket and claiming it as her own.

They are chaotic, comforting, exhausting, grounding, and exactly what we need.

On a brighter note, my friend Mary got started on the window decals, and I am absolutely in love with how they turned out. All the tweaks, edits, and back-and-forth were worth it. Seeing that BADASS ribbon in the wild made me stop and smile — which doesn’t always happen automatically these days.

So today held nausea relief, messy surprises, fur-covered blankets, wrapping paper round two, and a visual reminder that this whole thing — the blog, the words, the art — is becoming real.

Not perfect.
Not easy.
But real.

And for today, that’s enough.

We keep going.

💗 Tina –
One Badass Day at a Time

Fur Babies, and My Mary