So January, right? The new year, new me time of the month. Gone are the holidays and the stress and the sense of wonder and bright lights and racist family members trying to justify their bad behavior around the dining room tables. Onto the cold and the dreary wait for Spring to wake up and shake off the frost and to make things warm enough that all of us Vitamin D deprive zombies can stand topless on our front porches and spread our arms in an example of mass photosynthesis.

... what? No one else stands topless on their front porch and photosynthesizes? Only me? ... well that explains all of the complaints.

But January! What a month. Our wages went down, benefits went down, taxes went up; we went through weeks and weeks of 50-70mph winds with gusts upward of 90+; the outer temps dipped into the super chilly -20Fs, which made Jack Frost not so much nip at our noses, but chase after them with a pair of pruning shears and a mad look in his beady eyes.

But we survived January and dove head-on into February. In retrospect, we should have checked the water levels.

About mid-Feb, our furnace went down. Like, down down. To goblin town, even. And I couldn't get it running smoothly again. I could limp it along, sometimes. But during the coldest time of our season, our main source of heat went kaputt. So a tech comes out and, after a deep inspection, tells us that replacing the parts would cost just as much as getting a new one. And that the furnace we've been running for 20 years only has an industry 10-year lifespan, so... go me and my technical fumblings :D So we get one part replaced in the hope that will let us limp it to spring. And the part was... damn, should have been made out of gold for how much it cost. Thank you so, so much to everyone who donated to us and helped us warm our homes. So we replaced the control board. Then the pressure switches went out. So we replaced the pressure switches. Then the blower and inducer went out. All the while, we shopped around and got full replacement quotes and saved and penny pinched and worked on getting financing.

And then came Friday the 13th.

Seriously. Friday the freakin' 13th. I go in to see my therapist. And I wind up causing a urinal on the second floor to break and flood the building. Like, seriously. A valve in the auto-flush or something like that popped and a torrent of water like a fire hose just gushed out. And continued to gush out. And continued out into the hallway. And started dripping into the first floor. So we let someone know and we left, 'cause... I mean, what the heck could I have done? Taken off our shirts and plugged things up? ... I mean, I actually considered that. Thank goodness for Elora's common sense xD

The day went on. Found out some trauma drama occurred with her parents, then some with my parents, then with some siblings. I feel folks looked at the calendar and went, "Hell yeah, now's our chance for crazy!" Not all went bad. We managed to, after making four round trips between our home and a neighboring city, we finally found a lender that could help us, and we acquired financing for a new furnace! Not on that day; we had to wait a week for all of the underwriting to finalize. But we felt like celebrating, and we went out to eat, all happy-like ^^

And then the morning came

Did you know most banks are closed on Saturday? And that most banks don't have fraud or security services on hand during that time either? We didn't. We learned, though. Because when we woke up, we found our bank account, with everything we saved and everything we transferred and everything we received as donations was just... gone. Empty. Between the time we finished dinner on Friday to the time we woke on Saturday, some hacked and drained all of our accounts of absolutely everything. Turns out this was a nationwide hack across a bunch of institutions and we were one of the lucky individuals chosen to fund a hacker's spending spree on Facebook. So. That was a thing (I love that phrase xD). We disputed it all of course, but nothing could be returned until the investigation was further underway. Better living through hoarded gift cards and the kindness of loved ones, amirite?

AND. And. I just wanna say. I owe some of you more than I can say. I felt so extremely low during those days during and after. Elora and I both still have anxiety attacks about this. Both of us still have nightmares and weird thoughts and check our apps way too often now. The hack felt so... violating. Like something snaked in through all of our defenses, broke down all of our barricades, and hurt us right where we were the most unsteady. It's painful, because you start second guessing everything and start questioning everything and start being suspicious of everyone. But those of you who reached out, and who listened to us, who consoled us, commiserated with us, who supported us and helped keep us fed and warm... Thank you. From the depths of my soul, thank you. I wish I could give you the words I feel. I wish I could explain just how deeply your kindness and your words and your compassion has touched me. You fill me with hope and with love and with joy. You keep staying awesome. We need more awesome floofs, fluffs, feathers, and scalies in this world.

We have our heat situation taken care of now. Our financing came through. Wound up taking out a second mortgage in order to get done what we needed done, but that's alright. We'll make it work. We have a roof that needs repairing (see 90+mph gusts; shingles and paper and our roof cap need replacing), trees that need felling, and other outside work that needs completing before Winter 2026 comes around. But we'll get there. Like I said, you folks give me lots of hope and lots of joy. Here's hoping we get a bit of a respite from the bad luck and weird situations that seem to visit us every so often. Life, eh? What a weird thing it is!

Stay awesome folks! Always err on the side of love. Always take a chance. Be kind to each other. Smile to one another and to yourself. Be who you've always wanted to be without fear or shame. Love each other. Love yourselves.

And for crying out loud, let yourself have some damn cookies! There's always room for cookies, and you'll never look back in pride and say, "Boy, it sure was worth not having a cookie!"

Love and snickerdoodles to ya,

Oakstone