The Year in Review

My calendar has been full of tiny things I put down so my life wouldn't look so bleak and empty. Like, which days we went to Costco and which to Shop Rite. Days Herb spent time at the Legion. Sometimes my friends came to visit, which was cool. The hours I spent reading and editing their work. The times Sally came up and we just had lunch and sundaes which most of the time were the highlight of my week and month. The times Sandy called and we talked and talked and talked....
And sometimes I remembered to write down the food I ate and the doctors' appointments I had.

Then there were the times it snowed and the times I was sick and the times Karyn was sick. Order numbers for the few times I ordered things online. There were the times I didn't sleep and the times I called my brothers. We ordered new furniture, which was cool as I always like going furniture shopping. Got a sofa bed for the front room, got a dishwasher and auxiliary refrigerator and a big chest that I can't figure out what to call, but it was in Craftsman style.

I wrote down my dreams if they were good and I remembered them. I wrote down the times I made it to the writers' meetings, I even gave a presentation once. The conference in March, a highlight. A lowlight, the bombing in Boston. The death of a dear friend from cancer...a horrible way to die, Debbie. Planting the garden, Easter, Cara, my niece and her husband up for a visit. Going to Wildwood for the Legion convention...nice time. Meeting Father Jim Martin while there. Cool beans!

Staying in Holgate twice in one year! Seeing the damage, seeing things getting better, seeing Seaside catch fire. We went on a couple of harbor cruises, too, down south. We had a visitor from Scotland here and we did some touring ourselves...Mt. Vernon, Montpelier, a DC harbor cruise. We canned tomatoes from our garden! Jack and Nicole came up for his 50th high school reunion. We did NOT kill each other.

My one daughter decided she was going to move out and she did. She still comes back to do her laundry and visit her friends up here. She's not that far away, but it hurts me. We got a futon for her old room which will be my office.

Karyn spent some time in the hospital. It was not fun. Sally and I celebrated our birthdays together. We had Thanksgiving here and no one got killed. I made Nesselrode pie. Christmas shopping, seeing the Stickley homestead, going to a Viking bakery in Denville and riding around to see Christmas lights. That's it. Tonight rolls over into a new year. I tried my best, things didn't always work out right but we are all still alive, including Mom C and Mom P, so that's great!

God bless us, God bless you all. Happy New Year.

I don't know how other people do it

My life has taken some bad turns lately.  I've had trouble here and there and felt like crap and had to handle some odd situations for which I was unprepared.
Naturally, it wore me down.
But, most of them are over.
I hope.

No, I won't go into detail.  Except that personally, I was worried that the cancer had come back.  Found out Monday that it had not, and that is super cool.  But I still feel pretty bad.
Must be the elephants in my living room.
And I certainly have a few of those buggers hanging around.

Other people manage to write around the elephants and the troubles.  I can't.  I can barely blog.  My heart just isn't in it.  Here I have a novella ready to go up on Amazon and I have the other half of the World War II story begging to be worked on.  I dream about it at night, plot when I can't fall asleep and promise myself to work on it, but it hasn't happened in a month. That's just about when all the sh*t hit the fan around here, just before Halloween.

I really envy my writing friends who manage to sit down at the computer and pound out word after word.  They either have a deadline, for which they will get paid once met, or are trying like hell to produce something that will get sold.

To this, unfortunately, in the back of my head I hear "been there, done that".
OMG
Have I actually quit???

Say it ain't so, Irene!!!