Bring it on

Happy New Year! And bring it on.

I am so ready to welcome a bright new year. Or better said, I am so ready to give 2014 the BOOT! Out with you! Out with you, full of C-words, hospitals, doctors, tests, you bad year, you. We've had enough.

Another C-word crept into our house during December and it was as unwelcome as the C-cancer word that visited my husband in July. Thankfully, after several rough months, he has recovered and is adjusting nicely to life without a bladder. He manages the urostomy remarkably well.

This time it was my turn to host another C word that I'd never heard of before: C-Diff (technically, Clostridium difficile), which causes infectious diarrhea due to a type of spore-forming bacteria. Symptoms of C diff often mimic flu-like symptoms and can also mimic disease flare in people with inflammatory bowel disease-associated colitis. C diff release toxins that can cause bloating and diarrhea, with abdominal pain, which may become severe (Wikipedia).

So it started with cramps, then chills, then put me in bed as I thought I had the flu. Thinking it would only last a day or two, we proceeded with our scheduled laminate floor installation, so as I lay in bed, workmen were tearing up carpeting, drilling, sawing and pounding, all in the next room.

When symptoms got worse and I became very weak, my husband brought me to the emergency room of the nearby hospital. Blood tests, x-rays and CT scans were done and the next thing I knew I was moved to a hospital room in isolation. The diagnosis was explained to me as IVs were started, heart monitors were put in place, a catheter was inserted, and I lay helpless.

Seven days of helpless, in the hospital, on my birthday, daughter flew from Minnesota to help, daughter addressing and mailing all my Christmas cards, and Christmas preparations going on around me. Without me.

Home now and recovering, slowly but surely, I am ready to ring in a new year, full of promise and optimism, like a precious gift waiting to be opened.

I read about somebody who last year set a goal of listing one thousand blessings during the year. In the process, her eyes were opened to all the everyday things taken for granted.

As I thought about this, I realized how even illness, disappointments, losses and changes can be blessings. You see and appreciate little moments, small pleasures and small progress. An epiphany of sorts.

And you recognize in people around you the gifts they freely share with you that you perhaps never noticed before. Smiles, small acts of kindness, offers of friendship, gestures of friendship, signs of caring for one another.

I wish for you a Happy New Year, full of God's richest blessings....and no C-words!

Lost somewhere

Here's to 2014. A new year.

So what happened to 2013? It's all kind of a blur.

I do remember gaining a new great-granddaughter with the birth of Tallulah Rosemarie (love that name) in mid-June. But if anything at all happened that was news or memory-worthy in 2013, I'm afraid it was lost on me.

Two reasons for this. They may not seem significant to you, but they have caused time to whiz by like lightening for me this year.

1. I got an iPad.
2. I got a streaming device for Netflix movies.

Okay, if you have either one of these yourself, I needn't say more.

But I have lost countless hours on my iPad by playing Words With Friends with no less than fifteen opponents at a time, checking Facebook and email updates as fast as they're posted, and discovering Magic Puzzles, a jigsaw puzzle game, when I have never put together a single jigsaw puzzle up to this point in my life. You can start with a 42-piece puzzle and work your way up to my current level of 288 pieces. The final level is 550 pieces and of course, I am aspiring to reach that level.

I've also discovered Facetime. Now, from Arizona, I can bug my kids in Minnesota by calling them on Facetime and seeing their faces and further disrupting their lives and spending their time. We watched Tallulah's bathtime via Facetime and saw her giggle with delight at Daddy pouring warm water over her head as Mommy held the iPhone camera. It was great fun.

But worse than the iPad are the Netflix serials. I'm telling you, I am not a television-watcher, A waste of time, I always said. But these series? Ooohhhhh, I am glued for hours totally captivated by the likes of Breaking Bad, Scandal, and Canada's Heartland, (love the horses).


A poor screen shot of so many choices!

There are BBC series as well which I'd never heard of before. World War II-era series such as Bomb Girls and The Land Girls; and the post-war series, Call the Midwife. If you thought Downton Abbey was riveting, you ought to see some of these.

It's hard to believe I couldn't stay awake for the 9:00 news before. Of course, I still don't see the news, but am up till all wee hours of the night. Putting that last puzzle piece in. Playing that last game of WWF. Checking to see if anyone left me an email message at midnight, as if anyone else is awake. And m-a-y-b-e watching one more episode of the current series.

So that's where 2013 went.

But now I learn there's no hope for 2014 as a friend just introduced me to the series, Lost.

Okay, everyone else has watched it already but I wasn't (formerly) a television-watcher so I missed it. It already shows great promise, so here goes...

Forty-eight people are stranded when their plane crashes on an island. They are a diverse group of people so I can imagine that besides just plain surviving, their differences cause all sorts of problems as they struggle to create a semblance of life together there.

I can hardly wait to start it.

And there goes 2014. If anything important happens, give me a call.

New Year musings

Ding, Dong, Merrily on high,
Christmas bells are ringing.

And so we arrive at Christmas Eve Day.

Snow is ever so softly falling. It's bright and beautiful as we prepare to attend our afternoon worship service and then to our family Christmas Eve gathering. This year we have family from New York, Virginia, and Ohio with us. We are so blessed.

This will be my last post of the year.

Christmas Day finds us beginning our 1900-mile drive to Mesa, Arizona, where we will stay until mid-April. But, of course, there will be new posts and news when we arrive.

The year 2010 has been good to me, and I hope it closes on a satisfactory note for you. I have enjoyed my first year of retirement, have renewed some valuable friendships, and have had some new experiences. I joined a new church and made new friends.

Of course, I have a few New Year's resolutions. But why are they the same ones I made last year?

Don't we always have such hopes for a new, fresh year? I love its clean slate, its promise; the journey of it stretched before us, like an open road.

I wish you the best of health and happiness in 2011. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my stories and being a part of my 2010, making it the blessing it has been.

And I pray that 2011 will give you good health, enough strength for the day, and a joyful spirit.

Happy New Year!