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Monday, December 31, 2012

Out with the old, in with the new!

Happy New Year, everybody!   Let's give this tired old year a decent burial, and start fresh.  Passing the popcorn and champagne.

What's something that was good about 2012? 

Is there something you are looking forward to in 2013?  I'm not asking for resolutions, since mine are generally broken within hours -- but if that is your cup of tea, do share!

I'm pleased that I got 2 giant projects done this past year, that my big election issue made progress (even if we lost), and that now I have not smoked for 13 weeks (which I pretty much viewed as impossible, even though I didn't like being one of those people who scurries out to a secret location during good times and bad).

In 2013, will finish one more giant project (that I know of, so far); we will do some long-delayed work on the house; and my husband wants to take me on a real vacation!  We'll see how all that works out.  Crossing fingers that my daughter finds work soon.

Right now, I'm preparing for the major work-a-thon.  Some important stuff got lost in translation; must recover it.  Updating virus software on the laptop.  We'll celebrate the new year in a convenient time zone.  Tomorrow, the Christmas stuff will go back to storage.

Regular whines and anti-whines welcome, too!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meanwhile -- Liz has set up the Wednesday Book Club!  We'll start by asking everyone for one book suggestion -- a favorite piece of fiction that you want to share, available in paperback so everyone can get them easily -- and then we'll work out some kind of schedule.

It is fine to invite folks to join the Book Club!  But lets keep the whines over here and private.  OK?   

39 comments:

kathy a. said...

I'm really looking forward to replacing my dysfunctional book club with this one! Jammies are the preferred attire. Fiction! Good virtual food.

Sue said...

Good stuff about 2012: Sabbatical. Only five years til I can do it again!!

Also good: Migraine treatment that works. Discovering food triggers and managing to avoid them almost all of the time. Reading LOTS of good books. Writing a good research paper. Feeling loved.

Hopes for 2013: Healthy eating and fun with hubby as we try new recipes. Okay, technically, HE is trying the new recipes, but you get the idea....

I got new snowshoes for Christmas, so I'm hoping to blaze some trails!

For New Year's Eve, we will be celebrating in our usual Introvert fashion with the two of us, some snacks, a good book and watching the ball drop before sleep takes over. Ya, we're that much fun.

kathy a. said...

happy new year! we celebrated east coast time (9 p.m.) -- that is how exciting we are.

esperanza said...

Good stuff about 2012: Sweet's progress on many fronts, 15th anniversary for me & Mr E, I think I learned how to say "no," at least a little bit.

2013: hoping to use my "me" time wisely

We are (AW) back home after Christmas with family. Lowlights include Mr E having to depart early because (of course) someone died/funeral and my grandmother's increasingly frequent congestive heart failure "tizzies" (her word).

W: holy crap, I am keynoting a church youth conference a week from Friday. Work done for 4 keynote speeches: almost nothing. Every spare Baboo-free moment will be dedicated to this for the next ten days. If you're yearning for Christmas in February, our house will be the place to come!

Liz Miller said...

Tree almost all down. Got stopped by abdominal pain, probably gas, but may be ovulation. New Years resolution, see a honest to goodness Gynecologist, and find out for sure if I'm perimenopausal

Liz Miller said...

Best thing about 2013 so far, a friend of mine resolved to do all his fb posts in haiku. There just are no words for the awesomeness

esperanza said...

Haiku updates, I love it, Liz. Hope your pain resolved itself, pronto.

I forgot an AW. Our family (immediate and extended) decided to downsize Christmas this year, not so much for financial reasons. Just because opening gifts was so overwhelming for everyone that it wasn't any fun. Verdict: SO much better.

kathy a. said...

sue -- snowshoes? how exotic!

esperanza -- the downsizing is good! i'm sorry about your grandma, and hope she is comfortable.

liz -- haiku! yay.

since i had the world's longest perimenopause (i made that up, but it could be true), here's the scoop: finding out you may be perimenopausal does not really tell you anything. how long? don't know. what symptoms to expect? don't know; it varies from person to person.

a possibility is hormone replacement -- something i was not interested in, and docs would not prescribe it because of my family/personal history, anyway. but tons of my friends swore by it. you'll have to evaluate pros + cons, if that is offered.

Liz Miller said...

The thing is, if it any perimenopause causing these symptoms, what the hell is it? Painful ovulation is something I can deal with --- if it's a symptom of the ending of the visits from Aunt Flo, but what if it's not? What if, despite the US saying I just have two "normal" cysts, that I have something else?

So I'm gonna find out.

kathy a. said...

yes, find out!

i'm sorry to be a drag, but nobody told us that the whole process is variable in so many ways. which pisses me off, because at least when i was in elementary school, we got filmstrips about the wonders of menstruation.

a good bit of the peri-menopausal stuff is disruptive -- and worse, some of it could be potentially be symptoms of something horrible. (clots and floods -- gets one's attention, no? just like those lumps that turn out to be benign cysts, except messier.)

or they may not be something terrible -- usually not. we are women of action! but a lot of it turns out to be stuff that can't be solved with resolve. i had trouble adjusting to "this is how things are for now." (still do -- i am the nighttime hot flash queen, and the prediction for duration is "might be a couple of years; some people have them for a long time.")

kathy a. said...

i don't mean to discount the painfulness at all. you are right to check that out!

i had a similar worry at one point, and thankfully it was nothing and did not last long. apologies for the perimenopause rant. some people sail through unscathed; but for others of us, it's not much of a picnic. and it is not polite conversation, so we may as well mention it here, in a safe place.

kathy a. said...

esperanza -- happy writing of keynotes!

Sue said...

esperanza - great work on the downsized holiday celebration! Good luck with the keynote speech writing. You will, of course, be marvellous.

Liz, definitely check it out. Like kathy, I was puzzled and frustrated by the lack of info I had going into menopause-world. Now on the other side of it all, I see a gaping hole in the way our culture deals with this life transition. I think there are two reasons for the silence about menopause.

One, it signifies aging, and North American society is all about the young and the beautiful. Menopausal women are similar to aging actresses - we are viewed as having a "best before" date (this is changing, but slowly). Simply put, we become invisible (see book suggestion on other page).

Two, there is still that stigma around the workings of the female body. I think there will always be a mystique about the - lets face it - Fabulous things our bodies can do. For some, the Fabulous is still taboo.

Anyway, I would get it checked out.

esperanza said...

I could go on a rant about the things modern medicine does not know about the female body. But you know it all. At one point, I was damn tired of hearing "but we don't know why."

kathy a. said...

i'm not going to mention this on the book club list, because it is silly and might have limited appeal. but i recently read a book called "the murderous urges of ordinary women," which is basically about how we become invisible at a certain age. and so the "book club from hell" starts cluesticking away. ;)

Anonymous said...

Waaahh.
My whine is that I can't comment on the book club site, because I don't have any of those kinds of accounts. Is there a way that you can allow anonymous commenting like you do here?
--Neighbor Lady

debangel said...

Eek! Missed the book club, and tried to "enter" the site last-minute but the invite's no longer valid. I commented on it before, but don't have time now to search for it. Waaahhh! Oh, always tomorrow morning, LOL.

Arianna's 3rd birthday party was a BLAST! FB buds, check out the parliament of owl cupcakes!!

Love ya Pixies..more tomorrow! (Just had to check in and say hi!)

Liz Miller said...

Oh, neighbor lady, I'll fix it!!!

Liz Miller said...

Deb angel, I'll resend it

Liz Miller said...

NL, WBC now allows anonymous commenting.

Deb, did you get another invitation?

debangel said...

Nope, no other invite. I got in before and commented..is there another way in? I still have my owl jammies on, in case there's a dress code ;-)

debangel said...

I found it! Of course now I'm wracking my brain for book suggestions..mine are a little more on the sci-fi/fantasy side of the house..hope that's ok?

Liz Miller said...

Absolutely, from my point of view.

Anonymous said...

Thank you soooo much Liz!
I am so happy to be able to join everyone for book club!
:)
Neighbor Lady

Liz Miller said...

Sharepoint screwed me. Screwed my supervisor, screwed my co-worker, screwed us all.

Now I've got two printed-out versions of the document and have to go through line-by-line to see exactly how it screwed us.

Liz Miller said...

By "how", I mean "in what way". Not "by what means".

Anonymous said...

Arg, Liz!
Good luck and hugs!
:) Neighbor Lady

esperanza said...

ugh, liz.

AW: Hubby came home early from work today, unexpectedly. I said, "I'm running away from home." Went shopping (boring household stuff) and now at his office working on aforementioned keynote speeches. Thus bringing to an end the TWO WEEKS I've been with the Baboos nonstop.

W: I detest getting Baboos in/out of coats when entering/exiting buildings and cars. I don't know how you cold climate people do it.

kathy a. said...

oooh, esperanza's big escape! two solid nonstop weeks = lots and lots, even without holiday travel family excess nonstop madness. xoxo

my daughter (adult) had a complete flaming screaming meltdown today, about losing job app info online. it was bad.

she is better now. also, a recruiter person is coming to our HOUSE in the morning.

but i'm not in a good work place, actually; i'm in a several months behind place, is where i am.

kathy a. said...

and my son just came by, in a grouchy mood. gah. at least we have some food around; that usually helps.

the thing about the recruiter and the morning? daughter has been on the up-all-night schedule. so this should be interesting. but i guess i cannot work in jammies in the a.m.

debangel said...

Hi fellow Pixies!

Whine: ShowerSac ex wrote a petty, whiny email to my hubby (who asked to be our go-between, with my permission) in respond to James asking for the trip itinerary this weekend. AGAIN. That I am ENTITLED TO, because my child is going out-of-state, during my parenting time, to boot. Apparently being asked for a good time to call and talk to my 3 year-old by phone causes him "nothing but distress", and he will "allow one phone call" during the Friday-Monday he is gone.

Anti-whine: I has witness! I forwarded the email to our Liz, because I was sweating through my shirt and shaking with fury. We already know Liz is a good egg, but did you know that she is an approved treatment for anxiety attacks?? Truth ;-)

Major anti-whine: leaving in the morning for two nights in Glenwood Springs with my Moosie! We're going to ice-skate (which both of us have done, but many years ago, so never together), snowshoe (a first for both of us), and soak in the hot springs (a time-honored remedy for life's problems, especially SHowerSack exes. Soooo happy!! We've never been away for more than one night before, and we've been cooped up with the girls for over a week (Christmas break, and cold weather), and I would jump out of my skin with excitement, but then I would have to cram that into my suitcase, too.

Gotta go finish packing! Night night!

Liz Miller said...

True fact, debangel's shower sac ex is one of the top five biggest assholes I've ever heard about that hadn't been elected to something

esperanza said...

Liz for Mullet. With apologies to debangel for having to be in the sentence.

Sue said...

I'll second that Mullet nomination. Lol.

debangel said...

Yeah, I third that, LOL. I don't mind at all. Liz is my long-lost twinsie anyway ;-)

Liz Miller said...

True fact, I copied that sentence verbatim (except for pseudonym) from my discussion with Debangel about Shower Sac yesterday.

You people would not BELIEVE what that douchebag was proud to put in an email.

kathy a. said...

deb, you are printing and saving, right? never know when this kind of thing will turn out useful.

kathy a. said...

friends. there is no hell like a person suffering through job app items like [a] the thing times out and deletes former entries, [b] the thing needs to have entries re-done when it comes time to print and sign, nevermind [c] the thing needs to be scanned, and yell yell not fair itwontwork yell. ugh. fortunately, daddy came home early, and this is his problem now. gah.

kathy a. said...

awards tomorrow. carry on!

the disgruntlement has abated, and all the dog people in the family have gone for a walk.