Fresh Calendars Make Me Smile

Last year about this time, I was looking at my 12-month wall calendar with equal parts dread and fear. It wasn't going to be a pretty year, that was for certain. Little did I know, though, how really bad it would be.

I write this just so I will have something to look back on in 2011 when times are good. A lot of this rambling will be in code that only I and certain others will understand. The names will not be changed to protect the innocent or the guilty, and the facts presented will be just vague enough not to implicate anyone.

The year started well enough, with a bit of traveling to exotic lands like Washington, D.C. (my favorite city!), Philadelphia, and Lubbock (my second-favorite city, and I'm serious). Traveling usually is an adventure for me, but by the time I was home for good, I was ready to never stay in another hotel again. Some health problems plagued me, and they were just bad enough that nobody really understood WHY I kept saying I didn't feel well and kept bowing out of fun stuff in order to grab some rest. It was both immensely embarrassing and frightening for me, all at the same time.

In late April, I fetched my mother from her home of 65 years and dragged her (the way she tells it) all the way to Satan's armpit (aka Lewisville) to purchase a new home against her will. Dragging her back was a pleasure. A month later, we plucked her from her safe haven and unceremoniously locked her in a stark, unfamiliar lot of four walls with half her funiture and not a single feral cat to keep her company. To this day, I haven't heard the end of it.

That began a series of new and unending errands to add to my to-do list. Grocery store every week (How one woman eats all that food every single week really dumbfounded me until I realized she's stocking up!), pharmacy, doctor ... She won't drive, so guess who takes her? I will admit that I don't usually mind doing it, but she could at least mention a couple of days before her pills run out instead of making it a do-it-now crisis. The best part was (and she would KILL me if she knew I was writing this) her hair. My mother, who for all my life has had very short hair, has not been to a salon in almost two years. She started looking VERY OLD. We tried to go to the hair place, and they made her wait too long and she tired out, so we left (also an ordeal). And so a week later, after multiple attempts to persuade her back into the barber's chair, *I* cut her hair. Not bad, I might add.

During the latter part of July, I headed back to Washington, D.C., this time to board a charter bus that would take me to Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, for the 2010 National Scout Jamboree. I would be there, living in an unair-conditioned army barracks with 100 of my not-so-closest friends sharing six of the not-so-cleanest showers, for three solid weeks. It was certainly an experience, and I tried to make the most of it by starting a Facebook page. That in itself was fun, and I enjoyed the tiny bit of celebrity I attained, even if anonymously. I will say that the jamboree experience was an important one for me, but it was not the Waldorf Astoria.

Here's where things will get a little more cryptic, but apparently while I was at jamboree something a little more sinister was brewing at home. I'll say only this about it: I needed two different flavors of medication to keep from contemplating drastic measures of many kinds. I went without sleep. I went without regarding any type of healthy diet. I went without trusting ANYONE, and I mean not even my husband, for several months, and I can't say I have fully recovered ... or ever will. I learned a little about human nature, and I learned who my real friends are. I will forever be grateful to two people in particular who coached and comforted me through this time, and for several others whose empathy was truly appreciated. You know who you are. I have vowed never to let this happen to me again. I will be better. I will know better. I will do better.

And that particular "instance" brought us all the way through the end of the year. The whole year was frought with financial strains at home, but God's grace helped us make ends meet one way or another. Our geriatric central heat and air broke down at least three times, each time over a weekend or holiday: once during February in the 20-degree temps, once in September (Labor Day Weekend) in the 100-degree temps, and again in December (Christmas weekend) over the few days that it did get cold. Scott's car broke down (WAY down--it's still sitting in front of our house, where the tow-truck guy dropped it off... Half a payment left and it's all ours!) two days before I went to jamboree. He drove my car (which really worried me!) for a week and then went to Texarkana to fetch my mom's car to drive. It needed two new tires before it could make it back. Fortunately, she paid for that. If she hadn't, I guess Scott would have gone hungry.

(By the way, a little sidebar here. Say what you want about Barack Obama, and I might be really misinformed here, but it seems that the consumer credit reform his administration has enacted would have been welcome at Texas Tech University in the early 1990s. Do you know that I am STILL paying off debt that I incurred, both for school and for immature fun, starting with the line of credit that was extended to me without any form of income? Do you know that if I could just get that stuff paid off that I would be SET? It's one of the most horrible struggles of my life.)

Anyway ... Throughout the rest of 2010, I did a little more traveling, mainly back and forth to Texarkana every other weekend to bring Mother more stuff she "forgot to pack," including one instance with my bestie in which we DID NOT HAVE THE KEY TO THE HOUSE. We made do by geocaching. What the hell else is there to do in T-Town? I also spent a weekend in San Antonio, a great little place I haven't visited since my first marriage. I hated it when I went then (summer = HOT), but I really loved it the first weekend in November, and I think Scott and I might make plans to go back.

Thanksgiving came and went, and Christmas has now been packed away until next year. It was a low-key event, and that is fine with me. I have spent the day today, New Year's Eve, at work, shoveling out the old and preparing for the new. I received a nice compliment from a good (and true) friend today: I have inspired her. Do you know that is quite possibly the best compliment you can give to someone? If someone inspires you ... tell them. It will make their day.

Anyway, that was what was on the calendar for 2010. I was pleased to replace that old one with a fresh, bright blue one with bigger blocks to write in. I've already pencilled in some tentative vacation time (to be taken in blocks so as to ensure REST, rather than in single days) and nothing really scary stares back at me. We've got a week in T-Town to finish packing the house in January, another Report to the Nation in February (and my 40th birthday!), Altrusa Conference in April (here in Dallas!), my first cruise--to Jamaica, we think--in May, Altrusa Convention (not the same as Conference) in South Dakota in July--but finances might not permit that, and nothing else for the rest of the year. I'll be focusing on being a better person and balancing my work vs. my real life.

I'm looking at a fresh wall calendar, in my organized and clean office, and I have to say that, if nothing else, 2011 at least *looks* more promising than the brand-new 2010 did.

Wish me luck!