What a great year. What a wild year. What a fantastic and crazy 365 days, all strung together like super-charged Christmas lights after one too many mocha lattes. Dizzying.
Merry Christmas 2008, you were a year to remember — one I won’t soon forget. How could I? So many things happened. Celebrating my 10-year wedding anniversary, and days later impaling my thigh on a surfboard that left me on crutches for 5 weeks and nerve-damage to this day. My 3-year-old started sewing words together into elaborate and complex sentences that sometimes went somewhere, and other times didn’t. One minute she sounds like a genius and the next you wonder if maybe the oxygen isn’t reaching the top floor. Either way, the girl doesn’t know how to use a period — she’s one long run-on sentence.
We had two 10-year anniversaries, as this year also marked a decade with a little black mongrel of a dog named Chase. Ten years of a dog who sheds hair like a 4-month-old Christmas tree.
And I finished up the coursework for my masters, which means I have even more time to procrastinate, watch TV and still not get this column in on time. I’ve always been smart, but never in measurable ways, so it’s all the more astounding that I finished with all A’s. As soon as I figure out what a thesis is and where I can buy one, I’ll be able to collect my diploma and start acting masterly.
This year I also had an essay published in Scholastic’s Parent and Child magazine, which has a print circulation of more than 1 million. It was on, of all things, childhood discipline — something I have failed spectacularly at. “They paid you money so you could write about how you know diddly-squat about something?!?” a co-worker asked incredulously. “It’s America!” I told her.
And, of course, we geared up to start an addition on my house, which will commence shortly after we crack the New Year. That reality consumed a fair amount of the waning days of 2008 whether it meant refinancing the house (nothing like signing your name to 20,000 papers that you don’t understand), finalizing plans or now trying to figure out how in the world we collected so much junk over the years. We must be part squirrel. Every square foot of our house — which isn’t that big — is packed floor-to-ceiling with crap.
There’s no other way to describe it.
The past couple of weeks we’ve been weeding through it all as we prepare for demolition of part of the house, and moving into the part that hopefully won’t fall down. We discovered all manner of things that once upon a time must have seemed pretty important. And that we thought our future selves would truly appreciate. Nothing like digging through crumpled newspaper to find frog candles and broken items that I must have been too lazy to fix back then, but figured I would be willing to repair in the future.
Much has gone to storage, a fair share to Goodwill and even more to it’s final and unfortunate resting place in the dump.
We’ve slimmed down, streamlined and simplified. And now we’re all moving into the front part of the house — it will be fun, and not dissimilar to camping for several months, or living in a shipping container. We’ll have next to no closets, our living room will resemble a circus tent and it’s possible we’ll spend the coldest time of the year exposed to the elements with nothing to shelter us but plastic tarps flapping in the breeze. Anyone know what the insulating value is of plastic?
It was a rough year, a fun year, an exhausting year, and an unforgettable one. And 2009 looks like it will have no shortage of excitement. My daughter will be a full-blown 3-year-old, I’m officially banned from the surfboard (but free to pursue other debilitating hobbies) and the weeks of construction should keep us occupied.
So, farewell 2008. You were a good one, and bring on 2009. I can’t wait to see what you have in store for us next.