2013 IN REVIEW

Over the last few days, I have been thinking a lot about life....and death. What brought me to start thinking about this? It may well have started with a death.... On Thursday the 19th of December, there was a report of a fatal car crash on a nearby highway. Well, it just so happened that a couple had just dropped off their dog to be looked after over the holidays, because they were driving to visit family and did not have room for Nova in their vehicle. When they left, they were headed to their home, which would take them past where the accident had reportedly happened. I was hoping that it was not them, or anyone else that I knew. (It's bad enough that SOMEONE had been in it.) It turned out that the two occupants of the vehicle hit by the other, WERE know to myself and my children! The victim, an 18 year old girl, had been a crush of my son's, and the driver was a cadet in the Squadron that both my children are members of! This accident hit my son particularly hard, because of the connections he has to the people involved. The boy driving was not very badly injured, but suffers in other ways due to the accident. The girl's funeral will be son's first since my mother passed away almost 12 years ago, when he was just 6 years old. It will be the first funeral involving good friends, and someone his age. My son intends to keep close contact with the boy who was driving. He wants to make sure that he gets a shoulder to lean on when he needs it, or whatever else the boy needs that my son can do for him. Needless to say that I am very proud of my son! This accident has affected me more than I ever thought that it would.... I think that it is because I know the drive quite well, and that I met the victim a few times in the last year. I also think that it is because she was the same age as my son, and he has just received his drivers' license. --- And our roads have been particularly bad this winter. (Even though the roads were clear and dry at the time of the accident.) This Christmas, we have a house guest: a dog that I decided to take care of over the holidays, so that her owners could drive to Winnipeg to spend them with their family. They had to take their smaller vehicle, so there was not room for Nova to go along. She is a Shepherd of some sort (my husband thinks that she is part wolf!) She is not very well trained. But is a good dog just the same. I have been working with her, to see if I can train her a little. But, I don't think that I am experienced enough with dogs who are older, and who have not been worked with much. She is well enough behaved, but she could use some more manners when taking food out of your hand or walking on a leash... Oh well, she's only hear for a few more days, so we will just have to manager as is. This year was somewhat eventful, my son graduated from high school, and is looking for a job while he waits to either enlist in the army or go to college to take an Emergency Responder Course. My daughter finished junior high, and is now in high school. She seems to be somewhat happier there, than she was in junior high. The school population is larger, so hopefully she will be less likely the target of bullies like she was in junior high. So far so good! She is also enjoying her classes much more. The teachers at our local high school seem to be a group of caring teachers who are good at what they do. Time will tell if this will continue on into the next semester, and the next two grades. I surely hope so. We have been working on renovating our basement. This started earlier than we had intended, because we developed a leak in the foundation this Spring. This was probably caused by a faster than usual melt of the snow. Anyway, now we are clearing out our basement, so that we can develop it into a suite for our son to live in. But first, his girlfriend will live down there, when she comes to stay with us for the summer. -- She lives in Saskatchewan, and wants to come here to work this summer, and visit our son. It is amazing how much junk one accumulate in 13 years! We have come across things that we had forgotten that we had! Everything must be cleared to give my hubby room to move around, and room to demolish some of the walls affected by the flood. My next few blogs will be about this process. Also because of the leakage, we had a friend of our son's dig a hole by the foundation, so that my hubby could reseal it and check the weeping tile. We are trying to decide what to do in the spring: should be have a cement patio installed in front and back of the house, where the leaks occurred? Would that help stop them from re-occurring? My hubby has planned to rebuild the walls in the basement, that face the foundation with a space between them and the foundation walls, so that he can access the foundation if the leaks reoccur. Then he plans to install a kitchen area, rebuild the walls in our office that were demolished due to the leaks. He also plans to install, or have installed a bathroom in the basement, finish the walls, floors and ceiling in the laundry room, storage room, bathroom areas! We plan to have all of this done by the time July 2014 comes, because that is when our guest arrives! WHEW! As I said, I intend to chronicle this journey into construction from beginning to end! It should be interesting! The rest of the year was relatively uneventful, except that our son turned 18 in April, graduated from high school and earned his drivers' license. Our daughter finished junior high and entered high school, where more BOYS exist! This will be her greatest challenge: keeping her head in the books, and off of the cornucopia of boys that surround her at school.....wish us ALL luck with this one!

MY HEALTH AND LIFE'S ISSUES

My seems to keep deteriorating.... BUT I don't seem to want to do anything about it.... Why? Because I seem to have this crazy idea that I am going to suffer the same fate as my fate as my Mother. She passed away 11 years ago at 66 years old from ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. Why do I think this? BECAUSE: Of all of her children, I am the MOST like her: I look like her - I am the only child who has her coloring - Blonde hair Hazel eyes. All of my siblings have dark hair and eyes. I am the same height as was: 5'4" I have the same weight issues she did: I am struggling with it. I have been depressed for most of my life; as was she. We both had difficult childhoods. Different reasons, same results. Her mother died at the age of 66 years, from complications resulting from obesity, heart issues, blood pressure issues and diabetes. I am obese, have diabetes, high cholesterol, depression, and thyroid issues. Her next oldest sister died due to complication with ALS....at the age of 66 years. So I figure that I have approximately 15 years of life left. I am 50 years old at this moment. So instead of fighting to get "well" I am curling into a ball, and slowly succumbing to my fate. Why though? I have two kids who need me....although I am sure that my husband could manage quite well without me.... I have never heard him say otherwise, so I assume that this is so. (I have told him on several occasions that I could never have accomplished what we have without him.) ? What is it gonna take to shake me out of this? I have already almost died once during a surgery.....does this need to happen again? Maybe if I remembered anything about the near death experience, it would make a difference.....maybe. WHAT DO I DO ????

SAME OLD SAME OLD.......

Looking over my past posts, I've come to realize that the issues in my life keep rotating.....taking turns repeating themselves over and over again..... Why? I TRY to resolve each issue as it arises.... I THOUGHT that I had them conquered.... BUT NO! I guess that I was just fooling myself into thinking that these issues were done and over with! Why? Why doe they keep repeating themselves? I am I not learning anything from them? Is my husband? I have always though of myself as being reasonably intelligent.... I have always thought of my husband as more intelligent than me.... (I have learned A LOT from him, and hopefully he has learned something good from me.) We have been trough a lot together in the past 21 years. But still the question remains, why are the same thing repeating themselves? Is there nothing NEW for us to learn? Or do we just look for something new in the same old issues? Why? What purpose would that serve? Is there anything new to be found there? If so, why have I not seen it before, if they repeating? Same issues, same lessons....right?