What Kate said. Plus you have an awesome smile.

I actually mailed my slacker present today! That will make it less than a month late!

I bought the first part of my slacker present yesterday.

Is it slacks?

Heh heh. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Heh heh. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Sure, but it'd probably be a slacker hit. Every year you'll put another post in Good Riddance, apologising that you haven't got round to it yet, but you stopped into a music store and asked which pianos are the mot effective when dropped from a great height, so that's progress, isn't it?

Dear 2011,

This is NOT the way to start out. You need to work very, very hard to make things better. My mom making a full recovery would be a good start.

Tom, IME therapy is a long, slow process, often going long stetches without discernable results. Then a lot happens in a short time. Whether it's incremental gains or a rush of progress, I hope 2011 is the year that it all comes together for you.

Continued ~ma, Jilli.

Tom, I'm in a degree of admiration approaching awe for all you've accomplished since I've known you here. Having come this far, I have all faith you'll go further still. You have my best wishes always.

Well, 2010 was the year of taking care of people.

My niece was born in February and I was cheerfully out there one day a week helping my sister with her. I helped Msbelle out with Mac which was also a joy. (Seriously, that child is 95% sunshine. The other 5% is so hard but it used to be 10+ and some day it will be nearly none.) There were various other babysitting gigs and, again, so nice to be part of keeping happy families happy.

Then came August and I was off to Florida for what turned out to be four months to look after my aunt Barbara's 91 year old mother Roz while aunt Barbara underwent cancer treatments.

The work its self wasn't so difficult -- cooking, cleaning, keeping the books, getting Roz to her various appointments. Roz's dimentia isn't as traumatic to me as it is to her immediate family because I'm not feeling the loss of her memories so much and she and I were able to enjoy simple things -- clouds, trees, Jewish food, Errol Flynn movies... as well as those days when she was sharp and funny as hell.

Being away from home, missing my friends, being out of my environment, not knowing if this was even going to work -- that was all pretty hard. My uncle John and I bonded quite a bit on that through those long months and he and I have regained the closeness we had when I was a girl.

But it worked. Barbara lived. Roz kept her faculties. We all went home. Just this once, everybody wins.

Maternity and Paternity leave for my sister and her husband have ended and my nannying the niece a few days a week means I'm probably eligible (fingers crossed!) as a part-time worker for NYS's single-payer health insurance. With any luck I'll soon have the foot surgery that got put off three years ago when I lost my job. Maybe 2011 is the year for taking care of Trudy.

I received a lovely present in the mail! My santa gave me a soft, soft, soft (and very warm) red scarf (my tactile happy fingers didn't want to let go), and an ecological calendar, which I'd never seen before, but which is really beautifully illustrated. I've started looking at it, but there's so much to see, I haven't really even begun to figure it out. It's this one: [link] and I can tell it's going to be very useful and interesting already.

Also included, were perfect presents for my punkins, a little book on how to draw dinosaurs for Aidan, with colored pencils and dinosaur stickers, which he has already begun to use (he created a dinosaur zoo this evening), and a 3 bottle set of purple, silver, and black fingernail polish for my infant gothy-girl, who is making plans to paint her nails tomorrow, but hasn't decided which color to start with yet. Both presents were stuck in tiny fuzzy stockings, which made the children very happy, so the Fisher family is feeling the santa love tonight.