Thanks, Nilly! You are great.

Nilly!!!!!

And thank you for saying that, too

I still remember something you wrote (and read aloud at some - oh, my sieve, I don't even remember what, where and why), about how writing was always a part of you, or rather, how you felt you were always part of writing. It not only had a beautiful ring to it, but also showed, in such few words, what you thought and felt regarding the whole subject. It's been years since I saw that sentence from you (goodness, maybe even a decade), but I liked it so much, it stayed with me ever since.

Scrappy!!!

Um, I don't need content. Just your exclamation points. I think you're great, too.

(I'm in front of the computer because I'm writing an exam for a class I'm teaching for the first time. Actually, I should be sleeping, but posting is so much more fun!)

This has been...an interesting year? I don't think I'm a big fan of interesting years.

Good: Moved back to Texas. We were very tired of the town we were living in, which was never a good match for us. The process of moving is always a pain (at least for me, and if anyone enjoys it, let me know so I can hire you next time), but we have a great house and the promise of 60-degree weather by the weekend.

Bad: Still haven't sold the other house.

Good: I was able to work at my old job for a few months long distance, and I continue to do hourly work for them.

Bad: Still no new job.

Good: Much closer to my family.

Bad: Which became pretty important when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer right about the time we moved. I was down there for a week.

Good: She did really well with the surgery and followup.

Bad: But despite everyone's predictions, they found another carcinoma last week when they finished the round of six-month tests. At the advice of doctors, she's opting for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. It should really truly be dealt with at that point, but it's pretty stressful right now.

Good: Spent a week in Austria and Germany.

Bad: Which overlapped with my mother's hospital stay in Austria, when she had a bad kidney infection. This has really not been her year.

In summary, I feel like all of the above have conspired to make me pretty flaky this year. I got through the important stuff, but lots of other stuff was deprioritized to the point that I couldn't give a shit about it. I watched a lot of TV. I ate too much food, but since May, a lot of it has been Mexican or sushi or Vietnamese or Thai, most of which I couldn't get at the old place. I worked out not enough and slept too much. But I made it through.

As always, I'm grateful for you guys and all of my online friends.

Oh, Dana - it's an opportunity to tell you, too, how much you (and your mother) have been in my thoughts (And - I hope it's OK - in my daily prayers).

I hope the next year will not enable you to write such a symmetrical Good-Bad column, because the good will so much outweigh the bad.

Oh, and you're great, too.

It's possible I've missed posting with you guys too much, or something sapped my keyboard, or it's the constant lack of sleep and leaking of IQ points. I'm, um, sorry? Not sure.

Like Dana and Jesse, I had a year that was, frankly, too interesting.

Moving my parents into assisted living in November of 2012 led to a couple of months of horribleness with my mother's mental health issues, compounded by job uncertainty. I got notice in March (on Mom's birthday, in fact) that I was going to be laid off, and within a few weeks Mom took a turn for the worse. The job ended in May and Mom died a week later. I worked two months during the summer, but haven't found anything since.

So that all sucked.

On the more positive side, my oldest brother's restaurant business is going gangbusters (he plans to open two more this year!), my nieces and nephews are all doing wonderfully, and the rest of the family is in good health. Dad seems to be settling into a routine and has made some friends (although we have not yet convinced him to stop driving).

I do hope 2014 has more of the pleasant kind of excitement and less of the awful stressful kind.

And I'm immensely grateful to the Buffistas, who have been so kind and supportive through all of this: you've really been awesome, and {{I hug you all}}.

This year has been mixed. Very, very mixed.

Bad: The stress levels at my tech writing job kept soaring, the manager who took over our team turned into Dolores Umbridge, and she tried to railroad me into a 30 day performance improvement plan that I didn't deserve.

Good: I never thought I'd be happy to be unemployed, but hey! I don't work for a horrible person anymore, I'm not hiding under my desk and taking Xanax every afternoon, and I'm getting some of my long-delayed projects underway!

Good: We went to the UK! Pete visited his family for the first time in 13 years!

Bad: Angst, family issues, and trying to help his mom sort through a lot of things that had built up in the house.

Good: We saw UK peeps (WE SAW FAY!), and I had a religious experience at the David Bowie Exhibit at the V&A.

Good: I went to California to visit Cass, go see a concert, and generally decompress after the horrible ex-job.

Good: I finished the first draft of my fiction project, and it is in my agent's hands.

And finally, Weird: Casting agents and people with notions of reality TV shows keep contacting me. Who knows where that will go?

I knew Hollywood would find you eventually!

My year was unremarkable until the last quarter.

Good: Turns out about a hundred years ago, my grandfather bought a hunk of land in the next township over from the old homestead. The evil energy company that's been fracking and wrecking the ground water wants to pay his descendents a bunch of money to explore that land and develop any mineral resources there. I wanted to make a moral stand and refuse to accept blood money, but I'm one of eleven (or thirteen, depending on how surviving spouses of descendents are counted) heirs, so I'm not likely to stop anything, and several thousand dollars is useful to most anybody. So, I signed. I expect to see the lease payment after the new year.

Bad: Hubby was diagnosed with a rare, hard-to-treat cancer. Tests are scheduled to see if his heart is up to the rigorous chemo that is known to be hard on hearts and to see what's up with his bone marrow. Then begins 6 to 10 cycles of chemo, spaced every three weeks. The oncologist says we have a 50-50 chance of knocking it down completely, but history shows that it will pop back up in 5 to 7 years, at which point he hopes there are better treatments. I hate even odds. This particular type of chemo is so rough that he'll need to be hospitalized for it so they can monitor his heart.

Good: The oncologist is affiliated with one of the best cancer centers in the world, and between my work insurance and Hubby's disability, he's 130% covered for the treatment.

So 2013 we can call decidedly mixed. 2014--winter and spring look to be bad. If the dice roll our way, a lot of Hubby's pain and creeping malaise will go away.

I would like to speak to the entity who decided my life should be scripted by the writing department of a telenovela.

Dana, continued best wishes for your mom. And you guys, too!