Wishing growth, peace, and love to you, Beloveds, in the coming year.

2017 is the year my father, defying all expectation, didn't die. So that was good. It would be really lovely if 2018 followed suit!

2017 was the year my father did die, and I've been equal parts sad and relieved about it. I actually found Christmas to be less sad with him all the way gone.

Other than that, my year was a year. I got a new job and a new cat, had a great trip to Europe, and was mostly horrified at the state of the country, with just a couple of bright spots here and there.

I'm not sure if I know how to feel about 2017, except in little bits.

Husband got laid off AGAIN. Bad. Might have to move again. Exhausting. Moving here was supposed to bring us closer to family, but we've only seen them a couple of times, probably because they are not good at organizing, and the younger ones are all busy with kids. I mean, they're there if we need help.

Got my hair colored with blue and purple and green. That was cool. I may do it again in February, before another con.

Back surgery. Definitely sucked. Surgery part wasn't that difficult. The parts before and after were worse. I'm still fighting to get that last 10 percent of functionality back, and apparently that's going to require work on my part, and work is never my strong suit.

Finally went to a headache specialist for my migraines. Ongoing. One step is dropping artificial sweeteners, which means dropping diet soda. Which hardly seems fair. But I've mostly done it. Unrelatedly, I've lost about 20 pounds since September. I could probably lose more faster if I were stricter about it.

I wrote a thing that's making money, and that's cool. I could make more money if I wrote another thing, but again, that would require work.

Went to Europe twice, once three weeks post-back surgery. If I had known, or been able to cancel without penalty, I would have dropped out, but it went pretty well, considering. Thankfully, husband came along. Prague was neat, but I really liked Vienna, which husband and I did on our own.

The other trip was a ten-day coach tour of England and Scotland with my oldest fandom friends, celebrating twenty years. It was awesome, and I'd do it again right now if they asked me.

So I guess that trip was the high point of my year, and the low point was realizing that so many people around me were able to completely deny reality and refuse to accept actual facts. I think progress is being made, but there are still plenty of times when I just can't cope with things in our country, and I feel guilty, because I have the luxury of hiding under the covers. But it won't do anyone any good if I'm huddled in a corner, weeping.

Summary: Vacation good, politics bad.

At first glance, 2017 didn't seem terribly different from previously years for me. Same job, same house, same husband, same child, same cats.

Obviously, 2017 was very different politically from 2016, and not in a good way. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Mr. S entered the terrible twos with a vengeance. He doesn't listen, and gets into everything. He's had some behavior issues at nursery school, and we are working with him on it.(with a good bit of help from the teachers and people from the county Infants and Toddlers program) This can be frustrating a lot. He is making progress, though.

I wanted 2017 to be over with, and I wanted to keep to my 11:00 non-work-day bedtime on New Year's Eve. So I found a radio station from England on the Net and celebrated New Year's with London.

I may make that a tradition. Kind of refreshing to celebrate New Year's, then go out for dinner at the local pizza-pasta-subs joint that was so dead that they were adding complimentary salads, and still get a good night's sleep.

I may be getting old.

Might be that with age comes wisdom!

Also possible.

I did enjoy ringing in the New Year with Big Ben.

What a great idea, Fred!

This was the year of The Move. My HR job was sucking my soul out of my body on the reg and there was no way we could afford our mortgage without me keeping it. We decided to move to Michigan and, although the actual prep and move were a huge pain and we STILL aren't all unpacked, we are very happy we did. Love our new house and how great local NPR is and, basically, the whole Midwest thing.

My goals for 2018 are first, to get a job, hopefully as a substitute teacher, and also to do research about opening a used bookstore in the future. Also to get the rest of our books unpacked!