2013 Summary

(Written on December 18, 2013)

2013 was a very unusual year.  I think the ill luck of 13 was in the air this year.  Fortunately, along with the bad comes some good – there definitely was a yin and yang to the year!

Yin: My Director in the Career Center made an emotionally difficult decision in December, 2012 to take a job at Dartmouth and left in April.  He hired away another co-worker, leaving the Career Center severely short-handed for the end of the semester and the summer.

Yang: We were incredibly fortunate to find a local applicant (through a national search, of course) to fill the position in July.  The new Director brings skills that were very much needed to the job, along with enthusiasm and energy.

Yin: The Career Center limped into the academic year still down a couple of staff members when the person we were very excited to hire as an Assistant Director let us know three weeks before the semester started that she had taken another position.

Yang: We were able to hire a colleague in a temporary position for the year who already knew a great deal about internships and so aren’t limping as badly as we might be, even though we’re still down, technically, a half person (and, in reality, 1 ½ people).

Yin: This was a biggie.  Over the 4^th of July weekend, when we were away (naturally), our cat sitter discovered one morning that our house was full of water.  A pipe had burst in the upstairs bathroom vanity (the mesh kind that are supposed to last forever) during the night and our kitchen and basement below were flooded with over 650 gallons of water.

Yang: Thank God for cat sitters and their fathers!  They called Advance 1 and got the basement pumped before we got home (we were 5 hours away in RI).  When we arrived there were fans and dehumidifiers installed throughout the house.  The fast response, I’m sure, saved our hardwood floors in 4 rooms.

Yin: The kitchen we gutted and refinished just 10 years ago was once again torn out to the studs.  The bathroom floor and vanity were totaled.  At night, for several weeks, you could see light from the bathroom to the basement, or the other way around, between the base floor planks.

Yang: The toilet, shower, refrigerator, utility sink in the basement, and the washer and dryer all continued to function.  And it was summer, so we were able to cook on the patio using the grill and our Coleman stove.

Yin: Because we often get water in the basement in the spring, we had everything in plastic boxes or up off the floor.  However, we weren’t prepared for water coming from above, so we spent many hours sorting out wet things and drying them or pitching them.

Yang: We’ve been wanting to clean out the basement for a long time.  We built new shelves and are happier with the storage and the room generated on that side of the basement.  We had a lot of stuff to contribute to the church fair sale.

Yin: It was 3 ½ months before we had a functioning kitchen.  Two weeks after everything had been installed, the stalwart refrigerator died, extending the project to a full 4 months.

Yang: We have a brand-new kitchen that looks a lot like the old kitchen (same color walls, same style cabinets since we had to match the ones in the mudroom).  But this kitchen has all new appliances (stainless steel since we can’t get “bisque” anymore), including a gas range (upgrade from electric and we love it), granite countertops (Maine granite, no less), and vinyl flooring (much less worry in the kitchen and mudroom than the old laminate floor). 

Also Yang: The bathroom also enjoyed a renovation, even though technically only the floor and vanity needed to be replaced.  We put in a new ceiling and tiled over the bathtub ceiling, got a taller vanity, love the new vinyl flooring, and found a remnant piece of granite for the vanity top that I find endlessly fascinating to look at.

Yin: Hardwood floors in 4 rooms were damaged.  We had to completely empty them for a week to refinish the floors, which meant that the other rooms left (our bedroom, the living room – which was already full of boxes from the kitchen – and the porch) were jammed to the rafters with furniture and “stuff.”

Yang: We have 4 rooms with beautifully refinished floors.  While they were empty we painted the ceilings in 3 of them (along with the bathroom and kitchen ceilings).  And we are still slowly moving back into each of them in a more intentional way, throwing things out (or putting them in the church sale). 

Yin: my sewing room was engulfed with furniture and “stuff” and all of my knitting supplies are still boxed up in the basement.  I skipped the Maine Quilt Show completely for the first time in probably 15 years.  I held out some yarn for projects I wanted to work on, but had to go buy new needles every time I needed a different size because I couldn’t for the life of me find them in the basement boxes.

Yang: I’m actually going to have a real “fiber room/studio” – the kind I’ve dreamed of for many, many years.  Nate’s old room got re-plastered (one of those “while we’re at it” projects that had been “on the list” but wasn’t probably going to get done for another year) and painted.  Don and I took apart my massive sewing table and moved it into the room. We purchased IKEA shelves and I’m slowly moving in, trying to be thoughtful about where and what will be in there.

Yin: I’m exhausted.  Which has pretty much sapped any Christmas enthusiasm.  I came home from visiting my parents last weekend to find Don putting up decorations because he was afraid I wasn’t going to put any up myself.  The tree has been in for well over a week but all it has on it are lights.  I’ve done absolutely zero holiday cooking (though I’m planning to spend a lunch hour to make spiced nuts).  Gift buying has been painful – I just don’t seem to have any good ideas and don’t want to face the traffic in the stores and the parking lots.

Yang: I’ve got the next 12 days off and am particularly looking forward to the after-Christmas days.  I’m also really, really looking forward to seeing my sons.  Zeben will be home most of my vacation, and I hope we’ll see Nate more than once during that time too (in addition to Christmas Eve and Day).  If the weather doesn’t interfere, I’ll get to see all of my cousins on the Talbot side, as well as all of my siblings this Saturday, and cousins on the Smith side on the 26th.  And, we’ll have our usual family-full Christmas and a fun New Year’s Eve with friends.

Yin: My parents’ health continues to decline and that makes me sad, mad, and sadder.

Yang: My parents are still with us and are still living independently.  And their health issues have prodded me to take a “Preventing Diabetes” class through our local hospital starting in January with the hopes of losing a bit of weight and also replacing some bad habits with some new good ones.

Yin: I started out the year wearing a brace day and night to help jumpstart recovery from tendonitis in my right wrist.

Yang: With the help of an OT, daily wrist exercises, and wearing the brace at night, the pain is now very nearly gone. 

Yin: Our older cat (15 years) is suffering from pancreatitis and has lost 4 of her 11 pounds of weight in just three months.  We thought the weight loss was from the stress of the work on the house, but after blood tests were done it clearly is more than that.  We have to check the floors when we come home as she has trouble keeping her food down.

Yang: Pandora has given us a great deal of companionship and joy over the past 15 years.  While she is getting more and more frail all the time, she doesn’t seem to be in major pain and more than ever wants to be wherever we are.  She’s still eating and drinking, even if she can’t keep it all down.  I’m looking forward to lots of Pandora lap time over vacation.

And, major Yang: Don has been my rock through all of this, even when all I can manage to do in the evening is play Candy Crush on the iPad.   I’m so grateful for his love and support.

Now, let’s put 2013 behind us and move forward into a new year.  Two bright spots that hopefully indicate our luck is turning – I recently won a gift card in a drawing a work and won a sweater’s worth of yarn from my local yarn store in another drawing.  A little more paint and the whole house will look refreshed from top to bottom.  We’ve gotten pretty good at cleaning stuff out and hope to apply those skills to the garage and other side of the basement (that miraculously didn’t get wet at all in the flood) next summer.  We’ve got our health, good jobs, and each other.  I’m sure there will be bumps in the road, but overall I’m looking forward to a great year.