2012 in Review

This year, I'm going to modify it to ask the questions I want to ask. Because I can.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before?

Played role playing games. Taught third grade. Spent an entire road trip in the driver's seat.

2. How did your goals for the year come out? 
Meh. I read some older books, though not as many as I would have liked. Memorable ones: Histories of Herodotus (not all of it yet, but it's quite the read); Count of Monte Cristo (doing with a book club, slowly, so haven't finished); The Practice of the Presence of God. I made enough money practicing law to pay for a massive cement loading-dock-and-wheelchair-ramp. Which wasn't what I wanted to do for landscaping or with the money, but it worked and I'm glad of that. I didn't give up on my book research, though I didn't progress very far. I didn't ferment anything. We did do some science lessons. The basement, after a brief respite in the summer, has returned to utter chaos. However, the living room is much better and we have bookshelves!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth or get pregnant?
DOB's sister had her first, a little boy. My brother and sister-in-law had their second, a little boy. They have the same name, just to confuse the cousin issue.

4. Travel?
Some fun local trips: the mountains; the ocean; the mountains and the ocean. That's pretty much our options. But we haven't gotten tired of them yet.

Also, a real, honest, overnighter-at-a-bed-and-breakfast without the kids.

5. Did you move anywhere?
No. Hallelujah.


6. What was the best month?
April and May might have been good. Or I might just have forgotten what went wrong.

7. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
A feeling of being on top of things. Ha.

8. What date(s) from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
July 1. When a very small pain in the sole of my foot became the catalyst for massive upheaval.

9. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Keeping going and feeling relatively optimistic.

10. What was your biggest failure?
Occasionally losing it.

11. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I sprained my metatarsal arch. Which ought to have been minor, except it never got better. And then DOB tried to help me out, and his feet (which were already doing badly) got worse. And worse. And worse. And now he's in a wheelchair, which was bound to happen sooner or later anyway, but this is sooner.

12. What was the best thing you bought?
Bookshelves! Bookshelves! Did I mention we have bookshelves?

13. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The ducklings, who are somehow managing to grow into reasonably sane, well-educated and often even helpful people despite their parents' continual state of crisis.

14. Where did most of your money go?
A wheelchair ramp. Which is really snazzy, and actually improves the look of the house over the falling apart and far too narrow sidewalk that was there. It would have been nice to put more of it on the old credit cards, but at least we had it to pay for.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder?
ii. richer or poorer?

i. A little sadder. More discouraged, anyway. I could use a little less of Massive Overwhelming New Problems arriving regularly. On the other hand, I have much to be thankful for.

ii. About the same. Which could be a lot worse, considering.

16. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Walking. Wow do I miss walking when I don't get it.

17. What do you wish you'd done less of? 
Dealt with people throwing up. Sat around.

18. How will you be spending New Year's Eve/Day?
Waiting to decide, once we find out whether the upset tummies in evidence this morning were harbingers of doom to come or merely a reaction to low blood sugar headaches.

19. What was an unexpected surprise?
This was not a year in which surprises were anything good.

20. Did you fall in love in 2011?
With role-playing games! Would you like to hear about my wisecracking hobbit thief alter ego? Or perhaps my homely but sturdy medieval middle eastern cook trying to rebuild the merchant fortune her father lost? Or my space-age charming, manipulative, mind-reading ex-geologist?

21. What was the best event you've been to this year?
Seeing Fiddler on the Roof outside was awesome. Also, getting to see the Duchess perform in her first musical was pretty thrilling.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
We finally discovered Monk. It's been therapeutic for both of us: DOB who finally is willing to be open about his OCD and me who finally understands what that pained expression on his face means. Also it's really funny and most of the mysteries are well plotted. And little of the gore and other ookiness that is too often in modern shows. (We tried Castle for awhile and just found it distasteful. We also watched Luther which DOB loved but I found extremely depressing.)

We also finally started watching Dr. Who. Unfortunately, so did a lot of other people who use our library, so we don't get to watch it for very long at a stretch.

23. What authors did you discover this year?
I am really terrible about keeping lists. If you saw my shopping lists, you would not wonder that I don't keep a book list. 

However, if I read enough books by the same author, I might remember him or her.

Nonfiction: Oliver Sacks. He writes beautifully about science, loves it passionately, and knows its limits. I thoroughly enjoyed The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and just finished reading Uncle Tungsten: Memoirs of a Chemical Boyhood. I did not finish some of his more clinical books, but I might give some more a try.

I am always reading a bit of the Charlotte Mason education series, to try to keep myself in the right frame of mind.

I didn't finish, but I got almost to the end of Dawn to Decadence, by Jacques Barzun. I should get it from the library again. It's just too thick to finish even in a twelve-week maximum checkout.

Fiction: OK, I read more series fiction than perhaps was good for me. They are handy when everyone has the stomach flu, though. Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series got us through the stomach flu early in the year, and I have much enjoyed discovering David Weber's War God and Safehold series. (Even though he does info dump. Boy, does he info dump.)

Also, after being extremely horrified by reading The Three Musketeers at the age of ten, I think I am ready to handle Dumas now.

Also, I finally finished Anna Karenina! (I think that was this year. It got lost when we moved and I rediscovered it.)



Also, I read The Hobbit out loud to everyone, which was wonderful.

24. Random Memories from 2012?
Going to Port Townsend with just DOB.  Wandering in the woods. Children learning to write. Standing in the ocean. Date nights in DOB's short-lived but beautiful orange Camaro. Learning the names of birds and mushrooms. Children squealing, "We have Shakespeare this week? Hooray!" Relearning how to knit.