Year End Observations

Looking back is easy.  Remembering what moved you and writing about it challenges me.  Stand back; here it comes.

Things I learned this year:

• I know now that I love my children for different reasons. Eleanor challenges me, is beautiful and is (unintentionally) funny.  Saralyn is cuddly and daffy.  When each makes a sincere smile at me, I melt.  When they spend the entire day prattling, crying, mumbling and otherwise making CONSTANT noise, I want to put my own head in a bag.
• I love my husband more this year than last year.*
• Unlimited cell minutes to your husband and parents is a GOOD thing.
• I love my job.  What I do now may not get me through retirement in a well appointed villa somewhere, but I love what I do right now.
• Broadcasting doesn’t miss me.  I went looking on the GPB website for some stuff I had done that was archived there.  It’s long gone.  Luckily, I don’t miss it.  Just a few friends.
• I love season passes to museums.
• I love gardening but hate grass, the ground and most dirt.
• I live to eat.
• I live to blog.
• I live to laugh.
• I believe that people who murder their friends / family members / spouses / girlfriends, then go on a rampage shooting and burning things and then go off and kill themselves – REALLY – need to start at the other end of the list.  Note to people who kill others and think they will get away with it: You won’t.  If you need to kill, look no further than the man in the mirror, Okay?**
• Happy Holidays is a perfectly acceptable greeting in late November and all of December.  When did people go off the deep end and take it as a personal slight to their religious beliefs, leaders and God?  Be polite.  A greeting is a greeting.  Don’t loose your cool.
• I’m generally OK with people throwing their shoes at W.  It sure beats strapping a bomb to your own body when you want to make a political statement.
• I no longer know any of the musicians in EW’s 10 best musical acts of the year.  THAT made me feel old.
• I loved the Chinese Olympic hoopla.
• I hate reality game shows.  They all have an odor of poke the freak. I don’t want to watch you lose weight, survive, date while your mother meddles, pick cases for models to open or design evening wear and dinner.
• I tolerate cold better than heat.
• I feel like I’m missing something.  Surely on this list, but more of a general feeling.  I hope to figure out what it is in the new year.

So, what truths have you found this year?

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*I find this to be true every year.

**I find this to be true every year.  It just bothered me more this year.  When I was pregnant with Elly – a pregnant woman was kidnapped, murdered and the baby cut from her.  I took it personally.  And then there seemed to be a string of pregnant murder victims.  I am taking Casey Anthony’s murder personally, too, as she just a few weeks different in age from Eleanor.  I can see how children can push you over the edge, and some people are closer to the abyss than most.  I just don’t see how you can really do it.  The people who have scare me to the bone.