Happy Trails, 2009

Sophie actu­ally allowed me to place these silly antlers on her for about a minute yes­ter­day. Big­Bob bought them sev­eral years ago and she would not tol­er­ate them for even a sec­ond. When I found them in a box, I decided to again try putting them on her and was shocked when she sat calmly for a brief few moments.  

No, she does not own a sweater or any other apparel.  Nei­ther does Buddy.  I do not nor­mally dress my dogs up in goofy out­fits, but those antlers were just too cute for even me to resist!

I can’t believe that New Year’s Eve is here … again. I am told that time pass­ing ever more quickly is a sign of old age. If that’s the case, I’m not just old, I’m a fos­sil because time is a com­pletely abstract con­cept at this point. The days, weeks, months are a blur of activ­i­ties, events, tran­si­tions, and passages.

I am launch­ing my new blog­ging project tomor­row, so I invite you to come back and read about it then. I also hope that you will par­tic­i­pate. Admin­is­ter­ing the Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life for more than two years was fun, but time-consuming. Like Oprah, I decided to dis­con­tinue the Car­ni­val while it was still pop­u­lar, rather than wait­ing for it to fiz­zle and sput­ter its way to extinction.

In 2009, I took a blog­ging hia­tus. Unin­ten­tion­ally. I was so busy with my work, boys, and music, not to men­tion shop­ping for, pur­chas­ing, and get­ting set­tled into my new house, that I didn’t even real­ize my writ­ing here came to an abrupt and unplanned halt. When I reviewed my 2009 archive, I was shocked to see that, aside from the Car­ni­val and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a few memes, I pub­lished my last sub­stan­tive arti­cle in Jan­u­ary 2009. Part of the rea­son was my deci­sion to ter­mi­nate my rela­tion­ship with another site where I pub­lished weekly arti­cles for a cou­ple of years. Not hav­ing a weekly dead­line allowed me the free­dom to post only when I wanted, but also elim­i­nated my moti­va­tion to select top­ics about which to write and pro­vide new con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis. There’s noth­ing wrong with blog­ging less fre­quently, of course, since it is a hobby for me, rather than my pro­fes­sion. How­ever, I plan to get back to writ­ing more reg­u­larly and purposefully.

I will also remem­ber 2009 as a year filled with tran­si­tions and change, as well as tremen­dous chal­lenges. It was the year that I took a pro­fes­sional “hit” in the form of a nearly 15 per­cent salary reduc­tion due to the fur­loughs imposed by the Gov­er­na­tor, but have made excel­lent use of the extra three days per month that I do not work. It was the year that I lost one of the best friends I’ve ever had, Clint Ritchie, as well one of my men­tors and tutors, the senior part­ner at my for­mer law firm. But I also recon­nected with sev­eral old friends and made quite a few new ones.

And, of course, I decided that it was, at long last, time to live my life apart from my hus­band of 24 years. That has proved to be the best deci­sion I’ve ever made. Now that I have my beau­ti­ful house that I main­tain in accor­dance with my stan­dards of clean­li­ness, orga­ni­za­tion, and a dearth of chaos and clut­ter, I have wel­comed more guests into my home in the past four months than in the prior two decades. Since I love to enter­tain and missed hav­ing the abil­ity to do so, the move has been very pos­i­tive for me. Even bet­ter, my friends have embraced my new cir­cum­stances, as well as my res­i­dence. In fact, one woman with whom I have been friends since sev­enth grade (1968) brought me the lovely win­dow dec­o­ra­tion this past week­end. When giv­ing it to me, she explained that when she saw it in the store, she imme­di­ately thought of me and my new house! That was one of the loveli­est com­pli­ments I have ever received. I smile every morn­ing when I get up, look out my kitchen win­dow into the back­yard and see it hang­ing on the glass. My friends have offi­cially dubbed my new place “the party house” and that delights me.

I hope you spend this night with folks you love, feel­ing loved. I hope you are warm, well-fed, com­fort­able, and at peace with what the old year brought, as well as hope­ful about what the new year holds in store for you and those dear­est to you. Have a won­der­ful New Year’s celebration!

Click here to see the list of other Word­ful Wednes­day par­tic­i­pants, visit their sites, and see the pho­tos they are shar­ing today. To see the list of folks par­tic­i­pat­ing in A Thou­sand Words Thurs­day, click here!

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