Good riddance, 2010

Tough year for me, overall, despite some blessings and happy times.

This posting isn't about food but why have a blog if you can't use it to sum up a challenging year in your life?

I'll start with what was good about the year:

• A couple of great trips last summer -- Cape Cod in June, and the West (Denver, Moab, Monument Valley, and Santa Fe) in August;


• At year's end, my physical health is fine, my mother is hanging in at almost 90--she lives in a nursing home near our house, and my loved ones all made it through the year in decent health;


• My nephew Lee and his wife Savannah had a baby boy in July -- the first of that generation in our family;


• My stepdaughter and her husband had their first wedding anniversary and their happiness is a source of continuing joy in my life;


• My day job (university professor) is engaging and fulfilling;


• I have an astonishingly wonderful emotional support system of family and friends, and this year is especially noteworthy in that my father's sister, Aunt Jean, came into our lives with her kindness and grace at just the time we most needed her (a God thing);


• I have found greater comfort in God than in many years prior -- and also found a new church that I like a lot.

So with all those blessings, what have I got to complain about? It's a shorter list, but with some major stuff on it:

• In March, the healthy foodie was shocked to learn that she had two arteries that were at least 90 percent blocked. I ended up spending 5 nights in hospital and getting 4 stents in those two arteries. I'm on all the meds now to keep my heart healthy. The cardiologist said there was "nothing" that I could do different, habit-wise, to improve my chances for no recurrence. In other words, my lifestyle is heart healthy, my genes are not.


• My mother fell and broke her arm in January. She went into nursing care (from an assisted living apartment) and then the facility informed us that she would have to spend the rest of her life in nursing because of her advancing dementia.


• Over the summer and without my knowledge, my husband's drinking got out of hand and he got into trouble with the law. He was arrested in September on a felony charge, and convicted early this month. Since Sept he has been on house arrest awaiting his (our) fate. His crime was on local TV and on the front page of our city's newspaper. I never could have imagined such a thing.