I spent the tail end of New Year’s Eve in the usual way: with my family, watching a TV broadcast of the ball dropping in Times Square. As the people in the crowd chanted the countdown (“ten, nine, eight, . . .”), I felt strangely dislocated from time, because how could it be the end of the year already. Hadn’t we just started it?
Each new year feels more that way as I get older. My blog usually helps with that, letting me see each year in retrospect as a connected series of stories, rather than a puddle of mixed-up half-memories, random and detached from the calendar. Regretfully, I didn’t blog much in 2024, so the year will always be more muddled in my memory. But, I suppose the scarcity of posts for the year makes each one more precious. Let’s review the highlights and talk about what’s happened since, shall we?
January: 17 posts (the most I wrote for any month of 2024)
- I posted about my daily puzzling habit. Since then, I quit my NYT subscription, and I only do the puzzles on the website that are free, so no more Spelling Bee for me. My mom later gave me a Spelling Bee mug for Christmas, which would seem like an ill-fitting present were it not that I now solve the puzzle’s twin (Word Flower) over at the Boston Globe, and I still feel like I’m solving the Spelling Bee daily.
- I also posted about my knee. The cortisone shot lasted for several months. Now, the knee is a little stiff and sometimes painful, but not so bad that I need to get another shot. I hope to delay getting more shots for as long as possible. I suspect that they will get less efficacious the more I get of them, and I want to save them as a last resort.
February: 12 posts
- I wrote a post in which I mentioned Livia’s puzzle-solving abilities. During 2024, she became an ardent puzzler, tackling many of the NYT puzzles daily, as well as the Octordle. She can solve them on her own, and sometimes does, but she’s just as likely to solve them with me or her Dad, who is now also a puzzler (OMG, what? I did not see that coming!).
- We got an air fryer/toaster oven. As a toaster, it’s a mixed bag. It makes great toast, but it takes forever. Consequently, we weren’t able to get rid of the actual toaster, which was part of our plan for clearing clutter from the kitchen counters. The kids don’t have a lot of time in the morning when they’re getting ready for school, so they need a quick toaster. But we find the oven incredibly helpful when we need to make toast for the entire family, because it can handle up to 9 slices at a time. As an air fryer, I’m not sure it’s much better than a regular oven, but it did get us to try a bunch of new recipes, some of which (such as the fajita recipe) were keepers. As a toaster oven, it’s useful for reheating food that would get destroyed by the microwave. All things considered, it was a good purchase.
- In a post that is now private, I wrote about the ridiculous “bait-and-switch” bill that I got for my cortisone shot. I never paid the bill. I haven’t heard from the collections agency in a while. I’m unsure whether they’ve decided to let it go or are working on another way to pursue me. I can only hope that 2025 will have no unpleasant billing surprises.
March: 14 posts
As mentioned above, some posts that were once viewable by the general public are now private. In most cases, that’s because the post contained political commentary, and I’ve since decided to keep such posts private. For March, I want to highlight a quote from one such post. I wrote, “Dwelling on the big messes that I can’t control makes little sense when there are smaller messes all around me that I could control if I so chose. Perspective.” That’s exactly the mindset I need right now. I should focus more on what’s going on in my daily life and less on whatever the fuck the world is doing, because I can’t control the world or even handle its insanity right now.
April: No posts
I don’t remember April at all. I can only assume that the lack of posts was caused by the lack of sleep.
May: 2 posts
OMG, was I was in sorry shape in May, as I explained in this post: Gotta Go With What You’ve Got. Sleep-deprivation is terrible and dangerous and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone ever.
June: 12 posts
- Though I didn’t mention it on the blog until July, I joined the YMCA so that the kids could take swim lessons. The kids enjoyed the lessons, but the Y didn’t have any openings in the next-level class, so they couldn’t continue. Meanwhile, I couldn’t justify the expense of the memberships while waiting for spaces to open up in the class, so I decided to cancel. The Y makes it hard to do so, though, and I ended up having to pay for a whole extra month. Due to these and other assorted issues, the experience ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth, and I’m unlikely to join the Y again, but I hope the kids will at least remember the swim lessons fondly.
- Other odds and ends from June: the kids (especially Marshall) were thoroughly sick of school and I was at the end of my rope. I don’t know how we made it through, but we did. I’d lost patience with people, resolving that my new default for climate-change questioners/deniers would be “Are you a fucking moron?” I haven’t been called upon to use it, but I have no doubt that the time will come. In music, I was working on a dissonant 4-part 6-tone piece, which my teacher liked. I’ve since started a second one but haven’t made as much progress as I’d like, largely because I had writer’s block (composer’s block?) for many weeks in late 2024.
July: 8 posts
July was mostly about work. After apparently tempting the evil genies in June by saying I was sick of my job, in July I learned that I might indeed lose my job. I haven’t, at least not yet, and I’m relieved. But, I’m pissed at my employers for the way they handled the situation. I get that they needed to reduce costs. But, they didn’t have to be so cruel, making us live with the fear of job-loss for months and then axing people right before the holidays.
August: 3 posts
I wrote about planning to go to Great Wolf Lodge. I had had high hopes for that trip, but it didn’t turn out very well. First, it got postponed. Then, when we finally did go, there was a lack of enthusiasm that was not helped by the fact that the place was both packed with visitors and freezing cold. I’d call it a big waste of money except that we had some family time, which is priceless. I was still sleeping poorly in August and finally tried melatonin (it didn’t work and it had unpleasant side-effects. Ugh.).
September: 3 posts
I wrote a little bit, in a post that is now private, about the upcoming election and my trip to CT to visit with my friend (we got totally soaked–not the first time that has happened to us, and probably not the last!). I started my music lessons back up after having taken a much-needed break during the summer. I had a good birthday.
October: no posts
What was happening in October? I can’t recall. I know that I was struggling to find books to suit my mood, and at some point I stopped finishing the books I’d started. I kept trying to read, switching from one book to another, hoping to find one that could hold my interest, but I met with little luck. I am only just now starting to get my reading mojo back. Halloween, which is usually the highlight of the year, was a letdown. Marshall didn’t want to dress up, and Natalie had made other plans for Arianna without telling us in advance, so it was just me, Livia, and my hubby who went trick-or-treating. We didn’t even visit the kids’ vovos. The vovos are getting old (my MIL is 90!). They don’t get out much anymore, and we see them less often, which is sad. In December, they didn’t go to the Christmas Eve get-together at my SIL’s house, and their absence was a drag on the evening.
November: 6 posts
The big thing that happened in November was the election, of course, and I mentioned my subsequent reactions to it. The biggest reaction was that I quit social media. My Facebook and Twitter accounts are now gone, assuming they were deleted as promised. I’m somehow still on Instagram, apparently, as I continue to get e-mails from that site. I’ll have to go delete that one at some point. The loss of social media didn’t hurt as much as I’d feared. It was tough for a week or so, and then suddenly it wasn’t.
December: 3 posts
I didn’t write much, so I’ll just give a quick recap now.
- The writer’s block that had kept me from composing finally eased a bit, which was a relief.
- I fell behind on almost all Christmas prep. I didn’t even decorate the tree or wrap any presents until Christmas Eve. Thank goodness for cheatah bags! (I may write separately about cheatah bags later, but for now, I’ll just say that those cloth drawstring bags in Christmassy colors were a real life-saver that night).
- The jelly Advent Calendar that I bought for my husband was a big hit with the entire family, though technically we still haven’t finished the last few days of it because we were so busy then with other things. The jams will still be just as tasty when we get around to them, I’m sure.
- In preparation for my parents’ visit, we cleaned the house as much as possible. It’s nicer now, and we got to use our dining-room table for the first time. Same as last year, once there was a table available, we wanted to put a jigsaw puzzle on it. My husband selected the puzzle, and OMG it turned out to be the Garbage Pail Kids. What a blast from the past! My husband hid the cover of the box, so solving the puzzle has been challenging. We’re still working on it.