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captainsblogIt's that time. Or rather, in the news business, it was that time over the past several weeks or even months, as editors assigned year-in-review pieces to be turned in so as to run between Christmas and New Years, most of which have been gathering dust in the can except for a few updates while all the muckeymucks take off for most or all of that week.
I largely did the same, forming my Ten Biggest Importantest Things of 2012 in my head long before fingertips hit keys just now. However, at least some new information will work into these highlights. These five are, primarily, about people other than me, although in some ways, I (or we) contributed to these occurrences.
In more-or-less importance order, also chronological except for a little hopscotching:
* Cameron moves in. Perhaps the single most important change in our lives in 2012 was about a week after Emily returned home for the summer, when her boyfriend literally showed up at our front door without a home. He'd gotten into a fight with his stepfather, and since he'd been living with his mom, the result of that dispute was the two of them kicking him out, not at all sure where he'd land. He had no doubt. WE had no doubt. We'd previously offered him Emily's room on occasions where he was having family issues, but this was the first time that, without a doubt, they'd be living here together. Which they did, happily and without much trouble from his 'rents on either side, for the ensuing three months.
There was a hiccup roughly midway through, where his mom tried to influence his choices by threatening to cancel his cell phone contract and his car insurance. Once she figured out that it was cheaper to just pay his damn $10 a month family plan bill versus the cancellation charge, Threat the First went away. We negotiated an end to Threat the Second by giving her back "her" license plates on Cam's van in exchange for her giving us his original title to the thing. In the end, he never even needed it, and we sold it last month for some much needed financial cushion for the two of them....
* Cameron moves out- and onward and upward.-... and that cushion now resides 70 miles to the east of here. Cameron transferred to Wegmans' Rochester stores- first one near RIT, eventually to the one literally a block away from where they now live. The apartment hunt, done mostly in early August, was stressful and contained a lot of false starts, but in the end they wound up in a small suburban complex which is perfect for what they need, and has allowed them to add a young feline life to their family in their third month there.
The three of them just ended their almost a week of Christmas vacation with us, and we, as well as many of his former co-workers from the local store, were immensely touched to have heard him report that he felt this was his best Christmas ever. Considering he spent Christmas Eve having an asthma attack, that's the highest of praise, and while his families on both ends behaved themselves this time and he saw other friends in the process, we know that we contributed significantly to that good feeling on his part.
* New neighbors are the people in your neighborhood. Transitions were the order of the year on our six-house little block. Two of those houses changed hands in 2012, and two others grew closer to us in their own ways. First was the younger couple most directly across from us, who re-listed their home over the summer and sold it much more quickly (and cheaply) than they'd been able to a year before. The new owners are an older couple who are letting their UB-student son live there until they are ready to downsize into it. Around the time that one closed, our much closer and dearer neighbor Sally finally put her home on the market once she settled into assisted living. The move-out process was stressful for her and her family, and the deal wound up closing on our 25th anniversary; since then, the new owners (a father-son combo) put a ton of work into it and, earlier this month, finally rented it out to a younger couple that we have yet to get much time getting to know.
On the other side of our house, and on the other side across the street, our neighbors, long-term and not-so, have grown into newer and deeper friendships with us. A pairof sisters bought the cross-the-street-to-the-right house two summers ago, and we've gradually gotten to know them, and their warbly rescue basset hounds, who hang out a few hours a day in their side yard singing love songs to our girls. Eleanor and Ellen, especially, have bonded in recent weeks, and I shared the moment of Santa coming down our street with her a few days ago. I'm 62 and I'm still a kid about this!, she exclaimed. I can relate. Our other next-door neighbor, same age as Sally but far from assisted living, is still starting to find limits in her life. She had eye surgery last month, and was apologetic to a fault when asking Eleanor for help after some post-op complications arose. We're keeping more of an eye on her than ever now (see what I did there?).
* Two days in Toronto. Despite living just over an hour (plus border time) from one of the major cities of our world, and listening to its radio every day, we'd gone years without setting foot on Royal Soil. That ended for the three of us, three days into 2012; I made it Emily's 20th birthday present to visit the city, see the Art Gallery, meet some longtime LJ friends, and have her first legal adult beverage where the age for such things was 19, not 21.
Not half a year later, I was briefly back. A Met blogger friend had planned a trip to the team's series against the Blue Jays by way of a connection here in Buffalo, and her Megabus turned out to be Megalost, and I wound up just driving up with her, and back alone, so she could get to the game on time. (Which she did; we actually beat the sold-out later bus by a good two hours, since it takes way longer to question 100 terrorists than just two;)
* Two weddings and a funeral. There were fewer transitional moments than we've known from some recent years, but three come to mind above the rest. Two friends from the blogosphere got married during the year, and while we attended neither nuptials, we were graced with the news of them and the appreciation for our friendships that they expressed following them. More recently, my nieces' grandmother on their father's side died earlier this month at the age of 99, and I was able to be a part of the ceremony and serendipity of my younger niece's arrangements in honor of Mimi's memory.
We've been watching some grainy VCR-recorded Youtubes of an amazing 70s BBC series called The Body in Question, which Eleanor remembered from ages ago, and it spoke of the essential human need to mark crucial changes in human status- from fetus to christened Christian, from boy to man, from daughter to wife, from living to dead- with ceremony for the sake, mainly, of those observing the rites. Not just the weddings and funeral, but the other changes in our lives chronicled here, did all of that for all of us- and we look forward to the New Year, itself a standardized rite of passage, with the promise of even more and better of them ahead:)
I largely did the same, forming my Ten Biggest Importantest Things of 2012 in my head long before fingertips hit keys just now. However, at least some new information will work into these highlights. These five are, primarily, about people other than me, although in some ways, I (or we) contributed to these occurrences.
In more-or-less importance order, also chronological except for a little hopscotching:
* Cameron moves in. Perhaps the single most important change in our lives in 2012 was about a week after Emily returned home for the summer, when her boyfriend literally showed up at our front door without a home. He'd gotten into a fight with his stepfather, and since he'd been living with his mom, the result of that dispute was the two of them kicking him out, not at all sure where he'd land. He had no doubt. WE had no doubt. We'd previously offered him Emily's room on occasions where he was having family issues, but this was the first time that, without a doubt, they'd be living here together. Which they did, happily and without much trouble from his 'rents on either side, for the ensuing three months.
There was a hiccup roughly midway through, where his mom tried to influence his choices by threatening to cancel his cell phone contract and his car insurance. Once she figured out that it was cheaper to just pay his damn $10 a month family plan bill versus the cancellation charge, Threat the First went away. We negotiated an end to Threat the Second by giving her back "her" license plates on Cam's van in exchange for her giving us his original title to the thing. In the end, he never even needed it, and we sold it last month for some much needed financial cushion for the two of them....
* Cameron moves out- and onward and upward.-... and that cushion now resides 70 miles to the east of here. Cameron transferred to Wegmans' Rochester stores- first one near RIT, eventually to the one literally a block away from where they now live. The apartment hunt, done mostly in early August, was stressful and contained a lot of false starts, but in the end they wound up in a small suburban complex which is perfect for what they need, and has allowed them to add a young feline life to their family in their third month there.
The three of them just ended their almost a week of Christmas vacation with us, and we, as well as many of his former co-workers from the local store, were immensely touched to have heard him report that he felt this was his best Christmas ever. Considering he spent Christmas Eve having an asthma attack, that's the highest of praise, and while his families on both ends behaved themselves this time and he saw other friends in the process, we know that we contributed significantly to that good feeling on his part.
* New neighbors are the people in your neighborhood. Transitions were the order of the year on our six-house little block. Two of those houses changed hands in 2012, and two others grew closer to us in their own ways. First was the younger couple most directly across from us, who re-listed their home over the summer and sold it much more quickly (and cheaply) than they'd been able to a year before. The new owners are an older couple who are letting their UB-student son live there until they are ready to downsize into it. Around the time that one closed, our much closer and dearer neighbor Sally finally put her home on the market once she settled into assisted living. The move-out process was stressful for her and her family, and the deal wound up closing on our 25th anniversary; since then, the new owners (a father-son combo) put a ton of work into it and, earlier this month, finally rented it out to a younger couple that we have yet to get much time getting to know.
On the other side of our house, and on the other side across the street, our neighbors, long-term and not-so, have grown into newer and deeper friendships with us. A pairof sisters bought the cross-the-street-to-the-right house two summers ago, and we've gradually gotten to know them, and their warbly rescue basset hounds, who hang out a few hours a day in their side yard singing love songs to our girls. Eleanor and Ellen, especially, have bonded in recent weeks, and I shared the moment of Santa coming down our street with her a few days ago. I'm 62 and I'm still a kid about this!, she exclaimed. I can relate. Our other next-door neighbor, same age as Sally but far from assisted living, is still starting to find limits in her life. She had eye surgery last month, and was apologetic to a fault when asking Eleanor for help after some post-op complications arose. We're keeping more of an eye on her than ever now (see what I did there?).
* Two days in Toronto. Despite living just over an hour (plus border time) from one of the major cities of our world, and listening to its radio every day, we'd gone years without setting foot on Royal Soil. That ended for the three of us, three days into 2012; I made it Emily's 20th birthday present to visit the city, see the Art Gallery, meet some longtime LJ friends, and have her first legal adult beverage where the age for such things was 19, not 21.
Not half a year later, I was briefly back. A Met blogger friend had planned a trip to the team's series against the Blue Jays by way of a connection here in Buffalo, and her Megabus turned out to be Megalost, and I wound up just driving up with her, and back alone, so she could get to the game on time. (Which she did; we actually beat the sold-out later bus by a good two hours, since it takes way longer to question 100 terrorists than just two;)
* Two weddings and a funeral. There were fewer transitional moments than we've known from some recent years, but three come to mind above the rest. Two friends from the blogosphere got married during the year, and while we attended neither nuptials, we were graced with the news of them and the appreciation for our friendships that they expressed following them. More recently, my nieces' grandmother on their father's side died earlier this month at the age of 99, and I was able to be a part of the ceremony and serendipity of my younger niece's arrangements in honor of Mimi's memory.
We've been watching some grainy VCR-recorded Youtubes of an amazing 70s BBC series called The Body in Question, which Eleanor remembered from ages ago, and it spoke of the essential human need to mark crucial changes in human status- from fetus to christened Christian, from boy to man, from daughter to wife, from living to dead- with ceremony for the sake, mainly, of those observing the rites. Not just the weddings and funeral, but the other changes in our lives chronicled here, did all of that for all of us- and we look forward to the New Year, itself a standardized rite of passage, with the promise of even more and better of them ahead:)