Wednesday, December 28, 2016

A Year in Review

I've not written on here in a long time - things got interesting this year.  But here's a year end in review, caused by an article - a poor one at that.

I was going to write an end of the year thing, but this got me started a few days earlier.A friend posted an article that is entitled "Hate To Break It To You But You Are The Reason Your Life Sucks So Much"
This article assumes that I believe my life sucks so much. And it says, paraphrased, beat yourself up, because you suck so your life sucks. I read it. I fully disagree with it. Their solutions to making your life not suck are overly simplistic. And pretty much NOT as easy to do as they state. A commenter - another Colorado woman- said yes, you CAN has a positive attitude about life, but there are forces beyond your control that you can do nothing about, and they can make your life suck at times. She's right, but she's being told how wrong she is by other commenters - positivity cures EVERYTHING. Heh. It's another in a long line of self shaming articles that gt so popular in the lest year.
Our last year? Not the best. Yep, it IS my fault I broke my arm - purely carelessness and not remembering a low gate. The bone healed, but the surgery scar is still very painful. Not unexpected at my age. It took a long time to get flexible again, and is still not fully flexible 11 months later; also not unexpected at my age.
But according to this article, that's all my fault - I'm at fault for being older. Damn me for aging!!
A couple of my hens were taken by a hawk this year, and a couple of rescue roosters died this year. The hawk thing? Didn't think it could get into the run; we learned we were wrong. Our fault. yep. The roosters that died - one had a tumor that grew in his neck and throat - any surgery would have been costly and likely killed him. The other rooster was deformed in the egg, and deformations all his life - likely affected his heart. Seeing no other illness, he died of a heart attack. That was sad - but also according to this article, all our faults. Our faults because we rescued roosters that would have otherwise been killed and we gave them decent, happy lives instead - and apparently that makes us suck.
Three dogs in our family died this year - two 14 year old dogs, and a young foster dog. All the dogs were from rescues - we suck for adopting a puppy almost 15 years ago and giving her a good life for 14 years, until her old age dementia got so bad she could barely function. The other 14 year old - we adopted him and his brother Halloween 2015. A small, deformed dog, devoted to his brother and old to boot - we suck because we gave the two of them a home when no one else would be willing to adopt them. We suck - our lives suck - because in his life before us, his owner smoked, so when he started having breathing problems in September, I took him to our vet, who said he has pulmonary edema and lungs scarred badly from his former owner's smoking, and he had maybe 12 hours left of increased suffering. I suffered more than him, and did feel rather sucky at that point, but made the choice to relieve his pain. And have spend the last several months with his brother pretty well glued to me because he still feels the loss.
The last dog was a foster - rescued off the streets while starving and pregnant - she came to us with her six puppies. We taught her that people can be good, got her healthy and happy, got her puppies raised and adopted out - and sadly, she died during her spay surgery. The vet tried his best to revive her - spent 30 minutes on it - but said her condition prior led to issues that made a routine surgery a death sentence for her. But we made the choice to foster, so that must have been a sucky choice.
Our home has a revolving door - my kids are free to come and go as they please or need. Currently, the whole family lives here. Mr. Mountainside is disabled, permanently. Sometimes, he has more bad days than good. My arm hurts more often than not.The house needs some repairs, the wind has been amazingly high, and a dog peed on a dog bed yesterday. I'm currently not working, because it's not the season to be working when you work Spring, Summer and Fall seasonal jobs. There were some other hardships as well. To others, my life must indeed suck - and according to the article, it sucks because of my sucky choices.
But to me, it doesn't suck. Our hens are picking up their laying. Even the girls who laid for a whole two weeks and stopped have started laying again - 6 eggs today, and picking up! I traded for some awesome beetle kill pine boards for some 1800s flooring - our bathroom is going to be awesome when we redo it. My customer base for my off season/home business is expanding, and I have several orders for the coming year - and some of that is going to be barter based as well. We adopted two of our other fosters, and they are doing well. Mr. Mountainside just showed me a picture of our tiniest rescue rooster sitting on the gear shift of the car - the wee guy went with him to the dump. This is the wee guy who loves to come up to people and be picked up. My kids are all here, for a few more weeks at least, until they scatter to the winds - two to a different part of the state, and one literally across the world. Nothing has broken on our house or our trees in these amazingly high winds (knock on wood). We saved the lives of 15 dogs this year. My dad is still with us and going strong, and that's a good thing.
Who knows what this next year will hold - lots of small changes to be sure, and maybe even some big momentous ones (Two for sure, as oldest moves to Australia, and Daughter in Law graduates from college!)
All I know, as hard as the year may seem to have been, I don't think my life sucks, and I don't regret any of the choices made this year. Some amazing stuff happened this year as well, opportunities arose that would not have happened without our choices.
Stick around - this next year is going to be FASCINATING!
I hope yours are too!
P.S. I'll see if I can get Mr. Mountainside to post that tiny rooster picture - it's cute as all get out!

No comments:

Post a Comment