Christmas Letter to Family and Friends

Season Greetings!

Before sitting down to write our annual Christmas letter, I reviewed last year’s letter to make sure I couldn’t just say “ditto 2010” and be done with it for this year, 2011. No such luck. Then I searched a website that prints submissions of the worst Christmas letters ever received just to make sure one of ours wasn’t sent in by someone on our mailing list. Thank you all for resisting that temptation.

2011 in review: We didn’t do anything as exciting as hike the Appalachian Trail---unless dreaming about it counts---or as pitiful as sitting propped in chairs with bibs around our necks---unless nightmares count. So I guess you could say those facts speak volumes about our ho-hum lives here in our villa where it was discovered that hammers come in handy for opening childproof caps and our conversations often sound like this:

"Windy, isn't it?" I say to Don and the dog.

"No," Don replies, "Thursday."

And Levi in dog-speak says, “Me too. When is someone going to fill my water dish?”

We did accomplish one noteworthy thing this year. We saved ourselves from the embarrassment of someday having our stuff featured on the TV program Storage Wars---that’s the show where they auction off the contents of storage units when someone falls behind on the rent. With the help of a good friend, Tim, we emptied out our storage unit that had been sitting untouched since Don’s stroke. This was no small weekend project. The unit was ten by twenty-five feet and Don campaigned to save just about every other item enclosed from going on e-Bay. Thankfully, he lost most of those “keep it/sell it” duel of words and we no longer qualify to be featured on the TV show Hoarders.

That was the highpoint of the year. As for the low point, this year will live in infamy for being the Year of the Chronic Hives. I’ve officially had the hives almost every single day of 2011. After a regiment of taking three different antihistamines daily, seeing four doctors, submitting my body and blood for umpteen tests, and getting a prescription that lists the main side-effect as “suicidal thoughts”---as if the hives don’t already make you want to slit your throat---I learned that Baby Oil Gel with Lavender and Camomile from the Dollar Tree store works best at taming the itching. Thank God for that discovery because a few times I’ve come close to ordering a gorilla suit to wear out shopping just so I’d be excused for scratching assorted body parts in public.

Aside from the above mentioned highs and lows, 2011 brought us a succession of ordinary-to-lovely days, the kind that make you happy to be alive and living in a place where you can write a silly Christmas letter to touch bases with family and friends. Wishing you all a joyful Christmas and a happy New Year!

With Love,

Jean with Don’s seal of approval

My Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to any cyber friends I may still have left after such a long absence from Bloggers. I wish I hadn't neglected my blog for so long but I've been busy with life this past summer and fall, and this winter with posting on a message boards where I enjoy debating politics and other controversies. Anyway, below is the Christmas letter that went out with our cards this year.....

Writing Christmas letters, for me, is like going to the dentist. You know it’s a good thing to do---well, some etiquette experts claim they are tacky but who listens to them outside of Washington D.C. and New York City---but the process is often tedious.

Speaking of dentists, going through our appointment book in preparation for writing this letter, I discovered that between the two of us Don and I went ten times this year! A bummer statistic when you factor in that we lost our dental coverage due to GM’s bankruptcy. But the really scary statistic is that we’d also been to other doctors, hospitals and therapy appointments a combined grand total of sixty times in 2009. And that doesn’t include the months of January and February. For some reason I can’t fathom, I tore those months out of our appointment book. Senior moment? Boring months? Secret life I didn’t want anyone to find out about should I die suddenly? I don’t know but I’ll probably spend the rest of December trying to remember.

To be fair to all of you younger people reading this letter and shuddering that you, too, might be spending your retirement years in the waiting rooms of health care providers, let me explain that my knee replacement took up forty of those sixty appointments. Hint: If you have surgery, don’t pick up an infection in the process. For a while I was taking so many antibiotics and steroids that every night I’d turn off the light while standing in front of a mirror to see if I glowed in the dark yet. It never happened but it was easier to worry about that than to fret about the possibility losing my leg. Okay, so I’m being a drama queen. It wasn’t that bad of an infection, but in my defense when a doctor mentions taking your lower leg off as a worst case scenario the other scenarios fall on deaf ears. I’m fine now, by the way, and pain-free for the first time in years.

Don is doing well, but he does have a new medical issue added to his list things he’d rather not have to dink around with---sleep apnea. But he couldn’t have just the ordinary kind. The sleep specialist says his type affects only three percent of those with apnea and it’s caused by a problem in his brain. He’s only had his two machines---one being oxygen---a couple of weeks but already I can tell he’s getting a better quality of sleep. I need to find him a new hobby, though, because I’m not used to having him up so early in the morning spoiling my treasured Hour of Total Quiet and Solitude.

Speaking of quiet and solitude busters the joy of our lives, Levi the schnauzer, is doing well. He’ll be two in January and is trained to take Don’s socks off at night and not trained to stay out of my mother-in-law tongue which he uproots weekly. I’ve seen these plants listed on the web as both toxic and non-toxic to pets. Thankfully, we seem to have the latter rather than the former variety. But if anyone has any Cesar Millan type tips for breaking Levi’s Sansevieria fetish please call before my Dust Buster dies.

In addition to the Mickey Mouse stuff mentioned above, 2009 has been a hoe-hum year. Or to be more honest, we’ve had better years----the years when we didn’t have to worry so much about issues beyond our control like the country’s and GM’s ability to come back to life and prosperity again. (Don might like being a greeter at K-Mart, should he lose his pension and have to go back to work, but I’d look lousy in their red vests.) Hopefully, the New Year will bring renewed hope and happiness to all of us. In the meantime, have a great holiday season!

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