2014 - Year in Review

1. What did you do in 2014 that you've never done before? Oh! Oh! I fired a gun! We went to a shooting range for our friend Dave's birthday and fired shotguns (I was surprisingly good at it), and then we went to his father-in-law's house and fired rifles and handguns (I didn't like holding a handgun at all). It was interesting, but it didn't give me a taste for it. Way too loud, for one thing. Also, I made a terrine

2. Did you keep your resolutions for 2014 and will you make more for next year? I don't make resolutions. I try continually to suck less. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No, and you should probably stop asking me that question now until I get some younger friends or some older kids. 

4. Did anyone close to you die? Grandpa. Matt's Grandpa, but he was the only Grandpa left in my life. I miss him. 

5. What countries did you visit? The Dominican Republic, in January, with the whole family for my mother's seventieth birthday. I had the usual reservations about spending a decadent week in a poor country. It was still a really great week for the family. 

6. What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014? Confidence. Focus. Abs. 

7. What date(s) from 2014 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? I don't remember the dates of ANYTHING. I remember hearing that Grandpa died while poolside in the Dominican Republic, but I don't know what the date was. I remember Eve and I threw a Sleepover of Awesome this summer, and I remember her first day of the last year in her elementary school, and Angus's first day of grade nine, and our first family camping trip EVER, and when Eve's Glee class performed and she sang the first line of the whole night solo and looked so pale I thought she might faint, and I was sympathetic and proud, but don't ask me when any of it actually happened. The date-etching tool in my memory is broken.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Did you not hear me say "family camping trip"? Like, with tents, and outhouses?

9. What was your biggest failure? Well, I still haven't managed teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? There was the tiresome fact that every time I tried to stop taking my antidepressant it was all "you can't quit me!" I also think I came to terms more fully than I have in the past with the fact that I just have really poorly controlled depression and anxiety and I don't respond well to most of the usually prescribed drugs, and that's just going to be a thing in my life. I have an appointment next week at the Royal Ottawa Hospital Mood Disorder Clinic to discuss how to proceed. I'm feeling terrified and hopeful about this. 

11. What was the best thing you bought? Really, really comfortable air mattresses

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? I can't think of anyone offhand.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Gamergaters, Men's Rights Advocates and mansplainers of all type and description, basically. 

14. Where did most of your money go? Food, shelter, clothing (although not, unfortunately, these - wait, can I go back to what I didn't have last year that I want to have this year?)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Blissdom with Hannah and Nicole. The last book in this trilogy. Realizing I could put the Kindle app on my ipad. Going to Suzi Q with Pam. My kids coming home from school. It's really a twenty-four hour party in my head. 

16. What songs will always remind you of 2014? Anything about the female posterior - was this not the year everyone was singing about the ass? I don't get it. Also, Shake it Off, mostly because at the Blissdom pajama party when I actually did know a lot of the songs, this one song came on and everybody was clapping and then singing along and dancing and I was standing there like a lump thinking what the hell is this and WHY DOES EVERYONE KNOW IT BUT ME, and then the Monday I got home I heard Eve singing it and basically attacked her - WHAT IS THAT YOU'RE SINGING? WHAT IS IT?? And then Eve's Glee class did it, and it was adorable. 

17. Compared to this time last year you are: Three courses closer to finishing my library tech diploma. About 150 books smarter (debatable). Just as in love with my goofy, hilarious, wonderful family and friends. A little closer to getting my house decluttered and organized (a very little).

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Exercising. Writing. Gardening.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Worrying. Self-loathing. Reading things that didn't challenge or delight or enrich.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? Once the kids were off school and Matt was off work, we had three days off to pack for Thunder Bay and see The Hobbit and hot tub with our friends. Then we went to Thunder Bay for five days and stayed with my mother-in-law and her husband for Christmas, joined by my brother-in-law and his girlfriend. We also visited my father-in-law and his wife. Then we came home and had a day with my sister and her family. Then we had a New Year's party. In between, we played some video games (Angus), watched some overwrought fraught-with-nudity-and-violence historical fiction television series (Matt), read some books (me) and loafed around in an elephant onesie (Matt again - ha, just kidding, it was Eve). It was a good mix of people and stuff and non-people and rest. 

21. Did you fall in love in 2014? Only with Mindy, and my husband thinks that's kind of hot, so it's all good. 

22. How many one-night stands? Only with Mindy, and my husband was usually out of town, so it's all good.

23. What was your favourite tv program? DUH. Eve's teacher sidled up to me in the library yesterday morning while I was shelving books and said "so I let slip that I was a fan of The Mindy Project and Eve said you and I should talk" and we had an absurd jumping-up-and-down-shrieking-and-giggling fellow fangirl moment. Although there's also a really fun new show on Space called - get this - THE LIBRARIANS

24. Do you hate anyone now that you don't hate last year? I try not to hate anyone, not for more than a second or two at a time anyway. 

25. What was the best book you read? Working on that post right now. 

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? I don't make great musical discoveries. I have appalling taste in music. I have to hide my ipod when guests come over. My biggest claim to fame in our group was when I accidentally introduced a couple of friends to an R.E.M song they'd never heard before because it was on a soundtrack of an obscure Wim Wenders film that I liked. I was cool for the five seconds before an old Backstreet Boys song started playing.  

27. What did you want and get? An iphone - okay, I didn't actually know I wanted it, but my husband got me one for my birthday and it turned out much like it did with the ipad - "What the hell made you think this was OH MY GOD WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE MY PRECIOUSSSSS."

28. What was your favourite film of this year? Oh, "film", aren't we grand. My favourite movies that I saw with the kids were Big Hero 6 and Guardians of the Galaxy (so fun!). Then there was that blissful night alone in a hotel room with X-Men: Days of Future Past. But for flat-out nostalgic wish-fulfillment awesomeness? Veronica Mars.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was 44. I had just helped throw a big party for Collette's 45th in April and then gone shooting for Dave's in May and I didn't feel like a big bash, so Matt and I went with a couple of friends to Play with a very generous gift card (a Christmas present from my brother-in-law and his girlfriend) and had a really nice dinner in the market on a lovely June evening. 

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? I find this question silly, self-defeating and impossible to answer and I would just remove it from the list if I wasn't too lazy to renumber the rest. 

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2014? Occasionally fabulous, with a weekday option on stretchy and wrinkly. Zarah did get me to buy these, so at least my boobs are well-dressed.

32. What kept you sane? My family and friends, as usual. Pam just now offered to take me out on Wednesday and do something that involves eating and laughing at other people (two of my favourite things!) to distract me from my scary appointment on Thursday. Hannah and Nicole and the other friends in my Writing Goals Facebook group are invariably supportive and comforting. Beck made me feel better about my whole entire life earlier this week. And my children have said on numerous occasions that they're really glad I've been home with them, which helps to moderate my regular fits of what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-my-life despair and ennui. 

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I'm going to go with Chris Evans, because he's a couple of years older than Chris Hemsworth and it feels marginally less cougary. 

34. Which political issue stirred you the most? It varied, but refer back to the Gamergate answer. Although I'm deep into thoughts about free speech and radical fundamentalism at the moment. 

35. Who did you miss? My sister. My friends who live in the computer and are not easily smushable on a regular basis. 

36. Who was the best new person you met? I don't see how I can go with any answer but Kate

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2014? Sometimes there isn't a cure for what ails you. You just have to learn how to live with it as gracefully as possible.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year? I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Or maybe Working too hard can give you a heart attack ack ack ack ack ack. Sorry. I haven't been allowed to listen to anything but Billy Joel since summer. 

Comments

Shan said…
Sounds like a pretty great year to me!
Lynn said…
"Also, I made a terrine." Right up there with shooting a few guns, I see, for thrills and danger. :)

I did not know you were a Veronica Mars fan (or did I?). SQUEE. I watched the entire series this past year and then the movie twice, and for Christmas all I wanted was a little star necklace like she wears every episode for the first half of season 1. VERONICA ROCKS. In other TV news, I have heard great things from more than one person now about Mindy so I really should get on the PVR. Possibly, though, I will wait for the whole series to show up in Netflix.

Also - wondering if I can get in on the Writing Goals facebook action? No worries at all if it's a closed group.
StephLove said…
#27 Isn't it nice when your spouse knows you better than you do?

Let me know the date of the appointment next week and I will think positive thoughts for you (unless that kind of thing makes you itchy).
Hannah said…
Shooting guns, watching Mindy, partying with friends... sounds ideal, really!
Nicole said…
You are the best. xoxo
DaniGirl said…
#26... is that like, how do you keep a girl in suspense joke? I read it three times, did I miss the punchline? I want to know your greatest claim to fame!!
Julia said…
#37 is, quite possibly, the wisest thing I have ever read. Onward and upward!
Sasha said…
I was on the range team in Air Cadets (highschool), so when a friend invited me to go to the range at the RA Centre I was really excited. But holding a handgun is SO NOT like holding a long gun. It just felt like it would be so easy to swing around and get the guy next to you, or your foot, or something. It was like being on a high balcony and feeling like you might just spontaneously fly off of it. #shudder

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