GET OUT OF HERE 2023! Let’s Welcome 2024

Well, I can only hope 2024 is better than 2023 was. I’m not the only one who said this year pretty much sucked. While looking through the highlights of each month, it was hard to find anything positive, but there sure were a lot of negatives.

In 2023, I experienced the deaths of more than 15 people I cared about. Some I expected because their health was poor. Others I didn’t even find out about until some time after they had passed. Each of them was hard to accept. A couple of them hurt deep into my core, for they were very close to my heart.

Vehicle problems were many during 2023. We had brake and exhaust problems at the beginning of the year.  After the exhaust was fixed, the brakes still worked in June when the transmission wouldn’t shift. We found it was a bad cable, but we couldn’t get an appointment for a month.

Then, the day after that was fixed, the brakes completely failed on me and I had an accident. I wasn’t hurt, and there was minimal damage to the vehicle, but we ended up having to completely replace the brake lines and parts.

Probably the BIGGEST thing to eat up my time in 2023 was scams. In January, I began the Facebook group Facebook Sleuths Deconstructing Scammers as a way to try to educate people about all the various scams I was encountering as a group moderator and administrator. There were too many people who were clueless about the signs of a scam and falling victim. In almost a year the group has grown to over 900 members, and the number of people who have been saved from scammers has been heartwarming.

The group started merely as a place to teach, but it became a home for people to learn, to ask questions, and to share information with others who fight scams and scammers. It has become a community of caring people willing to help others who have no idea how to recognize a scam.

2023 was a good year for my roses. With Dan’s help, there were some beautiful roses in my garden this year. Unfortunately, my favorites didn’t come back from last winter. They must not have been able to survive and my heart was broken at that. I was pleased with what did come through. But there was a lot of hard work involved. I fought off deer, rabbits, moles, Japanese beetles, and the heat and drought we suffered through most of the summer.

However, beautiful red, pink, and yellow blooms graced my yard. And I added a couple of strings of colored racing lights to add to the beauty. It looked like Christmas in July in my yard at night. We also added a birdbath so we could watch the various birds come to enjoy the flowers and the water.

One nice summer night, I played peekaboo with a raccoon. At night, the local masked bandits loved to come and see if there was any food left behind after my dogs had come in for the night. Sometimes there was, sometimes there wasn’t. This particular night I was sitting outside enjoying the dusk when I heard the little critter peek around the garage. There was a machine there he hid behind and he would pop his head up and look at me, then pop back down again. I had hoped he would stay, but after about 3 or 4 minutes of peeking up and down at me, he disappeared.

There was one weekend we were without electricity. A bad storm had knocked out electricity all over. It took out a power pole near the house that needed a couple of days to get fixed. So, from Friday night until Sunday about 11:00 AM we were without electricity. Thankfully it wasn’t long enough to spoil the foods in the freezer (which we kept closed) and even the stuff in the refrigerator was still good. (Although we didn’t take a chance on any leftovers or dairy products.)

In September, my left knee started to bother me with a lot of extra pain. I had pain in it off and on for a couple of years already but it never lasted as long. So, I talked to the doctor who ordered an X-ray. I am now diagnosed with arthritis in the knees as well as the ankles. Physical therapy was suggested and I started that in October. So far it has been helping.

As we come to the end of the year, I’ve had to deal with the overwhelm of medical paperwork. My husband fell and hurt his knee and is using a walker. So he can’t help me with a lot of the extra things he was doing for me. It’s put more pressure on me to do those things. The weather has been weird and there hasn’t been a lot of sun, so my SAD (seasonal depression) kicked in earlier than usual.

And Christmas was quiet. Neither of us was healthy enough to bother putting up a tree. There was no snow and the temperature was warm. It just didn’t feel like Christmas this year.

To top the year, one more death struck Dan’s family. His aunt died the last week in December. And now, we are heading into the new year. We have no plans for New Year’s Eve. I have shrimp trays, cheese and sausage trays, and the traditional herring and crackers for us to enjoy. We will probably be in bed by 10:00.

In previous years we said, “Next year has to be better than this year.” Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn’t. But in this case, I’m almost afraid to say it because I can’t imagine a year worse than 2023.

Dare I say, “Welcome 2024!” ?