Posts Tagged ‘year in review’
Year End
’Twas the last day of the year, and all through our house, we did a quick review through my blog to see what had mattered. It occurred to me that I am more inclined to reminisce about long-past events than the prior year. I spent time in the morning looking through newspaper articles from the 1870s. The minutiae of Pierce County, WI, in 1874 strikes my fancy more than the collection of my daily reports on the ranch.
Looking through the “Previous Somethings,” we were reminded of trips we made to the lake to supervise the replacement of a rotting log truss on the main house and to do a little DIY masonry on the satellite building we call Cabin 3. The fall I experienced at the end of February didn’t require any “remembering” because it led to a chronic shoulder problem that I am painfully reminded of every single day.
We coped with water on the basement floor at the beginning of the year and the broken power line to the barn. We dragged out a DIY landscape project to our entryways over several months. After a soaking wet first half of the year, we experienced a long drought that revealed the water fountain in the paddock had sprung a leak.
In February, we hosted Hays relations up at the lake place in Hayward with a photography contest as one of the features. I rode my bike in the 50th version of the Tour of Minnesota. At this point, I’m undecided about whether I will do the 51st in 2025 or not.
In a year when Cyndie went surgery-free, we each took a turn at having our first case of COVID-19 illness and separate bouts of pneumonia. For the most part, we are otherwise healthy, although both of us have been noticing aging is increasingly sapping our youthful vigor.
The most notable adventure was our trip to Iceland with friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus in September. That island country is a marvel of fascinating natural beauty.
Despite that wonderful event highlighting 2024 for us, I’m afraid the heartache of the results of the U.S. Presidential election in November and my resulting coping reaction of avoiding news ever since has become the predominant pall shadowing my perception of the year. I can pretend all I want that I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and we will all face the consequences in one way or another.
Considering all the terrible things that have happened in the world since those quirky stories of interest in the 1870s, it is noteworthy that good people still endured, coped, and found ways to survive and sometimes thrive time and again. We can do this.
Thus, my review of 2024 is complete, and I am ready to return my attention to whatever today brings, especially taking note of the many blessings bestowed upon us.
Sending love to all you readers who have successfully found your way to the last day of this calendar year. Let’s spread the love far and wide throughout the next 365 and beyond!
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End Near
On the last day of the year 2023, I was considering looking back through the images in my blog library to review what happened in our lives in the last 12 months. I couldn’t finish a scan through the images because the pictures stopped loading for some unknown reason.
That’s similar to my attempt to complete the installation of our new WiFi repeater cabling yesterday. I couldn’t finish because icy conditions kept me off the roof.
In the morning the heavy frost made the shingles way too slippery so I concentrated on the indoor work. Later in the day, a freezing mist started to fall on top of the frost that hadn’t dissipated. This morning there is a fraction of an inch of snow on top of the icy substrate.
Yesterday, I spent some contorted hours in the attic, balancing in a crouch on angled trusses to route a length of ethernet cable from one side to another. I drilled holes to give mice another couple of potential access points where the cable passes through wall and ceiling boards.
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I plugged the camera in to test my new connections and verified everything worked. The portion remaining involves drilling through the log wall at the peak of the loft ceiling to bring the cable from the repeater inside. Then I need to seal around that cable to prevent mice and bats from taking this new opening as an invitation to come live with us.
Today, I may putter about devising the mount for the camera down at the barn if the roof of the house remains overly hazardous.
I’m hoping the project doesn’t end up waiting until spring like the plan appears to have for digging up the electric supply wires to the barn.
I hope the theme of ‘not finishing’ doesn’t define the year ending today. Without the benefit of reviewing the year in my blog images, this is what comes to mind about the odd-numbered year, 2023:
We spent much of the winter months focused on Cyndie’s convalescence from her ankle reconstruction the previous November. She was functional enough to travel to Puerto Rico in April. In May, we adopted Asher. I did my annual bike trip in June. We made it up to the lake as much as possible through summer. As fall approached, we got the shoulders of the driveway professionally graded and then did the raking and grass seed planting ourselves. Finally, Cyndie opted to go for one more surgery on her ankle and had the metal hardware removed now that the bones had healed.
This morning a meteorologist on the radio announced this December has been the warmest since measurements started being recorded in the 1870s.
We have obviously reached the end of 2023 but I doubt we’ve seen the end of the warming climate’s effects.
Like we always do, I expect we’ll cope one day at a time and respond to whatever 2024 brings with as much love as we can muster.
Celebrate safely tonight all you wild and crazy people! Happy last day of 2023!
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Relative Something 