Hopefully the Really Bad Year Is Over

The year’s worth of time that began November 29, 2004, is now over, and I hope that the badness goes with it.

That was the day one of my three-year-old cats, Dublin, was diagnosed with asthma and died of an attack shortly before I arrived at the vet’s office to pick her up.

After that, things were mostly okay for a while.

But then in June, my dad contracted a life-threatening infection and only an emergency amputation saved him. So the summer was a lot busier than usual, and work was harder than usual, including working a few weekends, well into July.

Just as things were looking up, a storm came through in September, and left two trees on my parents’ house, damaging their sunroom and the roof of the main house. Also, a branch from one tree make a good-sized hole in the roof, causing quite a bit of water damage inside the house. To date, the only repair work that has been able to be completed is removing the trees that had to come down.

As if cleaning up at my parents’ wasn’t enough, the house of friends of mine was destroyed by a tornado during that same storm. Fortunately, their insurance company has been taking care of most everything, but I did go over one evening shortly after to help box up things from the kitchen for storage.

While backing my dad’s minivan out of the garage to go over to my friends’ house the day after the storm, I bumped a car that was parked exactly across from the driveway. I have no idea why I didn’t see it, but since cars are never parked there on school days, I certainly didn’t expect it to be there. There was only paint damage to the minivan’s back bumpter, but the other car was apparently not drivable (it was fine by what I could see, but whatever), since it was there for several more days, totally in the way and violating two-hour school day and overnight parking resrictions.

Then my mom’s car got hit while she was proceeding through an intersection in October, nearly totaling it. Mom was, thank goodness, uninjured.

Then my car was broken into while parked at a friend’s apartment building this past weekend. No big deal, really, just one more annoying thing to put up with.

Thank goodness for the highlights, noted in my Thanksgiving post. I’d like more of those in the coming year, please.