Generally I tend to favor giving my blog posts clever titles. With this post I feel unable to find a suitable title that does that. Without further ado here is a very generically titled update for the opening post of 2016. Let’s hope that this year isn’t always this generic! 

Let’s take a look back first to last November. I started blood pressure medication. After months of being instructed to do a very low sodium diet, it simply wasn’t enough. My blood pressure was still too high. Following a cold, I started taking a very low dose of medication. It’s likely I will take this for the rest of my life. As I type that I think of how that sounds, sort of scary but yet not. Like wearing contacts, it’s something that will just become a part of who I am. While age 33 might be seen by some as too young to start medication, I say better start now than when serious problems come up in about 5 more years.

Our Thanksgiving celebration was great! Richard and I hosted the dinner. It was the first time we have hosted a dinner so large and the first time we hosted Thanksgiving. We are looking to do it again next year we feel like it went so well. For the tables, we ran them end to end from the living room to the parlor. It provided one very long table where up too 20 people could be seated. Although the number that day was closer to 15. We were able to get a bunch of stuff done beforehand that helped make the day smoother. I got stuck in the kitchen a bit more than I was hoping, however I often had good conversational company. That helped lessen the ‘I’m trapped’ feeling a lot.

December opened well. We took a trip to Victoria for the first weekend. We had a great time. It was windy, wet and cold on the Saturday but Sunday was beautiful. There was a fair number of very sick ferry passengers Saturday morning on the way over. As it turns out our neighbor was also going over that weekend. We all hung out together on the ferry and met up for dessert that night. The place we went is a newer pub on the waterfront in an old historic building. There had fantastic dessert! Richard and I would like to go back and try the rest of their food. We rented a car seat from a place based in Victoria, they were very pleasant to work with and the seat was in great condition. I have full intentions of using them again if I need. Not taking my car over is much cheaper and less time consuming. I really enjoyed this option. The place is called Little Monkey Rentals, click the title for the link.

Upon our return home, I got a horrible cold. There was a difficult dry cough, followed by thick mucus a few days later. It went to Richard, very differently to Quince as well as next door. Although their version was quite different than our’s. That set me back on my holiday projects a lot. It took me all week to get over the cold, but when that happened I was having to care for Quince. I still got the wine jelly finished, as well as getting some of the labels made for the other jams made much earlier in the year. My holiday baking has still yet to materialize as this is published. At least I got the wine jelly finished!

Quince’s school performance was great! In fact, the whole evening was fun with lots of good food. I did take video using the gopro. However due to lack of hard drive space on my laptop, I’ve been unable to actually see the video. Very sad I know. The play of the book A Soup Opera, (click title for amazon link to the book). It’s a cute book where everyone sings in an operatic style. Quince was so excited to be one of the police officers of the story. All of the kids did a wonderful job singing their parts.

The Saturday that week we hosted the Christmas celebration for my siblings. At this point it’s really for the kids; Quince, Vespa, Aaron and Inara. They were fired up! Not only to see each other but to receive gifts AND give them. The house was very loud at times, ranging from laughter to crying depending on the situation at the time. Since three of them are so close in age, it’s always interesting to see how they interact. I’m really thrilled Quince views them as friends.

Unfortunately, that was the end of our holiday lightheartedness. The next week, on Tuesday, Quince and I were heading back from Sequim in the evening when my car was struck by a pedestrian who was trying to run across the highway. No, it wasn’t another car and Yes, you read correctly as a guy running on two feet. The hit happened about the wheel of the driver’s side, he rolled down the side ripping the mirror off, causing a number of dents on each panel and breaking the window behind me. The man survived, was taken to our local hospital then released the next day.

Wirbelwind is presently at the auto body shop. She expected to be there for all of January, if not a bit into February as well. The damage was extensive, you can imagine how very relieved/glad I am they can fix her. This has really shown me that I was not ready to let go of my car. Like my cats, she is part of my family. You know how the pedestrian is doing, but how am I doing  you wonder? Well, I haven’t driven at night since that day but I am driving around town. I’m an extremely nervous driver right now, locations with lots of traffic(foot and car) almost cause panic within me. Think of the grocery store parking lot as an example. Having never been someone who was afraid to drive or thought ____ location was too far, this has been hard and weird. I feel a bit stuck.