Happy New Year to all and sundry! And if you are like my family (local and extended), your attitude is one of “goodbye, 2014, and don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out!”
The year exploded on the scene like Kim Kardashian’s butt in JANUARY, during which we bid a melancholy farewell to Zippy, our 1997 Saturn wagon. We bought it new when Cam was 9 months old. We rather expected it would be the car he drove as a teen, but he’s not bothered to get a license, and the car couldn’t be bothered to hold its engine in properly — the support struts rusted and had to be replaced. Due to accumulated issues, we decided to replace it with The Snail, a 2013 Corolla. (Why the name? It has a big S on it, so when we drive, everyone says LOOK AT THAT S-CAR GO! Yeah, I went there.) It was also, sadly, another month in which we had to say our final goodbyes to several friends.
FEBRUARY was busy and stressful, as Scott worked to get the 2014 CR Municipal Band season schedule despite the decreasing number of venues. The entire family was quite busy with school, church, music, and prying our frozen footwear from the pavement. Cam spent a lot of time visiting colleges, while Scott worked to get our annual Weather Spotter training set up.
MARCH was a fun month, with birthdays, Girl Scout cookies, and a special guest! We hosted Chinatsu, an exchange student from Okinawa, for two weeks. This was unexpected — her original host family had to bow out due to an illness, so we volunteered, and we’re glad we did. We had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and played what has to be the longest single hand of UNO ever recorded (on the order of 90 minutes). Scott was able to start bike season early, which was good, because…
…APRIL brought the second annual Marion Marathon, on which Scott was the “chase bike.” His task is to follow the last full marathon participants (we have others to handle the simultaneous half-marathon) to provide telemetry to the ham radio APRS infrastructure. This allows organizers to look at a special web page Scott built to see what parts of the course are still active. Sadly, the race was on Palm Sunday, which wasn’t optimal in several respects, but it was a good event. Heidi and Tab kept quite busy with Scout events, and Cam selected Central College!
MAY was incredibly busy, with Scott and Heidi setting up the band season, Tab and Cam taking AP exams, and the like. And best of all was Cam’s graduation from high school! We hosted a small party for extended family that came to see the event. He did VERY well in high school, and we are immensely proud of him.
JUNE, quite frankly, was a blur. There were many Girl Scout camps. Heidi taught a ton of classes for the Science Center. Scott did a lot of band work, ham volunteering, and work-related things. Cam learned to panic over the costs of college. But all in all, this was probably the best month of the year.
Did that seem like foreshadowing? It was…because in JULY, Scott’s mother died suddenly. She suffered a stroke and heart attack in her home in Indiana on a Friday night, and was not found until Saturday morning by friends. She lived a few more days — there was little hope of recovery. We drove to Indiana to bid her a final farewell, among many Scout camps, concerts, and other summer mayhem. We miss her. Heidi pointed out that Scott is now an orphan, which felt weird.
AUGUST was a red-letter month for all. Tab returned to high school, where marching band season inflicted itself on the entire family. Cam went to Pella to attend college (which he enjoys, insofar as he enjoys anything). Scott and Heidi wrapped up the band season and reverted to “harried parent” mode, which carried over into…
…SEPTEMBER! Wherein Tab adopted an incredible social calendar, keeping us all busy. Cam had some trouble with calculus because his textbook didn’t arrive until week 4 or so, but he managed to keep things going (well done!). Heidi and Scott performed with the Coe College Concert Band, and did a lot of home chores.
OCTOBER brought some stupidly cold weather, but was otherwise a lot like September. Scott put a lot of work into repairing a broken HF antenna, but our electric company put a lot of work into new poles in the back for the 34 kilovolt power line. Turns out they plan to move the lines to the houses, so Scott had to go find someone who could tell him WHERE they were putting them before he put his antenna back up — nobody needs 240 volts directly into the back of a radio. Seems as though the rest of the work is put off to springtime, so all is well for winter.
NOVEMBER was dull…ABOUT DAMN TIME. Sadly, the fall season saw a number of family illnesses, and November was no exception. But we had a great time visiting with Heidi’s folks, whom we love and enjoy. Sadly, Heidi’s mom spend Thanksgiving day ill, so the rest of us played games, told stories, and made sure she was doing well. She’s an awesome woman, even if she frets too much. (Vicki: my bass is fretless. You should be too!)
DECEMBER was busy, but we didn’t handle that entirely well, as Scott got quite sick for two weeks (and is still recovering!), Tab got sick (and both had to miss Tuba Christmas at the new location), and we had to have some serious HVAC work done (for which we had little money due to college tuition). But the weather held for our holiday trip to Indiana, which was TOTALLY AWESOME (including the hockey game, which is odd, because we don’t like hockey). And the cats forgave us when we got home and stuffed them full of kibble.
The feeling is that 2014 wasn’t much better than 2013, but as I wrote this, I realized that fewer bad things happened. And really, it could be much worse. So here’s to 2015! I hope it is a good year for you.