2013 in Review

Since this is the last day of 2013, I thought I’d visit some of the highlights and lowlights of the year. This year was very mixed. Some good things happened but it seems like we spent the year moving from crisis to crisis.

The year started out pretty good. Todd found out about a horror convention in Charlotte that was going to have Bruce Campbell as a guest. Bruce Campbell is one of those actors both Todd and I always wanted to meet but he doesn’t do a lot of conventions. We made plans, got a hotel room and someone to watch Emily. We did bring her on Friday and she got to meet Danny Glover, who thought she was very cute.

Todd and I had a great time at Mad Monster Party but we had gotten some bad news right before. Emily needed dental surgery because of teeth issues. It was going to be very expensive and we didn’t know if we were going to have to cancel our Disney trip.

We managed to get the money together for the dental surgery and Emily was fine afterwards. Her surgery was in May and things evened out a little after that. It was also this summer that I got to meet Neil Gaiman which was awesome. He was doing a book tour for his new book and Todd got me a ticket. I waited for hours to meet him but it was worth it in the end.

As we got into the later summer, Todd was having more and more issues at work. He had been unhappy at his job for years but didn’t feel like he could leave because the money was too good. It got to a point in August that he couldn’t stay. Thankfully

he got another job right away and he’s been much happier. But it was pretty stressful for a few weeks.

We still got to go to Dragon Con which was awesome as always. I got to be on two panels this year and it was great fun. Once Dragon Con was done, I went into high anticipation mode for Disney. The Disney trip was great. My pain levels were low the whole week and it never really rained except in the morning of the day we went to Hollywood Studios. Emily had a wonderful time and has been asking to go back. The only bad thing that happened was Todd got food poisoning on our last day so the ride home was pretty miserable for him. Otherwise, it was the highlight of the year.

Once we got home, we got back into the groove of things. Then at the end of November, my car died when Todd took Emily to school one day. He tried to fix it himself with the help of one of the dad’s of Emily’s preschool friends. But they couldn’t get it to start. Finally we just towed it to a shop and they pulled it into a computer, flipped a switch and it was working again. Thankfully it didn’t cost too much to fix though it was stressful again because Todd couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The last thing that really made 2013 an overall sucky year was the death of our cat Star last week. It put a damper on the holidays for me and I still am grieving his loss.

Mostly 2013 was not a good year for me but it did have its bright spots. I’m really hoping that 2014 will be a much better year. We don’t have anything big planning – just Mad Monster Party and Dragon Con. Plus I’ll be planning and attending the Browncoat Ball, which should a lot of fun. Otherwise, working and doing house improvements is our main goal as a family for next year.