It seems like EVERYONE I know and all the articles I have read lately agree that 2008 was a horrible year. Here is a short list of things that happened to people very close to me this year:
April – My mom-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer; she spent most of the year going through chemo treatments, surgery, and radiation therapy. The treatments messed her up so bad that she is now permanently disabled and will likely never be able to work again.
May – My brother sprained his ankle in one of the worst ways possible.
Summer – My dad-in-law was diagnosed with an advanced stage of prostate cancer. He’s still going through radiation therapy.
September – Coming home from a podiatrist appointment for the messed up ankle, Wes (my brother) was rear ended in a car wreck that almost killed him. The driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit him going at full highway speed. Wes broke his neck and a lower vertebra, sustained a traumatic brain injury, and possibly permanent nerve damage manifesting in his legs being cold all the time.
Fall – My work lost a HUGE contract that we’ve had for about 20 years. This decreased the college’s budget by over 10% a year (It might actually be bigger than that, I could have my numbers wrong). In the meantime our college’s president declared a hiring freeze, so we can’t hire anyone to fill vacant positions. All of us are asked to pinch pennies.
December – My mom had foot surgery for a tumor she’s had in her foot for years, and to cut some tendons that have been pulling one of her toes completely sideways. She hasn’t been able to stand up for very long in months, and there were only two pairs of shoes she can wear b/c all the others were too painful.
On the other hand, 2008 was good in a lot of ways (especially for me personally):
I still really enjoy my job (that I got in mid-2007), and in spring 2008 I got a promotion. My job allows me to get a Master’s degree with 50% off tuition, and I started the Master’s of Public Administration program in fall 2008 (with two A’s to boot!!!). Despite the penny pinching and downturn in the economy, I’m really not at all in danger of losing my job… it just might get a lot harder if people leave and we can’t hire anyone to replace them. Fortunately we haven’t had a single person leave our department since June (which may be because of the challenges of finding a job right now).
I got to go to San Francisco for work in early April. Jared came with me for part of the time. Neither of us had ever been there before and we both had a great time.
At the end of April, I completed the OKC Memorial Half-marathon! (the key word is completed. I didn’t run the whole way, and finished at just over 3 hours. My goal for 2009 is to run the entire race). Wes and my sis-in-law Lori both ran the race in April (and Lori actually beat Wes by a lot… he looks forward to a rematch in 2009).
In May, the day after Karen’s (my mom in law) first chemo treatment, my sis-in-law Kerri gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Lily. We were honored to have Kerri and Steve (bro-in-law) hang out at our house in Norman during the labor. Lily is an adorable baby. She played with our little dogs a whole bunch last week at Christmas and found them to be hilarious.
My job allowed me 5 weeks off work in the summer to go to to the UK with Jared for his law school Oxford summer program. Having lived in Oxford for the better part of 5 weeks, I got to know the town pretty well. I also got to travel all over the UK (London, Cornwall, Bath, York, Edinburgh) and to go to Paris for a weekend. I strongly recommend going to York if you ever have the chance to go to England, and Cornwall was the most beautiful place Jared and I have ever been (I recommend staying in St. Ives).
During the time we were in Europe my mom-in-law had surgery to remove the (at one time cancerous) lump from her breast… she followed up with radiation therapy in the fall and she is now CANCER FREE and is growing hair again! (the chemo caused all her hair including eyelashes and eyebrows to fall out).
Wes’ car wreck in September didn’t kill or paralyze him despite a broken neck, and the one potentially good thing to come out of the wreck is that because he was in a neck brace for two months, he was forced to rest the messed up ankle. Now the ankle is hurting him less even when he runs. (However, the insurance settlement is still pending, which sucks).
Another job-related blessing for me this year – I GOT OUT IN TIME. Before I started working at my current job in 2007, I worked at a mortgage servicing company that had a pretty big portfolio of Lehman Brothers loans. In case you didn’t pay attention to the news at all in 2008, Lehman Brothers went down in flames a few months ago. I don’t think anyone at my old place of employment lost their job because of it, but the loans we serviced were getting messier and messier right around the time I left and continuing to the present. I shudder to think about still having to work there.
The 2008 election season was rife with fiery conflict between Jared and I and people we know (as election seasons usually are)… but now I’m excited about the coming Obama presidency. I don’t think the country is going to change dramatically because of the new administration, but it is like a breath of fresh air. It’s really cool that we will have a leader that most of the non-US western world views favorably. (Now if only John Edwards hadn’t screwed up so spectacularly by cheating on his wife while she was undergoing cancer treatment and he was campaigning for president… that one goes on the “why 2008 sucked” list, I guess).
…so 2008 wasn’t a total loss for me. Lots of people haven’t been quite so lucky, though. I’ve read a bunch of facebook statuses lately saying how 2008 sucked. Why was 2008 a crappy year or a good year for you?
