Did anyone have a good year last year?  It seems to be consensus among everyone that I know that it was the worst year ever. Just about everyone in my community is thinking “Thank God It’s Over”!

I went to a zine reading the other night by my friend artnoose.  Ker-bloom! #81 was actually sub-titled Artnoose and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Year.  She writes

My Inner Nietzsche berates me and says that those with power are the ones with the will to power. It ridicules my resentment because it says I can’t be angry at wolves for eating sheep. I hate the Inner Nietzsche; I think it’s a jerk.

Okay, well it is true that you can’t be angry at wolves for eating sheep, but that doesn’t make it suck any less for the sheep, right?  I think we are in just such a predicament, with the terms of our liveliehoods being so far from our choosing.  It is hard to not lose integrity, compromise or get screwed sometimes.

Of course on the most immediate level, my year was defined by 0ur adoption disruption, which J- and I agree is the hardest thing we’ve ever done.  The first months of the year, we spent attaching to T-4 and getting further distanced and discouraged by T-7. The end of the year was spent in recovery. One of the contributing factors to our decision was my mom getting diagnosed with breast cancer.

She has spent the year fighting it through western medical treatment, chemo, radiation etc.  It is not that simple of a story, of course.  She actually had breast cancer  many years ago, which she successfully fought and this new case emerged in the scar tissue of her masectomy. She noticed it some time ago and her doctors reassured her it was nothing. Time passed and eventually, she found a doctor to biopsy. Unfortunately, it had reached stage 2. Additionally, our go0d friend N-’s mom has been near death several times from leukemia. She and my friend  Anandi , who also has breast cancer are both uninsured.

Tristan Anderson got shot in the head by a teargas canister in March and fighting, literally on the edge of life for the rest of the year.  Tristan is not  close friend of mine, but he is a close friend of friends and is a long-time acquaintance. The good news is that it sounds like the setbacks to his healing are behind him and although he has sustain serious cosmetic and cerebral damage, his is finally accomplishing some recovery.

My friends, the hikers were detained in Iran at the end of July.  And still detained. I think of them daily and hope that their spirits are strong. I have so many feelings about this, but there are just too many words to open them here.

I have had many friends experiencing nasty and tragic breakups, the most public of which is zombie mom.

I kinda hate to even mention it in the same context as these other things, but Obama sure has turned out to be a big disappointment to the far left on many counts. (I never really believed it to begin with, but I am sad for the folks that had such high hopes.)  While in 2008, people were getting pregnant with Obama babies all over the place, this year has been.

Good Riddance!