2013, Part 2

Family:  In July, my long-lost older sister came out to visit with her daughter.  For those of you who missed the whole story, I did post about it back when it happened…but here’s the nutshell:   my father had a daughter through his first marriage, but after his ex remarried and moved across the country, they lost touch.  40 years later, I got a message from her on Facebook, can you believe it, and she had for all this time thought she was an only child.  I had known about her, but she didn’t know about me.  It’s like Jerry Springer without the chair throwing.

So we invited her to come out for dad’s 75^th birthday, and she did!  The closer the time got, the more nervous we all were.  Was this a good idea?  Was this going to work out?  Was this REALLY a good idea???  

But it was!  Everything worked out swimmingly.  Dad was sooooo excited.  My sister is deaf and while we were worried about communications problems, there were really none to be had.  She could read lips well enough (especially if you slowed down and enunciated well) and Crystal was there to translate if need be.  

And….to be honest….it was really weird.  I mean, yes I have a sister and yes, it is nice to know I have more family.  But we spent nearly 40 years not knowing each other and the relationship people just assume we’d pick up, well, we never had a sibling relationship in the first place, so what’s to pick up?  It is odd and hard to explain.  

Work:  The day job has gone very well this year.  The office has been successful, our numbers of subscribers is growing each month, and we are making headway into agency and association partnerships more and more.  

It is starting to get boring, however, finding 4 topics to write a newsletter about every single week.  Somehow I get it done though.  Somewhere about April I hit my stride and it wasn’t a struggle anymore.  I can take a topic and write on it after a bit of research and it’s good to go.  That switch took quite a load off my mind, now I know I can come right up to the deadline and not be too freaked out if the newsletter isn’t done.

Back in February, I wrote on a topic that is becoming an issue in states where pot has been legalized.  It, um, er, got picked up by nationwide media and my agency’s external affairs office had a cow.  A big, fat, loud mooing cow.  I see it as good publicity (and how often does this particular agency get good publicity, eh?) but they didn’t like that their name was mentioned in the same sentence as “marijuana.”  Too damn bad. 

The government shut down for nearly 3 weeks in October and I was on unemployment.  It wasn’t that bad.  The vacation we had scheduled happened to fall during that time.  My company acted like a bunch of ninnys and terminated us all, paid us out all our vacation, and if the shutdown had lasted after 10/31 we would have been without health insurance.  They claim they thought we wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment unless we were terminated.  I think they did it so they wouldn’t have to pay our benefits.  

My small jewelry business is still going, slowly but steadily.  It is mostly a hobby business, and I’m not making as much as I was, but I do occasionally pop out some earrings, a pendant, or whatever and list it.  I’ve actually been crocheting more than jewelry making, but I’m not selling that.

Various other things:  Matt bought a portable sawmill this year.  This has been an ongoing plan, but he actually did it, it is on the property, and he has used it.  Right now, though, it won’t run.  He’s in the process of “fixing” it, and has been for, um, 4 weeks.  I’d rather not talk about it.