2012 Sucked

2012 started as a year full of exciting plans.

Get re-invigorated about blogging.  Lots of plans for the garden.

June:  Trip with The Parents and The Nephew and The Husband to London to celebrate The Nephew graduating high school (my parents raised him).

July:  Trip to Thailand to play work with elephants.

August:  Trip to Iowa to visit The In-Laws and Mr. Subjunctive from Plants Are The Strangest People.  Hopefully to pick up some Anthurium cuttings and/or seedlings (he has a few).

In between:  Work on labs for one of the Biology classes that I teach where the labs are, well, mostly boring wastes of time.

The plan changed when My Best Friend From Grad School's husband was diagnosed with a pre-cancerous condition.  This condition required a bone marrow transplant and about 4 month spent in care at a hospital two states away from home (it was a seriously rare condition).  He's back home and officially in remission now.  Can I just say that bone marrow transplants are harder (for the recipient) that you think.  For donors it's not too bad (sign up and you, too, can save a life:  http://marrow.org/Home.aspx).

OK.  So trade in the trip to Iowa for a trip to the Left Coast to be supportive Girlfriend.

Then 2012 got worse.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer.

My dad's cancer had already metastasized by the time it was discovered.

So cancel the trip to Iowa or the Left Coast so I could fly down and see my dad multiple times this year.  Cut the trip to London back to just The Husband, The Nephew (he still graduated and a promise is a promise) and myself.

My dad passed away about 2 months ago after a too-long and all-too-short battle with cancer.   I'm still not quite back on my feet and I'm not sure what I'll be doing (if anything) with this blog.

I just really, really hope 2013 is the kind of year where nothing much happens all year long.  I know I could  use the break.

And maybe I'll just order the purple Anthurium from the only place I've ever found them for sale - Hawaii.  I bet the shipping charges will be more than the cost of the plant.