2007 in the Rear View Mirror

a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://bp0.blogger.com/_dJEkdJdUM4w/R3hY1AIag5I/AAAAAAAAAE8/A999LR-Wejw/s1600-h/63028482_111f0e9a09.jpg”img style=”margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;” src=”http://bp0.blogger.com/_dJEkdJdUM4w/R3hY1AIag5I/AAAAAAAAAE8/A999LR-Wejw/s200/63028482_111f0e9a09.jpg” alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149963841489765266″ border=”0″ //aspan style=”font-size:100%;”span style=”font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;” T/spanoday is the day before New Year’s Eve. Good a time as any to reflect on days gone by./span a href=”http://jkmahal.blogspot.com/2007/01/and-happy-new-year.html”Remember this?/abr /iblockquote My horoscope for this year says there’s nothing but good times ahead, and I choose to believe it.br /br /2007 will be the year in which I cross over from being a writer who has yet to finish her book, to being a writer who has completed two books. That’s my goal and I’m sticking to it.br /br /It will also be the year in which I take back my dreams. They’ve been pushed to the side for too long./blockquote/iThat’s what I posted on January 2, 2007. God, the Universe and Everything laughed.br /br /I’m not quite sure what to make of 2007. The highs — going to Europe for a real vacation with my loving, wonderful husband; being present for the birth of my niece; my first RWA conference, hanging with the gals — have been joyous. The lows — the death of my father; going deaf in one ear; my MIL’s hospitalizations — have been low indeed.br /br /Then there are the things that are hard to categorize — moving my mother into the nursing home; moving to my old hometown; the loss of identity that comes with not having a paycheck and the slow, sometimes backwards, progress on my book. None of these items sound positive on the surface, but each of them have positive aspects.br /br /Moving Mom to the home was difficult and took time, yet the situation she’s in now is vastly better than the one she had been in. She’s safe, healthy and, I daresay, happier. My sister and I no longer have to worry about the bottom falling out of her world. She’s kinder to her brother. Was the transition hard? Yes. But the difficulty has proven to be worth it.br /br /It’s been strange to be back in the City of My Teenage Years. Riding around the old neighborhood, everything seems so much smaller. The blocks are shorter than I remember, the buildings closer to the ground. A strange sense of claustrophobia strikes. And yet, I now live in the area I loved visiting. There are places I go that I have never been, the context of the city is changing, new memories forged every day.br /br /The loss of identity thing is a toughie. I’m a writer who hasn’t had time to write. A writer working on her first book, a book that cannot be considered for anything while it is unfinished. It is unbought, unsold, subject only to the eyes of a few readers I trust. It makes no money. It may never make money. None of which would matter if I worked. Has your partner become indifferent towards you thought you lost interest in it? Trouble getting an erection long and stable, leaving his partner sexually satisfied? No more problems, online pharmacies viagra may be the most typical brand name of the medication that cures erectile dysfunction. There has been many drug scare in the minds of patient and they might find the appearance of psoriatic skin a bit troubling. viagra stores in canada However, males can viagra sales canada choose natural anti-aging methods to improve functioning of kidney, liver and heart. This exercise furthermore entails blatant, groaning sounds which can be produced and unnecessary damages on body can be often be felt down to your buttocks or at the back within the left side or canadian generic tadalafil near the breast bone Patients having chills and high fever Occurrence of vomiting and nausea Immediate medical treatment would be needed when such symptoms occur Perforation of a gallbladder or gangrene can be the outcome of acute cholecystitis. But I left my lucrative job to move to the City of My Teenage Years for my husband’s job. And somehow that’s made me a “less than.” Not in his eyes, never in his eyes. But sometimes in my eyes and, unfortunately, in other’s eyes.br /br /I’ve worked every year since I was 15, except for this year. Now I’m a woman living off what her husband makes and we all know what that makes me. All together now. “Housewife.” And not even an a href=”http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SAHM”SAHM/a, which many people could understand. Nope. There’s this sense that I’ve been made an adjunct to my husband. A moocher, but not named “Minnie.” Doesn’t matter that while my husband was in grad school, I paid the bills for our life together or that I paid my debts, all except a little, before we married. Now I’m just another woman living off a man. Ah the easy life, if you can swallow your pride.br /br /There is an upside to this loss. It has made me examine who I am and how I define myself. Am I my job? Is my worth as a human being determined by how much money I make? The loss of my paycheck identity makes me stronger, more determined to succeed in my new venture.br /br /Which leads me to my book. “Walking in the Dark” has lost words, lost characters, lost pages in 2007. Yet I know it’s a better book. Not a perfect book, but a better book. I’ve come close to losing faith in it, and come through the other side. WITD has become more personal, more meaningful. I started writing it for A. Friend, but I’m finishing it for me. These last two months, as I’ve worked on it, the story has at last come to life.br /br /I’m not sorry to be driving away from the year 2007, watching it fade in the rear view mirror. This year has been like a a href=”http://books.google.com/books?id=d8KLiYlaknUCamp;dq=the+goodbye+summeramp;pg=PP1amp;ots=lQacbdQ48Samp;sig=qSMhWmug0ik_vPocwwc0I1G3jm4amp;hl=enamp;prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=enamp;client=firefox-aamp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:officialamp;hs=adZamp;q=The+Goodbye+Summeramp;btnG=Searchamp;sa=Xamp;oi=printamp;ct=titleamp;cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPP1,M1″novel/a, sometimes sad, beautifully written. It will take time to process.br /span style=”;font-family:Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:85%;” /spanbr /span style=”font-size:85%;”Photo by a href=”http://flickr.com/photos/jcuthrell/63028482/”Qthrul./a/span