The Running of the Holidays & Catching Up in 2013!

Well here we are! Life seems to be just running, flying, cruising, moving, sailing, & all of the other words we could use to just it is going by too quickly!!! Just about the time we get our decorations put up from the previous Xmas, and get our "figures" back in shape from all of the great food, we look up and here is another Christmas at our door step. This year has been a very mixed blessing year for my family. I had a much "better" year somewhat I guess you can say. I only had 1 major surgery this year, my 4 level cervical neck procedure. I went through the minor issue of the biopsy on my temporal artery, but so far I am still having double vision issues, thus the "hunt" for what the heck is causing it will go on in 2013. Until then I just able able to see "double"! Which is a good thing, depending on what the hell I am looking at! LOL!!!! It seems that with medications, treatments, follow ups with the doctors, and all of the things I do to try and keep the RA, Lupus, and Chronic Pain in check have worked fairly well this year. I have of course still had come pain issues, and still had a few flares, but for the most part, when my neck began to show a huge difference in the shoulder pain, I knew I was going to be feeling more human when it healed more. So far, so good. I pray all of those holds out, and that nothing else decides to give way, break, wear out, etc. :) Same with the family, for the most part. After the scare here with Mom, this past week, and her heart, then it turning out to be as far as the doctors can tell, all is well from the tests they ran. So we are grateful that it appears her heart is fine. She is already doing much better with the Lasix. As soon as it began to remove the excess fluid she has in her mid-section she is already breathing better, and the shortness of breath seems to be gone. She was up and at the market by herself yesterday morning, so she is doing much better. :) So, that is the very best Christmas present we could have. For her to check out at 77 years old, and have a clean bill of health as far as her heart goes was wonderful news for us. I was a tad bit on the concerned side just due to her age, her high blood pressure (even through medication controlled) and she is on high cholesterol medication also. Other than that her had quit smoking probably 30 years ago, and other than that she is not huge on being an exerciser. All in all, bless her heart, she is in better physical shape than I am. I was also a factor in putting her into the hospital for the blood work checks on her heart. Due to my two Mi's at such a young age, they took that into consideration also, is what our family doctor told us. Of course the biggest thing I guess for myself, as well as Jim was me publishing my very 1st book! I am now officially a "published author"! that was a huge event for me, and my plans and (resolutions for 2013) or part of those are to have a 2nd poetry book published by Spring or early Summer, as well as have a great deal of my "book", "book:" as I call it completed. so, I plan on being one busy lady beginning in 2013! LOL!!! Like I am not busy already. It seems there is never quite enough time in my day to finish everything I want to finish, or honestly I run out of "steam" before I am finished. I also plan on getting back into the music part of my somewhat artistic nature. I have already been on my drums some, and also on the keyboard. Right now, and once again our "music/extra room" is filled with the boxes from lights, tree etc, and you can't even barely get around to the instruments. But, once all of that is put away after New Year's, I plan on doing some writing, singing, drumming and keyboard playing. I also want to get back into working on sewing quilts. I really enjoyed that before my shoulder decided to completely quit on me. Since my neck surgery seems to have for the most part fixed the pain issue in my arm, neck and shoulder, I am hoping to be able to do all of these things. I certainly can sit and type again a great deal more than before the surgeries. I am much more able to be online and on the computer than I had been in years. So, between all of my "artistic endeavors" as well as the usual cleaning, cooking, house keeping, errands, doctors visits, stuff for Mom and so forth, I plan to have an extremely busy 2013! I just pray that my hope grows, and my faith stays alive, and my body and mind give me the opportunity to do all of those things. I had even mentioned to Jim I may get back into SOME of the web design stuff again. I am not sure if I had mentioned it any here, but I did web design for a couple of years when we first met. After I was getting so ill I was having to make a decision to quit a job outside of the house, plus I had always been intrigued with web design and how it all went together, Jim was the first person that really took me seriously about that. I had a book but no one had really sat down with me to help explain the basics of it all. So, honestly Jim did "throw the HTML 10 thick" book at me one afternoon in Seattle, and said here you go, everything you need is in this book. Then you can start asking questions once you have gotten clued in from it. Well, I had already been observing his coding of sites. He works more on the "back end" of sites, to make shopping carts work, data bases, and those types of things. Where I wanted to actually design the sites themselves. In a few days I was putting together some "simple" very basic items that went into a web site, and was showing signs of having the ability to grasp the idea. He then jumped in to give me more help so I could learn the right way, and not get engrossed in some of the wrong tactics, and within a few months, I was working on my own web site, and then designed several sites for people in the business realms of Seattle. In fact two sites I did all myself are still all up and running, just as the day I completed them. That has been about 9 years ago or so. I go to them every once in a while to see what they look like, and there they are just like they were the day I said they were completed! So, I had to quit much of that when we got to TX. I became so ill with so much pain, and then I began going through all of the surgeries, doctors, tests and so forth, and also the Lupus mess reared its ugly head. So, my design and development web status got put on the back burner for awhile. I even got pretty good at SEO work and did lots of optimization for Search Engines for our clients. But, that has also changed so much, that things are not at all as they were. It has almost became an entire "schooling" of working knowledge as to how to really optimize a web site to keep it high in rankings, and up in search engines such as Google and so forth. I have considered since HTML 5 is now coming out, and now CSS 3 is huge. There are so many changes, that things like graphics, etc. are going to be a thing of the past, and much of what a did as a literal graphic in Photoshop, will be replaced by "coding" through style sheets. Lots of changes in a very short time, so I would probably have to go back to "square one" if I really wanted to learn. Anyway, that maybe another thing I put on my plate. Jim is thinking about taking the development business into a new direction this year, and begin "designing" again. Since all of the changes with web sites when it comes to phones, I-Pads, Kindles', smart phones, and so many more devices are coming out, keeping up with the latest in those types of design entities are important. So, as he has been redoing our own website, and I have been more of the "consultant" this time, rather than doing the hands on designing myself with all of the economic issues, and our changing of what is happening in our world, we may have to seriously take the business into a new direction just to survive. Interestingly, enough design had kind of fallen by the way side a few years back, when the "cookie cutter" sites came out, and now with all of the latest in HTML 5 and CSS 3, now design for these new electronic devices is going to be critical for those with online businesses. So, here we are once again, with an ever changing world, that tends to take us on adventures at times we may have never dreamed of just a few years ago. It would be interesting to be a "fly on the wall" in 100 years or more from now to see just how much we advance from here. I can imagine that even in 50 years, things are going to be extremely different. I shall close my long winded post for now, and wish everyone an incredibly wondrous Christmas Day tomorrow!!! May the peace of family and friends, and love surround each of you, and bring you much joy for the day! May we all find 2013 to be a better year in so many ways, and may our world also find in its heart to become peaceful, and lead the way to a divine place of respect for one another. If you can't do anything else tomorrow due to illness or so forth, at least tell those you love if possible how much you do love and miss them... for we truly never know what tomorrow brings... Merry Christmas Rhia