Here's my recap of 2018:
There were really only three good things that I have experienced this past years. . . .
- Meeting Steve Whitmire at Knoxville Fanboy Expo. He was an incredibly nice guy, very wonderful to talk to, still very passionate about the Muppets and his work with them - you can tell he definitely appreciates the fans, and what the Muppets have meant to them.
- Building a long overdue new Steve D'Monster puppet. Granted, it's still not 100% perfect (I only suck a little less at puppet building), but it's a vast improvement over the previous puppet - mainly because I finally found the right kind of fur, so this puppet not only looks better, but isn't as heavy, stiff, and cumbersome at the last one. Also, it's a smaller puppet, which is also easier to work (and easier to keep my head out of frame).
- Becoming better acquainted with a female friend of mine whom I've taken an interest in.
Now, aside from all that, 2018 was a mostly sucky year for a number of different reasons:
- My dad had cancer. He spent six looong weeks at home, enduring chemotherapy and radiation for it. He's reportedly cancer-free now, but it still was a long ordeal, and he may still not be completely out of the woods.
- My mom's permanently handicapped from her knee injury in August 2017. She finally got off her crutches in January, but she'll be on a cane from now on, and I've pretty much become her fulltime caretaker.
- My nana died earlier this year . . . but, honestly, I was never particularly close to her, she wasn't a particularly grandmotherly type of woman (barely a motherly type to my mom and aunt), so I, unfortunately, really felt no loss when she passed away.
- My aunt broke her foot - and just two weeks before she and my uncle were about to leave for an extended vacation in Scotland and Ireland. They did, eventually, still make it over there, they just postponed it.
- My uncle just had shoulder surgery this month, and he's having a really hard time healing from it.
- Spring was extra early this year (earlier than it's ever been), and it lasted a really, really long time . . . not to mention what a frustration and annoyance it was that everybody else was whining and crying about how they were still having snow in April, while everything had been green and blooming for, like, two months here.
- Summer lasted two weeks longer than it needed to, so two weeks in September were lost to two extra weeks of August.
- I lost my health insurance coverage for several months, because I couldn't afford the price hike to $536 a month for my premium, and ended up with a retroactive outstanding medical bill for my annual physical (and that ended up being over $300 . . . just for giving blood, and peeing in a cup).
- I accidentally wrecked the car again, and I have no idea how it happened, but damage was far worse this time, because I literally blew out an entire tire, and basically crushed the hubcap.
- I was really, really hoping to finally have MORON LEAGUE 4 in full production this year, but a major setback has delayed it even further, and I'm still having a hard time finding a replacement voice actress!
- So many of many friends and loved ones have been going through all kinds of personal hardships, crises, misfortunes, and other crap that really makes you just feel bad for them: losing loved ones, severing ties with other people, being affected in one way or another by the rotten political landscape.
- Speaking of which, just seeing how the country is further spiraling downward into hate and division brought on by Dictator Drumpf is just a sad thing to have to witness.
- And, as I pointed out in another thread, it jumped up 20 degrees above average today, making it a surprisingly appropriately sucky way to end a sucky year.
So, yeah, 2018 has been quite a sucky year. Glad it's over, but after having a rocky 2017, and a sucky 2018, I'm really, really apprehensive about what 2019 holds in store. But, as
@LittleJerry92 can attest to, at least the new "Out of Office Countdown" calendar will be theraputic.