Is it 2009 yet?

Over halfway through the year seems like a pretty good time to update on what’s been going on so far this year.  Let me just say – I’ll be happy when this year is done and over.  I think most of the family has pretty much washed our hands of 2008.  In a nutshell, here’s what’s been going on.

• Jan was spent looking for and ultimately accepting a new job.
• Jan-Mar was a frenzy to get all my projects completed and knowledge transferred in order to move to the new job.
• The end of March came with some very sudden trips to visit my grandmother (father’s mother), who took a turn for the worse and ended up in hospice care.  She did pull through, but at that point, they gave her 1 – 1.5 months to live.
• April 1 was the the start of the new job, followed by lots of training, including a week-long trip to the Chicago suburbs, and attempting to remember coding knowledge I hadn’t used for quite a few years.  The group over here is a lot of fun, and I’m back to really enjoying what I’m working on – mostly. 
• Early May, my grandfather (mother’s father) got pneumonia and refused treatment because of the affects the medicine has on him.  We thought he was going to pull through, but he suddenly took a turn for the worse and passed away.  On the plus side, my grandmother got stubborn about staying healthy since we already had enough to deal with.
• In early July, my dad found out he has prostate cancer.  Its minimal and in early stages, so the prognosis is good, but it certainly wasn’t something we needed added on top of everything else going on.  This still isn’t common knowledge, but putting it on here probably isn’t announcing it to much of the world.
• My grandmother passed away at the beginning of the month.  She had been having good days and bad days, and while she had been holding on pretty well, there was always a chance things could turn for the worse at any moment.  Considering she outlasted most of the doctor’s best guesses, I guess there wasn’t much else to hope for.  The timing though – a day before the 12 year anniversary of my grandfather’s death.  That was a little hard to handle too.
• On the way up to the funeral, I found out that the doctors are going to monitor my mother for 6 months because they found a dense spot during her mammogram.  There is a pretty big history of breast cancer in our family, so that’s a little worrying.

If it wasn’t for the new job, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of good milestones occurring this year.  At one point during the funeral trip, I turned to Mr. B and said, “Imagine how I’d have been if I’d been going through all this and hadn’t gotten the new job.”  He looked somewhat scared.  Not that my old job was a bad job, but there was enough going on with it that I wasn’t exactly happy.  And being upset with all this and in a job that wasn’t making me happy would have been bad news.

Here’s hoping things start looking up…