Yes, it really has been that long.

I haven't written a blog on this thing for a year and a half! That doesn't seem possible, somehow, and yet, given everything that has happened in my life in 2010, I guess it is.

Oddly, I don't feel like doing a recap. I really don't want to rehash all of the crises that have happened this past year at all. So if you are close to me personally, and know about the crap I've been dealing with, thanks for your love and support. If not, consider yourself lucky not to have to hear all of the crap I've been dealing with, and thanks for your new and untainted love and support! :D

Seriously though, I can't wait for a new year and a (mostly) fresh start. 2011 had darn well better be worth the cost of 2010! I can't handle things to stay the way they have been. Most of my friends wonder regularly whether my sanity levels are staying in a healthy range. If things don't alter from what they have been around here, I can tell you that those levels are going to plummet from "Handles stress with calm, grace and patience" to "bring in the antipsychotic drugs and the coat that makes her hug herself!!!" very, very quickly.

There have been a few good things, don't get me wrong. I love my kids and they are perpetually amazing and wonderful and infuriating in turns, and that is what keeps my life at a normal and socially acceptable pace. My marriage has come to the precipice of ruin more than a few times, but on occasion during counseling sessions (when we're both able to make it), we make each other laugh, so I suppose that counts as a mark in the 'positive' column. We aren't divorced yet, nor are we paying out (more) money (than we make) to attorneys to become divorced. I'm sure that is an indication that the past year wasn't quite as bad as it could have been.

But here lately, I'm not content to simply be happy that things "aren't as bad as they could have been". Of course, I am overjoyed that all of my family is alive and well. No one is ill with a terminal disease. No one has been in the hospital, or severely injured physically in any way. We have jobs, meager paying as they are. Yet there is a certain basic level of living that I would like to have attained at this point in my life and I find myself more than a little pissed off that it hasn't been so.

Some may frown at my seemingly bad attitude and tell me to stop being such a spoiled child. But I believe it is this intolerance for a mediocre and unsuccessful life that spurs us on from despondence to action. Yes, this has been a hard year. But I am a strong woman. I am also smart, competent, witty, attractive and skilled at a number of creative abilities. I will see this year out with a glint of steely resolution in my eye, but I will not allow my hardened resolve to harden my heart. In a few weeks, when the last hours of December tick away, I will bid a hearty farewell to 2010 and tell it not to let the door hit it on the butt on the way out! I will spend more time with the people who make me feel like I am worth more than how clean I keep a house that isn't mine. I will spend more hours with the friends who make me laugh and whom I amuse and make laugh in return. I will see what can be done to repair and rebuild my broken marriage. I will cherish and treasure each moment I can with my babies, because they won't stay babies for long. All in all, I will have a good attitude, and I believe that better things will come.

Perhaps I'll post again soon, or hopefully, more often. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy that tryptophan induced nap on Turkey Day!