Welcome 2025!
You may have noticed that I've been absent from blogging for quite a few months - my last update was in September.
Well that's because the last few months of the year have been rough and it took all my energy just to survive them.
In early October we had a hurricane and I feel like life is now forever split into pre-hurricane and post-hurricane.
The stupid storm didn't even hit us directly, it was a couple of hundred miles to the south but it changed everything. A tree fell in our yard and narrowly missed the house but that wasn't even the bad part. The flooding was devastating to the road leading to our house to the point where we couldn't drive in or out of our driveway/road for 2 and a half months.
Luckily our neighbor lives on a couple of acres and he let us drive through his yard to get out (after a week of being stuck in the house with no power) and also let us park our car on his property until the road got dry again.
BUT, to get out to his property we had to cross over the water so Chris put down pallets as a bridge but my balance is never the greatest even in the best of times so I couldn't walk out there by myself, Chris had to lead me across the bridge (with me clinging to him) so my independence was severely limited with me only able to get in and out of the property if he was with me.
Meanwhile, conditions at my job were deteriorating as well. My supervisor in Virginia suddenly decided she needed me to work 16 extra hours every week doing tasks for the Virginia accounting department in addition to doing all the Florida stuff I was already doing and she wouldn't discuss it with me (when I objected) but just told me it was non-negotiable. It's because someone in Virginia got promoted and rather than hire someone to do the work, they decided to save the salary and have me do it for free.
This caused a major amount of stress because when I tried to talk about it, she shut me down and then the whole work relationship just became really toxic. She couldn't complain about the quality of my work but she tried to. She would send emails complaining that I hadn't done something (and copied every supervisor) to try to get me in trouble and then, when I provided a paper trail showing I had done whatever it was she was saying I hadn't, just went silent, never acknowledging she was wrong.
The stress of knowing she was lurking around every corner just waiting to trip me up did a number on my body and I knew I couldn't live like this anymore so I gave my notice for the end of the year.
This angered the head of HR who took away my ability to work from home so I started having to make the 2 hour drive each way and that injured my knee making the whole walking and driving thing harder than ever and really affected my quality of life.
December 30th was my last day at the job and it was very sad for me because I loved that job for the 6 1/2 years I was there and I still don't understand how it all went so wrong so quickly.
October, November and December are somewhat of a blur to me. Halloween was no fun because we were still dealing with the flooding. I celebrated my birthday in November and we had a nice Christmas with the kids in December
We got to see a lot of my family - 2 trips to my sister's Florida house and a trip up to Alabama to see my brother end his 42 year Nutcracker career. That was an especially meaningful trip because I got to see almost all of my "siblings." The only bad part of that trip was that 2 days of being on my feet had taken a toll on my legs by the time of the performance and everybody noticed and I hated appearing so weak.
