What's Up for 2026?

[yourlibrarian]

In May I took a great trip with friends through Oregon and we ended in California. The timing for the trip, however, was to coincide with the memorial service for my oldest friend's mother.

As she is my oldest friend, I knew her parents the best of all my friends' parents because of the stretch of time over which we saw one another (and she lived just a few doors down from me). I was not close to them but they were always kind to me, and it's interesting how it's the kindness that lingers.

At this point only one of my friends still has a living parent, who is not in the greatest health. But during the last visit in which I saw her, she mentioned that she always considered herself to have four daughters. This was really unexpected as it had been decades since I'd lived nearby and I didn't even see her on all my visits with her daughter. So even though my relationships with friends' parents were very uncomplicated compared to my friends', the losses do have an impact.

We had one in our family around Thanksgiving, and the friend who held the memorial now has news that her stepmom has a recurrence of cancer. So we're all now living in the life stage where these events are happening each year to someone we know.



It was also a year with a lot of unexpected events. Some of them had an upside. In June, my partner's sister had damage to her roof which caused damage to the bed below it. This happened to be the guest room where my partner would stay when visiting. So I suggested he take his current bed there and we get a new one.

This ended up being a complicated and costly process, but the upshot was that her roof was repaired, she got a new bed, and my partner a more comfortable one while there. And aside from getting a more functional, comfortable bed ourselves, the bed swap ended up being critically timed. Because a few weeks after returning from the visit, he tore his hamstring and spent a good deal of time in bed with his leg elevated since the bed is adjustable. We also bought a movable side table and he figured out how to set up his laptop and extra monitor so he could work from bed.

He liked this so much that he continues to do it at times, especially now when in the winter he can keep his room several degrees warmer than the rest of the apartment.



A few months ago my fitness tracker just stopped working. I'd replaced it in 2024 and the new one had an un-rechargable one which was guaranteed for a year. It was just past it when that happened, so I figured I'd better line up a new one, rechargeable this time since my first one worked for 4 years before breaking.

A day later my previous tracker started working again, so I have now been wearing 2 of them for a month. The old one stalled out a second time and the above image was where the app stopped. I couldn't help thinking, "Well that pretty much sums up this year."

Overall it wasn't a bad year, but it wasn't a good one either. Our car broke down twice, which shouldn't happen given its age, and we were never given a good explanation why (our local dealership, the only option in certain circumstances, seems to be in a death spiral, especially with its service). There were some big health costs, although overall we're doing ok. There were tax issues and a scary financial incident, but things worked out (hopefully -- we'll see about the tax one).

In the end, I think my partner's work experience this year summed things up. It was very stressful, enough so that he told me at year's end that if he were offered a retirement buyout he would take it right now. At the same time, some of the big stressors are gone this year, even if he's going to have to do some extra work because of those changes. So in the end, a year with a lot of challenges, but ones we passed through.

Comments

[brightly_lit]

That's so touching that she thought of you as her third daughter. Absolutely beautiful flowers!

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, and I wish she hadn't developed dementia soon after as I wish I could have talked to her about it. (It's not that the development was so rapid but that I wasn't in the area for some time because this happened pre-pandemic).

[smallhobbit]

Those flowers are beautiful.

[yourlibrarian]

What seems sad about that is that the memorial lasted less than an hour and was followed by a lunch at a nearby restaurant. As a result there were disagreements about what to do with the flowers, as hardly anyone lived in the area so that they could take them home, and there was a debate about them being brought to the restaurant. I daresay they just lingered there for a day and then were probably tossed out.

[smallhobbit]

That is really sad, rather painful.

[cmcmck]

Gorgeous flowers.

[yourlibrarian]

The arrangements were all lovely but the pink one was my favorite.