The Turn of the Year

It's time again for the annual reflection on life over the past year.  For me, 2014 was a pretty good year.  For a lot of people in my life, it was not a great one.  So it's hard to say "what a fabulous year!" when indeed it wasn't.  I tend to live over-empathetically through/with the people I love and accompany them on their journeys, whether happy or sad, and there was just unfortunately a lot of sad this year.

But I can see lots of light for all my favourite people who had a rough go this year, shining ahead in 2015, and I can't wait to enjoy it with them!

Some of my 2014 highlights are here.  That facebook "year in review" thing kinda stole this blog post's thunder but I took my time picking out some of my fave pics in this one, so please come along!

- a fabulous trip to Italy in May.  That was some of the best eating I've ever done!  I came back completely addicted to cheese (worse than before) and even seek out buffalo mozzarella at the grocery store ($$$!!!) from time to time, in memory of our beloved trip through central Italy.

Lunch in Venice - fresh baguette, prosciutto, buffalo mozza and a basil plant!

Grand Canal in Venice at night - SURREAL!!

St. Mark's Sqaure in Venice at night - you can see that Venice really is sinking!

Found my parents in Florence at my favourite church, Santa Maria del Fiore/il Duomo

 - a shorter but still totally awesome trip to Florida in April to watch the Leafs play Tampa Bay and Florida, visit Americatherine and Patrick and check out the Everglades, even if only for just one fleeting day!

TML @ TBL

In excellently close proximity to my fave dudes (even Phil Cheeseburger Kessel, laziest man in hockey) in Sunrise, FL

- a great year at work, including an incredibly productive field season which had tons of funding, which meant tons of deliverables to complete, tons of traveling and fieldwork to do and tons of great results at the end of it.  I also had the most superb team of interns a girl could ask for, Mike and Laura.  We dubbed ourselves Team Awesome - this is what happens when you spend too many hours alone outdoors together!  Fieldwork highlights for me include canoe tours for donors down the Nottawasaga River in the Minesing Wetlands, a jaunt deep into a wetland to find endangered orchids, inventorying the 2 properties I successfully purchased in spring 2014 (woohoo! full circle!!!), a public event at one property on a beautiful September day (the week that I also scored a room at a beautiful resort west of Orillia for $99/night.. I will never forget!! <3) and evenings spent enjoying beers, taco salad, laughs and sunsets with Team Awesome.  I complain about fieldwork demolishing my body and spirit all summer long, but honestly, it's hard to imagine a year without it!

Laura picks up her very first snake, which musks all over her, but turns out to be an Eastern Ribbonsnake, which is a rare species!

The Nottawasaga River in July, by canoe - the only way to go!

Georgian Bay views while completing invasive species surveys

Property dedication and celebration in late September (felt like mid-July!)

Team Awesome at Minesing Wetlands tree planting event

- any and all outdoor time spent with my hubs. I'm not picky! Cross-country skiing, biking, hiking, boating, dogwalks, yardwork - all of it.  Time spent in nature is amazing.  Time with Jeff is the best.  Add in a furry idiot like Bailey and it amounts to some great memories, including a snowy ski at Guelph Lake where we could barely see on the way back the snow was coming down so hard, a November bike ride in icy 1C temps where we laughed our heads off and froze our hands off, or another trip to the dogpark on a summer Saturday!

Bailey helping Jeff in the yard on the first nice day of spring

Black dog party at the pond at the Hanlon dog park

- a great roundup of concerts and hockey games!  My absolute favourite thing to spend disposable time and income on!  I saw THE CURE!  I saw Kings of Leon .. twice!  I saw Alt-j!  I saw the Leafs lose a BUNCH of times!! ;)

- awesome dinners, lunches, nights in, nights out, long chats, and more with great friends.  I could probably go on for a million years about the great times I've had with the great people I'm lucky to have in my life, but I won't bore ya!  Just a little note that I'm super grateful to all the great people in my life, and glad you're a part of it, and glad you will be again in 2015!

However... because I don't believe in painting an untrue picture of life on social media, I will include a downer list, but it will be a benchmark to compare 2015 against so I can be like "wow!  2015 was soooo rockin'!".  Right?! :)

Worst Days of 2014
1. August 13 - finding out of my best friends was very, very sick and feeling completely helpless in not being able to do anything to help her.
2. June 9 - finding out another of my best friends Viv's dad, Hubert, had passed away, far too early for a man filled with far too much joy and laughter for the world to lose.
3. Dec 11 - attending the sentencing hearing for Philip Grandine with my very best friend Dawn and reflecting on the loss of life of the incredibly special Karissa Grandine (http://www.sincerelygoofy.blogspot.ca/2014/12/a-place-id-never-been-before.html)
4. October 15 - second day of a vacation week I'd planned that didn't quite work out, that later turned into a day of superior work/emotional burnout culminated in tears and forced reclusivity!  Sometimes you just need to escape from life and your inbox for a few hours...
5. Dec 24 - I had a bout of probably the closest I've come to depression in my life on this day.  It had been prickling at me for a few days leading up to this and culminated in me feeling incredibly sad, helpess and lost for absolutely no reason at all.  Jeff kept asking "what's wrong?" and I said "nothing is actually wrong.. so this will go away, right?".  Luckily for me it did subside, and went away entirely within a few more days, but it shed some serious light into what it must be like to be depressed and I have the deepest sympathy for people in that situation where there simply aren't any words or thoughts that can make you feel better. No magic bullet.  I'm wondering what I might be able to do to help people feeling similarly now that I've experienced it for myself, if only very fleetingly and nowhere near the same magnitude. I have no idea what brought it on my dark cloud but it was seriously scary.

And onto the bread and butter of a New Years blog post.  Resolutions!!!

Resolution Progress Report - 2014 Resolutions
1. Juice.  I was doing great juicing away apples, greens, ginger, lemons, you name it, into delicious concoctions when I hit a bad batch of spinach. But didn't realize it until after I'd drank the juice... Let's just leave it at that was the end of juicing for me in 2014. Lol.  Jeff and I made some nice fresh-pressed OJ on Christmas morning.  The juicer is otherwise in the pantry, mostly gathering dust!!!

2. Learn French.  I did pretty ok, though I don't think I made a crazy amount of progress I did spend some time with Viv and many nights in front of some free computer software just trying to get my vocab and pronunciation down.  I know some words..I can make sense of a fair bit of French. I will keep working on this in 2015! It's actually quite fun.

3. Floss. I'm finally giving in that this is the resolution that is not meant to be.  I'm not making it again this year.  It's useless!  To be honest, I floss for several weeks before I see the dentist so I don't get yelled at.  Aaaaand done!

4. Get Back to my Wedding Weight. I was really.. REALLY close in Feb/March of this year, before I was advised to throw out the scale, just eat what I want and stop when I'm full, stop counting calories.  I really heartily enjoyed this strategy.  And really, definitely put on about 7 lbs since then.  I think I'm fairly broken when it comes to functional eating/exercise, so now I'm back up to my old, time-tested tricks, watching calories and working out whenever I can, knowing that I will probably fall off the wagon about once a week. But that is a-ok!  See 2015 Resolutions for more info.

5. Read 5 Classic Books. I read 4!  I read Walden by Thoreau, painfully throughout several months of the field season.. it took forever!  I liked it, but upon later learning that this dude basically lived on the edge of town and went to his mom's for dinner on the weekends was a bit tough to swallow.  A fun reflection on nature in a specific time/place, but not a top read for me! When I realized I better step it up on this resolution toward the end of this year, I read Animal Farm (84 pages) (which I adored and sobbed over - Boxer :( ) and Dickens' the Haunted House (also short). I have been enjoying Madame Bovary for the past few weeks and just finished it this morning.  GREAT book with some good life lessons to pull that I think I'll be musing on for awhile.  For now though, I have a stack of 4 magazines and a Watchmen biography waiting to be read! :)  (woo!)

6. Be a Better Listener. I definitely tried to improve at this one, though it's hard to say how well I did.. you'd have to ask my friends and family, who wouldn't tell you the truth probably anyways because they're too nice. :)  I'm adding this one to the continual-improvement-life-skills section. :)

2015 Resolutions
1. Improve my posture and stand at work more.  The end of slouching!  If you see my sitting like the Queen of England, you'll now know why.  Also, did you know sitting is the new smoking?  Get off your caboose regularly, office workers!!! (have you seen this desk yet - my dream: http://gizmodo.com/ikea-sit-stand-desk-review-i-cant-believe-how-much-i-l-1652445999)
2. Have all my pants fit me comfortably again. To be achieved through eating well and working out.  Because who wants to buy all new pants?  Not this cheap bastard!
3. Cycle 50 km. Might be a little while before I can achieve this, seeing as it's currently "feels like -13C" out with 50 km/hour wind gusts.  However, this year, I hit a personal record of 35 km, and steadily improved my speeds on each ride this summer/fall without even trying, so I know I can get here for sure when that sun decides to join us again after these last couple of months of cold ol' winter.
4. Fix my back.  With stretching, massage, acupuncture, foam rolling, modifying how I sit/drive/sleep - I will do whatever it takes to get back to having the body of a 32 year old instead of an 80 year old!
5. Be better. Be good, sweet, light, generous, kind and happy.  Be the kind of person you've always wanted to be, and already are in your better moments!  There is nothing holding you back. :)  Sort of nebulous, but that's how it looks in my brain right now.  I just know life is too short to be cranky, critical, cynical, anxious, etc. - but how do you find your way to being an even better you and living an even better life?  Let's find out.... I will aim to shape this resolution even more as the year goes on and report back on progress.

Happy new year, friends!