Is It 2010 Yet?

Mmmkay, here goes my end of the year post. It probably won't be pretty, and the month of December has probably unfairly biased by view of 2009, but I'm going with "2009 sucks" anyway.

How did 2009 start? With an infant covered in vomit. Oh yeah. I woke up New Year's Day 2009 with a Max who had vomited in his bed and rolled around in it. It took two baths and the forbidden scented shampoo to rid his hair of the smell. Not an auspicious start to the year.

That stomach bug was followed by illness after illness for the Max, including four ear infections, a bunch of colds, and three more stomach viruses. I also had two stomach viruses in 2009, so there went my 5 year record of no vomiting.

2009 was also The Year of the Rat (well, mice, actually but rat sounds more vile). First, they invaded the attic, which I can live with. Then one died under the back porch, but we thought it was in the wall. So Chad cut a hole in the wall in the laundry room to try and find it. What he found instead a was a big hole leading from inside the wall to outside on the porch. He sealed the hole. A few days later, a mouse chewed through the putty that Chad used to patch the hole and got into our aluminum cans. And so began the vermin invasion into the house. Actually, I think there was only one in the house. We bought some electronic mouse traps, and caught exactly nada. So we resorted to poison. Oddly enough, that was a bad idea. Because, by sealing the hole in the wall that went outside, Chad sealed off the mice's escape route. So instead of going outside in search of water after ingesting the poison like they were supposed to, a couple died in our walls. And decomposing rodent? STINKS.

THEN there was the mouse in the kitchen. Turns out, it was living underneath the cabinet under the sink. And one day (the day our new refrigerator was delivered) it came out in the early evening instead of invading the kitchen and dining room at night as usual. The good news about that incident is that Chad and I successfully trapped the mouse under a big plastic bowl and scooted it out into the back yard. So no more mouse in the kitchen. Yay. But now there are more mice in the attic. I vote we call an exterminator.

And now, the new refrigerator. The week before Christmas, we had a big storm system come through, and our house was hit by lightning. It killed the refrigerator, DSL modem, wireless router (Chad fixed that, though), CD player from Max's room, wipe warmer, space heater from Max's room, emergency window air conditioner in our bedroom, and blew a bunch of light bulbs. Oh, and it took out a hella-expensive surge protector (but everything that was plugged into it was ok). We had a repairman come look at the fridge, and he said that both fans that blow the cold air into the fridge and freezer compartments were out. He did not have the replacement fans in stock, and it would have taken a week to get them in and would have cost $300. Instead, we went to Lowe's and had a new fridge delivered the next day.

I spent the week before Christmas hating life because I felt like complete crap (sinus issues, sore throat, chest cold). Chad then caught it, and now I think I'm getting it again. Yay.

Oh, and it doesn't end there. Krull the Warrior King poked a stick in his eye Saturday night, prompting an emergency trip to the vet. They can't tell us how much damage was done to his eye until next week, after it heals a bit. Vision loss is a possibility. So we've been keeping Krull in the house, which means we've had the baby gate that blocks the hall down since Krull likes to sleep in our bedroom, but we want him to be able to come into the living room with us if he wants to. Plus he needs to be able to let us know when he needs to go out. The baby gate being down means that Max has been making me crazy, going into all the bedrooms, office, and bathrooms. Too bad he can open doors.

So yeah, 2009 sucked. There were some good points (nothing went wrong on Christmas, for instance). It just seems like the bad outweighed the good.