"Cosmik Debris" - Frank Zappa, 1974

Hello, dear readers.

I'm sorry for my absence. I'm stunned that I've been missed (I've been told that a few people have noticed I'm not updating this blog), and I'll try to do better this new year.

Perhaps I'm now ready to talk a bit more about the "debris" that affected me during the second half of 2009.

See the photo I've posted here? Well, as a sort of inside joke, I printed this out and put a copy on the wall next to my desk at work back in May last year. The origin of the image? Well, I think it was Hurricane Katrina in the USGC several years ago. The reason? It was the sad and (I think) unwise "redundancy"of beloved work colleague last May.

When situations feel a bit out of control, sometimes I feel the need to respond...to regain some sense of control. My posting of this jpeg file at work was my response. Little did I know, though, that it would lead to the most difficult 6 months of my life.

Gavin's dismissal was only the beginning.

In June, my best friend Claudia experienced a bad fall at home in Texas and did a lot of damage to her shoulder. It required serious reconstruction. She's still recovering.

As I've written before, at the end of June, dear Marcella chose to end her own life. I still mourn the loss of such a special person.

In August, while my brother and his girls were with us, John experienced a loss of vision in his left eye because of a couple of serious retinal tears. After FIVE surgeries (4 of them at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London - the final one in November 2009), he's left with decent vision...but with a realization of how fragile our senses actually are.

Because of John's eye problem, we had to cancel our trip to the States last October. That means that 2009 was the first year in my life that I didn't spend even one second in the US during the entire year.

It continued. Another valued work colleague/friend was let go in the autumn. I began to have problems with my shoulder in September (and I probably have an impingement). And in December, my brother lost his ex-mother-in-law, and good friends lost their unborn baby.

And it hasn't been an especially good year for the financial world either.

So where does that leave me? Madly in love -- married four years -- loving life in the UK -- and more convinced than ever that the only way to stay sane is to remain as positive as possible.

But I'm tired. My shoulder hurts like hell most of the time. I mourn those who have left this world. And I wonder sometimes why we're all suffering all of these trials.

That's where I am today. Shall I try to write more regularly from now on, or is anybody really reading anyway?

Janet