Happy New Year everyone!

There has been so much change for me this year.  Even for someone with Uranus exactly conjunct their ascendant, this year seemed to be a time of break-neck, life altering major and minor change.  

 First of all, I got ill (or my body got ill and my mind got ill, as we would say at the Yoga Ashram).  Very ill.  Sick enough to be hospitalized multiple times and to go on disability.  So, since I have been working full-time since 1975, that is a major change, although not an unwelcome one.  

Having lost all of my corporate ambition and most of my ability to concentrate and/or put up with outright job-related bullshit, going on disability was a Godsend for me.  Lying awake crying all night because you're afraid you're going to lose your job and your health insurance because you're sick is no fun.  Our culture is so heartless and money-oriented now,  that people become jobless, homeless, ill and there is no help.  I'll take Socialism any day.  Europe and Canada are doing just fine and they have socialized medicine and safety nets.  Did you know that, in Canada there has not been any shrinking of the middle class as there has been here?  Proving that it's our bought and paid for politicians that have gotten 99% of us into this jam.  But, I digress.

 Second major change, after 31 years of living on my own in the DC area,  I moved back in with my mom and dad back in Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.  The last time I lived here was in 1976 and I was twenty years old.  Do the math.  It's been a hard adjustment for all of us, and it's also been very rewarding - just like fucking life itself.  Pain and Glory.  No one escapes.   

I thank God every day that I don't have to commute in hard traffic and work the 40-50-60 hours a week that corporate life demands these days (for one third of what I used to make).  I can't do it any more.  I'm not up to it.   

There were other hard changes, too.  My boyfriend that I adored just dropped me one day, like a baby on her head.  I still don't know why, but, it hurt a lot.  I'm almost all over it now, but not quite.  I would like to have a nice partner in life - I do better with a partner.  Don't you need somebody to love?  My parents and my brothers and sister are all married, so I am the third wheel now.  

At the end of the year, I like to make lists of what I am grateful for in the passing year, and what I'd like to let go of; and then what I would like to concentrate on in the new year.  

Here in rural SW Pennsylvania, the lucky new year food is pork and sauerkraut, and the Italians eat smelts, a very disgusting and smelly little fish.  It is a smelly holiday.  Especially since the pork in the sauerkraut is usually koelbassi - a polish garlic sausage.  Whew!  When I lived in DC we ate hoppin' john, which is black eyed peas and greens.  It is tasty, better smelling,  and healthier, too.  That was pretty much the only part of living in the South I liked.  I hate sauerkraut and smelly little fish, but I will eat a little  in order to have good luck in the new year.  

 What I am grateful for in 2011 is that I can rest now, and not be stressed out all the time.  Now, I am stressed out just some of the time, which is a big improvement.  

I'm glad I started my writing blog, and my reading and movie-watching.  I try to read a book that I haven't read and see a movie I haven't seen every single day.  It's so inspiring!  

One of my end of the year traditions is to start watching movies so that I will have seen as many as possible of the Oscar nominated movies as I can before the ceremony in February.  Netflix makes this a lot easier than it used to be.  Although the Oscar noms aren't out yet, the Golden Globe nominations are, so I start there.  So far, I have seen four likely Oscar contenders - Tree of Life, The Trip, Buck, and Beginners.  I have 28 movies to go.  

I am grateful that I get to spend time with my mom and dad now that they are older.   I am grateful that my son and daughter in law and grandchildren came to visit me this year and call me on the phone.  I am glad I am around my niece and nephews, brothers and sisters, brother in law, and sisters in law.  It is a blessing to have family that care about you.  

I am grateful my parents gave me Christmas money to buy my own laptop - my first computer!  It should arrive tomorrow for the first of 2012!  Wow!  

I am grateful that I still have health insurance, especially as  it is basically  a death sentence for me not to have it.  

What I would like to let go of is my habit of criticizing myself and thinking that other people will not like me.  This is a lifelong pattern, but I'm sure it can be healed.  

 What I would like my theme for 2012 to be is friendship.  My dear friend Yvonne (Penny) Pennypacker, told me when she was 95 years old, "You've got to have friends!"  She was a terrific friend, and I would like to be a terrific friend to new and old friends this year.  

Happy New Year, everyone!!!!!  Here's to 2012!