​Well, here I am, posting again after 9 months. It’s been . . . a rough year. Won’t go into details, but at least it hasn’t been as bad as what I’ve put my main character through. ;P

A couple of weeks ago, Oscar and I adopted a new dog! Introducing Toshi the Collie mix! :) <3

We got Toshi from a place called Rescue Village, so yeah, he's a rescue like Thatcher was. (I still really miss my sweet, precious Thatcher and always will....)

​This month has been really hard. Actually, this whole winter has been really hard. Not just because it’s cold and gray and the sunshine is (usually) lacking and my health isn’t so great right now—aside from the frigid air making it harder for me to breathe, I also have a lung infection, MAC, that is going to require a year of nasty treatment, and I still have about 8 months of it left. So I’ve been pretty miserable, physically . . . but that’s not the worst of it.
 
No, the worst part of this winter is that last week my beloved pup, Thatcher, passed away. (If you’re sensitive to reading about pet loss or death and grief in general, you probably shouldn’t read on.)

As I promised last month, here’s a poem (really, a parody) that I wrote recently! :)
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[“Ode” is short for Odious! ;P Also, for those who may not be aware: April is one of the most dreaded months for Americans because it’s when taxes are due! April 15th in particular (although it’s the 18th this year) is a day of infamy. ;P]

Well, I decided to be cliché again and do a love-related post in February. LOL...

I'm not going to do a list of 28 things like I did a couple of years ago. Just some random ramblings and some pictures. :) Because (and this is NOT a thing I love) I'm crazy busy right now!!

​Well, this past year certainly flew by like a whirlwind! If you want to see what I got up to, work- and business-wise, check out this post in Thinklings’ blog. I thought I’d talk here in my personal blog about more, of course, personal stuff. ;)

Well . . . guess what! For our tenth wedding anniversary, earlier this month, Oscar and I (finally) went to Hawaii! :D As you'd expect, it was AMAZING and we had a fantastic time!! Below are some of the best pictures from our trip! <3

​Well, I’m copying off Katherine this time...heh. (And her post isn’t even quite up yet!) Plus, I’m doing a similar topic for the next Thinklings newsletter next week—you can sign up here to read it—so I decided to whip up a quick nostalgic post for my blog, too.

Yes, this is a rather eclectic set of topics and somewhat of a rambling post! Heh. But you’ll come to see how those topics are related. It started off as a footnote to my last blog post, but it grew and mushroomed and before I knew it, it was long enough to be its own post—and since I’m always in need of (and struggle with getting) new ideas for content for this blog, I jumped on it!

Life update: Well, if you haven’t seen in my social media, I’m sick again. My autoimmune disease has once again—after four years—reared its ugly head and decided to chew up my lungs. So I’m back on a medicine (for three weeks, which is mercifully short) that I call “demon pills.” Those filthy demons are the one bit of trauma in my life that I still can’t really talk about, so please don’t ask what medicine it is and what it does. But it’s horrible.

Anyway, I thought I would write, this month, about how to deal with people who are suffering or going through trauma. Any kind of trauma. Because since I have about three decades of experience in that department (15.5 years of being sick, plus daily bullying from K–12), I thought I should put that to some good use and help others understand, if only just a little bit more.