2010 in Review...Lettuce Style

Contemplating.
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

I thought before I talk about what I'm going to do next year, I'd jump on the bandwagon in the blogosphere and recap the past year here at the lettuce. See how I'm contemplating, there in the picture (that was taken in January almost three years ago...)?

Other than Susan, Dave, and Joy visiting, I don't think anything happened in January. Well, there was nothing blog-worthy, I suppose, or maybe I just couldn't be arsed to write anything. (As if to prove my point, I didn't even blog about them being here until February!)

I did say in my last post of 2009 that I was planning to earn part of my living via my writing. How did that pan out? Stay tuned...

February was a short month, but it saw me heading back home for a holiday at the end of the month that included one of the best visits EVER with my best friend Leah as well as Sandy Paws, the best greyhound gathering all year. In addition, I just happened to be within an hour's drive of Athens, Georgia, when ,See What I'm Saying screened at the University of Georgia. Marvelous, life-changing, fabulous movie, that. Go see it if you can.

March started with me still in the US, but I was soon back home in the UK and back to work at the bookstore. I'm assuming that something along the lines of a run on anti-American/anti-gay/anti-anythingbutChristian/etc. comments must have cropped up during that month, as my only post during the month has a kind of "I've had enough and I need to remind people who I am and what I stand for" sort of flair.

April started out to be rough. I'd been here a year, Jeany would have been 13 years old, would have been with me 11 years, and had been gone for a year. Susan had a birthday and I was reminded that I'd made it through 12 whole months of living abroad and no one had died or gone insane. Life turned out to be better than I'd expected in April.

May brought us Mills's birthday...big number 12! That was the only post that month, most likely because I was trying to not think about the fact that my precious little man was twelve and that I was twelve years older than I'd been when he was sprung from the Spartanburg Animal Shelter. Somewhere during the month a new government was elected here in the UK, and things have gone downhill fast ever since. The end of May marked the lost of my Hunky a year prior, but we chose to remember him fondly as we took a day trip to a place that he would have loved...York.

June wasn't hot, but it wasn't freezing anymore either which was quite nice. I'm going to include July here as well, because there was one event that absolutely stole focus for all of us for the entire month. I found a lump in one of my breasts. I survived having what turned out to be a cyst drained, as well as a needle-core biopsy (google that if you want to be scared out of your mind) that showed absolutely nothing. Mind you, I'd planned my funeral in the six weeks from finding the pitch invader to the results of the biopsy, and I've never been so glad to hear a doctor say he recommended that I not come back to him again.

In between June and July a former co-worker and friend of mine, Christine, came to visit for 10 days. Other than family, she's turning out to be the only visitor I've had from the states, and I very much enjoyed playing bumbling tour guide while she was here. Totally took my mind off the pitch invader, that's for sure!

August is the hottest month of the year, with temps soaring into the...wait for it...70s. Holy moly. Can you believe it? Tempers ran a bit hot during August, but I said then and I will continue to say that I am very proud of myself for sticking to my guns and asking for what I needed. I think that all involved have gotten past it...but to be honest, the most important people involved, me and Simon, have and all is well. He and I had a blast doing some exploring of West Yorkshire.

The heat didn't stay, as evidenced by this excerpt from a post in August: "We're now fully into the August Bank Holiday weekend and I was wearing a scarf to work this morning. A Scarf. In August. I'll leave you Southern Americans a moment to fan yourselves madly as that thought settles in."

September was full of planning for our American Future, publishing a volume including all my dog books, and politics all over the globe. Somehow I got drawn into all the "Tea Party" insanity back in the US and wrote what I think to be a very salient explanation of why I think those folks are just plain nutters.

October was pretty much nothing but a countdown to our trip to America at the end of the month. I was captivated momentarily by the rescue of 33 Chilean miners from a collapsed mine, and wish that the result had been the same when the mine collapsed in New Zealand.

Oh, there was the wearing of a witch's hat, stripey socks and an actual skirt to work one day just before we flew because it was almost Halloween. Moving on.

November=NaNoWriMo. I wrote 50,000 words worth of an EQ fan fiction novel during the month of November, and I have never felt so much like a real writer. I know some people look down their collective literary noses at NaNoWriMo but I feel like I really accomplished something awesome that month. I also recapped our visit to America, a fact that makes my winning at NaNoWriMo even more special...I didn't really start in earnest until after we got back on the 12th.

And here we are in December. It's been a rough month. It's the second Christmas in a row I've been away from my family, and this year Simon and I were here on our own because the rest of his family was up north and we just couldn't manage that without our own car. I think I've been the most homesick that I've been the whole year this month. I'm trying to channel it into resolve and determination to make the move back to America happen as soon as possible.

So to my resolution last year...earning money through my writing. While the blogs haven't brought in any money (only one of them possibly could) and NaNoWriMo produced a novel that I can't publish without asking for Sony's permission first, I have sold some of the Proud Racer compilations so I'm letting that count. I'm keeping the same resolution for next year and just going to build on it. There will be money made through writing...and even if there's not, there will be published work. There's a writer in me...she just needs to come up and get busy.

Happy New Year, see you guys in Twenty-Eleven.