Happy New Year!

I’m excited to be one of the first bloggers to wish everyone a happy new year.

I, personally, couldn’t wait for the year to end. For all intended purposes, it went well. I published several more books (which was good for my pocketbook), made some great friends, and learned a thing or two about myself. I thought I was in the home stretch for finishing off the year with no major disasters.

Then it happened. I few simple words uttered by my partner and the year's nasty demons, which at first, seemed to bypass us, surfaced with a vengeance as 2010 bitch-slapped us back to reality.

”I think we have a problem.” Were the last famous words spoken before we found the nightmare of a hot water foundation leak in our living room.

Try convincing someone to take on such a large job only 4 days before Christmas. Yeah, good luck with that! Everyone wants to make sure they are home, snuggled close to family, not jack-hammering a crater in some strangers living room, and then mucking around in mud trying to find a leak the size of a pin hole.

Our insurance company has been awesome! Yes, I refer to the current present tense because the nightmare continues. It will be at least another 2-3 weeks before we get our little house back to normal. Well, as normal as can be.

We are getting new floors in the entry, hallway, living room and bedroom with new baseboards to go with it. The holes the plumber carved in our walls, for repairs, will be patched and our washroom, kitchen, living room, entry, and hallway walls will be painted, and yes, I was mumbling, row, row, row your boat gently down our hall, as the plumber tended to the foundation leak. Oh, the joys of owning your own home.

The truth is that even with everything that happened, I am grateful for what we have. You see, it's our tradition to volunteer at a soup kitchen every Christmas day and this year was no exception. How's the saying go..."neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night" - in our case, water, would keep us from our Christmas Soup Kitchen.

The funny thing about putting yourself out there is that you tend to forget your own problems and you start to see things from a different perspective. My anger quickly turned to gratefulness.

I'm grateful we have a home to worry about. I'm grateful we have the means to get things repaired or replaced. I'm grateful that SERVPRO of Dallas NWD, sent Nallen to our house for the water extraction. Kudos to Nallen, for without his sense of humor, I surely would have completely lost my mind. I'm grateful for the friends and family that I have in my life. I'm grateful for plumbers and homeowners insurance. I'm grateful 2010 finally came to a close and I'm grateful that my parents walked twenty miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, everyday, not that its ever snowed in Cuba, but...you get my point.

I have only one simple request of this new and upcoming year. "Please, dear G-d, don't let any of my lessons involve water. Amen."

Happy New Year and remember, keep it short, keep it sweet, and keep it real.

Annie :0)
http://www.anniealvarez.net/
http://naughtylittlevamp.blogspot.com/