2010 Christmas Letter
Just finished getting out the last of my Christmas cards! Don't bother to check your calendar; it's still February. But losing a chunk of time to sickness around the holidays left me drastically behind on, well, life.
With no further ado, I present...The Staffin Wiebe 2010 Christmas Letter!
Dear friends and family,
Belated Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and--heck, why not--early Happy Valentine's Day! I (Abra) am behind on everything, and Christmas cards are no exception. The only thing piling up more than my to-do list is the snow in Minnesota. We got a 20-year blizzard here a bit before Christmas, dropping 17+ inches of snow in Minneapolis in a day (other parts of the state got over 23). The snow piles are at least hip-high. Along some streets, the curbside snow ridge is taller than I am, and I am not short.
For us, 2010 began with a car accident and got worse from there. In January, we were driving back from getting a "free" pie when we got rear-ended, which totaled our little car. It also changed that "free" apple pie to a several-thousand-dollar apple pie. The pie was good, but not that good. The accident was not a hugely significant event (we were uninjured), but it sort of set the tone for the year.
In April, I had to have emergency abdominal surgery. That was pretty rough, but I am fully recovered and healthy now. At the time, I was also still in the tail end of my long, slow recovery from knee surgery. As the months tick by, I am having less and less lingering knee pain. I was able to do a lot of bicycling this summer, which was both fun and useful. I miss it now. Some people in Minneapolis do bike year-round, but they are crazy.
My mother was diagnosed with advanced ovarian and endometrial cancer this summer while she and my dad were working at a school in India. After an attempt at treatment in India didn't go well, they returned to the United States--with no health insurance, no jobs, and no savings cushion. They have been able to get by with the help of friends and family. At this point, my mother is going through an intensive course of intra-peritoneal chemo and feels about as lousy as you might expect. But the chemo is usually effective, and she looks forward to feeling well enough to host cross-country bicyclists again next summer. They were able to get on Kansas' pre-existing condition insurance plan before surgery, though the premium and the deductible are both very high. To raise donations for her medical costs, I've been writing an online serial story, The Circus of Brass and Bone, which you can read and donate to at http://www.circusofbrassandbone.com.
Aside from this little list of calamities, not much has changed. Overall, we are doing well. Phil is still a chemist in GE's water filtration R&D department. I still work at a legal document services company, picking up hours here and there doing pretty much everything under the sun. The serial story has been eating up most of my writing time. We've been seeing more of my family this year, since in addition to visiting my parents when they came back from India and for Christmas, we were able to make it to the Wiebe family reunion this summer.
Hope you and yours are doing well ~ Abra (and Phil, by proxy)
With no further ado, I present...The Staffin Wiebe 2010 Christmas Letter!
Dear friends and family,
Belated Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and--heck, why not--early Happy Valentine's Day! I (Abra) am behind on everything, and Christmas cards are no exception. The only thing piling up more than my to-do list is the snow in Minnesota. We got a 20-year blizzard here a bit before Christmas, dropping 17+ inches of snow in Minneapolis in a day (other parts of the state got over 23). The snow piles are at least hip-high. Along some streets, the curbside snow ridge is taller than I am, and I am not short.
For us, 2010 began with a car accident and got worse from there. In January, we were driving back from getting a "free" pie when we got rear-ended, which totaled our little car. It also changed that "free" apple pie to a several-thousand-dollar apple pie. The pie was good, but not that good. The accident was not a hugely significant event (we were uninjured), but it sort of set the tone for the year.
In April, I had to have emergency abdominal surgery. That was pretty rough, but I am fully recovered and healthy now. At the time, I was also still in the tail end of my long, slow recovery from knee surgery. As the months tick by, I am having less and less lingering knee pain. I was able to do a lot of bicycling this summer, which was both fun and useful. I miss it now. Some people in Minneapolis do bike year-round, but they are crazy.
My mother was diagnosed with advanced ovarian and endometrial cancer this summer while she and my dad were working at a school in India. After an attempt at treatment in India didn't go well, they returned to the United States--with no health insurance, no jobs, and no savings cushion. They have been able to get by with the help of friends and family. At this point, my mother is going through an intensive course of intra-peritoneal chemo and feels about as lousy as you might expect. But the chemo is usually effective, and she looks forward to feeling well enough to host cross-country bicyclists again next summer. They were able to get on Kansas' pre-existing condition insurance plan before surgery, though the premium and the deductible are both very high. To raise donations for her medical costs, I've been writing an online serial story, The Circus of Brass and Bone, which you can read and donate to at http://www.circusofbrassandbone.com.
Aside from this little list of calamities, not much has changed. Overall, we are doing well. Phil is still a chemist in GE's water filtration R&D department. I still work at a legal document services company, picking up hours here and there doing pretty much everything under the sun. The serial story has been eating up most of my writing time. We've been seeing more of my family this year, since in addition to visiting my parents when they came back from India and for Christmas, we were able to make it to the Wiebe family reunion this summer.
Hope you and yours are doing well ~ Abra (and Phil, by proxy)