What do you mean, the year's over? I'm not done yet!

[treeskin]

Where do I start? And do I even try to keep things in order? I'm not sure I can keep track, and I lived it. Roughly in order, anyway...

2005 started slow--my work, By's work, the cats, our hobbies. Nothing major.

Tuffy, our oldest and dearest cat, had a stroke in March, partially recovered by Heartland, was okay most of the summer, declined very rapidly through the end of October and November, and passed away the day before Thanksgiving. I'm still counting cats, and wondering where he is when I hit five instead of six.

Heartland was a riot, as usual. My hair was emerald green.

A kiss in the dark the end of Heartland turned into a solid relationship with the man who's snoring in bed right now. And that was a catalyst for many other things, like me falling head over heels in love with Byron all over again. By gained a playmate on Labor Day weekend, who turned into a love, and we're all beginning to gel into a family of five. Weird, but I like it, and I'm coming to rely on the support of these wonderful people.

We skipped Laid Back Labor Day, in favor of attending Festival of Tara. Much more our speed, mets lots of lovely peopl, had much fun, even though it rained A Lot. Something about getting too many pagans on that hill, and it rains.

Granny Phillips died the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We flew to Syracuse, got a car, and drove north from there to By's family. The trip home was scary--we barely made it back to the airport ("lake effect snow" translates to "you should have left an hour ago"), the plane barely made it off the runway, our connecting flight was cancelled, and we ended up returning to KC via Atlanta. Our luggage arrived the next day. And we get to do that trip again in June, because they'd had too much rain up there to dig the grave, and were expecting the ground to freeze hard any day.

We made it through another Xmas at Mom's. Sis's husband is leaving for intensive training in 3 days, three months there, then to Iraq, so the gathering was even more strained than usual.

The job I'd come to despise ended in October, and I'm in my dream job now, the greenhouse. And I let them talk me into teaching this coming semester. Mom's still laughing about that one.

By switched jobs the end of the year, after 8 years with Robyn. The parting went better than we feared it would. He's now a bench jeweler with Vulcan's Forge, and looking forward to gaining new skills, and enjoying a more stable work environment.

And lots, lots more, little things and not-so-little things that I just can't get into recordable order right now. But that's the highlights.