A whole year gone by

I realized late last night (a week too late, and a couple hours too late to mention) that I’d let Tales from FAR Manor’s first anniversary slide by without comment. That’s us guys; always forgetting anniversaries, right?

Originally, I’d meant this as a private place to complain about life in general — and in particular, a big house I’d been pushed into buying, would have to maintain, and really didn’t want to live in. I made the name (and handle) up on the spur of the moment — for those of you who don’t know, FAR means “Forget About Retirement.” On May 16, 2005, I had no intention of giving out the URL to anyone. If a stranger found me by clicking Next Blog, fine, but in my original plans they would have found only a written version of Primal Whine Therapy. Or maybe I just let things slide through June, and picked up again in July with a new focus and intent.

Looking back, this last year has been both better and worse than I could have imagined. The Summer of Discontent saw The Boy grow more and more hostile until he up and left — then came back with a dysfunctional girlfriend in tow. School just kind of went by the wayside for him and Lobster, who also fell into the same egotistical black hole — both of them could have graduated last Friday with just a little effort, but it was effort they weren’t willing to make and they didn’t care about the consequences. The Boy left again, but M.A.E. is still here and slowly beginning to mature (but still has fatal lapses of judgement). I wound up with both high blood pressure and high cholesterol, brought on partly by the chaos and partly by a rather inactive lifestyle.

And yet... somewhere along the line, I’d made my peace with FAR Manor. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t sell the place in a heartbeat were I offered a really good price, but I no longer hate living here. I’ve even begun to take some interest in the environs, which has been more work than it should have since I’d let the woods and weeds run riot in the previous two years. Maybe the Primal Whine Therapy worked after all — it has been said that you cannot observe something without affecting it. I’ve given up on ever having a satisfying sex life, but at least the finances are starting to clear up. I’ve lately started tackling projects that I’ve been meaning to do and somehow never got around to doing — writing them down over the last week may have helped there. The blog itself has also helped to mark when certain events happened; I’ve had my iBook in my lap on a couple occasions where I was able to pinpoint dates.

Lordy, I hope the next year coming up is a bit more peaceful than the last one. But whatever happens, I’ll write about some of it here, and include pictures when I can. This is FAR from a closing post... closing a crazy-arse year maybe, but I’ll be writing when I can.