Rosemary for Remembrance

Quoting Doonesbury in 1979 (when all the world and I were young) "To an armpit of a year!"  (For Doonesbury, it was "decade"; he had no idea of the horrors yet to come.)

As you could tell by my reduced posting rate, things didn't go well by me.  The migraines were bad and my husband was so miserable at work he nearly walked out the door without having a job to walk into.  

Great things that happened, though: 

• My son excelled in community college; he discovered a fierce love for college-level history and bonded with the chair of the department, who recommended which courses my son take for winter.  He has gone from severe anxiety and "I'm just taking this for personal enrichment" to thinking about which college he'd like to transfer to after the two-year degree.   My emotions are not just "intellectual mom wants kid to go to college", although I fear that's obvious -- it's that my son is no longer placing limits on himself on the assumption that he can never succeed.
• My daughter continued to blossom.  This fall, when applying to graduate school in social science, she wasn't crippled by anxiety.  Instead, she set herself time goals and easily hit the first two deadlines (the second two applications are due in January).    She also convinced herself she wasn't unworthy of UC Berkeley and applied there.  At her request, I gave edits for her essays; they're superb.  You never know what will happen, especially given the state education cut-backs, but I think she did a good job of presenting herself.  
• The children started cooking supper one night a week; both of them are growing in confidence and skill.  This is good both for their long-time lives and for my husband, who gets a day off.
• I started taking a new medication, indomethacin, in June or so.  I now often have 3-4 day stretches without a migraine; this is spectacular.
• I started writing again.   Extrapolating from Yuletide, I decided that outside deadlines did a lot to motivate me.  As a result, I completed 3 works, rather than just one for Yuletide.   I also started a WIP that I'm happy with, and I hope to move it forward in 2016 even without deadline pressure.
• (YAY YAY YAY) My husband got recruited, as in a company contacted him directly.   Within 3 weeks, he had a job offer.   He will start work in the new year.  Fingers crossed.

I have hopes for 2016.   That's a nice feeling.