I'm not really afraid to say or type "hell," but it's a lot more fun to use H-E-double-hockey-sticks, and I'm a fan of embracing the simple pleasures in life right now! I especially need to embrace the simple pleasures right now because this last year has been ROUGH. As a quick re-cap of the highlights (or really the lowlights probably), over the last year, I have been involved in 4 life-or-death situations with my immediate family and closest friends. All four of them required hospital visits and/or stays, and 2 of them required police assistance. I have been in the thick of dealing with lice infestations and parasite infestations. We heartbreakingly left our church of over four years, which was an agonizing decision involving many months and tears and attempts to reconcile. Also, my own health took a dramatic swan-dive, which was probably understandable considering the events of the year. This by no means captures all of the year's dramas, but they were prob...