And for seasons, and for days, and years

Everywhere, people, corporations, and media pundits are presenting annual reports and year-end summaries of their worlds in brief. My own year has been far too interesting and full of adventures and change to begin to summarize in a brief report. But I'll try.

We acquired five, two-day-old buff Plymouth Rock hen chicks on March 15. On August 12, the one called Havilah laid the flock's first egg. They've grown into the best-looking blondes on our block.

The Cat was diagnosed with diabetes in May. I dedicated eight days to pricking his ears to check his blood glucose around the clock and measuring and administering insulin shots; his diabetes resolved completely in that time with a change in diet. He then progressed rapidly into hepatic lipidosis and received a life-saving feeding tube. For the next nine weeks, my days revolved around his bellysnacks, or tube feeding. Mostly, they revolved around keeping his tube in place despite his determination to remove it. After a few ER trips to re-insert the tube, I resorted to duct taping it down after each feeding. Thankfully, he recovered, and is now suspiciously healthy, plotting his next scheme to derail life as I prefer it.

Rachel and Nathan were married in July, a very happy thing indeed.

In late August my husband persuaded me that I should have a "blog," whatever that was. I had been wondering whether and how God might impel me to write again. And so, ending a seven-year sabbath as a recovering wordsmith, my blog became a daily discipline. I thought it might also be a way for my pastor to know I really was listening, even though I look pretty zoned out on Lord's day mornings. I launched my blog as Board Housewife & The Cat on August 28. Due to an unexpected incidence of pun-blindness in the population, I changed the title to Mrs. B & The Cat. This is my 154th post.

One blog leads to another, and I began visiting the blogs of missionaries Ruben and Heidi and their three-legged dog Zack, who wrote a Christian romance novel this year. From my experience, it is as good as anything of its genre. Ruben and Heidi and Zack became very special online friends of mine and my husband's, and we aspire somehow to actually meet them at some point when they come to the States. We would love to see them in Mexico, but the Cat has yet to clear us for travel.

Christmas came with a three-day weekend this year; it will not again until 2009 and then not again until 2017. Christmas day was a huge deal for us. My husband pruned our apple trees while a cat we'd never seen before performed some antics for him, moving toward the chicken coop. The chickens, safe in their fenced coop, batted their wings at the cat with impressive ferocity, and the little black creature retreated to the heights of our plum tree. If he's still there, he's been quiet. We walked along the waterfront and mused at the new lows in designer-gene dogs. Some of these were barely four inches off the ground.

As I was about to heat my herb-filled pillow that helps me sleep, our microwave groaned its last on Christmas night, making an absolutely horrible sound and emitting an aroma of burnt transformer insulation flesh. This required my brave husband to face the after-Christmas crowds alone on an unanticipated microwave quest.

And I learned more than I ever aspired to know about Kwanzaa from The Concerned Citizen. You probably should, too.