A day, a year

I love the "photo a day" challenges, and I sometimes start them, but don't usually finish them. I was going to do a "tarot card a day" one (no challenge, just for my own learning), and I did it for a few days, then something happened that destroyed my mood for a few days, and I couldn't go on. Isn't it silly how that happens? But it does. I have a really hard time bouncing back from from things sometimes--disappointment, a perceived insult, something that doesn't work out the way that I had hoped.

I'm going to try the card a day thing again for December, as well as doing Susannah Conway's December Reflections. I was going through my Day Timer, putting the prompts in for each day, and when I got to the last day, it asks for your word for 2016.

I can't remember for sure what my word for 2015 was, either "sparkle" or "shine." I got a manicure right after the first of the year, and my nail tech convinced me to do gold sparkles (I always get French manicures), and I thought, well, that fits in with my word of the year, so, okay. But then Bob went into the hospital on the 5th, and was away from home, either in the hospital or in rehab, for six weeks, and I didn't feel like I did much sparkling. It was much more like my word for 2014, which was "believe." I did a lot of that in 2015. Bob says that was what made the difference -- my belief that he would live, and maybe so.

I notice that the prompt for December 1 is "sparkle," so I guess that's appropriate. I'll have to think about what I want my word for 2016 to be while I take photos this month.

It seems like we sure spent a lot of money this year, from the mountain of medical bills following Bob's hospitalization, to having to have our trees pruned, to having to get an unexpected set of tires this weekend. But we will try to have a small Christmas this year, and it will be fine. I have a secret thing that I'm going to be saving money for, and I'm really hoping that I can make that work. I'm excited about it.

The photo above is a selfie that Bob took a couple of years ago. I posted it to my company's Slack channel saying, "This is the face of retail from now until the end of the year." It makes me laugh every time I see it, he's so serious. And I love the bent "antler."