So what am I crying about anyway?

What was so bad with 2007 you might ask? Well, let's see, in fairly chronological order:

• In January we put my wife's father into a nursing home for 100 days of rehabilitation, with (we thought) the understanding that if he could manage to get himself in and out of bed, on and off the toilet, and feed himself a couple times a day, he could come back to our house (where he has been for 6 years). Otherwise he would need to stay.
• The day after he was settled in his 2nd Nursing Home (the first one was so bad we moved him after one day) Jack, my beautiful, smart, loyal, best friend, 5 1/2 year old German Shepard died from bone cancer, the day before he was scheduled to have one of his hind legs amputated at the hip.
• I spent February and March doing the little puppet dance for medicaid, trying to get my wife's father approved so he could stay in the nursing home if needed.
• In April, He came back to the house, even thought he could do none of things we said he would need to do to come home. So the duties of taking care of him (and he weighs in at nearly 300 lbs) fell to me and my wife.
• On a nice note: In May, my wife and I got to sit in on an interview and a Q&A session with Hillary Clinton. PLEASE don't go all political on me. We would have gone to see any candidate they just happened to call us for Hillary (who did a pretty nice job with the interview and the crowd Q&A).
• June was spent in a mad dash trying to hire a new Web Developer to work in my department. The HR people "didn't have time" to do any of this and after 3 interviews it became apparent that I would not get the job filled before the end of the month / fiscal year.
• July comes and the Web Position is pushed back in the next budget until the 1st of the year.
• August (things really go bad here) My wife loses her job after over 12 years of service in a way filled with such injustice and moral cowardice on the employers part it still makes me see red (did I mention I word at the same place?).
• They day they kick my wife out of the building they tell me to leave on my planned sabbatical early. After every 7 years of completed service at the place I work you get 3 months off paid. I was looking forward to the time to rebuild my wood working shop, and had spent several weekends before emptying and knocking down the old one.
• The middle of August I was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer, and had Surgery on the 24th of September (and emergency surgery on the 25th).
• We did spend 2 nice weeks at Myrtle Beach, SC in October.
• I needed to have another surgery, and after fighting with he insurance company finally go it approved at the place every doctor I saw said I needed to go and had the surgery on the 26th of November. (Oh yeah, I am now on Medical leave as my Sabbatical days have run out).
• My Uncle (who I liked very much) died while having his own cancer surgery on the same day I was going under the knife.
• Two days later my father died at home suddenly (while I was still in the hospital).

Those are just the highlights... Other stuff happened (broken showers, brother in law becoming homeless again and moving into the house, On a good note we did get a new puppy in July).

So, 2007, kiss my ass. 2008, lets see if we can even out the karma balances this year.