Dear Friends and Family,
We had such hopes for 2013. Really, we did. New Year’s Day looked full of possibilities for us, and I truly thought that we would be in better places professionally, financially and personally. As the pages on the calendar turned, however, reality more than once came up and bit us, laughing demonically as it did so.
So what do you do when your best-laid schemes don’t turn out exactly the way you’d hoped?
You put your head down and keep going.
In January, I had to face facts: no one was hiring me to have words come out of my mouth, and very few people were hiring me to do background work, aka “being a meat prop”, so I looked for some straight work. The best I could come up with was a part time job that put me back onto a retail sales floor for the first time in over a decade, and the best that I can say about this job is that my legs got really toned and I lost 10 lbs. Their health plan, which I will lose come 2014, didn’t cover much, and my “holiday bonus” was a coupon for 30% off selected items and 10% off of other items in the store, which wound up being worth $8.50. I did get an agent in NY, and they’ve sent me on over a dozen auditions this year, but no bookings yet. So between the day job, borrowing from every conceivable place I could think of, and the rare bird known as an acting gig, it’s been tough.
I keep going.
Tina’s first year of college wasn’t exactly going according to plan, either. While she really didn’t like all of the mechanical engineering work she had to do, she really loved working at the campus theatre, doing behind the scenes stuff and making friends. With her college not wanting her back until her grades were more to their liking, she decided that a change of direction was in order. Starting this September, Tina is attending a local community college, pursuing her dream to be a theater set designer. It’s still a bit of a slog for her, but her grades and her attitude are a lot more positive, and she got some on hand experience helping Town & Country Players with one of their productions.
She keeps going.
Though it all, Gail remained active with church, the SCA (taking Tina to fencing practice, for instance) and the Girl Scouts Historical Committee while trying to come up with ways to keep us from totally going under. She did this while simultaneously dealing with the unresolved physical and legal issues stemming from her car accident, now stretching into its ninth year, and with her parents and grandmother, living in Florida but desperately needing her help, as their lives spun into chaos arising from their declining physical and mental abilities. She made a trip down to Florida in May to see them and try to make some sense of what was happening to them.
She kept going.
Things started coming to a head in August. By this time, Gail’s Mom had been put in an assisted living facility. Gail’s Dad, Harvey Biggs, passed away August 14th, and as of this writing she and her siblings are still trying to sort out their business (I myself cancelled almost $200 in magazine subscriptions that they had taken out). In September, the attorney handling Gail’s accident told us that a final financial settlement from the insurance company was imminent, and we received that cheque in December. Finally, Gail’s Grandmother, Helen Winterhalter, passed away on December 8th at the age of 101. With their passing there will surely be more things to deal with than we thought we would have to, but we now have some breathing room financially, and having that cushion brought more smiles now than we’ve had in a while.
Not that it’s been exactly doom & gloom 24/7. The outpouring of support from our friends, both online and in person, regarding both Harvey & Helen’s passing have been tremendous. My own Mom is still going strong, albeit slower, but that’s to be expected. Janice calls us every so often, and between those calls and her Facebook postings we can see that she’s thriving, which we love. While we have no direct contact with our 4-year-old grandson Zachary from either Kate or his father, the occasional You Tube video we catch and the annual pictures sent by his other grandparents let us see that he’s growing and thriving. Would we want more contact? Absolutely, but we take what we can get.
So we end 2013 a bit more battle scarred than when we started, but in some ways better able to handle adversity that comes our way. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re less afraid of what might be lurking behind every tree. So to you, dear friend, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and whatever you do...
Keep going.
Peace & Love,
Gail, Mike, Tina, Princess & Falkor
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”- Anne Lamott
