Year's end

Here is a Tumblr post with a few photos of my yard from 2023.

It snowed last night, not even an inch, but enough for 2024 to begin tomorrow morning with snow on the ground.

I don't have lists, I barely remember when things happened over the last year, but here we go --

2023 is the year that my spouse learned about oxymatrine, began taking it, and has now had an 80% reduction/remission of her CFS (which began on New Year's of 2021/22.) I do not think it is possible to express my ongoing wonder and gratitude that this has occurred.

I spent January-September of 2023 with a tracheostomy, which colored everything else during those months.

In January my mother had a health issue and emergency surgery for it. First my spouse, and then I flew down to stay with her for a few days. She recovered and is fine now.

Over the summer I rode my mobility scooter all over our neighborhood. I love the freedom it gives me.

We have begun the process of having our current garage/shed demolished and a new garage, workshop, storage, and Accessory Dwelling Unit built. Work will begin in spring 2024.

This is the year I got my official autism diagnosis paperwork.

In many ways it has been a year with a LOT going on. But at the same time, the days have much of a sameness to them, and it's hard to remember them as distinct each from the next. I read, I watch tv and movies, I cook, I knit, I watch Kpop content, I garden, I write, I learn other crafts, I play video games, I spend time with people. Aside from the medical stuff and the lack of travel, it's pretty much the retirement I had envisioned.

The worst year of my life so far was 2022. Any year that isn't 2022 is now considered a pretty good year.

Books I read in 2023

This is the most reading I've done in YEARS. Somewhere around the end of 2015 or so, my ability to read just ... left? I couldn't listen to podcasts, I couldn't focus on reading, it was miserable. In 2016 I discovered that I could re-read certain authors, and that I could read new books by a scant handful of authors. (Alas, Agatha Christie is not likely to be putting out new books.) (Seanan McGuire and T. Kingfisher are, thankfully, very much alive and also put out a staggering number of books each year.) That's how it held, until early spring of this year, 2023. And slowly, carefully, I have been reading new-to-me books. Ones in bold I particularly enjoyed.

Fiction:
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers
Paladin's Faith, T. Kingfisher
Starter Villain, John Scalzi
A Haunting on the Hill, Elizabeth Hand
Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno Garcia
Death in Fancy Dress, J. Jefferson Farjeon
Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher
Camp Damascus, Chuck Tingle
Blood is Another Word for Hunger, Rivers Solomon
An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon
Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki
The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz -- This is the book that is sticking with me. It was amazing, and thought-proviking, and hope-filled, and EASY TO READ. So often when people say a book is thought-provoking they mean it's difficult. This is not difficult.
A House with Good Bones, T. Kingfisher

Non-fiction:
What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic, Annie Kotowicz
Honest Aging, Rosanne M. Leipzig
How to Keep House While Drowning, K.C. Davis
Guide to the Longbow, Brian J. Sorrells
Traditional Archery, Sam Fadala
Beginner's Guide to Traditional Archery, Brian J. Sorrells


Started but not finished yet: (These are books I fully intend to finish, but my ability to read them is not fully back yet.)
The Oxford History of Britain, Kenneth O. Morgan
How Infrastructure works, Deb Chachra
The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal
The Witch King, Martha Wells
The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History, Kassia St. Clair
The Ode Less Travelled, Stephen Fry
A History of Britain, Simon Schama
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitious 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman


DNF:
The Gift of Imperfection, Brene Brown  --  It turns out that Brene Brown is not really speaking to my specific emotional and mental health needs, and I rage-quit this book as well as Daring Greatly.

Re-reads:
I listen to audiobooks at night to help me sleep. Which means I re-listen to books I already know, as that way I won't miss an entire new-to-me book. My audiobook re-reads for 2023 included Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayer, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Like, as much of their works as are on audiobook on Google Play Books. I also listen to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by James LeCarre, and a couple very dry history books read by men with a British accent. I tried listening to the Rivers of London books because the narrator is AMAZING, but the plots are too engaging and I stayed awake listening to them. Same with Terry Pratchett on audiobook, the stories are too good and I stay awake to hear them.

Other re-reads are:
The Honor Harrington series, by David Weber, up to War of Honor
The works of T. Kingfisher - I didn't bold any of these up above, but I just fucking love all of T. Kingfisher's work. This is, as you may know, the not-secret pseudonym of Ursula Vernon. (She started out writing middle grade fiction as Ursula Vernon, and hence uses a pen-name for the works she imagines a parent of a middle-grade child might have apoplexy over.) Full disclosure, Ursula is a friend of mine and as a former editor I have published her work. But, jfc, I love her books. Ursula writes in every genre except lit-fic. The Saint of Steel books, aka the Paladin Romances, are, naturally, romances. Each one has, however, a gory murder mystery to be solved by the protagonists as they fall in love. Also, this is a fantasy setting. Nettle & Bone is straight fantasy. The Twisted Ones is straight-up horror, as is The Hollow Places, and A House with Good Bones. She also does re-tellings and re-imaginings of public domain stories, such as What Moves the Dead, or, The Raven and the Reindeer. Oh, and Digger is a comic that won a Hugo Award, about a wombat engineer who gets sucked into the machinations of gods both living and dead. Okay, maybe she doesn't do EVERY genre, but there's a lot of ground if you want to try something.