Heading Toward 2024

I’m not sure about you, but 2023 has been a major high and low year for me. It started off with a Covid hangover that provided me some forced downtime in December of 2022 – just long enough for my real estate obsession to kick in and I found the place I’m living in now. Although nerve-wracking, I’m glad it happened. It’s a great investment, an amazing area of the city and I can literally walk to nearly anywhere I want to go in the city. 

No doubt I’ll be receiving, like many of you perhaps, the letters of the year in review that are filled with how well everything and everyone has been doing the previous year, so I’ve never done one myself – although I’m thinking about giving a true, gritty and real overview of 2023. 

Here goes. Please note – this is the abbreviated version. Maybe . . . someday soon . . . I’ll give all the details! Maybe!

January 2023

I’m an absolute wreck about putting my place on the market, getting what I want for it, making the numbers work for me to come up with the cash to buy the new, more costly property, etc. 

I also started a part-time consulting project that was a huge help in moving the dial on the above mentioned initiative . . . However, it was like drinking out of a firehouse at first and  I thought it best to not share the impending move.

I got what I wanted for my condo. It closes but the buyer told me just after the purchase and sale agreement – that she would immediately sell the unit again and not live there after all. I wondered if this would even happen (and had already packed 80% of my items).

Months earlier, I had started the grueling process of completing forms for the Department of Developmental Services in Boston for my son Noah who needs assistance. We both were interviewed in January as part of the process in gaining entry into help for people with challenges. Interviews went well with both of us. Mostly Noah’s.

February

Thankfully, a near stranger I had met through a MeetUp Group I was a member of offered her condo to me for a month so I could get the painting and floors redone in my unit before moving in. 

That was amazingly generous, however the painting nor the floors were finished upon my moving in. 

March

The move into a condo occurred. With painting not completed and floors not finished either. The dust. The dust. The dust. Not sure how the rest of the month went. I was in a daze.

April

Preparing for an international visitor Maria to stay for the month of May. Pushing for work to be done, but It’s coming along at . . . a . . . snail’s . . . pace. 

May

Maria arrives! She’s lovely. Same age as my daughter Chloe and is excited about her project at Mass General Hospital. The day she arrives, I take a new high blood pressure medication and feel ill at Trader Joe’s as I’m picking up some things she might like to eat during the week ahead. I felt like I was going to faint and went out to the car thinking I hadn’t had enough to eat that day. I eat an apple and drink some water and I’m ok. For now.

I take another new pill on Friday and think I might have Epstein Barrs syndrome (mono). I had that last year when I failed to write my Year in Review! Felt lousy but still wasn’t making the connection.

Saturday, I met my friend Teri to have dinner and see My Fair Lady. We did meet at Capital Grille, where I proceeded to go into the bar area to sit at a reserved table so I wouldn’t faint . . . again. I ordered dinner but could not entertain putting a bite of food in my mouth. I knew I had to leave and miss the show. 

By Sunday, I had stopped taking the medication and rested all day. 

Monday morning, I got a call from Maria – my international guest. She called me because she thought it was odd I wasn’t up already and she was worried (with great reason). I was so grateful that she called and got up and realized I was not able to stand or walk. I had my phone in my hand thank goodness and called my nurse practitioner. She told me that I may be having a stroke and should call 911 immediately. She was going to prepare for the Emergency Department. So I did. 

I was admitted that day and by Wednesday I was in ICU because I was going into shock and had a rash that was unbearable. Unbearable. Was discharged with lots of prednisone and sent on my way. Prednisone. Don’t. Get. Me. Started.

June

I’m home, but the rash is ongoing. Marie’s parents come to visit and the weather is horrible. So rainy as most of Boston was this past summer. 

They left and I had grown so fond of Maria, it was a loss. A big one. I also was still dealing with the rash that wouldn’t go away and the cure . . . again? More prednisone. I’ll discuss all the prednisone nightmares in next week’s year in review.

Happy Holidays!

Nancy

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