After 2008 I started posting the newsletter to the blog, and you can see them here:
However, I never published the "2016 year in review" (it was in draft form) so here it is for the first time:
I wrote the 2015 newsletter a bit prematurely -- December 10, to be precise -- because just before Chistmas our landlords told us they would not be extending our lease! (They had been living in China and had decided to move home.) We had been thinking about buying a house but I was still out of work and with only one month to find another property, we had no time. Fortunately, the house we'd tried to rent the previous year had just come back on the market and so we were able to immediately make an offer and we ended up renting it. The new landlords were also overseas and they didn't ask for a lease, just a month-to-month contract, so I was a bit concerned they were thinking about moving back but they assured me they had no plans to do so. Our plan was still to buy a house so we were happy leasing month-to-month.
About the same time I was approached by an old co-worker who was starting up a company and asked me to join. I was employee #4 and I started on the same day we moved into the new house. (It was also the day our Internet provider screwed up and it took two weeks to get Internet!) Employee #3 quit after a month so it was just the three of us -- one in California, one in Oxford and me in New Zealand -- trying to build a new concept from scratch, and it has been very intense with crazy hours, but quite exciting.
Things were going really well...for about six weeks. That's when an estate agent showed up at our door to let us know the owners had put the house up for sale! They didn't even have the decency to let us know themselves.We were livid but there wasn't much we could do. Property prices in New Zealand had been on fire, going up 15-20% every year, which was pricing us out of the market. The owners were asking top dollar so we were hoping it wouldn't sell, but at the last minute they got an offer, which turned into a month of negotiating, then the bank submitted its own list of requirements. When it was finally settled, the new owner told us he needed to sell his current house before moving in, so we could stay until the end of November.
My partner is one of those people who hates doctors, hospitals, medicine, etc. She's not into crazy alternative therapies (though we've had heated discussions over the merits of manuka honey), nor is she a stranger to western healthcare (she's had three kids and sliced open her foot once in a freak pane glass window issue) but generally speaking she takes care of herself and keeps away from doctor. However, she started having abdominal issues and the doctors couldn't figure out why. They finally sent her for a CT scan of the entire abdomen which discovered...breast cancer.
Of course that wasn't related to the abdominal issues, but it took immediate precedence. It was a miracle they even found it because the CT scan just happened to catch the corner of her breast, where it was located. Thankfully, the NZ health system is actually quite amazing when it comes to cancer and she quickly had a succession of scans to see if the cancer had spread (it hadn't) and in less than a month she had surgery to remove the tumor.
Unfortunately, she then developed a series of infections which resulted in her being in and out of the hospital several times.The nurses and ED* doctors were great. In fact, two of the ED doctors belong to our synagogue so we got VIP treatment. :-) It was almost two months before my partner was feeling human again and able to go back to work and, more importantly, start the radiation therapy. (As the cancer was localized, they decided to do local radiation rather than chemotherapy.)
Of course all this meant we couldn't search for a house and our deadline was fast approaching. Now, I don't believe in divine intervention, but in mid-November I got a call from the new owner saying he'd just been offered a job in Brisbane so they were moving to Australia and asked if we wanted to stay in the house. It was a Hanukkah miracle.
Around the same time, the eldest daughter decided to move back in with us. The kids' father, who worked overseas and had never been around much, decided it would be funny to alienate the kids from their mom, so every time he visited he would tell the kids outlandish lies about their mom. Being kids, they lacked the rational capacity to see through his nonsense, but every time the kids would come home we'd spend hours calming them down because whatever he told them had freaked them out. (He also had a history of mental illness.) The younger two weren't as susceptible but the eldest was, and he really did a number on her. A few months after she turned 14 he told her she could live with his new wife. (I should note she was Nigerian in her mid-20s with a newborn baby who had just moved to New Zealand, so she was very happy to have a live-in babysitter.)
Of course this violated the custody agreement and we went to court but New Zealand has some very strange laws, including that a 16 year old can choose where they want to live, and that 14 is close enough to 16. So she stayed with her step-mom and had no adult supervision. She cut herself off from her peers and her school attendance (and grades) were disastrous, and there wasn't anything we could do except hope that she came to her senses. It took a year and a half, and I think a large part of that was she couldn't figure out a way to admit to herself she'd made a mistake. When her mom got sick, she quietly moved back in. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered she'd been left feral and had forgotten how to be part of a family, and so on top of everything else we were spending a lot of time dealing with her anti-social behaviours. On top of that, the middle child had flourished in her absence and now saw her older sister as an interloper and has suggested--numerous times--that she should go back to her step-mom's.
(I should note that over much of this period their dad was actually in New Zealand and living about 1km away. The kids made almost no effort to see him, and in fact they ran into him accidentally at the supermarket more often than they went to his house.)
But as 2017 dawns, all is right with the world. We've got all the kids at home again, which can sometimes feel like a chore but always feels like a blessing. We feel like we have a "home" again, even if it is a rental (and we're still hopeful we can buy a house in 2017). We went camping for a couple of days over Christmas and now the kids are at summer camp so we have a little time to ourselves. My partner will be finished with the radiation treatment at the end of January and I've told her she's not allowed to be sick again for at least two years. Between house, health and work, we didn't do much entertaining in 2016, but I'm hoping to pick that up again. We have friends here who are moving back to the States so we're looking to buy their car. (It's a 2008 VW to replace our 2004 Toyota.) So all in all, 2016 could have been better, but it could also have been much, much worse, so I'm very grateful. And, as always, I will remain optimistic about 2017...right until it kicks me in the nuts.
* ED=emergency department, which is A&E in the UK and ER in the States.
P.S. I didn't write reviews for 2017, 2018 or 2019, which is disappointing because the whole point of this was to remind me of all the things I'd done! Now all three years are a blur and all I can remember is this: After surgery and radiation, my partner recovered but I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I quit the start-up but it took almost a year to find another job. In the meantime I served on the Board of Directors for our synagogue and got shingles. In 2017, my stepson had his bar mitzvah and while the family was visiting, I proposed to my partner. We were married March 25, 2018 under a chuppah. In July of 2018 I was hired by MetService, New Zealand's weather agency. We did look for houses, and even made an offer on one, but didn't get it and we continue to live in the same rental. In 2019 our eldest daughter went on a gap year program in Israel and in 2020 she started university.
OK, I think you're all caught up now. Please remind me in December to write something.
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