Calendars

Those of you who have been to our house may remember that Karen and I keep a big calendar near the kitchen. It shows a whole year at a time with room to jot down appointments or other interesting things that happen in our life. I try to get the next year’s edition ready in December then have it printed first thing in January. So about a week ago I got the 2010 calendar and put it up in the picture frame we keep it in.

There is a bit of a ritual involved. I carefully fold up the old year and put it in with previous calendars we have kept. I have a copy of every calendar we made since we started keeping them in 1972. It’s a walk down Memory Lane looking at the old ones.

Lots of interesting things happened to us in 1972. We moved from out in the country by the airport to 941 21st Ave SW. In the process we managed to kill all our tropical fish and had to start from scratch. Lance got the croup and had to spend 5 days in the hospital. I got my first
SLR camera, a Canon FTb. I quit my job because my boss cheated me out of my vacation. Later I found out he was dying of leukemia and was going a little crazy. The day I quit, Karen called me from Iowa City and told me she had wrecked our new car, rendering it undrivable. I worked in Iowa City for a few weeks and Keith Andrews’ dad gave us an old Dodge to drive. Both Karen and I were taking classes. She was at the U of I and I was at Kirkwood. I started working for the City of Cedar Rapids. We got our wrecked car back. It took over 8 weeks to get it fixed. We got our first water bed.

The most important thing from 1972? Wendy’s birth, 13 days overdue.

After that, Wendy and the rest of us visited the Maquoketa Caves when she was only 4 weeks old. The lights went out when we were in the middle of it and we had to tag along with some people who had a flashlight. We went to Racine for Thanksgiving and almost killed Wendy with some decongestant spray. And I got a replacement for my new camera.

All in all, an eventful year.