A look back at 2012.

A look back at 2012.

2013?  Seriously?  How is this past year over?!  What an epic, epic year its been.  2012 will certainly go down as one of the most memorable and eventful years of our lives, with the highest highs and the lowest lows.  I thought I’d use this post to recap some of the major events of the last year.  (I DID want to post this yesterday, on New Year’s Day, but Tess had other plans so I didn’t get to it. Sorry!)

I guess you could say the year kicked off last January with a bang… or a snow-dampened “thud” really.  It's a long story, but its also pretty funny at times so I’m going to share the whole thing.  Andy and I went to a conference at a ski resort in Utah (Snowbird).  In hindsight, perhaps Utah wasn’t the best place for me to learn to ski but I really wanted to go to the meeting - for the science. I figured I was athletic and, with Andy as my instructor, would be a quick learner.  The fact that Andy broke his ribs skiing at this very resort 8 years earlier didn’t deter me at all for some reason.  For the first few days, I WAS doing really well.  On our fourth and last day of skiing, despite feeling very sore and tired, I was feeling very confident and wanted to try out a more difficult blue trail after sticking to the green every previous day.  To start the day, Andy and I were going to do one last run on the green trail to warm up and I asked him to watch my turns to make sure they were tight and fast enough to work for me on the harder trail. 

Snowbird Utah. Beautiful. But my least favorite place on earth!

As we made our way down the mountain, he did as I asked, but unfortunately, when he stopped to turn around and watch me I was headed right for him.  Since I was so inexperienced, I couldn’t veer around him in control and I face-planted big time.  My boots were fixed into my skis too tight so they didn’t pop off as I took a nose-dive down the mountain.  When I was 18 I tore 3 ligaments in my knee (including my ACL) and had knee surgery.  This was actually the reason I hadn’t learned to ski earlier than this trip – I had always been so afraid of re-injuring that knee nothing made me want to risk going through that whole experience again. 

As soon as I fell I could feel the pain in my bad knee and was freaking out that I had torn my ACL again, but was simultaneously in denial about the potential of having done that to myself again. Other skiers stopped to see if I was ok but, at that moment, my pride was hurt more than anything.   God, I felt like such a loser lying there in the snow.  They offered to call the snow patrol to get me off the mountain, but because I’m a stubborn fool I shouted at them all that I was fine and to leave me alone.  Knowing that this resort didn’t accept health insurance only credit cards, all I could think was “I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $1,000 for a ride on a damn snow mobile!” whether or not that was even true. So I pulled myself up off the ground, clipped myself back into my skis and went flying down the mountain.  Andy tried to stop me, but at this point I was so furious with him for “causing” the crash that there was nothing he could do to stop me. 

I essentially skied down the mountain one-legged, and somehow by the grace of God actually made it to the bottom alive.  However, I failed to think about what I would do when I got to the bottom considering we were about a mile from where our room was.  Andy asked the ski lift guys how we could get back and they told us that beyond the snow pile behind us there was a shuttle bus stop.  “Great, that’s lucky” we thought. WRONG! The snow pile turned out to be more of a small mountain than a pile.  It was literally 40 ft high!  So with my gammy leg, I had to scale this mountain of snow. We start making our way up, and I could barely get myself up this mini Everest let alone my gear, so there was Andy behind me carrying not only his own skis, poles and helmet but also mine.  I at least was carrying my own poles, but only because I was essentially using them as a prosthetic to help get me over the mountain.  So naturally, Andy was breathing quite heavily from his heavy load.  Because I was in such a fit of rage and blaming Andy for causing the whole mess, I shouted at him “STOP BREATHING LIKE THAT! Trust me, this is much harder for me than it is you!!!”  Poor bastard couldn’t even breathe right. 

I was making pretty decent progress, hauling my one-legged self up the snow when a low hanging branch hit me in the face, knocking me to the ground.  At this point, I just lay in the snow with tears streaming down my face. This represents quite possibly the most pathetic moment of my entire life. I couldn’t believe this shit show was actually unfolding. I felt trapped, halfway up this pile of snow – unable to keep going up, but unable to make my way back down.  Somehow, Andy managed to convince me to keep going and we made it to the top.  A shuttle bus came and we made our way back to the room.  Andy kept telling me I needed to get to a doctor, to which I could only reply that I didn’t need a doctor I needed a divorce attorney.

By the time we got to the room, I had decided against the divorce, but my knee was the size of a damn basketball. I knew it was bad.  It turned out, I did re-tear my ACL and would need surgery.

Dr. Jenkins taking care of me post-surgery.

Lovely swollen, bruised knee after surgery.

It was a pretty horrible couple of weeks between the injury and the surgery, but in hindsight it led to a few really good things.  Firstly, it inspired (forced?) Andy to get a driver’s license!  I hurt my right leg so I couldn’t drive.  After 8 years of begging him to learn to drive, all I could think was “I should have done this to myself years ago!” Only partly in jest…

First driving lesson!

Then, 6 weeks after my surgery, I found out I was pregnant...

That was another crazy day that I will never forget.  When I took that home pregnancy test Andy was actually working on finishing up fixing a plumbing disaster that had occurred in our kitchen the previous week.  What exactly happened with our plumbing is a story for another day, but long story short he was on his back under our kitchen sink elbow deep in drainage while I was in the bathroom taking the test.  When I saw the positive result, I’ll be honest I immediately went to a state of sheer panic.  I’ll never forget standing at our bathroom sink, feeling like I could actually hear my heart beating in my ears.  I walked out to the dining room where I called out to Andy that we needed to talk. He wasn’t exactly thrilled about being called away from his plumbing catastrophe, but heard a seriousness in my voice that I rarely have, so he thought he better get up.  When he walked into the room with me all I could do was hold up the pregnancy test stick to him.  I couldn’t even talk, it was like I swallowed my tongue or something.  When he saw it, he looked at me and asked “we’re expecting?!”  When I nodded my head, he dropped to his knees and started to cry.  He put his head to my belly and kissed it.  I’ll never forget it.  Despite the fact that I personally was in a panic, it was so calming and reassuring to know how excited and happy Andy was.  I was so grateful that my children would have him as their father. 

Positive! Yikes!

The drain pipe that was the cause of our plumbing catastrophe.

April. 6 weeks.

Tess's first trip to Fenway. 6 weeks.

September. 27 weeks. 

December. 40 weeks.

Once the initial shock of being pregnant wore off, I was equally as excited as Andy.  But during this time, we were also waiting on news of whether Andy was going to get tenure at Emory.  It was more than slightly nerve-wracking to consider the possibility of him not getting tenure, and being politely asked to leave Emory, while we were expecting our first born.  But fortunately a few weeks after hearing the amazing news about our little embryo, Andy found out he got tenure!  It was almost too perfect, we couldn’t have planned it better.

The rest of the year was a complete blur of being busy with home improvements and getting ready for Tess’ arrival.  We had to turn our party house into a baby house.  Andy did some amazing things re-doing our bathrooms, turning TV rooms into bedrooms, moving walls, etc.  

Old bathroom construction.

New bathroom!

Old TV room, now our bedroom.

We also had to buy a second car.

We also had some major scientific successes this year.  Just in the last month of the year, I had a paper accepted to PNAS and Andy had a paper published in Science Translational Medicine that had been covered extensively all over the popular press from the Today show to the Wall St Journal. 

Andy in the Wall St Journal

These things would have otherwise been the biggest events of the year, but they sort of got overshadowed in a year where Andy got tenure and we started our family.

Thinking back to the state I was in after my knee injury…. it was really hard on me emotionally. I like staying active, and in general hate asking for help or being impaired in any way. And when I hurt my knee 12 years ago, a lot was going on in my life (for an 18 year old at least) and re-injuring myself brought up all those memories. And taking the narcotics for pain didn’t help my state of mind.  But what’s crazy is that in a strange, roundabout kind of way, my first knee surgery ended up leading me to go to Smith College. Anyone who knows me knows how much I loved (and still love) Smith. 

Tess is already in the admissions database at Smith.  This is how much I love this place!

So something horrible ended up leading to something wonderful.  Similarly, this knee injury ended up leading to the circumstances that brought Tess into my life.  Even the bad experience I had with pain meds after the surgery is the reason I was adamant about recovering from my C-section drug-free… which is why, I think, I recovered so quickly.  It is really, really crazy how everything sort of came together perfectly in the end.

If there is one major realization I can come to after looking back on 2012 its how lucky I am to be married to Andy.  Of course, we are insanely in love and have been for 8 years.  Love at first sight on Bourbon St in New Orleans in 2003 has developed into the most loving and beautiful relationship I could have ever hoped for.  But this year I have had to depend on Andy more than I ever thought I would have to.  When I was laid up from my knee surgery, Andy waited on me hand and foot… and let’s be honest, I was a nightmare to deal with most days.  I was a complete monster at times!  God only knows why he put up with me. Then as I became more heavily pregnant, I had also injured my pelvis from overdoing it with exercise. In the last 8 weeks of my pregnancy I couldn’t bend, lift, carry, etc.  Again, Andy did pretty much everything for me. On top of all that, he’s made amazing changes to our home, all while having one of the most successful years of his career – getting tenure and publishing this major paper.  He is truly amazing!  I am blown away and totally inspired by him.  And finally, to watch him become a father in the past few weeks has melted my heart and made me fall in love with him in a whole new way.  He is already the world’s most amazing father and he’s been at it 2.5 weeks.  Tess is the luckiest girl in the world to have him as her dad, and I’m the luckiest woman in the world to have him be the father of my children. 

OK sorry to end on SUCH a sappy note, but what can I say?  Maybe it's the hormones or maybe its just the nostalgia that the New Year brings out in me, but I am madly in love and have the best family in the world.  I’m so grateful and felt the need to pour my heart out. 

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope 2013 brings you all as much happiness as 2012 has brought me.  

My heart belongs to her!

Very happy Christmas.

New Year's Eve drink at the Marlay House with my girl.