Merry Christmas everyone!

2013 was a crazy, crazy year for me, for the blog, for my jiu jitsu...

The biggest deal of my 2013 was the infertility bullshit.  After several years of trying a variety of things and spending a lot of money, we have finally come to accept that, absent a gestational carrier to host our remaining two potential-children that are currently frozen, parenthood is not in our future.  (I make it sound all pat and tidy and final when it's not always any of those, but, generally speaking, I am THE COOLEST AUNT EVER and I'm going to be okay with that.)

I will say, the worst thing about infertility for me has been realizing that all these hard lessons I've learned (and still need to learn) will not be passed along to my sprout(s).  It made me feel kind of pointless, you know? why bother learning things the hard way if I can't use that to save someone else from doing the same dumb stuff?

Then I realized, the worstest hardest lessons are the ones I'd never be able to confess to my own offspring.

AND... they'd never listen anyway. 

So.. there's that.  (Unless someone with a uterus wants to offer us 9 months of their life, in which case, come on mama.)

Also, we lost two important people in our family... my husband's mom Norma and his uncle Rolando.  That's been really hard.

Of course the TLI debacle has been huge.  Can't tell you how many wonderful, amazing friends I've made because of that miserable series of events.  That and increased awareness of and resistance to rape culture in our community is about the only silver lining.  We are LOSING the SEO (search engine optimization) battle against Lloyd Irvin, so if there's any SEO whizzes out there willing to help, ping me.  But we're not done with the NYE rapists.  Nick Schultz still faces two misdemeanor sexual abuse charges; people are tracking Nick and Mateo and we'll be discussing where they're currently training soon.  (I need to get some screen shots.)  I still encourage people to direct some traffic towards www.LloydIrvinRapeTruth.com and if you haven't read Jake Rossen's great expose, it's found here.

Work is ... work.  I love it, but it's been yanking my chain a bunch with deadlines and lots of travel.  It's messing with my training schedule and my blogging, but I love it and it's nice to make money.  Especially because my hubby is switching careers and begins an accelerated program in nursing this summer, leading to an RN, a master's of nursing, and a Clinical Nurse Specialist degree.  In a few years.

Future plans for 2014:

I'm toying with the possibility of getting back into competition.  I'll definitely be working the bigger IBJJF tournaments, and hey, I'm on weight for pena, wouldn't it be funny if I could make it to feather?  I love my academy and our instructors, Paulo just moved permanently from Brazil and Donald is back from Chicago... so I have fewer excuses. 

Bullshido: I'm looking forward to doing more of the work I should be doing there, once my real job slows down a bit in late spring.

In the near term though, I am looking forward to a few days with my Filipino family and I probably won't be on weight for pena by the time I get back to Austin.  Especially because I'm making some killer homemade eggnog tonight and I might have to drink it all myself.  Boo hoo ;)

I wish you all a holiday (yes, I know, Hanukkah is over, I'm a bad ecumenical friend) season full of love, forgiveness, and real joy