JUST WRITE!
Goodbye to a chaotic 2011
By Tracey Coveart/The Scugog Standard

Why is it that time seems to accelerate the older you get? As I move one year closer to confronting my own mortality, here’s what will flash before my eyes for 2011...
_The year started off on a limp for me - and a giant leap for the people of Egypt and the power of social networking. While I lay on my bed recovering from bunion surgery, I watched history unfolding late in January as the Egyptian people - in a movement organized on Facebook - took back their country in what might have been the world’s first peaceful revolution.
_On March 11, the world news found something else on which to focus its cameras when coastal Japan was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami. If Jan. 25 showed us the emerging power of the Internet, March 11 reintroduced us to the savage strength of Mother Nature as her waves devoured everything in their path - including more then 15,000 people. While we wait to see the global effects of the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, scientists in Hawaii predict as much as 20 million tonnes of debris - everything from TVs to boats to human body parts - could make landfall in B.C. by 2014.
_In Scugog, residents marked the end of the ‘Pearce’ era with a new town council and just one familiar face back at the boardroom table, but in my household we marked the end of the Scugog era. After 12 years of life in this fair township, I listed my house on Greenway Blvd. for sale and moved in with my own Greenway - Rob - in a lovely little semi-detached house in Toronto’s east end.
_A microcosm of Egypt and Japan, my household was fraught with chaos in 2012.
_First was the decluttering - a nightmare for a person who attaches sentimental significance to pencil stubs. Then came the staging, which necessitated the rental of a house-sized storage locker and the relocation of my eldest son. Then the unconditional purchase of the new house - a partnership between Rob, me and the Royal Bank - and the nail-biting experience of selling my Port Perry home in two months or less. The packing, the garage ‘saleing’ and the moving were next and, just when we thought we’d been sapped of our last droplet of energy and enthusiasm, we embarked on five months of renovating, cheque writing and edging our way past boxes piled high to the ceiling. It’s a wonder Rob and I made it with our relationship and our wits in tact. (The jury is still out on the latter.) It was Stephie - our autistic child who is supposed to resist change - who held us together. “Come here you two,” she would say when the air crackled with tension. “You need a hug.”
_Today, the renovations are behind us, we are learning to live harmoniously as a family, and we are loving our home, our ’hood and our togetherness. We celebrated our first Christmas with a new six foot tree in a new five-and-a-half foot basement family room and a new addition to our strange naked clan - Hunter S. Thompson the veiled chameleon, our gift to Rob. This fascinating creature makes eight ... pets that is. He joins Cali the sphynx cat, Rainbow and Simba the beta fish, Batman and Spiderwoman the African dwarf frogs, Taka the ball python (more about him in 2012) and Flynn the miniature horse, the only one of our menagerie that sports hair - and coincidentally the only one that doesn’t live under our roof. Blame the allergies ... or the fact that we have no grass in our delightful little urban backyard, the first order of business on our renovation to-do list and ‘daddy’s happy place.’
_We celebrated the festive season with Rob’s family on Christmas Day and my family on Boxing Day and, as millions of Canadians were out hastening the global economic recovery on Dec. 26, the first of what appears to be Japanese debris from the March 11 disaster - a wave of “garbage” bearing Japanese lettering, including lumber, water bottles, a toothbrush and a baby’s sock - washed ashore on the beaches of Tofino, B.C.
_What disasters and delights does 2012 hold in store for humankind? What sorrows and joys, tragedies and triumphs will we experience together? Stick with The Standard to find out.