It's been a while...a long while. What's that adage about life happening when you were busy making other plans? Yeah, that happened. I remember finishing last year's A-Z blog in April, then I wrote my reflection post in May---which was closely followed by a depressing Mother's Day post (that I have since removed). And then, there's nothing. After that, I sort of faded away from the blogoshere--quite unintentionally. One missed blogging day turned into one missed blogging week, which became a month and now, finally, a year... I never planned on dropping out of sight, but then, life stuck its nose in and messed up my plans. Sad thing, nothing noteworthy happened during my year-long hiatus. I just did other things. I did complete another year of NaNoWriMo -- my 8th year--in November! And, it was the first year that I blew away the word count goal and set my personal best at 85K!! So, there was definitely a noteworthy month during my absence. Christmas cam