I'll be honest, this year has sucked. I don't mean it's lame. I wish that it was just bland. No, it has sucked epically. Still, I have something to feel good about, so I thought I'd share. Now, I won't give you the full run down, that would just depress everyone, but I will tell you what has happened lately.

Believe it or not, this all started about six weeks ago. I was--as has become my habit, getting ready to back up my computer at the end of the month. A lot had happened in July, so it took a while to get it all sorted, but it was done. Except, the boy came down with a flu so bad it actually knocked him out for a month. Summer school got canceled for him because of it. Hubby began sleeping in his room because he'd stop breathing at times and we'd have to jolt him, which would make him cough and...well, it was a really rough couple of weeks there. But, after some antibiotics and a lot of patience, he started improving.

Then hubby started coughing.

Now, if you're married or ever been involved with a man who has gotten sick, there are two eventualities. You're going to consider holding the pillow over his face while he sleeps and you're going to get it. The pillow thing wasn't so bad this time, because he really was too miserable to whine, but when I started getting sick, I figured I'd get through it like I do every other cold or flu. I'd ignore it, be grumpy for a week and then all would go back to normal.

After the first week, a strange creaky door sound started interrupting my breathing. But a funny door. Or maybe a mewling cat. "Wrrrrrreeeeeeeehhhhhhh." After every breath. Then the coughing started outweighing the cute kitty sound...which was also starting to turn into a sputtery motor sound. Oh, and did I mention the sweats? I almost thought I was in menopause or turning into my own personal "Slip n Slide". I was really starting to think I needed a doctor...but I put that off until the babies started making the wet, squicky cough sound. I took them in and discovered that their doctor believed the whole family had Swine Flu. We had every symptom and she'd seen literally hundreds of cases in the last weeks. We still needed to take the tests, but she gave us the anti-virals and was pretty sure about the outcome. Still, since she couldn't give me certain meds, she recommended I see my own doctor the next day.

That guy gave me the surprising news that I had pneumonia. And it was bad.

So, I've spent the last ten days on bedrest and antibiotics, all but making love to my humidifier (hubby bought one when the girls were born...it looks like Hello Kitty. Very huggable.). And in the middle of it, as I watched movies on my laptop since I couldn't sleep, a terrible, ironic thing happened.

My computer died. Blink. Poof. Death. Since I'm a workaholic with too many jobs to mention, this is the second laptop I've done in and hubby was giving me all kinds of "I TOLD you so." looks because he's sure I'm a laptop abuser. (it's not my fault I have more work to do than most laptops can handle) I try to baby them and honestly, we're not totally sure I did this one in. The tech said... "Mechanical failure" caused the hard drive to fail. And since I hadn't backed up as I'd meant to, that meant six weeks of revisions and other work was irretrievable toast.

So where's the silver lining, you might ask?

Well, there was a lot of them. Miraculously, the Swine Flu results came back negative. The girls, because of the meds we got them, never fully caught the evil flu, which would have hospitalized both of them without question. Because I was so sick, I couldn't be around them and the two of them are officially weaned. And the computer death? Well, it turned out that though my warranty was done, the "mechanical failure" fit on an extension and I got a brand new hard drive without having to pay a dime! Even better...it has the newest OS already built in, which saved me a couple hundred dollars right there!

And the best part? I'm getting better every day.

Sure, I'll be happy to see the end of this year, but I'm determined to believe that if it's going to have the lows that it has---and believe me, this last month is the lightest low we've had all year---I'm going to squeeze something good out of it too.

So how about you. Have you had a silver lining this year?