Goodbye, 2008! (Don't let the door hit you)

I wave goodbye to 2008, and embrace 2009 with hope and high expectations. Touching briefly on the low points, my job of 14 years at the newspaper was eliminated in October, 2007. Now I work for our local cable company as a clerk. I still get to write advertising copy and do some of the other things I really enjoy, but essentially I was knocked down to the bottom again and have to work my way back up. I'm grateful to have a job, but I'm still a little bitter. Bruce was laid off in August. That hasn't been horrible so far, because he has been doing contract work for them. Unfortunately, the plant is closing December 24, and nobody knows how long it will stay closed. That's a little scary, but nothing as scary as what happened in October. Bruce hadn't been feeling well, and was off work. He called me because the carbon monoxide alarm was going off. He checked the battery (which was fine), and noticed he could smell natural gas. I came home from work, and we called the gas company. The gas company man came out, and his electronic gas sniffer registered levels of carbon monoxide and natural gas that were too high to be normal. He couldn't find a problem, and asked me to open the basement door. (Our basement door is like a trap door in the floor.) I did, and saw there was 8-10" of water standing on the basement floor. "Please don't tell my husband," I said to the man. Unfortunately, a pipe had burst over our water heater, filled up the basement with water and ruined the water heater. This issue, of course, required informing the husband. We had to replace the water heater. Yeah. A couple weeks later, it got chilly outside and we turned on the heat. Rather, we turned on the furnace. There was no heat. The water had gotten into the furnace, so we had to replace it, too. While all this was going on, Bruce still wasn't feeling well, and hadn't been feeling well for about six weeks. He went to the doctor several times, but the morning of October 19 he couldn't breathe. We went to the emergency room, and a chest x-ray showed a nasty case of pneumonia and a CT scan showed he had blood clots in his lungs. He couldn't breathe because he was suffering a pulmonary embolism. I was very fortunate to be able to bring him home October 29. He's much better now, and I am grateful every day to have him with me.
Bruce had been home for a couple days, and was feeling better. He had just done the dishes (Yes he does that horrible chore for me. Envy me. He's awesome.) We were both standing in the kitchen and heard a horrible noise. A joint in the hot water pipe under the sink had blown out. We opened the cabinet door under the sink and water sprayed everywhere. Naturally, it was just below the shutoff for the sink, so we had to shut the water off for the whole house for a day, until our angels of mercy, Bruce's sister Diana and her husband S.W. came to St. Joseph from Warrensburg to rescue us. S.W. is a plumber and fixed the problem (he's awesome, too).
As bad as the last part of 2008 has been, we made it through with the help of our amazing families. I'm pretty sure we couldn't have faced all of that without divine intervention, plus Mom and Dad, Judy, Diana and S.W., and many others.
There. I've said it. The past year has been really hard. I appreciate the lessons learned, but it can't be over soon enough for me.
Goodbye, 2008! Hello, bright 2009!