The worst thing that happened to me this year was slipping and falling and breaking my wrist, which in the greater scheme of things I realize is not that "worst". Still, surprising. Sudden. Painful. And once it happens there's no going back. You are stuck with the consequences.
The other "worst" senses:
Taste: day-old grease-laden tater tots (fresh, hot tots so good --old ones so vile)
Sight: the drooping American flag hanging ragged in the downpour (poor, America, a tattered flag flying in the rain from the back of a truck or other is no honor)
Touch: downpour; matted fur (my enemy matted fur, it shall NOT stand!)
Sound: "The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!” (a quote from Middlemarch about family); the national anthem blared over a tinny speaker (again, poor America, this seems no honor)
Smell: burnt cashew milk; Bolt Creek Fire smoke
Quotable: All from Middlemarch, which I reread again this year...
"I suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope.""While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightening which lit each of them up for the other—and the light seemed to be a terror of a hopeless love."But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."
Extra: a full calendar; sentence upon sentence of condemnation; what happened to the poor barn owls?; panicked dogs
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