It is with the same fervor with which we leave our acne phase in high school or our mother-in-law at the holidays that we say “Later!” to 2009.

Good riddance.

It was the year where we learned to cringe from phrases like “global recession,” “bailout” and “downturn.”

How long did the 401K update letter sit unopened because “Hey, don’t we have enough to worry about without losing half of our life savings?”

How much “cash” did you really get for your “clunker?”

We lost dollars in our savings accounts, friends in our workplaces and companies in our communities.

We lost John Kanzius to cancer, Michael Jackson to drugs and Brittany Murphy to “natural causes.”

We lost national anchor Walter Cronkite to the ravages of time and I lost my WSEE co-anchor Jacqueline Policastro to the bright lights of Indianapolis.

Now that’s a crappy year.

Our President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and escalated the war in Afghanistan practically on the same day.

Kanye West proved that he, too, can multi-task by publicly berating a teenage girl all the while teetering on the edge of obliteration.

And our top pop song of the year came from a woman known as Lady Gaga; the subject matter was (what else!) the paparazzi.

2009 began with a man of mixed heritage taking over the White House, raising the hopes of millions that their time of inclusion had come.

2009 ends with another man of mixed heritage being the obsessed focus of a rabid cable news and tabloid world, not for being one of the world’s greatest athletes, but for what seems to be a serial need to cheat on his marriage.

Quite the unseemly year all in all, wouldn’t you say?

So adios 2009!

Sayonara, aloha and ciao.

Ta-ta!

Toodles too.

2010 has to be better.

Anything that doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?