Copper Country Living

Our family got together for Thanksgiving on Friday this year. We had a wonderful afternoon. The big kids were feeding the birds in the yard and playing board games at the dinning table. Us adults were chatting about football and plans for our upcoming Yuletide get together. The food was fantastic, and everyone ate their fill. Our littlest (8 months) even missed nap without skipping a beat which meant I was able to relax even more than usual. The day felt filled with love. We never stopped to pray aloud or verbally give thanks, but you could feel the joy in the room and see the smiles. My world is pretty perfect. And then I got home and opened the news.  While my world today felt pretty perfect, the rest of the world is still very much not. Top of the page on Fox was this article . It's not real news. It's about a doctor (or at least someone claiming to be a doctor) on twitter giving reasons for why we shouldn't celebrate the holidays this year (or perhaps anymore at all?)

There was frost on the cars earlier this week. It was 20°F on the thermometer when I sat down in the porch for my morning coffee. It's spring in the Keweenaw. It's going to be one of those cold summers. I bought myself a geranium from the drug store last week. She lives in the porch with my aloe plant, because despite the chilly outdoor air, our enclosed porch hasn't been below 50 degrees at night. I had intended her to be an outdoor plant in the ground near the garage. Geraniums encourage the wasps to keep a safe distance. For now, she's an indoor geranium in a pot. You may recognize the white planter in the photo from when I repotted my peace lily . The peace lily died, though admittedly not from the repotting experience (I forgot to water it for too long). Not sure what will live in the white planter next, but I re-used some of the dirt for this flower. I don't have much of a green thumb. This weekend I plan on starting some marigold seeds, but they are going to

Happy 2022! We are fully into winter here now. I have even found myself wanting to make snowflake decorations, but I haven't yet due to the lack of blank white paper in my house. I have been contemplating the idea of finally buying a printer for my home office this year, perhaps it's time to do that and this is the sign. Being able to print typed things could also help with my new year's resolution. This year, I want to write more letters to my girlfriends that live far away. I've noticed in the past two years that I don't communicate with very many people on an intimate level, mainly just my nuclear family. Sure, I occasionally call my mom, but probably not enough. So the goal of the year is to reach out and reconnect with those I lost closeness with over the past few years. Some of this loss of closeness is due to distance, but, even more so, it's because of motherhood. Becoming a mom nearly two years ago now (and a stepmom even longer), I lost contact with a