MIA....

okay, so... we thought we had made arrangements to have internet hooked up at the new house on the same day that we arrived. however, due to strange and complicated winds and star alignments.... and the fact that apparently that particular company does not want our business, and truth be told we don't want to give them our business in the end.... we have been without internet since mid-December.

this has made it difficult to continue posting my gratitude on a daily basis.

which is not to say that i have been ungrateful.

i have been both grateful and somewhat agitated by our enforced period of "unplugging"....

i have been enormously grateful for the simple "we live in a house a little off the beaten track" sounds.... melting of snow in the eaves, washing machine doing it's thing in the back ground as i do my thing elsewhere (no more laundromats!!!), birds singing, no sirens, very little traffic...

i have been grateful to have a beautiful snowfall to make it feel like a real Christmas.... and also grateful that the former owner of our new house left behind a couple of snow shovels.

i have been grateful for my husband's patience and dogged get-to-it-ness regarding the unpacking of boxes... i did the bulk of the unpacking while he was at work, but those last boxes of "misc" i just could not bring myself to open, let alone put away.... and he's kept at it. we're almost all done... just a few more adjustments, moving this to there and putting that here... and it will be home.

i have been grateful for friends who invited me out to spend Christmas day with them, knowing that my husband had to work all day....

i have been grateful for the friendliness of all the new neighbours that we've met. we lived for two years in the last place, and knew no one there. the neighbours weren't very neighbourly.... here, people stop by to introduce themselves if we're outside.

i have been grateful for reconnecting with old friends...

i have been grateful for phone calls from my brother who never calls, and my grandad who rarely does....

i have been grateful....