And I'm looking forward to winter too!

Shortly after I wrote my last post, my laptop cord died again. Ho hum, here we again, sharing the main computer.

Ornery's Wife, at Thoughts from Miller Manor, wrote a list of things she's loving about life lately, and I decided to steal her idea. Here are some things I'm enjoying:

--Putting up garden produce as a hobby instead of a project. You know, where you only do it as long as it's fun and then you quit. Quite a change. So instead of two hundred quarts of tomato-ey stuff, I have eight pints and six quarts of tomato juice--I had a great time making them.

--Sitting by our woodstove on these chilly evenings. I LOVE heating our house with wood, especially with our stove that has glass windows so you can see the fire. It creates such a cozy atmosphere.

--Spending lots of one-on-one time with my youngest son. He hasn't had as much of that as I would have liked over the years, being the youngest of four.

--Using my cloth shopping bags when I buy groceries. It gives me great satisfaction to use them; for one thing, they're pretty, and for another, I no longer have to deal with hundreds of throwaways.

--The feeling I'm having lately of being a floating cork that's had some weight lifted off of it. I realized that, in truth, I have quite a bit of natural buoyancy but it's been held under water for a while by much responsibility, or emotional stress, making me tired and inefficient, or worse, lazy. At this stage of my life some of those things are letting up and, once I've gotten used to it, I've been liking the sense of freedom and renewed energy.

And? The first snowfall! It's snowing today, and it also happens to be our 28th wedding anniversary, so it's a very good day.