Blog? What blog?

Anyone else had their motivation sapped by the pandemic? Well, new year, new start, right? And I'll begin with an unusual snowfall for us. In this area we rarely get a white Christmas anymore.  But this year, for the first time since 2010, the snow started falling on Christmas Eve.

And kept falling throughout Christmas Day. As much as I don't like cold weather, I do love the look of freshly fallen snow.

My older son wasn't able to be here for the holidays. He was traveling from his second externship placement in Minnesota back to Memphis, to finish up his optometry program. His placement was at a hospital on an Indian Reservation and lasted until a couple of days before the holiday and he told me he wouldn't have time to quarantine. I haven't seen him since last Christmas and miss him terribly. We did have my younger son and my younger stepdaughter, and spent the long weekend eating, playing games and watching movies.

A couple of days later, when the roads were clear again, we hopped in the truck to go feed the cat and see what the property looked like with snow. Our little road hadn't been plowed but enough had melted away to make it safe.

The property itself is pretty heavily shaded so there was still a lot of snow left.

We decided to take a short hike, walked up the main logging road.

The creek was running with snow melt and the place felt magical and peaceful.

But I am feeling less peaceful. 2020 was a hell of a year, wasn't it? And 2021 hasn't had an auspicious start, what with our increasingly unhinged president egging on the lunatic fringe to attempt a governmental coup. I do love working from home, but I feel like I'm working all the time. And I miss my older son. I miss my other family. I miss my friends. With new COVID variants popping up all over the place, it is starting to feel like it will never end. I'm waiting anxiously to be allowed to get vaccinated and hoping that when Biden gets inaugurated our country will stop dealing in misinformation (or more accurately, bald-faced lies), and start instituting some saner policies. And maybe then, I'll start feeling like there is hope. So that's where I am in a nutshell. We'll see if I'm able to pull myself together enough to participate in the blog world more regularly.