2009, A YEAR OF BIG CHANGES Part of the grand plan was to buy a house. We hadn’t owned a house since we moved from MN to HI in 1973. Our son Darrel said it was time for us to move to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. With the help of Darrel and his wife, Mary, we were able to get enough information to decide on our current home, at 219 W. Harding Ave, Ironwood, MI 49938. The house appears to have been painted and had new carpets and linoleum installed before it went on the market, so it was nice to find it in really good condition. We’ve been here since early December now, and we can tell you that it really is as cold and snowy as you’ve been told. We seem always to wear an extra layer of clothing and still go searching for another layer. It is a nice place, though. We have contracted for a year’s plowing of the driveway and the front yard. That $400 has turned out to be a really good decision!! The people all seem to be kind and friendly. We’ve been too busy unpacking all those many, many boxes to get well acquainted, but we have at least now reduced the stacks to the point where we can find our way from one room to the next. We had never really made the kind of move where we had to be concerned with all the complexities of life in the 21st century. But we did get here, and most of our belongings did also. Until this evening, we thought my SEWING MACHINE hadn’t made it. But then Bob got curious about a strange item in one of the many boxes in the blue room, and when he turned it around, we found it was my beloved Bernina!!! Sunday we found our new church, the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration. The congregation is small, maybe 12 to 20 actually attending each week. There is no choir, which was a blow to me. I was looking forward to choir rehearsals, etc. I guess I got really spoiled at Christ The King Church. However, the people who have stayed with the church while all the mainline churches have been dramatically reduced in membership and attendance were welcoming and nice. Apparently the situation here is that the storefront churches are increasing as the mainliners are leaving or not attracted. We understand that there are usually discussions available at our church, but with the special holidays, those are now on hold. We look forward to Thursday evening’s Christmas Eve service this week. So far, I don’t have a very big list of accomplishments to account for having retired. However, Bob seems to pick up on what needs to be done. So he has developed a list of companies, stores, etc., that we need to keep in touch with. Beyond that, we mostly just do whatever needs to be done or whatever we want to do. This is a radical outlook for someone who worked at an important job for 35 years after the children were no longer in need of everyday full care. Bob has been retired since 1973, so he used to be the one the school called if any child from our apartment building in CA needed to come home. Once we moved to our apartment in MD in 1987, we got into a real rut, and now it seems we’re developing a slightly different rut. We’re looking forward to installing all our paintings, framed photos, quilts, and other artwork. That should keep us busy for a while. We miss you all, and we have been happy to receive greeting cards from many of you recently. We don’t have a landline telephone, but you can reach us on our cell phones: Bob 443-604-5253 Nancy 443-604-5156 Since Comcast doesn’t operate up here, we are now with Charter. For now, we’re using the following email addresses: Bob’s: murmuse2@yahoo.com. Nancy’s: nanquilt@gmail.com. We send our love and best wishes to each of you, and we look forward to seeing you when you want some great landscape scenery. |