King winter

There's a strong wind this morning. It's bright, sunny and cold. The outside thermometer read 15º at 7:30 am. (I swear someone must have been out on the fire escape touching up the paint during the night because there are smudges of what look like black paint on the thermometer this morning....strange.)

I made oatmeal this morning. Oatmeal on Fridays has sunk in. I don't always make it, but I always think about it. Making and eating oatmeal is very satisfying. I didn't like having to stand at the stove for a good 15 minutes to get it going, at first, but now I love the zen of it. We use McCann's Irish steel cut oats because of the wheat contamination of rolled oats produced in the U.S. (Although I've heard there is someone now producing "safe" rolled oats --- need to look into that.) (Soy) butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon the condiments that line the breakfast bar.

Doing some laundry. Discovering that if it can be done, doing it twice a week makes it more manageable for my back. To get to the laundry room we need to go downstairs, out the front door, around back and down into the basement through a separate entrance. We've got a great, sturdy, secondhand basket which makes the lugging easier. Doing two plus loads as opposed to the four plus loads of once-a-week laundry is proving to make a difference.

A trick to doing laundry here is to do it in the morning during the week. Generally, our upstairs and downstairs neighbors work during the day during the week. Although Donald seems to work from home sometimes.

I felt King Winter announcing his impending arrival as the wind whipped around me, me in my winter coat, with hat and gloves on, carrying the basket around the side of the house. When will it snow? Will First stand upon a snowboard this season? Will it be a white Christmas?

Time to make some lunch (rice, sausage, and spinach with tofu and miso). L and O will be here this afternoon and after that we will go observe the drumming and movement class. Cap lies in bed, felled by his jet lag/exhaustion/cold. Tonight, latkes. Decided to pass on making apple sauce, we'll have apple slices instead. And some broccoli.