Long Pants *sigh*

I had to wear long jeans yesterday--all day--and a sweatshirt too, a hoodie.  It was that cold, barely made it to 50 degrees all day and was drizzly and rainy after 4 PM or so.  *sigh*  And it's not supposed to get much warmer all week.  *sigh*  While the wash was flopping around I got out my long-sleeved shirts and put them onto the hanging bar and as the clean short-sleeved shirts came out of the dryer I hung them into my basement "clothes closet" (it's one of those rubbermaid-type enclosed hanging storage things from walmart) that stands opposite the washer and dryer.  Handy but kind of sad too.  Once the clean laundry's folded and put away later this week I'll fill the basket with shorts and tank tops for the trip back into the basement, then refill the basket with sweaters (maybe more than one trip too) and woolly socks to complete the transformation from summer to winter.  *sigh*  I like my winter clothes, I do, but I guess I'm just not ready to cozy up to them again, not quite yet.  But it's cold enough, also dark.  I've been up for an hour and the sky is barely lightening.  Dark days ahead, for almost 2 months, before the sunrise and sunset start moving away from each other again.  *sigh*  Good thing we've filled the house with full-spectrum lamps so we don't just fade away.

You're totally sorry you missed breakfast at our house yesterday.  Totally.  I had to duck the apple tree branches when I filled the feeders on Saturday and was struck (literally) by the ripe apples weighing them down.  Now I hadn't planned to make any sauce this year because we've got a bunch of jars from the last few years, but I just can't leave them all out there to rot, so I decided that we needed apple pancakes for breakfast.  I picked one apple (ONE! not really making a dent in the bounty) and grated it into the light griddle cakes recipe in the Settlement cookbook (my fave for basic cooking) adding a quarter-teaspoon of cinnamon.  Mmmm, good.  (hmm, *taps finger on lips* our pal JJ loves applesauce, his kids do too, maybe I should make them a batch, it'd be a sin to let those apples go to waste.  It was a great year for apples too, there're a zillion of 'em.  I'll call the neighbors too.)

I also realized that I'm going to have to replace my nearly 20 year old jeans this year since two of my four pairs of beloved everyday jeans needed patches on their rears and that just doesn't look good--even though I patched them on the inside you can still see the torn part on the ass.  Not a good look for an overweight 62 year old.  Not at all.  Guess I know where I'm going later this week--Walmart for new mom-jeans.

October 21--Egypt, Late Period, Genet Amulet.  "There's something in her hand," Rico said.  He was bent over looking at the body splayed on the warehouse floor.  Kids playing had found her and they had been racing down the cracked asphalt when the patrol car rolled up.  Wilson and Pickett had listened to their panicked words and asked the kids to show them what they'd found.  The smallest kid, a boy no older than nine, had marched Pickett back toward the deserted warehouse while Wilson collected names and addresses of the others.  "What's your name?" Pickett asked the boy as they walked along.  "Joseph," he said keeping his eyes on his shoes.  "Do you play down here often, Joseph?"  "Naw, Mama don't like it when I do.  She says that bad things live in blank places like this.  I guess she's right 'cause here we found a stiff."  They walked in silence for a few minutes.  "She's my first dead body," Joseph continued, "except for Great-aunt Parthenia laid out at Kramers last year."

Sorry about the Wilson and Pickett thing, I was too tired to resist and sleepily pleased with my cleverness.  Time to get all the soup and fruit containers into a tote and out into the car to take to work, and I promised DS that I'd drop off the stake pounder on my way across town AND I just remembered that Mrs. Boss told me there's a tank at Van's and would I pick up her dive bag from the shoe repair guy on my way in too.  Good thing I remembered all that crap... AND the furnace guy's coming between 8 and 10 to give the furnaces a going-over before the dead of winter.  Guess I'm signing off.  Toodle-oo.
--Barbara