First Snow - Time to Hibernate

Yeah, I saw my first sprinkles of snow today. I am not ready for this.

At work, the heating system broke on our floor. As someone who is always hot, it was weird to be cold. Bone-chilling cold. I spent the day daydreaming about going home and eating pasta with our leftover sauce with sausage and meatballs in it. I also dreamed about coming home and putting on my giant sweatpants and a fleece top. And it felt so good when I finally got home and could do that! And then after dinner, I made myself hot chocolate (with stale marshmallows from last year, but that's ok - they were good!).

On my way home from work, I turned on my phone and saw that my trainer had left me a voice mail message - if I wanted to meet her up at the gym today, she'd be glad to meet me. I deleted the message and kept on driving.

I think we are all bears at heart. When that cold weather hits, we want hot comfort food. To hell with lean chicken and fish and veggies. We need sustenance - good sauces - heavy food - to feel good. But unlike those bears, we can't go to sleep for the winter. When that alarm goes off, we must get up. And it is getting tougher to do.

My friend Beth moved to Florida a few years ago. She loves it. I don't think I would love the constant heat. I do love the change in seasons. I just don't like the season we're just entering into. She and her husband came up to Cleveland last week so that she could have heart surgery done at the Cleveland Clinic. I imagine this weather is really tough on them and they will really look forward to returning south.

We signed up with yet another snow plow company this year. The last few years, three of us neighbors got together to get the same snow plow operation, thinking we can't get screwed if there's three of us in a row. Wrong. For the last 2 years, when we had really major snowfall, our plow guys never showed up. Last year, I looked outside and saw two police cruisers outside our next door neighbor's house. He's a doctor and needs to get in and out of his drive, and with no snow plow guy, he couldn't do that. So he started to shovel himself. Well, he's a heart patient and should not be shoveling. So his wife called the police! (People call the police for the most amazing things - a few years ago, a policeman came to our door and told us he was embarrassed to be coming for this reason, but a guy who walks around the block every day complained that some of us have branches that hang over the sidewalk, so this poor policeman had to go door-to-door and ask all of us offenders to please trim our branches). Anyway, the police came out and were actually shoveling the drive next door.

I will try to think positive about this weather - I'm gonna try some new soup recipes. And pies. And crock pot recipes. And I'll go to bed earlier cause bed's the warmest place. And I"ll bond with my cats as they join me in bed.

OK, I am almost ready.