After 10 days any remaining parts of the Thanksgiving turkey that haven't gone in the freezer are too old to use. Good thing it's trash day. Too bad we didn't have more people here to eat turkey when this marvelous bird was roasted. I also need to finish trimming the datura plant and send it away in today's trash. So far I've added one more limb of it (cut into pieces and bagged for the trash; this doesn't go into the compost because if it sprouts in the back yard the dogs can get sick from nibbling it.)

All of the talk of snow reminds me of the freezing weather chapter that can be described in this year's holiday letter (that I need to finish soon). We're inches deep in sunshine here right now. And in scanning back over the last few posts I see I didn't even last a week after mentioning my slowing sewer to when I had to roto-rooter it. Hexed myself! (No, I don't believe that, but it sure feels true! In fact, I should have acted earlier, is all.) It's a good thing it was a nice day when I had to spend a couple of hours out in the yard working on that. Today we have a brisk cold breeze despite the sunshine.

I'm close to finishing a woefully-incomplete used jigsaw puzzle. I'm finishing just because, but this one will not go back into circulation once I finish as much as I can. It has been my most challenging to date, with all of these little Italian houses on Cinque Terre and their watery surroundings.

Coming off such a hectic weekend when I pampered myself by picking up more takeout than usual, this morning I finished the combination lo mein for breakfast. That's probably a full-day's worth of calories right there. I have a lot of vegetables to finish also, so the rest of the day might be more bulk than calories. I need to do more baking so I have to pull cooked, mashed pumpkin and sweet potatoes from the freezer. Lots of food activity today. I've already given away a couple of those frozen pumpkin/sweet potato loaves, they are a neighborhood favorite. Baking is restful compared to the yard work, so it's a good activity to switch to.

Lots of big peppers in the garden, way more than I can use, so I'll make a run to the community fridge to donate some. Other chores - more laundry today, and on my fridge I still have that list of the 12-days of cleaning for the holidays that Lily Festre shared several years ago. I find that helpful when trying to make a big push to clean everything everywhere.