Rain! It's a heavily overcast day and so far it's beneficial gentle soaking rain. When it starts out this way its more likely that even if it rains hard later more of it will soak in.

I've just found a fly in the Thanksgiving ointment for late November. A friend with three cats has me cat sitting for her again, now requiring three trips a day because of the various medications one cat needs. I think her time away will be Nov 20 to the 26 so I'll put our family Thanksgiving meal on the 27th so I don't have to interrupt our cooking and eating. If necessary, I'll negotiate so she knows why I need that entire Sunday open. We rarely end up doing Thanksgiving ON Thanksgiving, as we accommodate our own family travelers.

Trash pickup included a bunch of shredded files today. I keep finding old bill files that are no longer needed, plus I got rid of some more graduate school notebooks. I know, I know, I'll never use them again, but the ones from favorite classes hung around a while longer than the rest.

My elderly (both in late 80s) across-the-street neighbors apparently quietly went through their own COVID crisis earlier this month. I saw her daughter drive up several times, and one day I met her at the driveway to give her a bunch of okra for her mom, but she didn't mention the COVID. I had a call on Friday explaining that they were about over it now (they'd had the antiviral prescription that helped). I took over some still-hot fried okra and a bag of fresh okra to do whatever else with they might enjoy.

Some months ago Charmion mentioned that she thought the whole fat milk helped squash a desire for more sugar in her diet. I gave that a try and while whole milk tastes good, I have decided to cut the extra calories and go back to 2% for now. For me, I find that simply adding sugar into my diet quickly triggers the sugar habit. This last week has had some desserts (Strawberry cake) and a Scotch in the evening, and those really do work against keeping to 1200 calories a day. My next cooking challenge is to look at my favorite recipes and make smaller versions. Next up - bread pudding half-size so it's only 3 servings, not six. And I think I need to build in a fasting day after I've had desserts on the menu for a few days.

And the heavy rain is here!