A White Sunday

7:05

Late Afternoon, Mid Lake 

The Loneliness of  Ice Fishermen

Woodlawn

It's 7:30 and I have only been up since 7:00.  It's more white outside  than gray at this hour, the lake, the sky, the yard, with a light falling of snow.  It's a cold 19º and a few guys are out fishing already, not as many as I expect on a weekend morning.  As I wait for Weekend Edition, Fresh Air is on talking about how food products, like Fruit Loops,  hook us on their products with salt, sugar, and fat, all part of last night's great meal.  At least it was not processed salt, sugar, fat but home made!

Yesterday, a Saturday as I recall, was typical.  I had yoga at 9:00, too early, as it cramps my leisurely morning.  Class was crowded, fourteen people, so that we hardly had enough room.  Four or five new people, with the regulars.  Our teacher was pleased of course so class lasted almost an hour and a half, ending with a twenty minute savasana, a relaxation period.  After class,  I went the the Lakewood Library to pick up Louise Erdrich's National Book Award winning novel, THE ROUND HOUSE and a couple of other books by Brad Meltzer, a writer I had heard about on NPR but have not read.  It's so nice to have so many libraries around; if a book is taken out in one, I can often pick it up at another.  I met Evie and Ryder's Cup.  She had worked out at the YMCA while I was at yoga.  We then went to 'Community coupon Day' at Bon Ton's, the local department store.  If you contributed five bucks to the community, you got a ten dollar coupon and a dandy coupon book.  We did not want to waste the coupon, of course, so we went hoping to find a deal.  Well, almost anything we wanted was on sale but when we went to buy it, we found the coupon was not 'good' for that sale item.  Catch 22.  It literally took us twenty minutes to find something that we did not want or need but allowed us to use our ten dollar coupon.  Shoppers we are not!   We returned home about 1:00 and  I was more than happy to head to the Transfer Station, to get  rid of our trash for the week, less taxing and infuriating than shopping at Bon Ton.

We enjoyed the afternoon, reading, watching some basketball, staying in our cosy home.  None of our neighbors were up for the weekend, so it was quiet on Woodlawn.  We were not sure about dinner but both of us liked the idea of home made french fries.  So,  Evie got out the potatoes, enough for four of us and the cutter. They have to be peeled, then put through our cutter, soaked in ice water, then given a first fry.  They can then sit till you are almost ready to eat, when you give them a second frying.  While Evie was getting the potatoes prepped, I went for a walk around the Woodlawn/Victoria loop, quite cold, and  I also ventured out on the lake to see if it would be good for cross country skiing but a thin layer of snow hid a slushy underneath.

For dinner we had lots of fries along with some lamb and feta sausages I bought a couple of weeks ago from the local grocery store in Sugar Grove.  We watched an older romantic comedy, The Break Up, which was worth watching. And, we had another piece of raspberry pie a la mode, to end a perfect meal...sugar, salt, fat.  Yum.

It's nice to have a funny, light movie to watch on a Saturday evening.  You would think with the thousands of movies out there, it would be easy to find something worth watching but it is not.  I did finish, thank god, Carl Hiassen's STRIP TEASE.  I wanted to throw it out the window numerous times because it was so ridiculous, but stuck with it, the dictum from childhood running through my mind: "You finish what you start."  I did.  Fortunately, I am really into THE ROUND HOUSE and cannot wait to get back to it.  What would I do without books?