Routine Is Good

7:42

7:57

7:59

7:07

Up at 6:20 thinking about what the mornings will be like starting Sunday when we turn our clocks back.  I have only a few more days of an hour of darkness before the sky begins to lighten and take shape, like now at 7:15.  A boat just went by, light on, no doubt an early morning fisherman.  Lots of boats were out yesterday because it was such a nice day.

Yesterday, I quickly fell back into routine, going off to yoga though I was not too excited about it.  But by the time class was over, I was glad I had gone because I felt better.  I stopped for coffee, then hit Save A Lot and picked up salad stuff, a pot roast and pork ribs.  When I got home, Evie decided to have the pork ribs for dinner, so she got out the slow cooker, browned the ribs, added some crushed tomatoes, cooked for six hours, adding sauerkraut during the last hour. Dinner prep was done by noon, nothing to worry about later in the day.

By the way, I forgot to mention that on our drive to Virginia and back this past weekend, through much of western Pennsylvania and New York, we saw hundreds of Trump signs, with nary a Clinton sign. And we were just listening to POTUS and a resident of Pennsylvania explained that the Democratic headquarters were not giving out signs because they were being ripped out of the lawns. Another caller said that a neighbor had painted their entire house red, white, and blue with a huge Trump sign.

I was just reading about something called 'cognitive closure' which defines most of today's voter's, whether Democratic or Republican.  It's defined as 'the moment that you make a decision or form a judgment. You literally close your mind to new information.' And, 'The more uncertain our world seems, the more we compensate by seeking out certainty.' That's where we are at, both sides certain they are right, unwilling to see the other side. Scary.  This 'uncompromising certainty' on both sides leads to nothing getting done. Sad making.

Our early afternoon was one of leisure, having lunch for me, watching Longmire, reading and taking a nap. For Evie, because she had a busy morning, washing windows, doing laundry, straightening things up, she took it easy until around 2:00 when she got to do her favorite thing, cut the lawn and mulch the leaves.  I joined her around 2:30 and we had dual lawn mowers going until just after 4:00.  It took that long to get both yards cut and mulched so that we could say the lawns were clear of leaves (for an evening).  We also did some raking and I filled up a pail with leaves and twigs and took it up the hill, one of my many trips during the fall.  

Because we both worked up quite a sweat from working in the yard, we took showers before cocktail time.  We settled down in our living room around 5:30, with Manhattans, edamame and another of our favorites cheeses, Saint Andre, and enjoyed the waning of daylight, ruined only by the occasional pundits dire predictions about the election on the radio.  We were looking forward to dinner, pork and sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and it was as  good as we hoped.  We also were looking forward to the Indians game but that was quickly quashed in the first inning when the Tribe fell behind by three runs.  We channel surfed from then on, hoping to see a change in the score but  it never happened, the Tribe losing 9-3.  We ended up watching more of the documentary on Anthony Weiner before going up to bed.  I finally finished Ann Patchett's novel, COMMONWEALTH, which I enjoyed.