O Natal tá chegando! 🎄

Temperature: 2/35.5 degrees with more snow on the way.

Eating: Greek chicken gyros. Yes, we do still eat meat on occasion at Casa Dita. I ruined the boys by taking them to a churrascaria. On every trip to Brazil. My infinite bad. Which I’ve been trying to rectify. But what did they ask for just the other night? Poulet au vinaigre aka Lyonnaise garlic vinegar chicken. It’s a process.

Drinking: a wrappucino. What’s a wrappucino? I have no idea, but I bet if I had one, I’d have extraterrestrial wrap-it-all-up energy oozing out of every orifice. Which sounds like sci-fi gone horribly wrong. Maybe just a cafezinho then. (Yes. Afternoon coffee. Again. It's a process.)

Listening: Kissing and a-hugging, dancing and a-loving, wearing next to nothing, burning hot as an oven… That would be the B-52s, folks, proud purveyors of love and unity through music and pop culture since 1977. What Christmas with my sister’s family will look like. On a scale of one to are-we-there-yet, how excited am I? Stoked, sweetie darlings.

Watching: I have never been less excited about the World Cup. As if the tournament in Russia wasn’t bad enough. Much ado about nothing or genuine reasons to boycott? No one does pissed-off-and-for-all-the-right-reasons-ones-I-will-explain-in-an-educated-yet-entertaining-fashion-if-you-can-focus-for-more-than-a-TikTok late night better than John Oliver.

Reading: Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat, and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas. Highly recommended by yours truly, madly, deeply.

Writing: up a storm so that everything gets wrapped up before the holidays. Hmm, so that’s why I concocted that stimulant of a wrappucino...

Thinking: ...not that I’m in need of a stimulant, the smiles, giggles and shenanigans of my nieces...ai meu Deus, that's motivation enough.

Feeling: There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. (From the poem A Grateful Heart by Celia Thaxter.)

P.S. I will stop by before Christmas. 🤝

God rest thee mellow gentleman

Temperature: a sunny 14/57 degrees on Saturday. Which is alarmingly warm for November but nothing out of the new ordinary. A bit colder now, but it has never been this warm this late in the year.

Eating: Veggie cabbage rolls. The stench! The taste!!

Drinking: afternoon coffee. Which I’ve kind of given up. But today calls for afternoon coffee and lots of it.

Listening: to an audiobook, even though I don’t usually do audiobooks. But when you admire someone’s work enough you go the extra mile. Is it any good? Stupendous. You clever, clever thing. Person, I mean.

Watching: If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of either the movie My Sailor, My Love or the World Wide Dance triple bill (Akram Khan, Fei Bo, and Justin Peck; unless that was a one-off, come to think of it) go see them, go!

Reading: Leafing through Nigella Christmas. Oh come on, you know me. Or ought to, sweetie darlings.

Thinking: Imagine if we’d taken the Kyoto Protocol seriously in 1997. Imagine if we’d taken Putin seriously in 2008.

Feeling: for my husband and his late mother’s side of the family; his uncle has died of pancreatic cancer.

Life imitating art imitating life

The fifth of November, sweetie darlings. Bonfire Night. You know what that means, right? Time to visit the man from room number V.

And to all a good fright

'Twas the night before Samhain, when all thro' the house,
Every creature was stirring, is that a dead mouse?

Happy Halloween to all!

Everything everywhere all at once

Sure feels like that sometimes; as if you need two heads, another few hands, and some doppelganger stand-ins to send out into the world to handle everything on your plate. I do hope you're not overwhelmed but enjoying the hustle and bustle of it all. And when it's time to relax, may I suggest some Pedro Ximénez to go with a bit of dark Swiss chocolate; it's one of those perfect pairings that make the world disappear into blackish-brown scrumptiousness. Okay. Keep calm and shine on. 🌟