It snowed on November 1st. My Colorado friends will be unmoved by this because I know it snowed earlier there. I saw the posts of the little children and dedicated parents trick or treating in full winter gear. Kudos to you. We don’t do Halloween, but here in Cleveland it can definitely be snowy on Purim so I empathize with the disappointment of epic costumes hidden by the necessary warmth of a coat. Thank G-d for social media, amirite?

We turned our clocks back a couple nights ago and now the mornings are dark the early evenings are dark it’s all dark all the time. And soon the days will be gray as well and we will all find it (more) difficult to crawl out of those comfy, comfy, warm beds.

I’m going to flagrantly self-promote and remind you all of this article I wrote for Jew in the City last winter about staying connected spiritually even when it’s dark and cold and difficult.

Also here’s a post where I talk about hygge.

I was caught off-guard by this early snow. It wasn’t a very serious snow, it was the type that was mostly melted by the end of the day but also cold enough that I was scrambling to locate all the winter coats that were residing in storage because we had been fine with hoodies until now.

It was a reminder that I need to get more gloves, check to see who needs new boots, whose coats are still functional and whose aren’t, and all the various nitty gritty of winter motherhood.

It was also a reminder that I need to fix our dire basement situation, which I updated on my Instastories but since not everyone has Instagram (which is fine! Good for you for having less social media!), I’ll give you the cliff notes version – we had a sewage backup, it was gross, now I need to do something about the carpet which THANK G-D is not the whole basement but just a 9 x 10 foot area.

Why do I need to fix the basement so urgently? Because winter is coming and my kids have abundant energy and that energy is best expended downstairs where it will not raise my blood pressure to critical heights. PLUS I just got a small indoor trampoline which should hopefully be awesome and not require me to write a sad yet objective Amazon review.

And now I’m going to go browse for an area rug as a quick fix for the space where I have to remove the carpet squares until we have the budget to really redo the basement floors.

But first, a list of some of my favorite things about winter:

• you can run errands and not worry as much about the food spoiling in the car
• hot chocolate
• snow is pretty
• the kids go to sleep much easier when it’s pitch-black out
• sweaters!
• other things that I can’t think of at the moment

Photo by Briana Tozour on Unsplash