Coping with Cold

It's cold in the Bag Lady's neighbourhood. Oh, not cold enough to make brass monkeys cross their legs, but cold. The kind of cold that makes you shiver before you go outside. The kind of cold that makes you put on an extra pair of socks. Long-john weather.

This Arctic system rolled down in the wake of a heavy snowfall, which is not at all uncommon. Most of our warm weather comes across the mountains to the west, pushing warm, moist air. What was rain on the coast turns to snow when it meets the cold air here. Eventually the cold air from the north wins and pushes the snow out of the way, freezing everything in it's path.

All of which brings the Bag Lady to the point. (of this post, not the point of despair, although sometimes that happens, too! Especially when it remains cold for weeks and weeks.....)
....err, the point of this post... the point of this post... quick, think of a point, stop wasting these people's time!

Coping skills. That's it! How do you cope with bad weather? The Bag Lady tends to hunker down in the warmth of her house sitting at her computer, playing solitaire for hours, moving very little and attempts to find engrossing tasks to keep her occupied. She will clean closets, re-organize kitchen cupboards, do some kind of craft, read many, many books, or bake and cook. Baking and cooking serves two purposes - the heat of the oven helps warm the house, and the results are usually comforting.

Yesterday, she did a variety of things. She read a terrific, engrossing book ("Alex Cross's Trial" by James Patterson & Richard Dilallo) and cooked. She made cookies to put in the Rancher's lunches, and dessert for supper (a mixed fruit crisp with an oatmeal topping) and she cooked a Prime Rib roast. She also made Yorkshire Pudding and was very pleased that they rose to previously unheard of heights! She remembered to take a picture (after she started eating, ahem) but the angle she used doesn't show the Yorkshire pudding to the best advantage (she was trying to hide the fact that she'd already eaten part of one)


She was so excited about the pudding turning out so well, she forgot to cook another vegetable! (Which was just as well, because she couldn't eat even half of the baked potato on her plate)
And she needs to explain that she cooked the Prime Rib roast, which is ordinarily something she reserves for company, because it is rapidly coming up on time to take another load of beef-on-the-hoof to the abattoir to become frozen beef-wrapped-in-brown-paper, and she needs to make room in her deep freeze.