It occurred to me this week that it was December and I had yet to put on my coat.

I have only lived, until now, in cold places, each one more bitter and raw than the next. At least half of my closet space is taken up with coats, along with their traditional accoutrements; scarfs, hats, mittens, and gloves. My closet is a moth's dream, stuffed with enough wool to keep their voracious hunger pangs at bay.

Despite this treasure trove, around February I grow cranky with my coats. I'm tired of all the buttoning and swaddling. The weight of those additional folds of fabric make my shoulders slope and my spirit wither. The cold drains me from the outside in and the inside out.

When you need a warm coat, there is nothing better than having one. Except for not needing it in the first place.

"You have to feel the bite of the wind to appreciate the warmth of a winter coat." – Fennel Hudson

The sun sets early in the beginning of December, even here in southern California. The first day of this darkened month also marks World AIDS Day, established in 1988 to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Just one year earlier, the National Mall in Washington, DC played host to the first display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. A patchwork of names, sewn with care, grief, and outrage, it was a clarion call to a nation that, for far too long, had averted its eyes to the worst public health crisis of its time.

I was one of the estimated 1.2 million people who were fortunate enough to see the quilt in 1996, the last time it was shown in its entirety.

Panels of names for as far as the eye could see, lost, in part, through complicit silence.

"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow." – Alice Walker

Of the countless holidays littering the American calendar, there is none I love more than Thanksgiving.

As a kid, my mother used to roast our turkey in a contraption she would plug into an outlet on our screened porch. The smell of the turkey would drive the neighborhood cats crazy. But what are you going to do? The kitchen oven was already reserved for baking the pies.

Here's to napping, and football, and breaking out the linen napkins. But most of all, here's to the holiday that places the mashed potato front and center. Now that's something to be thankful for!

"Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him." – Frank McCourt

Still in the nascent days of my new Los Angeles life, I'm looking forward to the upcoming SoCal winter, finally free of slippery sidewalks, antifreeze, and staggering heating bills.

But this week I realized I had underestimated my lifelong love affair with the most surprising of objects. The snow shovel.

Sitting in the crowd at the Staples Center this past Wednesday, I took in my first LA Kings game. When the contest came to an occasional stop, a fleet of skaters descended upon the ice, each armed with a wide-mouthed shovel. As they glided in formation, up and down the rink, they scraped the ice clean with military precision.

Much to my surprise, I realized how much I wanted to join them.

So much for palm trees and Coppertone.......

"Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?" - Kobo Abe

Stop the presses! It has FINALLY happened!

Just this month, the word "fluffernutter" has been officially added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, joining such legendary turns of phrase as "Dad Bod," "Vaccine Passport," and "Doorbell Camera."

Invented in 1917, this sugary staple was a hallmark of my childhood lunches. Indeed I am such a fan I count myself among the many who have volunteered for the annual "What the Fluff" festival, a cacophony of marshmallow concoctions and carnival rides, held each year in Somerville (MA), where Fluff was originally invented.

Sure there are healthier options. But is there anything more fun?

"No one ever pretended that shopping is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?" – Jeffrey Kluger

This weekend is the Head of the Charles.

An annual tradition for Cantabrigians, this event brings thousands of people to the banks of Boston's Charles River to glimpse ridiculously lithe rowers propel boats the width of a hanger toward a finish line located three miles from the start line.

This experience is not for the faint of heart. Rowing requires endurance, stamina, coordination, timing, rhythm, strength, power, and BOTH aerobic and anaerobic fitness. Oh and blisters. Did I mention the blisters?

But if you've ever watched a boat cut through water like a hot knife through butter, a tango of synchronized oars pulling to and fro, you know the seduction all too well.

“All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.” – Boys in the Boat

It rained this week.

Actually, it poured. It was as if a giant bucket in the sky had tipped, sending cascades of water down to the parched lips of Southern California.

Every nearby zip code got drenched. Every dog in my apartment building howled, goaded on by both lightening and thunder. It was raining. IN LOS ANGELES.

Back in my hometown, pounding rain wouldn't have even registered on my storm-weary geiger counter. But after a mere few months in the San Fernando Valley, I leapt to the window at the slightest hint of a brewing squall.

Can wearing a jacket when the temps drop to 60 be far behind?

"Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day." – English Nursery Rhyme

I love television. Full stop.

Last night's return of Grey's Anatomy was a particular highlight in a month awash in new programming. This latest episode kicked off the 18th season of Meredith, Bailey, Avery, and Dr. Webber prowling the hallways of Grey-Sloan Memorial. While I still miss the old days when McDreamy and Christina dominated the story lines, somehow Shonda Rhimes always keeps me coming back for more.

So whatever show is your guilty pleasure, I am right there with you. Pull out your favorite blanket. Fish the remote out from underneath the couch cushions. The fall season is BACK!

"If it weren't for electricity, we'd all be watching television by candlelight." – George Gobel

A few days ago, I saw the above photograph in my hometown newspaper.

Why oh why, I mused, would anyone stick a slice of pizza under a windshield wiper? Perhaps to free up their hands to search a purse or pocket for an elusive bus pass? As a peace offering to a jilted lover? A practical joke? A drunken mishap? The possibilities are endless.

Everyone has a favorite pizza. Mine is the cheese thin-crust pie served up at Pizzeria Regina in Boston's North End. But any way you slice it (pun intended), leaving a piece of pizza under a windshield wiper is a true act of charity. My kingdom for a hot gooey wedge of Boston's finest.

"Unless you're a pizza, the answer is yes, I can live without you." – Bill Murray

The latest wave of symbols have just been released by Unicode, 37 in all, including (wait for it......), a DISCO BALL EMOJI!

Now that is technological progress I say.

During the 1970's, disco music was all the rage. Who could forget the opening scene of 1977's Saturday Night Fever? John Travolta, strutting down the streets of Brooklyn, paint can swinging to the pulsating beat. Or others, inspired by Travolta's gold chain and white suit, making their way to the newly opened Studio 54, hoping to carve up a dance floor dripping in celebrities. By the end of the decade, disco was still king. Donna Summer topped the charts in 1979 with her trio of hits; "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," and "MacArthur Park." The bass notes of each made my boombox quiver in delight.

Disco has endured a lot of shade since its heyday. But I remain a fan. If the mirror ball emoji is back, can the music be far behind?

"A glittering disco ball spins from the ceiling, but the music is something I've never heard, discordant and haunting and insistent, the kind of music that demands you dance." – Candace Bushnell (author of Sex and the City)

Last night I dreamt I was on a gameshow.

The task I was given required me to remove thousands of pieces of gold confetti from the shallow end of a swimming pool. It was both an infuriating, and ultimately, futile assignment. Every time I went to raise my cupped hands from the water, the sparkling flecks would slip through my fingers.

Without dragging Freud into this too much, I suspect I was wrestling with that age old quandary of how best to capture the opportunities given to me. I often feel this way at the beginning of the academic year, when the time ahead is a fresh new page filled with hope and possibility.

Reach out and grab a fistful of whatever comes your way. Life is for living.

"How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it." – Paulo Coelho

For the past two weeks I have walked to and from work each day. That, in of itself, is not unusual. It gives me time to both prepare and unwind from the various activities of the day. My extended strolls provide fodder for sermons, unkink muscles cramped by my desk, and acclimate me to my new neighborhood. Pretty standard stuff.

So why do I feel so different here? The answer? 84.

As in there are 284 days of sunshine each year in Los Angeles. That's 84 more days than my native Boston. Even more if you subtract days categorized as "partly sunny," bringing the total of bright sparkly days in Beantown down to a paltry 98. 186 days less than here in the City of Angels.

Given our planet orbits the sun, it's no wonder light has such a salvific effect.

"Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy." – John Denver

I've never been a big fan of bumper stickers.

After spending tens of thousands of dollars on a car, I just couldn't see how a sticky, silly, or worst yet, snarky comment pasted onto my back bumper was an upgrade.

I fear I hold the minority view on this one. Every day I learn where people sent their kids to college, read proclamations of finding Jesus, and discover the political leanings of my adjacent drivers while stuck in traffic. I'm just not sure I need to know all that.

But this week I came across a bumper sticker that tweaked both my theology and my funny bone.

"What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about?"

Perhaps I need to rethink my position.....

“Only a writer would slap a bumper sticker on her car that read, 'Seriously, I'd rather be working'.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich

I learned a lot from my mother.

I was inspired by her fierceness. I watched her insist a place in the working world be available to her, and later, to me. I listened as she disavowed anyone who thought she was "just a woman, ruled by her emotions." I understood the complexities of walking in this world, incarnate in the body of a woman, from my mother.

But it was my father who gave me my confidence. In my father's eyes I saw the reflection of what I could be. It was my father who taught me to celebrate and treasure the ways in which I was not made in his likeness.

With Father's Day just around the corner, I celebrate the man who raised me to be the woman I am.......

"A study of successful women showed they all had one thing in common; fathers who listened to them." – Elinor Lipman, I Can't Complain

Twice yesterday, as I was careening down the twists and turns of Los Angeles' canyon roads, my heart jumped out of my chest when an AMBER alert suddenly blared out of my cell phone.

AMBER is an acronym for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, named after a nine-year old girl named Amber Hagerman. In 1996 she was kidnapped and later murdered in Arlington, TX, discovered just 5 miles from where she was riding her bike prior to her abduction.

I didn't know any of that until I did a bit of research upon arriving back home. My heart aches for parents who have lost a child to the vagrancies and cruelties life can bring. So this morning, my prayer was for Amber Hagerman.

Still loved. Still missed.

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why." – Kurt Vonnegut

My love affair with soup began with Campbell's chicken noodle.

It was what my mother gave me when I was sick, cold, or tired. Ladled into a shallow white bowl, it was served with a sleeve of saltine crackers. A perfect combo.

As I got older I moved on to tomato soup. The texture and thickness was markedly different than the chicken broth in which all those slippery noodles swam. The heat of the rich bisque lingered as it made its way down my throat. Topped off with a toasted tunafish sandwich, it kept my hunger pangs at bay for hours.

Then I fell in love with my mother's homemade minestrone. It would take her hours to compile and prepare the ingredients. When finished, it felt less like a soup and more like a meal, in part because the propensity of pasta and lentils required me to chew.

The best soup I ever had.

"Soup is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup." – Willa Cather

Do all of your passwords seem to expire at the same time? Yeah, me too.

Things will be rolling right along and then my laptop will ping with an "update" reminder to choose a new password. Which would be ok if every other entity in my life didn't require a similar adjustment.

Accessing email, paying bills, even reserving a book at the library requires a password. Which means every few months I must create a new combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that are both memorable and opaque. It's like trying to solve a crossword puzzle using invisible ink.

Perhaps this obsession with security has kept my personal details protected. But I fear the only person who can't figure out my passwords is me!

"Treat your password like a toothbrush. Don't let anyone else use it and get a new one every six months." – Clifford Still

With this weekend's completion of the Belmont Stakes, the 2021 Triple Crown circuit officially has come to a close.

As a girl, I had very few opportunities to saddle a horse. The local YMCA program allowed kids to ride in a big circle within the safe and cozy confines of a small wooden corral. I had a chance to ride during my time in Montana, a more freewheeling experience that involved neither reins nor stirrups. In retrospect, likely not the best idea.

But in recent years I have had two opportunities to ride with proper equipment and a guide. The first was an easy ramble across the desert landscape south of Tucson. And the second, a jaunt that traced the progression of the battle of Gettysburg. To ride across those fields, just as the soldiers of the Civil War did, was both remarkable and moving.

"We have almost forgotten how strange a thing it is that so huge and powerful and intelligent an animal as a horse should allow another, and far more feeble animal, to ride upon its back." – Peter Gray

As if there weren't enough reasons to love Fridays already, today is (drum roll please......)

NATIONAL DONUT DAY!

At least according to Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' (or "Dunks" as we call it in Boston).

Originally this holiday was designed as a way to honor the "donut lassies," women who helped men serving on the front lines in France during WWI. In addition to dispensing writing supplies and stamps, these volunteers cooked homemade meals for the troops. They soon discovered the soldiers' shallow metal helmets could be used to fry donuts. Necessity, it appears, is truly the mother of invention.

"Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?" – Matt Groening