Cozy

      It is November in Geneva with a vengeance. Saturday night, it was raining so hard that even I didn't want to go out for dinner, so we decided to order pizza. Dominos exists here, and, if one is a COMPLETE BABY about making telephone calls in French, one can order pizza online. Further, if one does not want to venture into the rain to withdraw cash from the bank machine down the street, one can pay online with a credit card. Perfect. Except that when I tried to pay, I was directed to a page that informed me that all the redirects required by the payment process had left my computer lost in cyberspace. I tried again, received the same message, and started to worry that perhaps somehow I had just ordered two Hawaiian pizzas (and cheesy bread and Cinnastixs -- hey, we're hungry over here). So I nicely asked Drew to call Dominos and ask if we had ordered twice. He nicely did, only to be informed that they had no order from us. Pas de pizza. I tried one more time online (I am not a quitter), then called the other Dominos in Geneva, just to make sure. Nothing. So I did what I should have done all along and told the patient man on the telephone what we wanted. In my flusteration over trying to repeat my phone number in French, I forgot to ask if I could pay with a credit card, so guess what . . . we had to go out in the rain anyway. Later, I saw a message in my email from a company called Saferpay, telling me that my credit card payment of 57 chf had indeed been successful. Twice. We kept waiting for the doorbell to ring with our other two pizzas, but they never came. The lesson here seems to be, "Quit being such a coward about the phone calls, and you'll be able to stay inside where it's warm. And save hundreds of francs into the bargain."

      The good thing about nasty fall weather is that it makes staying inside where it's warm that much more blissful. So, in the spirit of warmth, here are some things that make November cosy.

1. The sugar bowl. I don't know what it is about a sugar bowl. I don't even like sugar in my coffee. But there is something about this piece of crockery that just says, "come in and curl up."

2. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. I heard about this group and how it survived through years of communism in a radio segment called, "The Singing Revolution" (The World and Everything in It, Nov. 10. http://www.worldmag.com/podcast/worldandeverything.cfm if you're interested). The story was so lovely that I looked up the group on Spotify. The music perfectly captures the feeling of being inside in candlelight watching rain run down the windows.

3. And speaking of candlelight, the darker days allow for more hours of candle burning. This one, with the candlestick made in my grandfather's furniture factory from the tulip tree that grew near his home, makes me feel connected to my forbears and so is particularly comforting. The marshmallow-scented one from Migros isn't bad, either.

4. The Thanksgiving Tree. Years ago, in an effort to extend my favorite holiday, I started having the kids attach leaves to a paper tree that we taped up in the kitchen. Each leaf bore something for which we were thankful. The idea has evolved, and now we use an actual tree . . . okay, a branch, but it's 3D, anyway. So far, we've been thankful for football, friends, memories, an available God, running, and, I'm pretty sure, video games. We range from the sublime to the trivial by the minute.

5. Soup. It's such a great meal. On Saturday, a person could cook up a pot of say, chicken vegetable soup with gnocchi, and on the following Wednesday, the family could still be enjoying a tummy-warming dinner in a pot. I did promise to make something different for dinner tonight. Chili?