holidays – Ahuva’s Blog

Today’s excursion was VERY sunny, in more ways than just the weather. My usual outings consist of making sandwiches and grocery shopping. When I’m very lucky, I might also get out for a massage. Alas, that’s not happened since even before I injured my rib. At the moment the very idea of someone wanting to press on my rib makes me flinch. In November and December I had a series of medical appointments -that was a bit different. Nothing serious, just trying to get the yearly check-ups accomplished once we all figured out how to interact during a pandemic. But today, today was very special!!

Books to be placed outside later (or maybe that’s also what they do in bad weather)

My sister has been telling me for weeks (months?) that our local library was back in business. You place an order with them either over the phone or via email, and they would bag up your books for you. They would contact you to set a pickup time. At the scheduled time your brown paper bag would be waiting for you in front of the building. I am a Kindle Unlimited patron and I have been getting the vast majority of my reading that way. Besides, part of the fun of the library is the browsing to see what is there that you weren’t expecting, or hadn’t known existed. Back in December I treated myself to an outing at Barnes & Noble to get some REAL books. While I do appreciate the convenience of my iPad, there is something about a tangible book, with tangible pages, that still fills a particular need. One of those books was the first in a series by one of the authors I like – Jeffery Deaver’s new “Culter Shaw” series. I REALLY wanted to read the 2nd book but I didn’t want to spend the required amount for an ebook. I turned to my local library. Sure enough, they had it available ( because this is only new to me, not to the world). I dug out my long-abandoned “books from the library” list and found 3 more available and placed my order yesterday. Today I ran over to pick up my books!! Making the book acquisition even more wonderful – I just learned that Monday is a company holiday!!! I know it’s a national holiday but only this year, due to changes in scheduling because of Covid19, is this a work holiday for me as well. *huge smile* Oh my goodness!!!! THREE WHOLE DAYS TO READ!!!!!!!!

MY books – although it also looks as if maybe there should be fried chicken in there as well.

Ah, 2020, the year when we need to devise new ways to do traditional things. We have just completed the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These are wonderful events and, like most holidays, a time when we get together with family, friends and community. Except it’s very difficult to fit large numbers of people together in limited space and observe social distancing. Our congregation had a “sacred space” committee that sent out emails, suggesting ways we could all achieve or create a “sacred space” for ourselves in order to observe the holiday. They suggested that people should NOT just sit in their usual video conferencing setup but that we should all dress up, change locations within our homes, and otherwise beautify or “dress up” the space. I discussed this with my sister and we agreed that setting up outside, on my deck, would be a wonderful way to create a sacred space – outside in nature. Of course for me, this year has been horrendous with the no-see-ums so I knew if we were outside, I needed to be INSIDE of screens.

I already had one pop-up canopy, but it did not have sides. I went searching on the internet (WAS there life and commerce before the internet?) for another popup but with screens, and a way to add screens to the one I had. What a range in prices and styles. I didn’t want to spend THAT much because I really didn’t see the need for TWO popup canopies in my life. I confess that I let price be the deciding factor when I finally found some 10’x10′ popup canopies with screened sides. The add-on screens and the screened popup arrived a week before they were needed. My sister and I spent an afternoon setting them up, aligning them, figuring out how to ‘join’ them and keep them steady. That was Tuesday and when we were done it looked GREAT! Thursday morning I woke up and went off to make sandwiches. While I was making sandwiches it began raining. It poured. I came home and the new popup had collapsed under the rain. I was very very dispirited. But come Saturday the sun rose, and like the itsy bitsy spider the tent went up again. This time with pool noodles to try to keep rain from bringing down it down.

The holidays were wonderful. We made a beautiful space in the screened area. We had friends join us for meals, and we could be socially distanced because of the large space. We had multiple laptops and large added monitors so we could livestream services and have our families video conference in to join us while they ran a livestream for the services. Hurray for multiple devices! No rain from Saturday September 12 through Tuesday September 29. Last night was a major storm – someone on a morning business video conference called it a mini-hurricane. It was so fierce that it woke me up around 3:30 am, which is extremely unusual given how hard of hearing I have become lately. I went downstairs and looked out. Sure enough, the new popup was splayed and bent across the deck. I guess pool noodles will only get you so far. But it’s okay. It did what I needed it to do. If in the future I want to be able to build and KEEP an extended screened area, I think I might invest a few more dollars and get something a bit more sturdy. It seems you do get what you pay for. Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, PEACEFUL new year, filled with hope and good things. 🙂

Tag: holidays

Sunny Excursion