Reluctantly Shutting Down Again

After several months of being able to see friends we trust, we are now back to being pretty much alone again.  Woody had a scare and has clamped down.  We had to cancel a dinner we planned to have with two friends we have eaten with a few times already.  it seems that we will have a private and rather empty holiday season.  No solstice party, for thing we’ll miss – and so will many of our friends.  Not giving gifts to many people because we won’t be seeing each other. 

 Thursday night was the first night of Channukah and also my mother’s yahrzeit – the day of her death according to the Hebrew calendar.  So I lit the two Chanukah candles in the dining room where we eat every meal and a glass yahrzeit candle that burns for 26 hours in the bathtub where it can’t set fire to anything, and said Kaddish for her.  The Channukah candles I try to light before I start dinner, so that when we get up from the meal, they are burnt out or almost. I don’t want to leave the candles unattended, especially with three lively cats investigating.  they have quite enough fun with the tree and my wrapping paper that’s in a big box on my desk.  We exchanged presents and made latkes the next day to have with gravlax, applesauce and sour cream.

 I try to wrap one or two gifts a day so that I am fresh and don’t feel overwhelmed or put on.  I got sick this week with a bad stomach.  Woody was terrified I had Covid but it was just either a stomach bug or something bad I ate.. Since Wednesday, I was living on oatmeal, yogurt and simple chicken soup.  Today is the first day I’m eating normally and everything seems to have quieted down at last.

 I finished The Water Dancer and passed on the book to Stephanie and Tash.  Now that the library is still closed and I have to buy books I want to read, I like to pass them on to friends, to circulate them as if I were a lending library.

 The cats are very happy.  I’m here all the time [gardens done for a couple of months] and Woody is here most of the time.  The tree was set up to amuse them, they believe.  Every morning, the successful hunt of the night leaves ornaments on the floor. Yesterday I came into my office in midafternoon and found Schwartzie in the box of papers with a third of the mail over the floor. If you want to make a cat happy, there’s nothing better than a box of tissue paper [not Kleenex, tissue paper for wrapping].  It makes a wonderful sound and crinkles perfectly when they paw at it.

 I miss seeing people.  We always have a solstice party with 25 or so people, sometimes more. We always have friends over for dinners. Melenie always cooks with me for the party and we exchange gifts with her and with Dale and Stephen as well  as some other friends.  Karen and Tony always have a wonderful between-seven-and-eleven fishes party on the 24th.  New Years Eve is not a holiday I like or take part in, but from Chanukah through the 26tgh, we are celebrating another year and friends.  Trump has killed the holidays.  There’s a comic out now called: How The Trump Stole Christmas.  I would add, Chanukah and Kwanza as well.

 We couldn’t eat latkehs the first night of Chanukah because I had the stomach bug. But we will, probably tomorrow. evening.  I tried to order some smoked fish from Zabar’s, but their web site really sucks and half the things in the catalog didn’t come up on line.  I  especially miss smoked sturgeon. When I tried to order on the phone, I sat there for 22 minutes and got nobody. The website kept rejecting my delivery address.