Archives - Weekly Update

At the beginning of this week, my mailbox was filled with Cyber Monday offers. I have decided that neither Cyber Monday nor Black Friday are motivators for me to shop. When I got a Cyber Monday offer from the local YMCA, I realized this has reached a new level of insanity. When on Tuesday my mailbox was filled with “Cyber Monday has been extended,” I grabbed my mouse to delete delete delete. I do enjoy giving at the holidays. What I loathe is gross materialism --- and gifts bought without meaning.

As promised, our newsletter comes to you early this week so our staff can enjoy a well-deserved loooooong weekend. We’ve had a really busy fall.

I KNOW I am not alone in feeling like Thanksgiving has crept up on me. The natural order of things used to be pumpkin carving, handing out candy, turkey, and then snow. I think there are children of a certain age --- like four to seven --- in my area of New Jersey who have a new definition of Halloween, which is you buy a costume, wear it around your house, and then eat a lot of candy you bought for yourself. And then it snows. And THEN it’s Thanksgiving. This year, with Turkey Day the absolute earliest that it can be, things feel even more out of kilter.

The construction project behind our house has taken on the spirit of “if you give a mouse a cookie.” What started out as new pool tile (I think there were only about 20 of the original 1972 tiles left on the sides in September), new coping and some patio work escalated into a much bigger project when the storm felled four 40-year-old trees and uprooted their huge root balls. We ended up getting seven trees taken down (some were hanging), cut into firewood, chipped, and now the plan we had for the back has a hole in it. My thought right now: ”I’ll think about it tomorrow….”

With nine days of Executive Camping under my belt, I am thinking I am now ready for my Merit Badge. I have it designed to have a generator, a gas can and a Wi-Fi card on it. But ever the optimist, I have decided that the downed pine trees can be turned into a new business. If I get some ribbon, we can be making holiday sprays for homes and grave covers. Of course, I will have competition from all those in town who have fallen trees (the evergreens are upended everywhere), so I guess I should stick to talking about books. By the way, my husband gets an award for keeping the neighbors powered up and hot-wiring heating units. He and Cory, his engineering apprentice, had their hands full this week. Nice finally to be able to flick a switch and see something actually happen. I really would not have had fun in frontier days.

Well, my plan that if Tom got a generator we would not get hit by the storm was foiled, but I am VERY glad we have the generator. However, I feel like we are in an episode of "The Walking Dead" sans the zombies. Around our house, discussions about where to get gasoline and how much we have is the topic of the day. I am ready to do ads for Verizon's My Wi-Fi, which allows five people to be online together.