Fat Friday

     Happy Fat Friday! Or Vendredi Gras as the French would call the day if the French celebrated Thanksgiving. A friend told me on Thanksgiving that he was looking forward the day after: his favorite Friday of the year. A day of no obligations. Meals ready to eat. Just add heat.
     I agreed with him, but as the day progresses, I find I'm doing things here, there and everywhere. I did sleep in an hour. That was a good start. I went to the guest house to stoke the fire. I don't believe in astrology, but I was born under a fire sign so tending a fire is a pleasure. I noticed the bin of burnable trash and decided to reduce that to ash The cardboard boxes burn well, but the junk mail requires poking. Fuel, heat and air, those are the three elements of fire. A judicious poker being the honorary fourth.
    I had bought a new shop vac a few weeks ago, but hated to open the box. These things usually require assembly. But what the heck. If it looked too complicated, I'd just shove it back in the box for another day. But the only requirement was to remove a twist tie from the cord. I plugged it in just to assess the noise level and suction. Not bad, and succulent. I carried it over to the garage, where we would use it mostly for vacuuming out our cars which were sitting right there. Again, I "what the hecked" and vacuumed out the front and back seats. Teresa's car is never dirty. Mine leads a harder life.
     As I was burning trash earlier, I had noticed a postcard from Stephan, a guy I met in Ireland. He seems to travel constantly and sends me postcards. I rescued the card, a nice picture of Edinburgh, and resolved to send Stephan a card even though I haven't been anywhere postcardable. I also owed a note to our hosts for Thanksgiving dinner.
    While I had been vacuuming the cars earlier, I remembered I wanted to fire up the snowblower before I needed it. It always starts easily even with the pull cord, except for the first time after it's been sitting all summer. Sure enough, it wouldn't start. There are four different steps. I did them all four times. I pulled the plug. It had spark. The fuel tank looked low. I got the extension cord to use the electric start. Bang! she started. When it it's ten below with a foot of snow on the driveway. Future Joe will thank me for taking care of this.
     Thank goodness for days like this with no obligations. I get so much done.

I cleaned the beach, assembled the chair, and distilled this gin.

Holiday Tour

This is not funny!

   Thanksgiving gets little respect. I've heard many otherwise sensible people say that Thanksgiving should be moved to mid-October like in  Canada. But that's not going to happen. We are never going to copy the Candians in anything, though we should copy them in many things.
   People complain that the Christmas hubbub starts right after Halloween. Thanksgiving is only tolerated for its long weekend; our only dedicated four day weekend of the year. Those four days tempt people to travel further than they should. For what? A turkey dinner? A fine turkey dinner can be had much closer to home. Everyone should stay off the roads. There's a lot of crazy people out there.
   Halloween is the appropriate start of the Season of Light. By early October we've finally accepted that summer is gone and won't be back for a long, long time. This is scary. Unseen forces are shortening the days. Darkness extends its realm. We don masks for a day in a pathetic attempt to frighten away the monsters that may be coming, forgetting for a night the monsters that are already here. We eat a bunch of candy which makes us feel worse. That's Halloween.
    A bit further back we had Labor Day, the very first made-to-order three day weekend. It was a supposed end mark of the summer season. A sop to the working man who must return to his job after spending the summer at his rented beach cottage. No one complained that the stay at the beach only lasted a week. No one complains that it took a depression and a world war to bring about changes that gave the working man enough money for a week in a cottage. And now his wife must work too to affard the week at the beach, and the kids are left on their own. Mother and dad go their separate ways. Beach house is turned into condos. That's Labor Day.
     earlier in the year, summer got rolling on The Fourth of July, even though the days are getting shorter by then. We set off fireworks to remind us of the wars that set us free. It's a follow-up to Memorial Day, which honors the troops that fought in those wars. Memorial Day is not that important a holiday because it shifts around to the nearest weekend. I'm all in favor of that. It's like Presidents Day. Couldn't Washington and Linclon have been born on the same Monday? Their birthdays are so close. They were so indispensable to the country's survival. Maybe they'd pull the turf tighter over their heads if they could see us know.
     And don't let us forget St. Patrick's Day. A sign of spring, of shamrocks and flowing streams of Guinness. By some incredible quirk of Irish luck, the Saint's day falls on the day the British occupiers sailed out of Boston Harbor in 1776. They had been under siege all winter until Washington mounted cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga upon Dorchester Heights overlooking the city. The British agreed to leave without burning the city if Washington agreed not to sink their ships. The British might have left on the 16th, but by the aforementioned Irish luck, they sailed on the 17th. That day became a civic holiday in Boston. It still is. No school! Yahoo! We always went to the big parade in South Boston, which has since sadly moved to the weekend.
     Valentine's Day? A special day for lovers. I guess that's all of us, or should be. Which brings us back to New Year's Eve. The lights of Christmas are going out. Let's have one more blowout before confronting the darkness that stretches endlessly ahead.

The Italians Have Twice As Many