Part 2 – I Can’t Deal with This

I’m asking you to envision the following situation; you’ll see why as we go along. It was a Tues. (Aug. 31 to be precise) at about 1:15 or so in the afternoon, and I was sitting on the couch in our living room. Once I finished my glass of cold brew coffee, I would have shifted to a horizontal position on that self-same piece of furniture, going into couch potato, pre-nap mode, preparing to tackle the NYTimes crossword puzzle.

Based upon what I have just described, do you think I would have been interested in getting off the couch, finishing my coffee in one gulp, going upstairs to put on my shoes, and leaving our apartment lickety-split? If you are the cautious type, you might want to say, I don’t think so, or Probably not; whereas a more decisive individual might declare, Not a chance in Hell or No way, Jose. So what transpired that caused this unlikely scenario to come to pass? Let’s take a deep breath and go back a week in time.

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Part One – Where the Boars and the Hyraxes Play

If no one is going to show up for my Shabbat morning kiddush, well then, dangburn it, we’ll just have to pick ourselves up and have it elsewhere. That’s kind of an exaggeration for effect; we had planned weeks before to spend a few days with The Levines on their mountain top, where the boars and hyraxes play (knowing full well that by the following Shabbat in Ma’ale Adumim we’d be back to normal, the whisk(e)y would flow, the coffee would be poured, and the herring would be served).

To be on the safe side, even though we had just gotten our third COVID shot, on Monday, we went down to the parking lot under our mall to get tested (in and out in the blink of an eye – actually a swab up the nose). By Wednesday, we knew we were good to go; time to pack up, remembering to take the three bottles of rosé I had bought for them, the pound of Starburnt – I mean Starbucks – Sumatran coffee that Barbara had brought back from The States, and, last but not least, their copy of the new JSPCA calendar (photos of cats and dogs – no bathing suits required).

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