Mass trip '11: Days 2b and 3

Day 2b: Rosh Hashanah

Hawthorne Suites: It is evening on September 28th.  We eat foods that Wifey prepared in advance (with some last-minute cooking using our room’s mini-kitchen).  The foods were transported frozen from Canada.  In some cases, such as the matzoh farfel, this food had actually been made in the USA and imported into Canada—then we bought it and exported it back!  Tasty and traditional.

(I think this is what TVTropes calls a PseudoCrisis, where episode 2a seems to end with a cliff-hanger but then episode 2b resolves it with a single paragraph.)

Day 3: Visit with Aunt

Last year I wrote a friends-only post in which I refered to my aunt as “A₁”.  It is a silly name for her, but then I am a silly dog.

Rosh Hashanah is one of the ”high holidays” on which no work is done and no business is conducted—just stay in the synogogue all day.  The observant Jew will not even pick up a pencil on this day.  Well, fuck that!

Stock market: The market is going down.  Buy TZA.

Toys Я Us, Bellingham MA.  Buy toys for the cousins, whom we will see on day 6.  Cousin #1 gets a kid’s chemistry set.  Cousin #2 gets a pogo stick.  Cousin #3 gets a Hello Kitty themed karaoke/radio plus some AAA batteries.  Total $78.58 at 12:56 PM.

Market Basket, Bellingham MA.  Buy a bottle of Juicy Juice® Berry, which used to be the juice that Kid #2 and I drank all the time when living in the States.  (Now we mainly drink President’s Choice 5-Berry, which is also raspberry-flavoured.)  This is to ensure that there is something suitable to drink at A₁’s house.  $2.99, 1:19 PM.

A₁’s house, Brookline MA.  More foods prepared in advance by Wifey and transported frozen from Canada.  It turns out that A₁ has plenty of beverages and so the juice wasn’t necessary.  Dinner conversation is pleasant, mainly because touchy subjects are avoided.  Examples: A₁’s morning at the synogogue, Kid #2’s lack of preparation for a Bar Mitzvah, a certain lawyer.
      At one point, it was necessary to run the garbage disposer.  A₁ went to the sink, stood out of her wheelchair on her one good leg, then used her one good arm to grab the stopper, insert it into the garbage disposer, and twist to turn it on, with no spare limbs for balance.  This is the first time I have seen her out of her wheelchair in at least ten years.
      Eventually we get to the subject of money.  It seems A₁ is expecting that I will not accept her ”no” answer to my request for a handout.  I tell her that I have other sources of money (though they are dwindling), but I have no other relatives with whom I am still on speaking terms, so that matters more.

Stop & Shop, Brookline MA,  8:45 PM.  Stop in at a local market to buy Jewish foods (on a high holiday!).  Disappointing: their Jewish selection is much reduced from prior years.  I guess the demographics of the neighbourhood are changing.  Buy some Hebrew National bologna for $7.20 because it’s not available in Canada and Kid #1 remembers it fondly.