Test and tree

I started the day early today - we got an email from Mary Cay Brass saying that free COVID self-tests were being given out in Dummerston at the Motor Vehicle Department office on Route 5. I dashed into clothes and left without breakfast - but I was too late. They were all out almost minutes after opening. They said that they would be given out at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital starting at 2p.m. So I came home, had breakfast, and we went to Elysian Hills to find a Christmas Tree. They had a nice one, small but nice, for $48, which was cheaper than the $60 one we saw a couple of days ago and decided against. So we got it and brought it home. But not before I went to Walgreens to get a prescription filled, and to Staples to get card stock, paper and blank CDs. I'm making CDs as gifts this year and was running out of materials. I got down to Brattleboro Hospital at 1:20p.m., well before the 2p.m. opening, but I could see no evidence of a place to line up. A woman in a pickup said it was actually off Canal Street at the place where they have been doing COVID testing, so I followed her. Things got a little crazy as suddenly everyone was cramming into that spot, but I stuck close behind her and by golly, at 20 minutes before two, I was having two test kits handed to me through the car window - two per vehicle was the rule. Who knows whether the people who came at 2p.m. got any! But I was happy - we can now test before our Christmas gathering, and I can share one kit with John if he needs one. Later,I put up the tree and put on lights. It looks nice!

Elysian Hills Tree Farm

Our tree

Test kits

Christmas Cheer

We spread some Christmas Cheer today. I met Jerome at his home and asked him what would be most helpful to him. His car is not working and he needed food, but doesn't have the strength to walk to the Market 32 supermarket which is near his place and lug home bags of groceries uphill. So i drove him to the store, gave him some $$ and he went in and did some shopping and I drove him back home. This was very helpful to him. Ellen also had made a little plate of cookies for him. He was very grateful! I came home, we had a bite to eat, and then Ellen and I went to two nursing homes and did a sing for the residents: Bradley House and Holton Memorial Home. This was organized by Robin Davis, whose dad is in Bradley House. It was a small group led by Mary Cay Brass and Andy Davis, and in adddition to Mary Cay, Andy, Robin, Ellen and myself, included Tom Goldschmidt, Beth Spicer, and probably a couple of others. I (of course) did not remember to bring my phone, so I got no photos :( . Too bad, because we were in some interesting spaces.At Bradley House, we had to check in, have our temp. taken and be fully vaccinated. We wore masks while we sang. None of the residents were wearing masks, however. At Holton, they knew we had been checked out at Bradley, so it was simpler. But we did wear masks throughout. Our repertoire was drawn from the pieces we had learned for our December 14th Christmas sing with River SIngers. At Bradley we sang in the dining room; at Holton, we were in a special activiies room. I would guess maybe fifteen residents attended at Bradley, and about a dozen at Holton. Everyone was very appreciative. So this was a special day. When we got home, I did Centering Prayer on Zoom while Ellen did some errands. This evening, J.E. called from Salem, OR and did Facetime with Ellen, and now Ellen is at the Hannaford's market delivering some cookies to a store manager who has been particularly kind to her. A good day!

Bradley House

Holton Home

Cozy!!

I think I've mentioned before that the fireplace insert has not been working since summertime. Someone from our propane supplier said that the burner was defective and needed to be replaced. They ordered parts and the parts were delayed. Yesterday, a repair man came from Friends of the Sun, which is where we bought the stove in the first place - this was an appointment we made months ago for a cleaning - he looked at it and said,

"There's no problem with the burner," and he took it apart, saw that it needed a new thermal coupler and needed some cleaning, he did all that and it's working just fine and boy is it ever cozy! ************************************************* Later: We watched a Christmas Celtic Sojourn virtual concert from Boston. It featured Moira Smiley and Windborne (Lynn Mahoney, Will Rowan, Lauren Breunig) all of whom we know. It was great.

Moira Smiley

Lynn, Lauren and Will from Windborne

Meet Elliot, finally!

I think I have mentioned in previous posts that we have two new baby boys in our neighborhood. Followers of this blog met Riley Grover a few days ago. Yesterday, we finally met Elliot Perkins, who was born three days before Riley, if I'm not mistaken. So these are six-month-old, very robust baby boys! Elliot's parents, Phil and Ashley, live in the house at the bottom of our driveway which has been under reconstruction for the last year or so. It was formerly the home of "Jake" Jaquith, a former teacher of math at Brattleboro Middle School. After living alone in the house for years, Jake had to go into a nursing home, and died earlier this year. Phil and Ashley had to basically gut the house and rebuild it; plus they added a wing. It is a work in progress, and now they have Elliot! And Phil works nights as a policeman in Springfield! So they have their hands full! But they seem to be enjoying it, and the house will be lovely when it's all done. More power to them! Just before going to see them, I drove down to check the mail and discovered a tree down over the road, blocking the road. Not a big tree, but I couldn't budge it, and I no longer have a chain saw. I called Zach, and he called Phil, who immediately came up and cleared it! Good neighbors! We are so fortunate!

Phil, Ashley and Elliot Perkins.

Close-up of Elliot. ***************************++++++++++++ Both Elliot and Riley will be walking before long, and before we know it, they'll be running up the driveway!

It’s snowing!

Well, we may be getting some serious snow. It's supposed to snow until tomorrow morning, and we could get several inches. I just mailed a whole bunch of things for Christmas, so I got that done just in time. This afternoon, we're going to Eliza's house and watch a Tar Heels basketball game. Ellen is preparing supper that we will take with us. I guess it will be snowing the whole time we are there! Fortunately, they have decided to live-stream church tomorrow. COVID is on the rise. No end in sight!

Let it snow!******************************** LATER It didn't snow that much. We just got a couple of inches. i'm not complaining! The Tarheels made a miserable showing on Saturday☹

Hallowell rehearsal

Last night, we finally had a chance to get to a Hallowell rehearsal. They have been going on for sometime, but we haven't been able to go because they were on Thursday nights and we had our Swarthmore short story class on Thursday night. But now that's over so last night we went to the rehearsal. It was really wonderful to be there with that group. They are a little different from our usual rehearsals before the pandemic. They are held in a larger space - the Westminister-West church (where we hold River Singers rehearsals) and with smaller groups. There are over 40 people in Hallowell, and that is considered too many to have in one space at the same time. We are also all wearing masks while we sing. That is not ideal, but we are sort of getting used to it. It has been quite a while since we have sung some of our repertoire, and it felt just a little unfamiliar. Mary Cay Brass, our Director, said we needed to get our nose out of our books and look up more. We got back into the flow again pretty quickly. It was very satisfying. Only time will tell whether we can continue these rehearsals, given the Omicron variant and the sharp rise in Covid cases in Vermont. You do have to be fully vaccinated to come to these rehearsals. But vaccination is no longer a guarantee that you will not get Covid.

Scenes from our rehearsal. I was sitting next to two of my former physicians. (Middle photo). Dr. Burt Tepfer was my cardiologist, and beyond him, Dr. Walter Slowinski, who was my PCP for a time. Both retired. I miss them.

Got a lot done

We just accompished a lot! First of all, I had an appointment this morning with Dr. Brickley. He looked at my foot and said that I have had cellulitis, and that he thinks the infection is healed, but it will take a couple of weeks for the redness to fade. So I need to keep an eye on it. Everything else was fine. Then I stopped at the People's United Bank branch in Newfane on the way back - a branch I had never set foot in, in all these many years I have driven by it. It is very old fashioned - the way banks used to look:

People's United Bank in Newfane *************************************** The reason I stopped by is that I had a good talk yesterday with Katie amd she needs some financial help in helping pay for special fees connected to a new job she has found - she will be working at a cannabis nursery, actually working with plants, and this is a highly regulated business and she needs a number of things to qualify that cost money. She is working temporarily for Door Dash and Grub Hub: food delivery businesses. They pay pretty well, but she still needs help. So I was looking into transferring funds from my bank account to hers. I found out that this would require a wire transfer, which costs $30. But if we did it from Ellen's Bank of America account into Katie's BofA account, it would be free. But that involved a trip to Keene, the closest BofA branch. So that is what we did. We went to Keene after lunch. Ellen stopped at Michael's, we did our business at BofA - that went smoothly - and then since we were in New Hampshire, we went up to Walpole to return some things at Ocean State Job Lots, and similarly at Vermont Country Store. That all went well, and we could check a few items off our To Do list. This is going to be a completely new kind of work for Katie, and also a 4-day work week. So sha will consistently have 3-day weekends, which makes a visit to Vermont possible - fly out Thursday evening and return Sunday afternoon. That was exciting news. The down side of all this is that I missed all three on-line events today - the zoom session of retired clergy this morning, the noon CTS "Reflections" event and the afternoon Centering Prayer zoom session. It's too bad to have missed all that, but I feel good about what we got done.