Jane was up at 6, preparing, taking down tarp, raking, prepping. I helped at 7. By nine we were waiting…
But we got a call from the fence guys: they’re in high wind, and wind is coming. This means no fence can be set. Sigh.
So we get fence on Monday. We have to survive three more nights of sleeping lightly with the lights on in the back yard, against prowlers, stray dogs, and whatever, and three more days of staying close at home during the day.
At least I did a big grocery run yesterday.
Just froze my fingers getting the pond filters rinsed out. Got back in to that phone call.
We’ll wait until the wind storm is past before putting the tarp back up. It’s not too horrendous a job, once we figured how to do it. We set some little eyelet screws in the wood corners of the garage, which take tiny bungees; we twist-tie two tarps together for the 40 foot run between house and garage. I had emptied the big water barrel we use to anchor the fence segment to the tarp [32 gallons of water is pretty difficult to shift] and the rest of the tarp goes up with bungees and a couple of heavy rocks.
But wah! We are disappointed not to have it today.
Not, however, at the risk of injury to the crew, who have to be up on ladders, one supposes, getting these panels in. They go in from the top, 6 feet up, and slide to the bottom down two grooves. So a high wind with 6 x 6 of sail in your hands while you stand on a ladder is not a good idea.
Well, you wouldn’t want fence guys riding panel kites crashing into your garden and scaring the fish, so no fence-building in a high wind is a good plan. 😉
But do they work next monday, or will it be tuesday before they can come? Over here, Easter, Pentecost and Christmas last two days, Easter sunday and monday, and for Christmas it’s the 25th and 26th. That means everything is closed on Easter monday, and few people work.
At Pentecost, in six weeks, the same thing happens, except then everybody who works for wages will have received their extra holiday allowance in May, and the big furniture stores and caravan boulevards open on the holiday monday to give people a chance to shop together for the big-ticket items in preparation for the summer holidays.
So what you’re saying is, you’re off-fence-less.
@Hanneke, Due to “separation of church and state” religious holidays are generally not celebrated, and in most U.S. locales are not considered holidays. Only Christmas Day itself is both religious and secular. The official U.S. federal government holidays are: Jan 1–New Years Day; 3rd Mon in Jan–Martin Luther King, Jr Holiday; 3rd Mon in Feb–Presidents Day; last Monday in May–Memorial Day; 4 July–Independence Day; Mon after 1st Sun in Sept–Labor Day; 2nd Mon in Oct–Columbus Day; 11 Nov–Veteran’s Day; 4th Thursday in Nov–Thanksgiving Day; 25 Dec–Christmas. Except for the Big 3 holidays–Christmas, New Years Day and Thanksgiving, one can expect most of the stores to be open and doing sales to bring in customers. Banks and government offices are closed on these ten days, but they are seen more as a means to boost business than as true holidays anymore. Some individual businesses celebrate holidays or allow their employees to take time off for religious celebrations, but by and large a contractor will be able to assemble a crew for most work for any day except our big 3. Exceptions do occur; observant Jews may not work for Passover; Hispanics may take the Dia de los Muertos off, etc. but religious practice is considered a private thing and religious time off is negotiated between an employer and their employees individually.
THey do promise us Monday there will be fence.We could at least use the standing fence posts to anchor the tarps…the old arrangement used everything from barrels of water to trees to hooks to a plant holder…and rocks. We only used one rock on the current design, to hold the flapping bottom in the middle of the big driveway opening.
Maybe that rock will keep the dog out, if it can’t get under the tarp when it gets loose again?
Ready, thanks for the answer, that clarifies things. We do have separation of church and state, and without the constant tries to get religious ideas sneaked into school curriculums and laws that I read about from the USA, but we’ve not extended that idea into the national holidays, even though we have a much larger proportion of non-religious people, as far as I know.
For non-religious days we do have New Year, and the King’s Day (April 27, used to be Queen’s day on April 30; people wear orange, have fun, go to streetmarkets where anybody can sell whatever they want, and there’s exhibitions and concerts and games for the kids), Liberation Day (May 5, the day the Germans surrendered in 1945, which government agencies celebrate every year, but shops and business nowadays only on years ending on 0 or 5), preceded the evening before by Remembrance of the dead (2 minutes silence at 8 o’clock for those who died in war, strictly observed by everyone even if they don’t go to a ceremony, a lot of people watch the ceremonies on TV); all the rest are based on Christian holy days. Those are Good Friday (before Easter, today, government agencies close all day but shops just close a bit earlier in the evening), Easter Sunday and monday, on Thursday nearly five weeks later it’s going-to-Heaven day (most things close), and six weeks after Easter it’s Pentecost sunday and monday; then we have nothing until December 5, when everything closes early (5 o’clock) for the children’s feast of Saint Nicholas, who gives the kids presents, often with funny rhymes and sometimes with elaborate surprise packaging, and then there’s Christmas, which traditionally was more for family and (religious) contemplation (no gifts), though the American/English style of giving gifts at Christmas is gaining ground.
There’s been talk in recent years of exchanging one or two of these Christian days for some other religions’ most special days, like the Sugarfeast at the end of Ramadan, especially if that would help spread them out across the year a bit better. But the non-religious like their holidays in spring too, and everybody is a bit wary that once having a particular day as a holiday is thrown open to discussion, it might be taken away altogether. So the other religious holidays are negotiated between employees and employers, just like you said.
The King’s Day and Sinterklaas’ children’s feasts have made me think about Cajeiri’s wishes for a birthday party. He and his sister are going to be alternating odd (lucky) and even (unlucky) years, so each year there will be a child of Tabini who could celebrate a lucky birthday.
This might be wangled into something like the Japanese Children’s Day, or a “Tabini’s heirs day” which might be more politically called something like “Annual celebration of the future of the Aishidi’tat”, and include a Santa-Clause-like gifts for the children tradition. If Cajeiri has seen anything in the human archive about those holidays, I rather think he might try for something like that. He’s never mentioned it though, so he probably hasn’t.
On the part of Tabini, instituting something like that might make political sense, because having one day a year when everybody parties together and feels good about being one nation (and in his case, specifically focussing people on having a positive future as one nation to look forward to) does help to keep people proud of or happy with being a part of that nation. we have our Royal birthday, the USA has the 4th of July, and so has France; Switzerland has the first of August – I think most countries have some national holiday that fulfills that function.
The atevi do have the opening of the Bu-javid’s political year, and some ad-hoc or local celebrations, but I haven’t heard or remembered a yearly special celebration. Celebrating the day they won the War of the Landing wouldn’t be very tactful, as they consider Mospheira to be a part of the Western Association, and I haven’t heard about any other noncontroversial achievement that everyone would be willing to celebrate; but everyone loves their kids and an excuse to spoil them for a day is not something people will object to, I think.
The link to Saint Nicholas got lost.
I don’t know if the atevi would celebrate a children’s day… We know there is no “love” although there is man’chi. Perhaps it might be infelicitous to celebrate all children whatsoever on one date as there may be children dying, becoming adults, etc on that day and the kabiuteri might have fits. That date in combination with a child’s birth date might be infelicitous and people would not want to saddle their children with bad numbers.
We do know there are harvest festivals (Ilisidi mentioned one at Malguri) and thrice annual fairs in Shejidan, plus the coming of age festival and the investiture of an heir (one assumes heirs of any lordship would have something similar. I think the dates are very personal so national holidays are probably scarce.
Ah. Indeed—which Cajeiri has not quite realized, though he generally adds numbers well—his sister is going to share his birthday. Forever.