In  high school, we read the play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett.  (Note:  I didn’t like it, no action at all and boring). Discussions raged (well, okay, they were forced by our teacher), but have raged throughout literary circles about this play and its deep meanings. Was it philosophical? Existential? Spiritual? Political? Psychological?  Even Beckett was vague, though I do remember reading once that he said something to the effect of “people like to make simple things complicated.”

               I remembered this all vividly when, about ten years ago, we remodeled our kitchen. We ordered all new appliances – a once-in-a-lifetime dream. The remodeling was done in about four weeks and we had everything but the stove. Let me digress to say that I don’t understand why it takes 4 to 6 weeks to move a stove from one state to another. Are they moving it via a horse and wagon?  But at any rate, two weeks after the remodeling was complete, the stove arrived. The wrong stove.

               We sent it back and waited another three weeks. (The store rushed it!). So for nine weeks we ate meals we cooked in the crock pot or microwave, waiting for our new stove. It finally arrived and when we went out with the installer to the garage to move it into the kitchen, we heard a lot of what appeared to be broken glass tinkling sounds. Sure enough, the oven door had been cracked and was broken to bits.

               Geez.  I recalled and identified with how bored and stupid the two main characters (Didi and Gogo) were in the play while they waited for a man who was never going to arrive. The store re-ordered the stove and we enjoyed another three weeks of soups and stews. I waited for that stove like I was giving birth, but it finally (finally!) arrived. Intact and the correct stove.

               It was a twelve-week wait, but that stove still works and I still like it.

               Why am I reminiscing about waiting for the stove? Because this year, the year of the pandemic, the year of finding new things to do, I have spent about that same time framing waiting. Waiting for blinds.

               We ordered new blinds for the windows in our family room. The old ones still work, but we’ve never really loved them and they are over 20 years old. So we masked up and went to the store and had them send a professional to measure the windows. That was August 6.

               We were told they would be cut in the store and ready in a “couple of days.” That should have been my first clue. On August 19, they told us they didn’t have enough of the right size and were getting two of the blinds from another store. Since these were “scheduled” to arrive on Labor Day, I presumed this store was in Antarctica and the blinds were being brought here by carrier penguins.

               They did arrive, a little after Labor Day. That was September 7.  On September 11, they called us and left a message to pick up our blinds. We called back, because when we ordered them and the installation, we had been told the installer would bring them. So we wanted to double check and sure enough the nice and, apparently incompetent, voice on the phone said, “no, no, the installer will bring them.”

               The installer company called and said they could work us in – in October. They were simply inundated!  Apparently, a lot of people were bored with their homes and ordering window treatments to be installed. I mean, it is a pandemic.

               So I waited another month, tracking the days on our mostly empty calendar until the installer came. He arrived yesterday.

               He did not have the blinds with him. He stated, very emphatically, that we were to pick up the blinds. It’s actually in the contract we signed. And we would have been happy –ecstatic, really, for an excuse to go somewhere – to pick up the blinds had the lady not told us he would.

               So anyway, we called and the manager actually delivered the blinds to us. In part, I’m sure to not lose our business, but at any rate, now, just a mere ten weeks after ordering them, we have the blinds in our house.

               No, no, not on the windows. I am sitting here now, waiting for the installer’s company to call to schedule us again. I’m sure they’ll work us in…sometime before Thanksgiving.

               Waiting for Godot was really not complicated at all. I’m sure Beckett must have ordered something to be delivered sometime in his life. He got an entire play out of his experience! We write what we know, right?

So, I’m wondering why we call the season of autumn “fall.” Back in the old (very old) days, we referred to this time of year as “harvest time,” which makes a lot of sense to me. “Fall” and “autumn” became popular terms during the 1600’s, when people began moving from rural farmlands into larger metropolitan cities. Without farming, the term “harvest” became less applicable to the lives of city-dwellers, and subsequently, “fall” and “autumn” emerged as two new names for the season.

“Autumn” is derived from the “autumnus,” a Latin word having connotations of “the passing of the year.” The term “fall” was likely from Old English words “fiaell” and “feallan,” both of which mean “to fall from a height.” It is assumed that this new name for the season was inspired by trees’ falling leaves. Again, makes sense to me.

By the 19th century, “fall” had become a totally American term, while “autumn” remained the commonly used British term. In fact, one source I found referred to the use of “fall” as “an American barbarism.”

But no matter what you call it – harvest, fall, or autumn – it’s a special time of year. Leaves turn wonderful colors and fall like snow from the trees. Birds sing and frolic. Pumpkins start appearing on doorsteps and in windows. Candy appears in every type of store. People start stashing away lightweight clothing and getting out sweaters, jackets, and hoodies. It’s all amazing. And for me, it’s just a glorious countdown to the main event – Christmas!

As I write this, there are 81 days until we officially celebrate Christmas. And before we get to the big day, we have all of autumn, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, costume events, Halloween, Thanksgiving, football, shopping, decorating, caroling, and wrapping presents! It’s my very, absolutely, positively favorite time of year.  People are full of love and the giving spirit, even more than usual, and you see acts of kindness everywhere. Fun stuff happens too – like my friend who has her family on a “group text” (whatever that is) and her daughter advised her mom, in the group text,  that she found out her husband would like a football jersey for Christmas. Of course, that meant the entire family, including her husband, read the information, so his gift might not be a big surprise.

It’s this kind of funny and fun thing that sustains me in happiness and joy and  keeps me from dwelling on the economy, the pandemic, the frightful number of deaths and hospitalizations, worry for my near and dear who work in hospitals and groceries and food service, and from the incredible number of people who wear masks as chin guards. I mean seriously, do they think COVID will enter through the dimple in their chin? It’s all I can do not to alert people that their mask is not doing them (or me) any good at all when dangling from their ear, wound around their neck, or pulled down when they talk. People don’t seem to realize that when we talk, a million little invisible particles of spit emit from our mouths and nose. It happens to even the most sophisticated among us, so please leave your mask up and speak a little louder!

Okay, off the soap box. Hey, “soapbox.” Where did that word come from?  According to Wikipedia, it comes from people turning over wooden crates used to ship soap to stand on and make an impromptu speech, usually political. Now it means any time we get on a rant about something, even if we’re just sitting at a keyboard.

So I’m off the soapbox about proper mask attire (what mask are you wearing for Halloween?) and on to making my Christmas shopping list. Shop local this year as much as you can, please!  Though that is a topic for another day, and another soapbox!

Recently I heard that the New York Transit Authority had updated their instructional guidelines to include the specific admonition that “defecation on the subway is prohibited.”  Have we really fallen that far down the evolutionary ladder in terms of both common sense and common decency?  This has gone far beyond the tags on pillows that say “do not remove under penalty of prosecution.” I used to worry about the tag police arriving at my house with an arrest warrant, until I realized that once I had purchased said pillow, I could remove tags at will.  Whew! 

Seriously, though, the instructions seem to have become more and more ridiculous – beyond the mere advice to “not use the hair dryer outside or in the bathtub.”  Well, duh. Plus, who has a cord on a hair dryer that reaches to “outside”? 

The sad truth is, however, that if you read instructions on most normal products or services, they speak to the very dumbest among us. Apparently, they have to.

For example, we bought a new hose last year and when we took it out of the box, we noticed instructions printed on the inside of the bottom of the box. Instructions for using a hose?  It really seemed self-explanatory. Worse, the first instruction said, and I’m not kidding, “remove hose from box.” Duh, again.

Last week, I purchased some small staples that are used with a hammer, rather than a staple gun, for craft products. The back of the tiny box had this warning:  “do not put staples in mouth.” I know that some folks do hold nails in their mouths when working, but staples?  Seriously, I didn’t think we needed to be told that!

Recently, I began to notice that some of the people who create these warnings on labels are displaying a quirky sense of humor. It had never occurred to me before, but it must be a tedious job to create tags for appliances or clothing that say the same thing, over and over. Equally dull is the job of printing up the schematics and instructions for putting together furniture or children’s toys, although I’m absolutely convinced that these people are either using a translating dictionary or are creating misleading instructions deliberately. There can be no other reason that you read at the beginning of step M, “be sure that part B was inserted with flat side out in step D.”

On the other hand, I was delighted to find a unique tag in a  shirt I purchased. Instead of the typical “made in wherever,” it gave the name of the company and this cute line, embroidered on the tag: “These shirts were tested on animals. They didn’t fit.” I laughed hard at this.

Then I discovered a company in England called Sainsbury. It’s an on-line grocery or market of sorts. On one of the cleaning products they sell, there is an intriguing bit at the very end of the ingredients, cautions, and warnings. It reads, “You are reading this because you forgot your phone when you went to the toilet, didn’t you.” This one made me laugh so hard, I nearly choked on my coffee.

I was shopping on line for some pet shampoo, since it is skunk season currently (and pretty much always around my house). I found a totally natural pet shampoo that has this information printed on the back: “Remember to eliminate all escape routes well in advance. Once your pet is slippery wet, he or she is suddenly faster and smarter than you are.”

I’d love to have the job of creating fun instructions for people who are either (a) really dense or (b) easily amused. So here’s my instruction for reading my blog:  Don’t hold a cup of hot coffee over your reading device while in a room filled with snakes or mice.

Tonight we went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription that the doctor had ordered today. Nothing is seriously wrong – just needed a prescription cream for a skin rash. The doctor said the pharmacy would have it a bit later in the day, so we waited until around dinner time to go. First mistake!  Trying to do anything at 5 p.m. on a Friday night is usually a bad idea.

               We compounded this error in judgment by getting into the drive–through lane. It seemed like a good idea, since there were only three cars in line and since there is a pandemic, we could minimize human contact. This was our second mistake.

               After about eight minutes of waiting, the first car finally moved. That meant two cars were in front of us. We played a game of Scrabble, discussed our dinner plans, and commented on every car that drove by. After another eight minutes, we began to agree that we might have been better off going into the pharmacy to get the prescription. On the 20^th minute of waiting, the first car in line pulled away.

               Now we were just one car from the promised land – that being the squawk box in which we could request our medication. We would have pulled out and gone to the parking lot, but there were now two cars behind us, effectively blocking us in to the lane.

               This brought back a memory from 20 years ago. I had dropped my husband off for a meeting and was supposed to pick him up in one hour. I drove to the store and picked up a couple of needed items, carefully placing the bag in the backseat. Having a half hour to spare, I decided to surprise him by getting the car washed.

               I got into the car wash line, which apparently was the exciting afternoon activity that day. I was about 5 cars behind the one in the actual wash. Listening to the radio, I watched for the door to slide open, indicating the next car could go in.

               It didn’t appear to move. In fact, it took so long, I began to wonder if it was broken. Finally, after about six minutes, the door slid upward and the next car in line moved ahead.

               I quickly calculated that at six minutes each, it would take another 24 minutes to get through the line. This would make it difficult for me to be back on time, but I’d likely only be a few minutes late.

               What I didn’t realize is that the car in the wash had been in the actual wash longer than I had been in line. The actual time of a single car wash was ten minutes. By the time I figured that out, I was the third car in line and I had about 13 minutes to pick up my husband. On my left were a row of bushes and on my right was  a long concrete wall.

               I looked in my rearview mirror to see if I could back out, but there were three cars in line behind me. Unless I wanted to get out and ask each of these drivers if they would consider backing up, too, I was stuck.

               So I waited, impatiently. This was before the era of cell phones, so I had no way to let my dearest know I was going to be about 17 minutes late. The more impatient I became, the longer it seemed to take each car to get through.

               When it was my turn to put in my money, I punched the car window button viciously. I was so frustrated by my own tardiness and the length of this car wash that I inadvertently pushed two window buttons down at the same time – my window, and the passenger window behind me in the back seat.

               This fact I did not realize until I finally got into the car wash and the water began to spew. At first, I didn’t know what was making the back of head wet. When I realized the back window was down, I stabbed at the button. But instead of raising that window, I had made my window retract. Now, the entire left side of my body was getting drenched.

               I was finally able to get both windows back up, which seemed to take a forever. I was soaking wet, as were the groceries in the back seat.

               I was also 25 minutes late picking up Matt, whose mood did not improve upon seeing the wet interior.              

               But every experience teaches us something. That’s why I was not surprised to find, when we eventually reached the actual box to talk to the pharmacist, that my prescription was not ready. It wouldn’t be in until Monday, and did I really need it tonight? was the question she posed. Instead of making a sarcastic response, I simply indicated we’d return Monday. We didn’t inquire why they hadn’t called to inform us of this. Clearly, getting stuck in a line of cars rarely yields a happy ending.

               That’s my life lesson story today, which I have related in between scratching. Ah well, it’s just another 48 hours of itching.  You can bet on Monday, I’ll mask up and go inside the pharmacy!