This week had such a good start with finally a positive headline in our local paper. I was getting sick of all the negative news about the election and of course the virus. It was such a joy to see a message that includes hope. However, the bahavior not only of the sitting president but also of many Republican leaders following the weekend is just shameful and embarrassing. So much damage has been done to our country and our democracy. I am not sure we will fully recover from this.
Throughout the week I felt how much the days after the election, the uncertainty had exhausted me. I was tired at my work at the high school library, and while I still got a lot done it was slower progress than usual. After two more days in the coming week I'm taking a break - I worked a lot of extra hours at the beginning of the school that have not been paid and therefore I will "balance" them out and not return to work until the second week of December.
Wednesday was Veteran's Day and this year I found it even more important to observe it than the years before after our military service people had been discredited by their own commander-in-chief. I was thinking of my uncle (my mother's younger brother) who spent ten years in Soviet war prisoner camps after World War II. He was neither a sucker nor a loser and I have the highest respect for him (yes, he is still around, in this nineties now).
Wednesday was also St Martin Day in Germany when the children go out in the street in the evening carrying their lanterns and singing the traditional songs. (I once wrote about this German tradition here) I remember when we were walking along the old alleys in Tübingen with Kaefer and her lantern when she was two years old.
She is living in Munich now and she texted me that she saw several families walking with their children, carrying the lanterns and singing songs. Unfortunately she hadn't taken any photos.
We had some pretty frosty nights this week, the first in the season. It was also the same time that my neighbor had left for a week. She had a house and cat sitter who was putting out food for the cats, but Kibeau didn't seem to be very fond of him and spent even more time than usual in my garden. I was worried since it was so cold (we can't have him in the house because of the Geek's severe allergies), so I made a box for him with a warm fleece blanket inside and a blanket tuck around it. In the nights I also put a few pillows up against it to keep off the worst of the cold. Kibeau immediately climbed into the box after I had set it up and spent every night there, sleeping late into the mornings.
