Your holiday plans without friends and family?

Valentine's Day Blue
Acrylic on canvas
12 x 16 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

SOLD ♥

I told you yesterday that Toronto (Canada) has gone into lockdown. Today
we went to 2 malls. It was only the third time we’d been to a mall in the past
nine months. Outside the mall north of Toronto where they are not going into
lockdown people were in line ups of 200 to 400 people at each store on
the sidewalk waiting. We circled the mall once, and left.  The scene was 
depressing and pointless.

At the second mall things were much different. In Toronto where the lockdown
is actually going to take place, the mall, which will be closed as of Monday morning,
was busy. Everyone was wearing masks and social distancing. But you could move
from store to store and there were small line ups at each store. All of the protocols
were in place, temperature checks, limited numbers in stores.  We stood in a short
line up, saw almost no one in the store, picked up our things in five minutes and 
left, delighted to be back in the car, and gone. Hand sanitizer, masks off. In these
Covid times we live in, and it is really cold tonight, we needed warm socks.

But the site of the mall all dressed up for the holiday season, (certainly the prettiest it
ever looks all year), and knowing that it will shut down in one day until four days before
Christmas, made me sad. Sad for the business owners who cannot afford this shut down,
and sad for all the people who get their holiday feelings by walking through this
beautifully decorated space. 

So my question is what are your plans for how you are going to enjoy the holidays at the
end of December, if you can’t have your friends and family over for dinner, and can’t have
parties, and if you meet people you have to meet them outside in the freezing cold? I’d like
to know what you can do to keep your spirits going, and what you will do to celebrate?

We sat outside for a few minutes on our back porch today. We call our Siamese cat
Fiona by whistling. So I was whistling the tune, and a neighbour one street over
started whistling after we finished, so we'd whistle back.  We were starting and ending
the tune for each other, and this went on for at least 10 minutes and maybe more.
Steven and I would whistle, and then the person whistling on the other street
would pick up where we left off. It was too bad that we couldn’t see the person,
but it was very happy scene. It was like "yes we can celebrate something!".So how
will you celebrate? That’s my question.

Have a happy weekend.