It seems that Jews are not a people of convenience. This time of year some of us Jews find ourselves eating in flimsy outdoor huts. That’s right — we like to do our outdoor eating just as the weather changes. (While our NY Sukkot has not been the all out piss-down of a Seattle Sukkot, it’s still not reliably warm.)
As festive, fun, if not ridiculously pagan as Sukkot can be, it’s often a bit of a shlep dragging food from the kitchen to the sukkah, which is inevitably stationed as far from the kitchen as possible.
This year our kitchen is a whole floor above the sukkah. But any shlepping is mitigated by this:
A dumb waiter! That’s an (admittedly unappetizing) tortilla I sent down to someone in the sukkah.
When we moved into the rental house (almost) a month ago, this dumb waiter put the fear of God in me, the same way that the foot-level laundry chute did in our house in Seattle. (We sealed up the laundry chute before we let the boys in the house because we knew otherwise poor little Francie would be flying down it.)
Rather than seal up the dumb waiter (or Manuel, as I like to call him. Fawlty Towers, anyone?), we made the rules quite clear: nothing with a heartbeat goes in Manuel.
So far, the boys seem to be adhering to it (probably because Bennett is spending every drop of energy he possesses begging for a phone.)
I also think it has something to do with the fact that nothing in our house with a heartbeat could fit inside Manuel.
Now I just need to communicate that to the mouse, who remains nameless, and is not officially a member of the family.
Not yet anyway.