On the morning after Yom Kippur, call the local deli/nursery/farmer's market. Ask if they have ornamental corn stalks for sale. Make a gleeful sound when the answer is yes. Drive over and buy four bunches.

Explain to the girl in the green t-shirt that there's a Jewish harvest festival where we spend a week sitting -- or living, or eating, or meditating -- outdoors, in flimsy houses with roofs made of organic material. Wonder what she's thinking.

Try to stuff the corn stalks into your car. Try a different way. Squint at the hatchback.

Remove them and sheepishly ask if you can buy some twine. Stand around feeling useless while the young man in the green t-shirt whips out his Leatherman, flicks it open, and binds the cornstalks to the roof of the car.

Go to Target. Consider, but discard, the glitter-covered pumpkin ornaments. Choose three metallic autumn-colored pumpkins instead.

Notice that the Christmas lights are on sale, already. Find yourself, for once, delighted that the retail Christmas season apparently begins in September. Buy two bins of little white lights, and one of purple-and-orange lights on impulse.

Pick up two autumn-leaf-themed plastic placemats. Print Sukkot blessings and affix them to the placemats with clear packing tape. Punch holes in the edges and attach some string. Admire your handiwork and wish it were Sukkot already.

Wait for your husband to come home and assemble the big wooden sukkah frame he built last year.

Spend four days trying to resist obsessively checking the weather forecast to see whether you'll be able to spend any of the week in the sukkah.

Wake in the night to the sound of pouring rain. Burrow deeper into your comforter.

When Sunday afternoon rolls around, listen to the whine of the drill driving screws into waterlogged wood.

Once the frame is standing, shrug into a raincoat and head outside. Wrap the walls in old canvas. Drag wet cornstalks across the lawn and heave them one by one onto the roof, the least aerodynamic javelins ever.

Twine garlands and strings of lights. Take off your eyeglasses because they're fogged-up and water-spattered.

When the last ornament is hung, wipe your brow and notice that the rain has stopped falling. There's even a patch of blue visible through the holes in the roof.