“I’ve just been bitten on the neck by a vampire… mosquito. Does that mean that when the night comes I will rise and be annoying?”
Yesterday was a weird weather day. It was cloudy then sunny then rainy then cloudy and rainy again. We ate outside under the umbrella. I could hear the heavy drops over my head and loved the sound. The rain didn’t last long, but the clouds hung around the rest of the evening. Today is really warm and the sun is playing hide and seek: disappearing and then returning. The prediction is for rain and the cloudy skies make me believe it.
The Cape was filled this weekend and the line of cars waiting to leave over the Sagamore Bridge stretched for miles. The paper today was filled with glowing predictions for the summer based on this weekend. I groaned a little, but that’s the price to pay for living here. I knew it going in so any complaints are just from frustration, useless at best.
My world is turning green from pine pollen. My voice is already raspy and I cough. The windows are closed as I’m trying to keep the pollen at bay, but I am Sisyphus with a dust cloth instead of a rock.
I grew up in summer darkness. My mother kept the shades down all day so the house would stay cooler. We didn’t even have a fan to push the night’s hot air around, but most times we kids were so exhausted from playing all day sleep came easily despite the heat.
I have these wonderfully funny memories of being wakened up at night from the bed rocking and finding my father standing on my bed trying to keep his balance as he chased down mosquitos on the ceiling with a newspaper in his hand. My father was a bit obsessive sometimes and flies and mosquitoes were among his nemeses. He wielded the fly swatter with perfection. The fly would be stationary, and my father with swatter in position would sneak up on it, swat it and then throw away what was left of the fly. Sometimes he’d have to clean the ceiling or the lampshade or worst of all, the kitchen counter. He kept count of his triumphs, “Got it,” was his summer refrain.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: bridge traffic, cloudy, cool house, flies, fly swatter, green, mosquitos, pine pollen, rainy, rolled up newsapaper, Sagamore, weird weather
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May 27, 2014 at 12:29 pm
Hi Kat,
Yesterday murky. That’s the only word for it. Murky. But warm. I think it rained a bit as well. Not what predicted by the weather folks.
Bugs don’t much bother me but I do heartily dislike flies. I have a tendency to leave the doors open when I’m sitting outside on the steps. The flies always find the open doors. It’s becomes a problem at night when the lights are on because the little b-tards like to bounce off the task light right above my head. Very annoying.
I encourage the spiders in the bathroom because eventually all the flies end up in there.
I spent yesterday wrestling with an online course. The cumulative time of the videos was not more than two hours but for some reason it took me all day to get through them.
It’s murky again today. And cooler.
Enjoy your day.
May 27, 2014 at 12:36 pm
Hi Caryn,
I lik that: murky. That was definitely yesterday. It rained three or four short times during the day starting about 2. Today the paper does say rain but that sun is persistent and keeps reappearing. I’m thinking no rain now.
I don’t mind bugs either. I lived in bug elysium in Ghana where I actually saw a centipede but didn’t stop to count its legs and went on cockroach hunts in the kitchen. Flies are the national bird, sort of I think. They were everywhere. The worst was on babies.
USAID once showed a cartoon at my school about flies landing on feces then landing on food. It encouraged covering food. The film was a cartoon, and I remember my students remarking at how smart white people are to make such lovely films. The whole fly bit was lost.
Maybe your head just wasn’t into the course yesterday.
Enjoy today!
May 27, 2014 at 4:25 pm
Some of the problem was a free book that was assigned as reading. The link was weird and the book would not download though I could read it on its webpage. No one else had that problem. It took all day to get my laptop to obey.
The rest of the problem is participation in discussion fora which is part of the grade. Discussion fora are always problematical.
The course is the prehistory of the Bible so there’s a lot of “wooo” posted and much citing and copy/paste of Biblical text. Hitler has already been mentioned thus invoking Godwin’s Law on the first day. A student from China is complaining because we are all asleep when he is online and should he just leave. Oh, and should a Chinese person be studying the Bible anyway.
If I saw tons of flies on a daily basis but had never seen a cartoon fly, I too would be more impressed by the media than the message. 🙂
May 27, 2014 at 5:10 pm
Caryn,
That would so frustrate me. I am okay accepting stuff I am responsible for which frustrate me, but when the frustration is from something external, I go crazy.
The cartoon itself was a novelty to my students let alone the flies. Yup, the message was lost.
May 27, 2014 at 12:42 pm
I thought about Geoffrey yesterday – undersized and at the age of 16 a boy soldier being gassed in the trenches and surviving Arras. Jack made it as far as Vimy Ridge and was blown up by a mine – probably saving him from the annihilation the 1/19s took at the Somme.
And so today we are confronted with electorates empowering UKip and the sodden Farage, the disgusting Marine Le Pen and her equally disgusting father Jean Marie from the National Front, Jobbik and the Golden Dawn. A generous spirit would claim antiestablishment voting, but this may be fair warning that fascism is not the past but an elected part of the future. The ghost forms shape once again.
May 27, 2014 at 12:52 pm
My Dear Hedley,
I feel as if I am being dragged backwards in time and so enough many of us will be wearing stars of different colors so we can be distinguished from the ruling parties, the leftists. My star will be tie dye indicating a long time liberal and all that connotes.
The climate is scary and that doesn’t refer just to the weather.
May 27, 2014 at 11:32 pm
When my family first moved to Texas in 1953 air conditioning was just becoming available in people’s houses. We moved in the spring and the summer of ’53 and ’54 where some of the hottest and driest on record. Most folks had attic fans that drew the air out of the house through the attic but when the low temperature in the morning is in the low 90s an attic fan just doesn’t cut it. My father bought a huge window air conditioning unit that would cool most of our apartment. Because the bedrooms were upstairs we would all sleep on the living room floor and hang up sheets in the stairwell to keep the cold air downstairs.
We are finally getting some nice rains. The forecast for rain on and off all week. It probably won’t be enough rain to kill the drought but every drop of rain helps.
May 28, 2014 at 10:58 am
Bob,
Air conditioning was quite late getting here. I remember when my parents got a window unit for the living room and one each for the bedrooms. My father did the sheet thing between the living and dining rooms. Why they never got central air I can’t explain. Money was not a problem.
We are right now getting rain.
The drought is a big story in the Boston Globe.
May 28, 2014 at 10:58 am
Kat, would you consider adding a link to my modest venture? I know I’m incorrigible, and I’ve reacted badly to (rude) people who grab the music and run without ever ONCE leaving a comment, BUT, I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. The new Marie is wearing beads and flowers in her hair and spouting aphorisms of love and peace! 😉 Well, maybe not quite . . . 😉
Anyway, thanks, and here’s the address again:
http://toodarnsoulful.blogspot.com/
May 28, 2014 at 11:09 am
Marie,
How could I ever turn down a woman with flowers in her hair?
You have now been added!
(I have so many people who drop by and few comments in comparison. I figure I’m just happy they came to visit.)
May 28, 2014 at 11:56 am
Thanks, Kat! That’s very kind of you.
I’ve tried to adopt your approach, I really have, but it’s complicated. I started to blog because I wanted to share some tunes but, more importantly, to hear whether people liked or weren’t keen on them. It’s not easy to gauge this by their visits alone, because there are some who feel they have to try to mask their presence on our blogs (for reasons I can’t quite fathom) and who figure because they surreptitiously download using Firefox that they don’t need to bother to be courteous. I’ve never expected a run of dissertation-like comments (I’m usually a woman of few words, myself), but a one-time simple “thanks, I like it (or not)” would go a long way in dispelling my unfortunate suspicion that the self-serving folk of the world are on the ascendancy.
😉
Marie
May 28, 2014 at 12:50 pm
Vintage Spins Marie – Took the Kat route off the KTCC island, commented on the fab Jack Scott from Hazel Park or Windsor and took no download 🙂
My musical space tends to be a little later than yours but please shout out if there is something Detroit that I should be paying attention to that isn’t Jack White, Eminen or Kid Rock..I run in to KR and Anita Baker every now and again when I bother to go to the Pistons, which isn’t so much these days. Seger used to go as well.
May 28, 2014 at 1:05 pm
Marie,
I write my little musings for me and am glad when they resonate with others. I like the music I post which is usually enough. It is really just a bit of icing on the cake. I offer the download so I don’t know why anyone has the need to be surreptitious. It’s there for the taking.
I’m glad for the comments, but I write and post music because I want to do it.
May 28, 2014 at 2:30 pm
I hear you, Kat, loud and clear. You know I’m a fan of what you have going here on Coffee, but my needs are different. It’s just not enough for me to simply offer up the tunes to myriad strangers. I don’t “muse” a lot, essentially being rather an introverted little so-and-so, but I do spend an inordinate amount of time trying to create an interesting experience on my blog. It means a lot to get even one-time comments from visitors – not ashamed to say so. I’m very grateful to you, Hedley and im6, by the way. How about you, dear Birgit? (I told you – I’m incorrigible!) 😉
Marie
May 28, 2014 at 3:51 pm
Marie,
I don’t see it as offering music to myriad strangers. Many Coffee readers have been with me for years. The numbers of downloads are minuscule compared with the number of visitors and for that I am thankful. I like the conversations best of all.
May 28, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Kat – Not sure that I have every downloaded….its atmosphere including ease of response to your musings
May 28, 2014 at 4:08 pm
MDH,
I love the responses and the conversations. I get a lot of laughs from some of the back and forths.
May 29, 2014 at 8:09 am
Hi Marie,
sorry, I’m late, it was a busy week so far, but we have a holiday today.
I’m still following whenever I find an active public blog, usually via
your Blues All Kinds comments. Meanwhile I’ve bookmarked up to 13 links (+4 profiles), so you know I’m a fan 🙂 Unfortunately I don’t always have time to listen regularly and to every song. Sorry, no comments, I gave up to convince the blogger-comment-system that I’m a harmless music-loving human. Just imagine a “Thanks, I like it” on vocal group posts and some others 😉 Also thanks that the feed feature on your blog is activated now.
Btw, you mentioned firefox, I usually don’t download when it’s not offered. When it is and I really want to save it, it’s often easier with a download helper. I don’t know how specific your provided statistics are, but please keep in mind that web crawler bots may be counted too.
May 29, 2014 at 10:16 am
Hi Birgit,
Thanks for getting in touch. I’ve been puzzling over your difficulty leaving comments on blogger, because as far as I know, you’re the only person who has encountered that difficulty. As you don’t show up on my Feedjit either, I’m assuming that you have your security settings set to ‘high’, blocking the cookies which are necessary to use the comment feature.
What I do when I visit my favourite blogs, is to lower the setting to the recommended “medium high” (still safe). Then when I’m surfing the web generally, I raise it again to “high.” Is it Linux that you use or Mac?
Marie
May 29, 2014 at 11:56 am
Marie,
don’t think about it, it’s probably not a general problem. Currently I use a Linux system with lots of personal settings and modifications and I individually alter my security settings when needed. I don’t really expect that everything works. However blogspot-comments didn’t even work with my former unaltered Linux, but I will try again when I update my system in September. Btw, Disqus comments on blogspot are no problem so far. I don’t show up on Feedjit? It’s not on my blacklist, but I guess it requires javascript and cookies, I’ll take a look at it later. Anyway, I probably wouldn’t comment often, this facebook-just”like it”-madness is not my thing and since English is not my native language writing takes time so I rarely comment on blogs other than KTCC.
May 29, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Birgit,
Got it!
May 28, 2014 at 5:47 pm
It IS fun reading the conversations that go back and forth (even when they seem to be in a code I can’t seem to understand.)
You see, once somebody leaves a single comment, they’re no longer strangers. I see it a little bit like inviting people into your living room – you’ve laid out some special hors d’oeuvres and there’s some groovy music on the turntable; there’s a lot of munching and chatting going on . . . but meanwhile, on the fringes, a few shadowy figures are stealthily stuffing their pockets before sneaking out the back door. 😉
May 28, 2014 at 6:01 pm
Marie,
I just figure they’re shy and hungry. If they’re in my room, I must have left the door open of them.
May 28, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Being rather shy myself (and being frequently hungry), I have to say that it’s never stopped me from murmuring “mmmmm, yummy” or a “no, thank you” at appropriate moments.
😉 I see that neither one of us is going to be able to budge the other here. But that’s okay, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point.
May 28, 2014 at 7:16 pm
I’m for that. Nothing wrong with disagreeing!
May 28, 2014 at 9:46 pm
P.S. Thanks for the link, Kat – and for letting im6 know that I’m back.
May 28, 2014 at 10:07 pm
You’re welcome,Marie, as I didn’t know if he’d have noticed the new link.
I went and deleted the duplicate.
May 29, 2014 at 8:24 am
Vintage Marie
Can you modify your “comments” so we don’t have to float in as Anonymous ? It might allow you to see quickly who in “Farmington Michigan” is looking at your post form their desk and be a bit more personal.
I will try to cross the KTCC bridge on a Wednesday when Kat and hound are taking a well deserved rest. However, we are on the Eve of the 2014 World Cup which will provide me with no end of distraction for a month.
Eels in concert are less than a week away – Mrs MDH and I are parked in the front row
May 29, 2014 at 10:10 am
Morning Hedley,
I’m not sure what you mean about the comments feature. At the moment, it’s configured so that anyone can leave a comment, either by signing in with a pre-existing account or as “Anonymous.” The only other option blogger provides is to enable registered users only, which leaves “Anonymous” commenters out in the cold. Do you have a gmail/google/wordpress account? If so, you can just sign in by selecting “Comment as.”
Marie