“Today has been a day dropped out of June into April.”
The sun is amazingly bright. The sky is a deep blue which looks best between the thinner branches of the pine trees, the ones at the tops. Today will be spring weather on Cape Cod, a high of 57˚. I have a few errands so I’ll be heading out a bit later. It is a glorious day for errands.
My to-do list has a new name, one with no immediacy. I have been what my mother would have called a Whirling Dervish. I had no idea what she meant until I saw a movie, a James Bond movie, with Whirling Dervishes. The dance was amazing and beautiful. (Why I remembered where I had seen them is a mystery to me.) Well, back to the main event: my cleaning frenzy. I am pleased to say that I did clean yesterday, but I only dust mopped the stairs and the hall then I sat on the couch eating chocolate chip cookies. Well, the new list is now called “What I’m Thinking.” No time is attached.
When I was a kid, spring vacation was a long time in coming. Our last vacation had been in February, not such a great time vacation with the weather and all. Spring vacation was always in April. Sometimes we’d get wonderful weather, sunny and warm weather. Other times it was cold and windy, a replica of February vacation.
We were never in the house when it was warm in April. We rode our bikes all around because there was so much to see. The cattle on the dairy farm, the holsteins I found out later, were out all day. I remember watching them slog in the mud on the way to the field. The ground had been hard in winter.
If we were lucky, the zoo would be open. It didn’t cost anything. There was a bike rack right by the entrance. We’d walk on the paths around the cages. Many of the animals were out on a sunny day.
We’d stop for lunch. We usually packed one on sunny Saturdays. We knew they were days not to be wasted eating inside. After lunch we’d hit the road again. Sometimes it was hunting balls on the golf course and off the golf course and across the street. On good days we’d find a couple or even more. On bad days we’d wish we had a way to get the golf balls out of the water without getting wet. That never happened.
I remember riding to the next town and bicycling around the lake. The houses were so big and beautiful. They were the best I had seen ever in all my ten years or so. Most times we’d ride around until we came to traffic, cars coming around the rotary. We’d run with the smallest break in traffic. We always made it across even wheeling our bikes. The next leg of the ride was through the square of the town next to mine. That square had a diner, a great diner, the sort where you wanted to have breakfast all the time. It wasn’t long from there to home. We’d get home before supper and watch some TV. It was a perfect April vacation day.
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April 23, 2021 at 12:12 pm
Blue sky and a shining sun gives the false illusion of spring over here. The ever lasting wind just keep on blowing and the wind is pretty cold. Still it was nice to walk in the forest where it couldn’t reach us. I have my car back now and I’ve missed it so much 🙂
The zoon in the park I grew up next to is still there. One day a civil servant decided that they only should have farm animals there and all hell broke loose. People in Gothenburg love that park and zoo so it all ended with the civil servant getting kicked out and everything looks the same 🙂 🙂 🙂
To be honest they already have farm animals there and only scandinavian wild animals so the difference wouldn’t have been that big. Most of those wild animals have relatives that walk around in teh city anyway 🙂 🙂 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
April 23, 2021 at 6:22 pm
Christer,
Like you I would miss my car very much. There is no way to get around Cape Cod without a car. There is one bus line which has few stops. The bus to Logan Airport has also stopped so there is no way to go to the airport unless you hire something or drive your car and park off the airport lots.
There are plenty of animals now in the zoo in my town. It is so much bigger than it used to be and is part of the state zoo system. At Christmas they have tons of lights. I enjoyed my last visit years ago.
Enjoy your Saturday!
April 23, 2021 at 5:46 pm
Hi Kat,
This morning was cloudy, humid and 60° with a chance of widespread thunderstorms through 10 o’clock tonight. There’s a moderate chance for severe weather including high winds, baseball size hail and tornadoes. We’ve already had the first storm this afternoon which brought very heavy rain. I left work early to get a haircut and the first storm hit the area.
This morning I awoke at 5:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. I stayed up and went in to work early. Now I’m suffering trying to stay awake.
I have to smile when you used the word rotary for a traffic circle or a roundabout. That’s a real New England term. There’s a residential, neighborhood, just south of where I live with a roundabout at each end of a street that goes through some very expensive homes. All those streets only have one lane in each direction. They are the only two of four roundabouts that I’ve found in the entire Dallas Ft. Worth area. There used to be a huge one in north Dallas in the 1960s on Harry Hines Boulevard. It had several exits of other major streets going in every direction. The accident rate there was horrendous. The Harry Hines circle has long since been converted to a grade separated and safe intersection.
Spring days were the best time to ride my bike and explore the area when I was a kid. My mother would pack a sandwich and I would be gone for hours. I don’t think I can still ride a bike. I certainly know that if I fell off of one I would wind up in the emergency room. 🙂
April 23, 2021 at 6:32 pm
Hi Bob,
Today was a delight. I went out and made 4 stops. I didn’t go to Agway because I figured I really didn’t need anything. Henry is close to needing another bag of biscuits, maybe early next week or even Chewy, the dog food delivery I use.
I usually have no problem going back to sleep. Part of that is because of how late I stay up. Usually my earliest time to bed is around 1. I also get tired around 4 but I plow through. I’d never sleep if I napped so late.
I used the word rotary because here it is a rotary, not a roundabout ( the word in England and it was the same word in Ghana) or a traffic circle. There used to be a rotary just before The Sagamore Bridge crosses the Caper Cod Canal. You can’t begin to imagine the back-up produced by the rotary. There were 4 roads you could choose from the rotary. Sometimes the back-up over the bridge was miles long. Finally, they got rid of it.
We were gone for hours as well. I rode a bike maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I did fine.
April 23, 2021 at 6:15 pm
No cleaning today, you have to celebrate World Book Day! 🙂
April 23, 2021 at 6:33 pm
Birgit,
No cleaning at all today. I did make 4 stops when I was out. Two of them were errands while the other two were just for me.