Occupe-toi de tes oignons
The morning is damp, cloudy and a bit chilly. It will be warm today, around 76˚, and we are almost there at 75˚, but the air still holds the dampness. A breeze blows leaves and high branches and is helping to keep the day a bit cool. I have no plans for outside today. I have a list, an inside list. The laundry needs to come up from the dryer as it has been there long enough for everything to wrinkle. The kitchen floor is covered in muddy dog prints all the way from the door down the hall. I’ll do a quick mopping. When I walk into the cats’ room, it sounds as if I’m walking on the beach with all the sand the cats kick out of the litter boxes. Vacuuming is on the list. I’m also thinking a nap might be a great idea.
My eye is still mending. One side is painful, but it mostly hurts only if I look to the right. Okay, time for a fun question: why would I look to the right if it hurts?
One afternoon in Ghana, there was knock on my front door. The door was open to the screen, and when I looked, I saw a man I didn’t know. I went to the door and asked him what he wanted. He said an American woman, me. I told him no. He then asked me if I knew any Canadian women. Again, I said no. He said thank you and left. Ghanaians are quite polite.
My two years in Ghana were when Peace Corps was still young. The first volunteers went to Ghana in August of 1961, a few short months after Peace Corps was founded. When I got there in 1969, the Peace Corps was still evolving. We were told not to call them. They would call us. We could go wherever we wanted, even out off the country, without telling Peace Corps. I lived a long way from Accra, the capital of Ghana, so I went to north to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso for weekends, sort of short vacations, but the country I loved to visit the most was Togo. Lomé is its capital. The city was filled with the most amazing shops. It had boulangerie pâtisseries. The windows were filled with bread and pastries. I salivated when I saw them. I always bought gooey, wonderful desserts. Other shops sold crème glacée, ice cream. In Togo, French is the national language. I knew all the words for food in French. As for the rest, I was limited to hello, thank you, numbers for bartering and asking for directions though I didn’t always understand the answers. I was big on left and right, gauche et droite.
I can still order an entire meal in French.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
June 26, 2021 at 1:11 pm
Hi Kat,
Have you thought about patching your right eye so you would have to tun your head to see to the right through your left eye. I’ve actually taught a couple of pilots to fly that had only one eye. They had to take an aeromedical flight test with an FAA Inspector to get a demonstrated ability waiver to the medical standard. American Airlines had a one eyed pilot who lost his eye in an accident after he was hired and was flying for the airline. Wiley Post, a famous pilot in the 1930s, only had one eye so having two eyes isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. 🙂 Of course, I may be wrong because both Wiley Post and his friend and passenger, Will Rogers were killed in an airplane accident in Alaska in 1935. 🙁
Today is partly cloudy and 83° right now with a high predicted of 95°. The humidity is high but a cold front is approaching from the northwest which will bring rain and cooler temperatures for the beginning of the week. I think today is a good day to spend in the pool.
The Ghanaian man at your door was certainly up front in his request. Did he want just sex or marriage? Was he looking for a ticket for entry to the U.S. or Canada? When I was single and young, I thought I might have better luck with woman by asking every woman I met if she would have sex with me. I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to get slapped across the face that much until I found a woman who would say yes. 🙂 I discovered that hanging out in, country western, honky-tonks resulted in better results late in the evening near last call for drinks. 🙂
June 26, 2021 at 4:04 pm
Hi Bob,
The pain is decreasing each day. I thought a patch would be sort of neat, but I didn’t pursue getting one. The pain is now coming more from around the left side of the eye, but I can tell it is getting better. The first day after it happened, driving was difficult, but it is easier now.
I have a wonderful breeze from the window behind me, from the north. The sun came out then disappeared. It had done that a couple of times. It is now 78˚, higher than the prediction, but I’ll survive. Tonight will get down to the 60’s.
He wasn’t looking for marriage though many Ghanaian men do ask white women for marriage then entry to the US, but they are quite polite and take no nicely.
June 27, 2021 at 2:46 am
Cool and cloudy morning here and it is quite nice. I do feel better but I still have a fever so wlaking in cool air was quite delightful. I did my chores yesterday but it’s never wrong to vacuum the floors, dogs do bring in lots of sand even though it is dry on the ground.
It is after all easier to look to the right than to move the head 🙂 I hope it gets better soon!
Have a great day!
Christer.
June 27, 2021 at 7:50 pm
Hi Christer,
It is ugly humid here today. I have the AC running as I was just sitting down and still sweating. We had some perfect days so now we pay for them. The nest three days will be really hot, 90’s in Boston.
Thank you. It is getting better every day.
Enjoy your day!
June 27, 2021 at 3:59 am
Have you changed your settings or the way you find music? Or has WordPress made some weird changes? Or maybe it’s just the way things are showing up in my browser and things look the same to you? I ask because rather than the usual YouTube screens I’m used to seeing, the songs are formatted differently and not in their usual format. They link to something called Daily Motion (new to me). It’s all a bit strange after all this time.
June 27, 2021 at 11:13 am
im6,
I haven’t made any changes to WordPress. Maybe it has made changes which they didn’t tell me about. Almost every song’s url becomes a black screen when I post saying the posting is not allowed. Once in a while, I can post the actual url, but that is getting more and more difficult. I spend an in ordinate amount of time finding videos I can post. I was lucky to find Vimeo. I knew the format was different.,but it is the best I can do so far. If you find something better, please share.
June 27, 2021 at 5:49 pm
I just knew things looked (and acted) different. It’s always something!
June 27, 2021 at 8:03 pm
I’m finding older groups haven’t blocked the videos. That is why The Kingston Trio and the polka are from YouTube.