“If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to the door, greet him with, ‘Who could have done this? We have no enemies.”
The morning is damp and overcast. It is in the high 50’s and could get warmer. Scattered showers are predicted. I’m just fine sitting home and looking at the world through my den window. My dance card is brittle and yellowed. It has one fading entry, my trip to Hyannis yesterday when I sat with my uke band and sang along.
My housecleaner is here. The dogs love her. They greet her with wagging tails. I’d do the same if I were a dog. She is generous with pats and treats. Last time she was here, Nala stole a box of baking soda from her cleaning supplies. I found it in the yard. Nala also follows her around the house and tries to eat the vacuum. My housecleaner is quite patient.
In Ghana, I had a housecleaner named Thomas. He lived in a room in the courtyard of my house. That courtyard had four sort of rooms: Thomas’ room, the kitchen, the toilet room and the shower room beside it. Thomas washed the floors every day. He dusted the furniture and made my bed. He did my washing. I was spoiled. When I went back to Ghana the first time, my former students tried to find Thomas. They told me he had passed.
I always wonder why people are afraid of spiders. I don’t get it. Even when I was a kid I liked spiders even though they do have a couple of drawbacks. They make webs all around the house. Think Mrs. Haversham. Some spiders bite, but generally house spiders seldom do, but if they happen to, the bite is more akin to a mosquito bite. Because spiders are valuable and devour insects, I don’t kill them. I don’t scream when I see them. If they are in the way, I just move them.
When I was a kid, my mother seldom cooked foods she knew we hated except for carrots. We ate them because we didn’t know we were eating them. We never had broccoli or cauliflower. Corn was big in our house. We all liked it in its varied forms: kernels, creamed and on the cob.
My finger hurts so it is time to stop.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
October 17, 2022 at 3:34 pm
I’m with you on the spiders. I’m more of a live and let live type of person, so I relocate them outside when I find them in the house. My wife has moved from being a smash upon sight person to giving me an opportunity to remove them first. She gave me a suction gun last Christmas to facilitate their removal. Simply point the gun at the spider, pull the trigger and the spider gets sucked down into the see through barrel tube. With a flick of the wrist, the spider is flung out of the tube and into the desired area of my backyard.
October 17, 2022 at 9:32 pm
Hi Mark,
I figure spiders eat enough insects that they need to stay around. I’m not big on spider webs where I have to walk through them so I do take them down. I haven’t ever seen that suction gun. It would make moving spiders so much easier. Now I let them walk on to paper or cardboard so I can resettle them. The hardest to save are the ones in my sink. They slide too much.