“Normal is a setting on a washing machine.”
The sun is elsewhere. It has been gone for weeks. No one knows anything. No one saw anything. The clouds have taken over. It is 44° according to my Google, but I’m doubtful. It is cold. I am hibernating again. My dance card is empty until Tuesday. Yesterday was a banner day. I had a morning uke lesson. I went shopping for human and animal food, got gas and went to my first uke concert since the mighty fall and the plague. Life now has a familiarity about it.
Last night the dogs went crazy. When they play, they make growling sounds. They were loud last night, almost scary loud. They chewed each others’ muzzles. Nala chased Henry around the house. They weren’t two dogs from the sounds they made, but a herd. I pat them, feed them, give them room on my bed, but that doesn’t matter. They ignored me when I yelled for them to stop. I live to serve.
I remember the measles. I remember the dark bedroom. I remember staying in bed the whole time. Though I had every childhood disease, I don’t remember the rest of them. You’d think I’d remember chicken pox.
When I was a kid, I had mysteries in my life. The washing machine was one of them. I had no idea how it worked. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I bested the beast. I didn’t know how to cook anything. That was my mother’s job. I was a junior in college before I peeled my first potato. I was living in an apartment, an illegal one as juniors had to stay on campus, so I cooked my own food. I became a master chef with ground beef. My mashed potatoes were a bit lumpy but still tasty. I ate a lot of canned peas. I also ate a lot of spaghetti with ground beef and bottled sauce. There is some irony there as cooking and baking became hobbies. That started in Ghana where I made my first sugar cookies.
My friend and I used to camp in the backyard. We’d put a tarp on the ground first. We had our blankets and pillows. It was always her yard. My yard was an open one with houses up on the hill and all around it. Her yard had a fence behind it separating the project from the houses on Green Street. I remember a large white house with a front porch. Pear trees lined the fence on the other side, but a few branches hung over. We picked those pears. I remember they were always hard.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
February 1, 2024 at 3:12 pm
Hi Kat,
Right now, we have clear skies and a temperature of 72°. This is the forecast high for today, but yesterday we hit 75°. I think winter has taken a vacation. 🙂 We still have February to go before we get to meteorological spring. On Valentine’s Day 2021 we had an arctic breakout that drove the temperature down to -7°F and was accompanied by rolling blackouts. We only had about two hours of electricity a day for four days. It was brutal.
I always said that in my next life, I want to return as a small dog in a Jewish household, or better yet in your household. 🙂 We treat our pets better than we treat strangers. Pets are our companions for our families, our kids, and when we become empty nesters, or widows, or widowers, for us.
In my childhood, the big mystery was the TV. I could see all the tubes light up through the vents in the cabinet, but I couldn’t figure out how the picture appeared on the nine inch diagonal, monochrome screen, from a wire going to the roof.
Like you I can remember having the measles and being in bed in my dark bedroom, but not the others. Maybe being in a dark room all day is the part which sticks in my mind.
I do remember chicken pox parties. If one kid in the neighborhood came down with it, the mothers organized a party to expose as many kids as possible. I remember my mother telling me that getting any of the childhood diseases as an adult was terrible. Other than being a boy and getting the mumps as an adult, was the only one that made sense. I once saw a photograph of a man who contracted Elephantiasis who had to place his engorged scrotum in a wheel barrow to get around. That picture, of a man pushing his scrotum around was what I thought would happen if a man contracted the mumps as an adult. 🙂
February 1, 2024 at 9:24 pm
Hi Bob,
It stayed cloudy, raw and cold all day. For Friday, cloudy will be the weather. For Saturday the prediction is we will have rain while the rest of the state will not. I swear Jupiter, the Roman weather and sky god and king of the gods, has it in for us.
My father always said he wanted to come back as a pet in any of our houses. My pets are totally spoiled. The new snack for the dogs is Oreo looking cookies with peanut butter cream. It said human consumable on the front of the package. The staff at Agway said they tasted the cookies, and they were great.
My mysteries were all the things I didn’t learn to do when I was young. I never thought about the TV as a mystery. I just accepted it. I think my father thought it a mystery. If something happened, he had to take the tubes to the TV store to test them. He marked each one as he had learned that when he couldn’t put them back the first time he took them out.
My family was its own chicken pox party. The four of us caught it from one another.
February 1, 2024 at 3:41 pm
Pack. It’s a pack of dogs.
February 1, 2024 at 3:48 pm
Side note: I remember having the mumps and my mother gave me (of all things!) Cocoa Puffs… probably at my insistence…and that went so: Crunch…OUCH!!! 🤣
February 1, 2024 at 8:58 pm
That’s a great memory!! Your mother was wonderful giving you what you wanted eve though it did hurt. I think I had a lot of soup.
February 1, 2024 at 3:54 pm
Glenn, I was talking about the loud sound they made. That is why I described then as not two dogs from the sounds they made, but a herd. It was intentional.
February 2, 2024 at 3:51 am
Okay, I can picture / “hear” that scene 😄
February 2, 2024 at 1:24 pm
I have two dogs. Both are about 65 pounds. They do not run gently.