“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.”
We have such a beautiful morning I should be breaking into song. The temperatures are perfect, 72° during the day and 57° at night, but hot weather is coming later in the week, the high 70’s, summer weather. Fall always has trouble making up its mind.
When I was a kid, my wardrobe was divided into school clothes, play clothes and church clothes. The first thing I did when I got home from school was change into play clothes because I had only one blue skirt and a couple of white blouses to last me the whole school year. That habit stayed with me even when I was an adult. I always changed as soon as I got home from school, from work. I even called them my play clothes. Now, my wardrobe is divided into outside and inside clothes. Comfort is the key.
I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and today is the dentist. Both were and are maintenance. The older I get the larger my stable of doctors.
I keep my eggs in the fridge, but when I lived in Ghana, I didn’t. I used to buy my eggs in the market. I’d go the egg section and buy enough for a few days. I never knew how old the eggs were. At home if someone was selling eggs at my door, I’d put the eggs in a bucket of water. I bought the ones which sunk. In the market holding the egg up to the sun showed a level in the shell. My egg man lifted each egg to show me. I looked and nodded and bought each egg. I had no idea what I was looking at, but the egg man was smart. He knew I’d be back if the eggs were all good.
I remember Dick and Jane, little sister Sally, Spot the dog and Puff the cat, the characters in my first grade reading books. Jane and Sally were blond and always wore dresses. Dick had dark hair and wore shorts or pants. Spot was black and white. Puff was orange. The words in the early books were repetitious and almost singsongy. That made them easy to read. “See Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Bow wow said Spot. Mew said Puff.”
I never liked arithmetic when I was young or math of any sort when I was older. My mind was not wired for numbers. It wanted words. I easily learned my times tables but that was memory, not skill. The nuns frowned on using fingers so I used to hide my fingers under my desk so I could count out the answers. When I was older, the problems were too complex for fingers so I was stuck using arithmetic. I have never used algebra or geometry. I have always used words.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
September 10, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Hi Kat,
Today is also gorgeous here. The sky is clear blue and the high is 89° while the low this morning was 58°. This weather is really false fall. By the weekend the temperature will top out in the mid 90° to upper 90° range. A little too chilly for me to go swimming, but my daughter will get into the pool. I will put my feet in while sitting on the side.
Here in the U.S. we have to refrigerate our eggs because they are washed before we buy them in the grocery store. In other parts of the world, such as Ghana, the eggs are not washed and they don’t require refrigeration because nature provides a protective coating when the egg exits the chicken. Here, we have such phobias against germs that the egg producers wash our eggs and thus remove the protective coating. Americans don’t like the idea of the shell having been coated by chicken vagina juice.
Yes, I remember Dick and Jane, the elementary school books and not the movie. 🙂 I also didn’t like arithmetic nor math. When I was a kid the teachers and the misguidance counselors kept telling me that pilots needed lots of math. I realized that they were mistaken, aeronautical engineers need math. Pilots just need arithmetic. Back in my early flying days we had aviation slide rules, called E-6b computers. It solved all of our navigation problems. I carry a digital version of the E-6b on my iPhone. Today, student pilots have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention E-6b computers.
We had a training center located at the airport in Mesa Arizona. Our flight simulator was in the same building as the Arizona State University aviation program. One of the classrooms had a large E-6b on a stand which was designed to demonstrate to the students how to use it. One day I ran into the ASU instructor in the hall, and I asked him if they still used aviation slide rules. He replied, absolutely, we want them to know where the answer came from. That was several years ago.
September 10, 2024 at 8:53 pm
Hi Bob,
The high today was 72°, but it gets chilly quickly once the sun goes down. Right now it is already down to 63° and will get colder. The heat will be here before the weekend. Boston will get into the 80°.
I buy fresh eggs if I can find them. They are often sold along the roadside.
Vaccines protect us from diseases starting when kids are newborns. Because of anti-vaxxers, outbreaks of what used to be common childhood diseases can now be lethal. Covid helped make people paranoid about germs. Washing eggs makes sense to them.
I remember using a side rule to determine students’ grades. That was about as savvy with numbers I have ever been. I believe that certain skills, many labeled obsolete, still need to be taught.