Happy spring!

Finally, spring is here, and, despite the clouds and dampness, today is warm. A little sun would have been an ideal way to greet the long-awaited new season, but I’ll take warmth.

The morning is filled with the songs of birds. The front garden has all sorts of flowers popping through the ground. The daffodil bulbs have color now, and a couple more of the hyacinths are poking out of the ground. So far they all look purple. The day lilies, a row of them where the lawn ends, are the slowest to grow.

When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to shed winter, to say good-bye to the heavy layers. I’d wear my spring jacket to school even if it was cold. I never admitted to cold. I wouldn’t go back to winter.

When I lived in Ghana, I didn’t miss winter though there were days when I wished for the cold instead of the heat, over 100˚most days this time of year, down to the 80’s at night. Instead of waiting for spring, we waited for the rain, for the start of the rainy season, for the end of the dry season, the end of brown.

In Ghana, I had a cook book called Ghana Chop, meaning Ghanaian food, Ghanaian chop. It was basic with measurements in cigarette boxes, metal boxes. It was from Peace Corps hoping we’d stay healthy. I ate pretty much the same dinner every night, meat and yams. Usually it was beef cooked in a tomato based sauce with onions, tomatoes and onions being the only vegetables I could consistently find back then in the market. The beef had to cook a long while to be tender. Chicken was the other meat we ate.

We sometimes bought Sunday dinner, fufu, from a local chop bar near the lorry park. For a big night, we went to the Hotel d’Bull for a really old movie and kabobs for dinner, beef and liver kabobs, for a mere twenty pesewas. We sat on the roof, the expensive seats. The movies were reel to reel. I remember seeing the ending before the middle in a western. The Ghanaians didn’t notice. I didn’t care. It made the spaghetti western a bit more fun.

I have plantain ripening in the kitchen. I’m going to make kelewele, my favorite Ghanaian dish. I do need some fresh ginger, integral to the dish, and peanuts, an optional ingredient I like. I already have the music, a cd of the songs of the FraFra, the local tribe where I lived. I have the right clothes. I have a matching bag. I have sandals in Bolga red leather. I’m ready for a trip back to Ghana, figuratively for now.

55˚ is the current temperature. The dense morning fog disappeared when the rain started. It will rain most of the day. The dogs will be in and out and will leave more paw prints. I’ll complain, loudly. The dogs won’t care. The day will go on as usual.

I’m tired. I need more sun so I can regenerate. I want to bake on the deck in the warmth of a spring day, but, instead, I get fog, clouds and rain, not a bit of sun. It seems I’m wanting a weather miracle.

I used to love to ride my bike through the biggest puddles. It was my version of the parting of the Red Sea. My bike made tsunami like waves on each side when I rode at top speeds through the puddles. The center was dry. Sometimes I’d lift my feet off the pedals into the air, my legs splayed over the water. It was part of the fun.

When I was a kid, I liked to roller skate in the parking lot up the street from my house. I had the old key skates, and, like the rest of the skating world, I kept my key on a string around my neck. I’d sit on the curb and use my key to tighten the clasps, as tight as I could get them, to my shoes. I always wore shoes when I skated. Sneakers didn’t work so well. The skates often came loose. I can still see in my mind’s eye the skate hanging loose attached only by the strap, not by the shoe. You always exaggerated the lift of the hanging skate on the walk to the curb.

Today is a day to languish on the lounge dressed to the nines with a wet cloth over my eyes and a tray of bonbons beside me. I will moan dramatically every now and then to punctuate my situation. A few words of comfort and an endless supply of chocolate would be perfect to heal the soul, with an emphasis on the chocolate.

I have no plans for today which take even the tiniest amount of energy. The bonbons should come unwrapped.

Yesterday and last night we had rain. Only a few clouds are left and more are disappearing, pushed away by the sun. Rain comes back tomorrow. Today is warm, already 53˚, and it will get warmer. I noticed the tip of a hyacinth in the front yard has popped. I can see purple. The daffodil bulbs too are beginning to show their colors. I see yellow and white. Spring is in the wings itching for her turn.

My house is relatively clean if you stay out of the kitchen. That floor is always a mess of paw prints. I make plans to wash it then it rains. Plans dashed. Washing the floor today was on the top of my to-do list so I am responsible for the forecast of rain tomorrow. I don’t know which is worse: living with that paw-painted floor or washing it just before the rain. I’m thinking I can’t take that floor anymore.

My father ran a company which provided sand blasting equipment and materials. 3M once sent a plane for the walnut shells only my father’s company had. When we were in Europe, my father saw a sand blaster and made me take his picture in front of it. That became part of every trip. Find a sandblaster. Another part of every trip was my father pointing to a poo pile. It started in the barn of the farm B&B where we stayed in Belgium. He pointed to it so I wouldn’t step on it. In France he pointed to a pile on the beach. In England, it was a London sidewalk. I have all the slides. My father is smiling in all of them.

I have been a sloth most of this week. I’ve sweatshirt-sleeve dusted a few tables, rearranged some baskets and put some Nala targets away, but that is getting more and more impossible. Did I mention Nala’s newest? I heard banging on the stairs and then in the kitchen. That’s when I investigated. Nala was trying to steal a 608 page hard-cover, The President’s Daughter. Nala had gotten it off my bedside table and down the stairs. She was trying to get it out the dog door but she kept dropping it and giving herself away. I saved the book. Maybe Nala should try smaller books.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

My family always celebrates St. Patrick’s Day. My mother made corned beef and cabbage. She often threw a party which inevitably ended in the kitchen with the crowd singing St. Patrick’s Day songs. That’s how I learned all the words to the songs. I remember my dog Shauna’s first St. Patrick’s Day at my parents. My father gave her a dish of corned beef and cabbage. She ate all of it. She belonged to the clean plate club. She did better than my father who never ate the turnip.

My sister has already started her dinner. She did the corned beef yesterday. I’ll be enjoying my St. Patrick’s Day dinner this evening, and I’ll eat the turnips.

I spent yesterday afternoon in Elysium. The day was pretty with a bright sun which shined from window to window, from the east to the west. I noshed on Effie’s cocoa biscuits and cheddar cheese. They were a perfect combination. On TV I watched old black and white movies which were so bad I loved them. The first was The Earth Dies Screaming with killer robots and resurrected human beings with popped out eyes. Now I’m watching The Hideous Sun Demon in which a scientist exposed to radiation turns into a lizard every time he is in the sun. I’m in heaven with bad actors and cheesy effects. “His appearance has turned into something scaly. He is not taking it too well.”

In Ghana, the two foods I missed the most were coleslaw and root beer. (For convenience sake please just go with root beer as a food.) Cole slaw made sense as I liked cole slaw, but the root beer stymied me. I seldom drank it. That I was missed it was odd.

Ghana had Coke and Fanta. What kind of Fanta you ask? If a Ghanaian ordered a Fanta, he’d get orange, only orange. Coke was just Coke, no lite, no Tab, just Coke, usually warm, except we found a store in town with a fridge and cold Cokes. It was at the end of a row of stores which started on ground level then the row of stores got higher so the last store was reached by climbing steps or walking the whole length of stores. We chose the steps every time. There was an outside table, and we were sitting there the day of the incident, I think it was Bill and me, when we were approached by a white guy or maybe two. I’m not sure. I remember one white guy stopped at our table to talk to us, not unusual in Bolga with few whites. He wanted to know where the bare breasted women were. He had heard they were around Bolga. We were horrified by his question. Why would you even ask that question?  We told him there were no bare-breasted women. We lied. He deserved a lie. He also deserved a punch, but we exercised restraint.

This morning the dogs woke me again. I went downstairs with my eyes barely opened and let them out to the yard. I went back to bed. They joined me a bit later. We slept another hour. Nala woke me up. I gave in and started my day.

It took thirteen minutes to start my day. I timed it this morning. I got downstairs, started the coffee then I went and got the paper and yesterday’s mail. While the coffee was perking, I toasted a bagel. It and the coffee were done at the same time.

The bagel was just a bagel until I spread on the black fig jam. That elevated the bagel from simple to magnificent. I yummed my way through both sides of the bagel while the dogs watched. They were hopeful. I gave each of them a piece, a small piece. I am entirely too generous.

When I was a kid, I learned to ride my bike on the street in front of our house. My mother taught me using the age old method of holding the back of the seat, running along side and offering words of encouragement until she felt comfortable enough to let go secretly. When I realized I was doing the riding myself, I yelled triumphantly. I had been given freedom to anywhere my pedaling would take me. The onyy deterrent was snow.

Ice skates and sleds had limited use as both were so dependent on the weather. Sleds needed snow so my sled stayed in the cellar a good part of the winter. My ice skates just needed cold, below freezing cold, except at the swamp, one of the neatest places of my childhood. It was shallow enough that it froze, even in above freezing weather, all around the front and on the canals, tiny canals, leading from the front to the back of the swamp. The water was clear enough I could see everything below the ice, mostly branches and ferns. I always thought it was kind of neat to have a winter picture of summer places.

The spring ahead has changed my mornings. I go to bed later and get up later. My coffee and bagel have morphed into brunch. The dogs wake me up. Nala cries so I crawl down stairs, let them both out and go back to bed. They join me later. We sleep until Nala wakes me up by whacking me, totally unnecessary as the back door is open. I give in and get up to face the day with bags under my eyes and a terrible need for coffee.

When I was a kid, cocoa was my morning drink of record. For my brother, it was tea. My mother always made the tea in a small ceramic teapot covered in pink flowers. The cocoa came cup by cup. Some days we had cereal while other days we had eggs, but we always had tea and cocoa. My favorite breakfast was a soft boiled egg served in the yellow, chicken egg cup and surrounded by strips of toast for dunking. My least favorite was oatmeal. It was palatable only because of the milk and the sugar we put on top, mostly the sugar. My mother was fortifying us for the trek through the extremes of weather to school.

I don’t know when I started drinking coffee. I believe it was in high school when I left so early for the bus I didn’t have time for breakfast so I bought coffee before school. It quickly supplemented the cocoa. By college, my friends and I started every morning over cups of coffee at the canteen and a race to finish the cross puzzle.

In Ghana, the coffee is almost universally bad. The only time I had a cup of real, as in brewed, coffee and real milk, not in a can, was at a resort on the ocean in Beyin near Nzulezo on one of my trips back. There was a real French press on the table. I wanted to borrow it.

I drank instant coffee during my two years in Ghana. Every morning I’d have one cup at breakfast; actually it was more of a stein than a cup, a huge amount of coffee. Breakfast was always two fried eggs and two pieces of toast. I’d have another cup during a break from teaching. I’d sit in the front yard and watch the little kids going to school. I was an attraction, the white lady. I always greeted them and they returned the greeting.

I love coffee. I just don’t love flavored coffee or instant coffee. Call me a purist if you will.

The morning is downright cold. It is only 30˚. The high will be 37˚. That sounds like deck weather. As if…

We have a pretty day with lots of bright sun, just not a warm sun. The air is clear. Everything looks highlighted by the sun. I can see through the tangle of pine branches in the back yard to the blue sky beyond. The dogs have been out a while. They enjoy this weather.

When I was a kid, we all gave up something for Lent. Most of us kids chose chocolate having very little else to give up. I rarely made it all through Lent. When I was contemplating eating the forbidden chocolate, I negotiated with myself to lessen the guilt. It helped.

I loved walking to school in the mornings this time of year. The cold felt temporary. My footsteps echoed in the still mornings. My friend and I chatted the whole way. It wasn’t a long walk to school: down the hill, around the corner to the straightaway which ended at the stop sign just on the corner down from school. We looked down both sides then crossed the street. The playground was behind the school. That’s where we waited for the nun to ring the bell, the time to line-up bell.

My school was old. It had no electric bells. It had bellringers. They were in the eighth grade on the top floor. They rang the bell in the hall so all the floors could hear it. I remember my first grade class, what it looked like, where I sat. It was on the first floor. I remember my second grade teacher, Mrs. Kerrigan. She was old or at least she looked old to me. She had grey hair and dressed like my grandmother. She lived in an apartment in an old house across from the church. My third grade class was in the cellar of the rectory. We didn’t have desks. We had tables. By fourth grade, we were in double sessions. The school was overloaded with kids. There were no places to put us so they started building the new school, which was all we called it even after it was old. For the fifth grade, while we waited for the new school, we were bussed to a school a town over as they had space. I never minded the buses. We were patient. The bus rides meant less time in the classroom. Nobody complained. By mid-winter, the new school was ready. We moved in. My class was on the first floor near the door. The school was shiny. It had electric bells.

The morning has started late for me. I let the dogs out early then I went back to bed. The dogs joined me. The one ring of the front doorbell woke us all up. It was my neighbor, and he was quite patient while I shooed Henry a couple of times then I opened the door. My neighbor had my overflowing mail from yesterday and today’s newspaper. I thanked him for his kindness. He always calls me Miss Kat.

The day is cloudy grey but warm without the wind. Today’s forecast calls for rain and snow with a high of 53˚ and a low of 22˚. The craziness of March weather continues. (It started pouring then it stopped.)

When I was a kid, a rainy, ugly Saturday meant being stuck in the house, my bike parked in the cellar. Sometimes I’d read in bed. It was quiet in my room. The only sounds were the rain drops against the window at the foot of my bed. Other Saturdays I’d watch the old science fiction movies from the 50’s. I still love those movies. The other day I watched Attack of the Crab Monsters. It was so wonderfully awful I bought it and two more Roger Corman’s for cheap money on E-Bay. I’m thinking a grand return, a red carpet event, to movies on the deck.

When I visited them for the weekend, Saturday nights at my parents’ house were always fun nights. My Uncle Jack always came. The kitchen was the center of activity. My mother served appies and had snacks like chips on the table. The small side of the counter was the bar. The card game was usually Hi-Lo Jack. At my parents’ table it got cutthroat. Sometimes there was music with the whole kitchen crowd singing. My uncle sang Bing Crosby songs. He always fancied himself a bit of a Bing. We all did too.

Tomorrow is a uke concert at the mall for St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll be bedecked and adorned in lots of green and shamrocks. I’ll be the one in the blinking green glasses and the shamrock fascinator.

Today is a delight. The sun is alone in the deep blue sky. It is 46˚, warm in these parts for March. The low, tonight, will be in the 30’s. That’s the spring pattern: warm days and cold nights.

The days are getting noticeably longer. The sun hangs around. This weekend we change the clocks. We spring ahead to an an even longer day.

Even as a kid, I loved this time of year. Unless the cold kept us in the house, we got to play outside longer after school. We lived on a tiny rotary, a circle of four houses. There were two street lights, hooded street lights, our alarm clocks of a sort. One light, my light, was right outside the house. When it turned on, almost magically, it announced the end of the day. On the poster of the film War of the Worlds, the original, is an alien ship knocking over a light pole exactly like my light pole. That always tickled my imagination.

Now, as the day turns from light to dark, there is an in-between, an almost night. I look outside, and the sun is gone, but I can still the outlines of objects and can guess what they are. There is a hole in the darkness letting in the light.

It was never dark in Ghana. The night sky, a blanket of stars, was so bright you could almost read by it. Every night had a falling star.

Night on a beach is filled with light. I can follow the sky to where it ends. I can see the stars from top to bottom. On a clear, easy night, the air is filled with the sounds of the waves gently finding the sand. It brings its own calmness. Occasionally I can hear the song of night birds.

I love my my deck at night. I can sit outside comfortable in the darkness. The peepers from the pond at the end of my street are loud. There are night birds. Henry barks at the sounds of likely intruders in cars or walking by the house. I shush him, but he still barks for a little longer before he finally ignores the sounds and settles down. Nala just quietly watches. We stay out late into the night, the three of us.

March is a quirky month. It waffles between winter and early spring. Yesterday was an all weather day. The rain started gently, sort of a spring rain, then it poured but only for a few minutes. The snow, big fluffy, wet flakes, fell next but didn’t stay. The sleet was last. Luckily, last night was above freezing, no ice on the steps or ruts in the road. Today is in the 40’s and is still cloudy. The wind has finally gone.

On my dance card today is the dentist. All of me is old, even the fillings, so I’m having one drilled out and replaced. I go to the dentist to avoid the dentist.

Before I went to Ghana, Peace Corps told us to have any tooth issues solved. I found a dentist in Lawrence. My father had the bills sent to him. I think I went three times and had even the hint of a cavity drilled and filled. During staging in Philadelphia we had to find our way to the dentist to have our teeth checked. Mine passed.

When I was a kid and went to the dentist, he always gave me this red pill to eat then he’d check my mouth. The red stuff ratted me out. It showed where I wasn’t brushing enough. I’d then get a lesson on how to brush my teeth. I always got a lesson.

My backyard has branches, some of them large, strewn about the ground having been broken by the wind. It has trash from Nala. Her recent booty was a bag of flour. I found her with it and put it in the barrel. She found it again and made a big pile of flour in the yard. Henry was licking it. Henry was again guilty after the fact, abetting again. I couldn’t pick the flour up so I covered it with part of the bird bath.

My days are comfortable and easy. A cleaning lady comes every two weeks though I do a few cleaning jobs in between. I do the laundry when the basket is overflowing. I have groceries delivered. I eat when I’m hungry. I eat breakfast at dinner or leftovers at breakfast. I wear my cozies all day. I’m enjoying life.