Keep the Coffee Comimg

My house was TP’ed yesterday, inside. I went out a couple of times. The first time, after my uke concert, I went home. Everything was just fine. I fed the besties, let them out, changed my clothes and went to Event the Second. It was a birthday/barbecue for a friend’s son. I stayed for a few hours, chatted, drank a couple of mimosas and ate the best barbecue. When I got home, I saw white TP all over downstairs, some tiny, soaked pieces, some huge pieces of the roll and finally the dead cardboard roll itself. I say dead because it had no paper. That was all over the floor. Miss Nala had taken a full roll of toilet paper from the upstairs bathroom, not usually her hunting spot. What amuses Nala always surprises me. She did bring a few stolen goods back to the deck from the yard this morning, but many more remain. I am going to the dump today so maybe I need to pick up all the cardboard and paper in the yard. Then again, maybe not.

The house is quiet during morning nap time. Nala is here with me while Henry is upstairs on my bed, or rather our bed. The cats too are sleeping, but I am only guessing about Jack. I didn’t see him when I gave Gwen morning treats, filled her water bowl and gave her a few cans of cat food. I put some in Jack’s dish too, but Gwen may get there first.

When I was a kid, I hated feeding Duke. He got two cans of dog food every day. It took effort to use the can opener, the silver one almost every kitchen in American had. Slicing a finger was always a possibility. Still is. I slit a finger last week on a dog food can top. The last reason and the most overwhelming was the smell. That food looked and smelled disgusting. I’d plop it into Duke’s dish, break it up a bit and then put the dish down. Duke had been circling while impatiently waiting. He’d immediately attack his food as if it had been days since he’d last eaten. My two dogs do the same thing now. Henry is food motivated. Nala is still a puppy who eats everything. This morning the three of us shared a banana. They looked disappointed. I think they were hoping for Cocoa Puffs.

I’m writing this in the wee hours. Today I will be busy from around 11 until late afternoon. I do hate busy.

The only thing I did on Sunday was vacuum downstairs which has become a daily chore. Wispy balls of Henry hair with a few from Nala thrown in for texture and color rise into the air with the slightest movement. I vacuum. They reappear. I walk down the hall. They fly. I grab the vacuum again.

I never noticed my mother cleaning the house. She did it while I was in school. I did know when she’d done laundry as it was hung out on the lines in the backyard. I loved the smell of fresh sheets dried on the line. My mother ironed. I remember she ironed my father’s handkerchiefs. They were rectangles when she was finished. He kept one in his back pocket, and he always used it.

I have an iron. It was a house warming gift in 1977. It works perfectly. I know because I had to iron napkins a few months ago after they exited the dryer quite wrinkled. I used to iron clothes for work. I’d set up the ironing board in the den and watch TV while I ironed. I once ironed a tablecloth. The logistics alone were trying. I keep my iron near at hand in the cabinet under the sink just in case it is needed. It is a steam iron.

Sometimes I wish I had a tree house or a yurt in my backyard. People used to have summer kitchens. I’d like a vacation house under or in the trees in my backyard.

I don’t like black licorice, but I do like Good and Plenty. I also like the Chuckle’s black jelly square. I pick out and eat all the black jelly beans in any assortment. Once I was given a bag of just black jelly beans. It was bliss. I love anise cookies. My uncle used to make them every Christmas. I have his recipe. He said to use anise oil. I always do. I’ve even been known to throw down a shot of Sambuca. I don’t choose to reconcile this apparent contradiction. Life should have some mystery.

It has started lightly raining. I can hear drops on the leaves from the opened window behind me. The rain is unexpected, but it’s nice, a sweet rain, a calming rain.

Today is a pleasant day. I can’t remember the last time I used pleasant to describe anything, but that nondescript adjective is the perfect word for now. It is hot, 77˚, and cloudy and sunny and humid. Rain is predicted for tomorrow. The breeze is ever so slight. The dogs are chasing each other up and down the hall and on and off the couch where I’m sitting. I wish I knew why they chase each other here rather than outside in the huge, fenced in backyard with entry through a dog door. Maybe they think it fun to annoy me sitting here minding my own business.

Henry has been amazing. He now goes out the dog door whenever a delivery comes instead of standing at the door snarling and barking and scaring the delivery men who won’t come down the walk. To Henry, I just have to say, “Out,” and out he goes where he waits impatiently looking through the dog door for me to let him back inside the house.

Henry is now an explorer. After nearly four years living here, he came to the other side of the den yesterday for the first time. He never went beyond the chair arm before this, and he did it twice yesterday and once this morning, no fluke. Also, I can now walk by Henry when he is eating, and he won’t run. He does look at me but ignores me and goes right back to eating. Nala has helped. She has no filters. She is pure puppy. Henry is heavily filtered but is changing. He is less fearful, quicker to accept visitors, and he doesn’t bark anymore at the sound of car doors closing or people walking by the house, but he does check them out at the front door. That’s perfect. He is protective without being crazed.

I remember Duke frantically barking and jumping at the front door during a hurricane when someone walked by the house. My mother told us to hold his collar so he couldn’t go through the door. Boxers are all muscle so it took my brother and me to hold him and pull him back from the storm door so we could shut the inside door. I still wonder why this guy was out walking around during a hurricane. I watched from the window as he went down the street and took a left. Duke barked until the guy was out of sight. I always felt protected by Duke. I also feel protected by Henry. Nala will soon follow as she gets older. Crazed, barking dogs are such good deterrents.

Last night I fell asleep on the den couch. Thunder woke me and the two dogs who were sleeping beside me. It was a rolling thunder which just kept going and going. Both dogs checked the ceiling then the window. It started pouring. The top of the couch was already wet. Both dogs took a seat, one on each side of me, and leaned. Neither one moved until the thunder stopped. It was five and still dark. The three of us, Nala, Henry and I, went back to sleep to the sound of the rain on the window behind the couch.

The rain is intermittent, and more thunder showers are predicted. The morning is chilly and damp at 67˚, the high for the day. I had planned a dump run, but I’m postponing that until tomorrow. Nothing about the day is inviting. The only item on today’s dance card is a nap. Now, that is inviting.

Yesterday I watched a video of a ride through Bolga, my town in Ghana. I named the places out loud I recognized as the video played. The Hotel d’Bull is still a hotel but has been renamed, air conditioned and reconfigured including a small internet cafe of sorts, maybe four computers, in what was once part of a bar. In the courtyard the blank, white wall on which movies were shown is gone as are the tiers of concrete seats facing the wall. The Hotel d’Bull was my night out. I’d buy a roof seat across from the screen. I sat at a round metal table with matching chairs, almost patio chairs except they were on the roof of a hotel in Africa, in Bolga. During the evening I bought dinner and a couple of Cokes. Dinner was a kabob for 20 pesewas, about 20 cents. The Coke was the same. I was brought a basin and water before and, later, after dinner so I could wash my hands. It still is the custom in some places, mostly on the road in chop bars, what they call local eateries in Ghana.

The video went a bit down the Bawku road, to the east, and up the Navrongo road, to the north. I had spent part of my training in Bawku teaching middle school and living with my Ghanaian family. I had friends in Navrongo, and I passed through the town on my way to what used to be Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, and Ougadougou. The road from my house to Navrongo is still my favorite road in all of Northern Ghana. It is lined with trees. I was told mahogany trees. They were planted and are equally distant apart. In the rainy season they are covered in leaves which shade the road. People walk on both sides. Women carry goods to market. Old men walk with canes. Every village, even small ones, have a market day so people are always walking.

I want one more trip to Ghana. Economic austerity begins now.

Today was a chase Nala day. I got a small delivery in three bags. One bag had several items. Another bag had two frozen items, and the third bag had chips and wafer cookies, chocolate wafer cookies to make it even worse. I heard the bag, the chip and cookie bag, being pulled through the dog door with her. I ran outside and she was already off the deck. Henry didn’t see her either. I looked over the railing and saw her standing majestically with my bag of chips, sour cream and onion, in her mouth, both unopened. I slowly made my way down the stairs. She took off in a blur, chips in mouth. I got into the yard, but she was on the other side of the yard, on the other side of my very unkempt backyard filled mostly with tall brush. I stood my ground and offered treats as exchange. She got closer. She took off, a tease, a game I didn’t enjoy playing. Nala was all in. Finally, she dropped the chips where I could reach them. They were a little worse for wear, sort of crumbly from multiple trips around the backyard. Nala got her treat. I got my chips. I don’t know where the wafers are. They are on the list as having been delivered. I need to check the bag in the yard, but I don’t really want to trash pick today, even for the possibility for chocolate.

Today looked like fall. Today felt like fall. Google says it is 76, but it feels chillier in the shade: chillier is better than colder I guess. The sun appears infrequently as slanted light through the trees in my backyard. The summer light, which was scattered and diffused through the same trees, covered the whole backyard. This change in light signals the change in seasons when dark comes early and stays long.

When I was a kid, Tuesday was no big deal. Wednesday and Thursday were’t either. They were regular days with the same pattern for each day. It was wake up for school, eat breakfast, get dressed in my school uniform, walk to school, sit in school for a bit, eat lunch, have recess, sit for more, walk home, play, do homework, eat dinner, watch TV then go to bed to maybe read a bit, then, finally, turn out the light and go to sleep. If that list sounded boring, it was. There were no surprises. Rain and snow didn’t change anything unless it was a lot of snow, a snow day of snow, mostly an overnight event, and snow days were rare. We did stay in for recess on a wet day. We could talk and walk around the room. I got soaked if I walked home in the rain and frozen if I walked home in the snow. I liked the rain better. My clothes and I got dried quickly. Snowflakes, wet and icy on shoes and clothes, took longer to dry. Snuggling in bed under lots of covers and reading under the bedlam were my favorite ways to get dry. Often I fell asleep. I slept wonderful naps, comfy and warm naps, my favorite sort of naps still.

This is my favorite time of year. Most of the traffic is gone, the ocean is still warm, the days are pleasant, generally in the 70’s, and the nights are cool for sleeping. Scattered thunderstorms are predicted for today, and, of course, it is dump day. I also need cat food and bread. My cleaning regimen of doing at least one room a day starts today. Here in the den is about as dusty as I have seen it. I could write an entire novel in the dust. Wash me isn’t enough.

Yesterday I left the dogs alone for about three hours. Nala kept herself busy. She concentrated on the table above and the baskets below. My wooden back scratcher no longer has teeth. She chewed my pen. I found pieces of it in a couple of different rooms. She pulled apart a catalog, one page at a time. That was it. I was pleased. Clean up was quick.

Both dogs are asleep beside each other and me on the couch. Nala has the end cushion, and she is sort of stretched. Henry is next to her and me. He is sleeping with his head on Nala’s back as he didn’t have enough room. He looks comfortable now.

When I was a kid, I used to beg my mother to let me ride my bike to school. It was such a good ride, the best ride. I’d speed down the steep hill where I lived then ride quickly across the road at the bottom. From there I’d coast, still using momentum from the hill, until I had to pedal on the straightaway. At school, I parked my bike in the wooden rack under the trees. I didn’t have a lock. I knew my bike was safe. On the ride home, I’d usually end up walking my bike up the last part of the hill, the steepest part of the hill, to my house.

My mother packed great school lunches. She never gave us peanut butter and jelly or fluffernutters because we thought of those as a snack, not as a school lunch. She mostly packed bologna, cut thinly and evenly unlike my jagged thick and thin slices or ham sandwiches. On both sandwiches I had mustard, yellow mustard. Friday was always, and I mean always, tuna. I don’t eat tuna now, haven’t for decades. I had my fill when I was a kid. We always had dessert, and it was never fruit. I didn’t like fruit in my lunchbox. Sometimes we got Oreos. My mother would hide them after shopping so she’d have them for lunches. We never found them. I remember potato chips in wax paper bags. I remember an occasional Hostess treat. They were special. Sometimes they were cupcakes, other times Snowballs, pink ones. Ding Dongs were my favorites. I usually ate them with a flourish from hand to mouth. I wanted the other kids to know I had Hostess.

I don’t have the time this morning to write Coffee. I need to be in Hyannis and won’t be home until late afternoon. Enjoy your day. It’s a pretty one.

The morning was tiring. Both dogs woke me up by playing on my bed. One attacked the other then both attacked me. They licked my feet, dug under the sheet when I tried to hide my feet, got tired of looking for my feet and tried to lick my face. I could take it for only so long so I got up up, let them out and waited for Henry. We both went back to bed. Nala would come in on her own when she was ready. We slept another hour. We’re talking sleeping the morning away, at least for me. The dogs woke me up by jumping on and off the bed. It was time to start the day. It was close to noon. I took my time to read the paper. I completed the Globe crossword puzzle. It had an error. The clue was Hawkeye’s home. We all know he came from Crab Apple Cove, Maine. Radar was from Iowa, the answer.

Both dogs have been in and out. The day is dog perfect for running in the yard and for chasing one another back and forth below the deck. It is 74˚. The high will be 76˚. The streaming sunlight has a cold look about it, a slant, a sharpness. It is a different light than summer light. It is still warm enough in the daytime for short sleeve shirts, but nights in the 60’s mean a sweatshirt for me, but I like the feel of these nights. The chill is still comfortable, even welcomed after a hot day.

I wrote a list of chores on Tuesday. I have crossed off two. One of those was cancelled so I really only did one. I was a slacker, a sloth of epic proportions, and I enjoyed doing nothing. Today, however, I feel like doing something so I’ll reactivate my old list. I never did throw it away. It sat on my table.

When I was a kid, I loved days like today. Mostly I rode my bike. I’d pack a lunch, roll up a sweater or a small jacket, put both in my bike basket and take off for the day. I remember riding to get uptown then walking my bike on the sidewalk so I could look at the windows to see what was new and what was old. Uptown was interesting when I was a kid. It had many little stores and many drug stores but they were a bit different from each other. The Middlesex Drug was grand to me. It had an epic soda fountain. It had the best vanilla cokes. Pullo’s had only four stools at the counter on the left. If I went with my dad who would often drop in to say hello, I got a coke while I waited. I never really went into the drug store at the furthest end of the square, at a corner which was never a corner for the stores. They were a sort of arc with the drug store in the middle.

On one side of the square was the men’s store, Finnegan’s. It was in a block of long stores with small store fronts. I never went inside, but I remember looking in the window and seeing long racks of suits. The luncheonette was beside Finnegan’s. I don’t know its real name. I remember a long counter with stools. When we’d get back from an orthodontist appointment in Boston, my mother would buy me a sandwich from there. I’d eat before I checked in at school. I remember the sandwich was always toasted.

Memories pop up unexpectedly. I think today I could have remembered every store uptown by name or function. My favorite has always been the cobbler’s. It too was in a long building. Inside was one counter the length of the shop. It was covered in shoes paired together. The cobbler was always hunched over a shoe. He wore a bib apron. I remember he was old, but I was young so old was different to me. He had the most interesting window. I could watch him work shoe by shoe. I don’t know when his shop disappeared. I just remember looking and not finding it there. I was sad it was gone.