Keep the Coffee Comimg

The rain is heavy. I can hear the drops hitting the top of the barbecue which long ago lost its cover. The dogs went out reluctantly. I went out to get my papers, also reluctantly. It is supposed to rain into the night with thunder and lightning coming later. I won’t complain about all the rain. We still need it.

My neighborhood is quiet. The house beside me is empty for the winter. On the other side of me, Brazilians live there, guys who work for my landscaper. We do say hello the few times we meet. In the house across from me are two people I never see. I do wave at the woman in the corner house. She waves back. Down the street are the only other houses with people. Eight kids live on the street, down the other end, but they are all in school. Not even the dogs bark.

When I was a kid, I liked school, but some of the nuns scared me. All you could see were their hands and faces. Their orders were instantly obeyed. Nobody dared whisper. Nobody wanted the wrath of the nun. My classroom was filled with close to forty kids. All the classrooms were filled. We were the boomer generation. The parish had to build a new school, but before it did, we went to double sessions. I hated getting out so late in the afternoon. In winter it was getting dark by the time we got home. The street lights came on quickly, no going out to play.

I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have a TV. I remember the giant console in the corner of the room. Behind its doors was a tiny screen. My father put an antenna on the roof. Sometimes, though, the picture got snowy. We’d wiggle the dials and the rabbit ears hoping to clear the picture. All the stations were local. I remember Big Brother Bob Emery and Rex Trailer. I learned that Eisenhower was president and Hail to the Chief was his song when we toasted him with milk on the Big Brother show. His theme song was The Grass is Always Greener. He played a ukulele.

I don’t remember when I went to bed back then. I remember watching a bit of evening TV. I remember all the westerns. I think I got my fill back then as I am not a fan of westerns except maybe for The Lone Ranger, Annie Oakley and Rin Tin Tin. “Go Rinny!”

Today is lovely with clear, still air and a temperature of 77˚. These are the days I love the most. They invite rides along the water, stops at vegetable stands and the flower stands people put along the sides of the road. Everything is quiet. The kids are in school.

The morning didn’t start well. My half and half had lumps. It went into the trash. I couldn’t imagine a morning without coffee so I ordered Dunkin’ from DoorDash, expense be damned. The driver was here in no time but not with my order. He brought iced coffee. I checked my order just in case, no ice coffee. I called DoorDash. They gave me credit and told me to enjoy the ice coffee and offer one to the driver. I did. He said he doesn’t drink coffee. I asked him where he was from. “Africa,” he said. I asked where. “Ghana,” he said. I was so excited and told him I had lived in Bolga which surprised him. He had never been to Bolga, no surprise there as most southern Ghanaians never go north. He was from Cape Coast, a city I love. It is filled with old buildings, tiny streets and people, always people, people walking on sidewalks and the sides of the streets. How wonderful it was to talk to someone from Ghana. He said he hoped he’d have to deliver here again.

My parents used to take cruises back in the day when men wore tuxes and women wore long dresses to the formal dinners. They usually traveled with my aunt and uncle. Their cruise ships stopped at mostly Caribbean islands. At one stop my father rented a car and drove into the mountains of one of the islands. He told me how they stopped at a local place for some drinks, and he took a picture of an old woman who yelled at him. His response, ” I have your soul in my camera.” She didn’t speak English. Good thing.

When I was a kid, I loved geography. I remember a map which had tiny drawings representing what crops each country grew. I remember coffee and bananas. I remember the rice growing countries. I used to pore over each map imagining what the country was like. Holland had tulips and windmills. South America had llamas, mountains and coffee. Latin American had bananas and pineapples. Later, much later, I traveled to some of those countries. I saw the windmills and tulips. I traveled through the Andes and saw llamas, so many llamas. I don’t remember the coffee, but I do remember seeing banana trees filled with not yet ripe bananas. My geography book had come to life. I was thrilled. I was living my dreams, my imagings.

Last night sometime after two we had rain, a deluge of rain. I jumped out of bed to shut windows. Henry followed. He always does. Nala stayed on the bed disinterest in what Henry and I were doing. I fell right back to sleep.

Right now it is 75˚ and dark and cloudy. Nothing is moving in the thick air. I don’t hear anything except the jangle of Nala’s tags on her collar. I keep track that way. She is elusive.

I choose to do nothing today except to shower for the sake of propriety. I will not notice the dust or the tumbleweeds.

I have no reason to go out. I did change the cat litter and get to the dump yesterday. I felt accomplished enough for a few days anyway.

My mealtime habits would make a nutritionist cringe. I don’t take the time to make a real dinner, one with a variety of foods, like meat, potatoes and veggies, on the plate. I’m big on cheese, sharp cheddar, and crackers, Club crackers. They make for an effortless meal.

We used to think of today as the last day of summer, calendars no nevermind. School always started the day after Labor Day. We had to take our baths on Monday, a bit disconcerting. My mother would set out our clothes so we’d get ready quickly in the morning. My uniform was a blue skirt, a white blouse and a blue tie, one of those bow ties with legs. I remember getting dressed, grabbing my school bag and loving that everything was new. My pencil box was pristine. The crayons were tall and had points at the end. My lunch box had first day goodies, usually something from Hostess. After breakfast I’d meet my friends, and we’d walk to school together. We’d be in the schoolyard until the nun rang the bell, the hand bell. We’d accept our fates, get into lines two by two and walk into the building. I swear the doors were slammed shut behind us.

The morning is cloudy. Google says it’s sunny, but he has no access to the windows. The air is a bit damp and makes today’s 74˚ feel cooler than it is. The small breeze is constant. Rain is predicted for tomorrow. Of course it is. I washed the kitchen floor yesterday. Maybe if I had known about this connection before, the one between rain and a clean kitchen floor, I could have prevented the drought we find ourselves in, and my kitchen floor would be immaculate. My only plan for today is a trip to the dump as it will be closed the next three days. Such an adventure!

I’m wearing my slippers, both of them. The former lost slipper feels a bit different, a little squishy in the toe. I don’t mind. I’m just happy to have my slipper back. I still need to collect the rest of Nala’s trash from the yard.

When I was a kid, Sunday was sacrosanct. The stores were closed. The churches were full. My church had masses up and down. I liked the down as the mass seemed to go faster, freeing us sooner. Back then women had to wear hats. I used to wear a small, round mantilla, the smallest not really a hat I could find. I used to crumble it up and put it into my pocket when I was out of church. Lace doesn’t crumble. It pockets well.

My grandmother lived down the street from the First National. She used to grab her wheeled basket, the sort you pull behind you, and shop. She had a closet in the kitchen where she stored some groceries, but I remember most the bottles of root beer on the closet floor. The kitchen’s top cabinets went to the ceiling. My grandmother was tall but stooped the way some some old ladies are. The only table in the kitchen was a built in with a bench. It was cozy, a better word than small. My grandmother wasn’t a good cook. She could do a roast with potatoes and canned veggies as that was an easy meal to fix, but her spaghetti was gross with stewed tomatoes plunked on top instead of sauce. I hated the clumps of tomatoes. When I was really young, we used to go there for dinner on Thanksgiving day evening. I can still see the wooden dining room table with matching chairs and the French doors facing the side yard. I don’t think I ever saw those doors opened. We used to use the side door which opened to the kitchen. All of the doors except the front were close to neighbors’ houses. My grandparents’ yard was open to all the backyards. Much, much later, a different owner fenced in the yard. It was a tiny yard. Once in a while I go by the house on my way to somewhere else.

Huzzah!! I have a pair of slippers. The lost slipper appeared as if by magic. I went on the deck and saw my slipper on the driveway part in the yard. I ran down the deck steps closely followed by Nala, trying, I suspect, to save her treasure. The slipper is a bit worse for wear. It is soaked from all the rain. A new hole is on the side. It also lost its insides which appeared, almost magically again, in the house in two pieces, one at a time. Now I have a pair of slippers.

When I was a kid, I got new slippers every Christmas. Each year they were the same, slipper socks with a wool top and a leather bottom. Only the color of the wool changed. The soles made a noise when I walked, a sort of a shuffling sound. They kept my feet quite warm. One year my sister gave me a pair of slipper socks for Christmas. The top was mauve. They made noise when I walked.

When I visit the town where I grew up, I sometimes just drive around some of the streets looking for my memories. They are easy to find. My house hasn’t changed. The trees have. They are taller than the house. My elementary school hasn’t changed either, but the convent where the nuns lived was torn down, the land sold and a building sits there now. I pass houses where kids I used to know lived. I think about them.

I have been to the theater uptown to see plays. It was my movie theater when I was a kid. The front hasn’t changed, but the inside is totally different. People can sit in the balcony, and none of them toss Juju Beads at the people below which usually includes me. The folks in the back row now watch the play. During Saturday matinees couples sat there and made out as we used to say. I found it amazing. I was probably only 10.

I miss places in my town which have disappeared. The armory where I used to have drill team practice is now a hardware store. The armory was sort of neat with all wood and the hanging flags and banners. The hardware store is generic. The fish market spot has a restaurant, the second one on the site. I’ve eaten there once. I had a Cuban sandwich. The diner is gone, replaced I think by another hardware store. The box factory is gone. It was across from the train station and the red store. I used to cross by it when I walked the tracks. The police box which sat in the middle of the square was hit by a car and couldn’t be saved. It is one of the unique places in my old town I miss the most.

I have friends who still live in town. I don’t see them often. One has been my friend for well over 60 years. We share amazing memories. We laugh a lot. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Today is a perfectly lovely day. The sun is bright, the air is clear and it’s only 69˚. The forecasted high for today is 71˚. The forecasted low is 59˚, yup, fifty nine degrees. I have to go out because I can’t waste this weather which will stay the same the whole long weekend. Blissful is my mood of the moment.

I am the victim of a plague, not one of the Biblical plagues of note but my own plague, a fly plague. Yesterday I had to go out for the first time since Friday. When I opened the car door, flies attacked me. Well, not so much attacked me but more like ran into me as I was just standing in the way of their freedom. I didn’t go into the car. There were too many of them. I did manage to get all the windows opened. The flies were small, maybe baby flies. my first baby flies. I waited outside the car and watched the swarm leave. The sky darkened, and the only sound was the fluttering of wings. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit here, but I’m telling you it took a while before all of the flies left for sunnier climes. Flies are dumb bugs. A lot of them crawled under the opened window so I had to shoo them out. I figured they just had to come from the trunk, from where the trash bags were. Today I will open the trunk and duck.

Nala continues her felonious ways, and I don’t know where she is finding the paper to shred. The only place I can think of is the recycle bin of papers and magazines. Nala has also become a naturalist. Yesterday she brought in a small branch filled with dead leaves. They ended up on the floor by the door and Nala, with some help from Henry, the abetter, chewed away the branch. When I was on the deck earlier, I saw a dog food can in the yard. I didn’t see any legs. It didn’t walk there.

When I walk to the kitchen, tumbleweeds fly in front of me. They rise slightly in the air then fall back down to the floor. They are never completely eliminated. I’d need bald dogs before that happened.

My slipper is still missing. This morning I went to get my papers. I was barefooted. I ended up having to step on pathway stones to get the papers. They hurt. I should have worn shoes. I really miss my slipper.

When we woke up this morning or rather closer to this afternoon, it was cloudy and cold, 64˚ cold, and the day won’t get any better. It will stay cloudy and dark and cold with a low of 60˚and a high of 69˚. A strong wind is swaying the pine tree branches. A flood watch is in effect. It is an ugly day.

Yesterday was an odd, as in unusual, sort of day. It started in the morning when a vase fell over after the flowers shifted. The water from the vase fell all over the kitchen floor under and over cans and bottles of food. I started picking up the wet stuff including a bag of dog food which had been folded over the top to keep Nala from snacking. I failed fold. The dog food fell out of the bag all over the wet floor. Nala thought she was in heaven when she saw the food. I thought I was in hell. The cleanup took a while.

Rain started slowly yesterday in the early evening. I could hear the drops on the leaves from the open window behind me. Not long after, the deluge began. The thunder came first. It was so loud Nala raised her head each time. Henry slept through. A couple of lightning bolts were next. They lit up my den window. The rain kept falling. At one point there was a lull, and I thought the storm was over despite the weather predictions. I was wrong. The most rain fell after ten. There were tornado warnings for Barnstable county. I watched the tracks of those tornados on TV. The first warning was until 12:45 then it was changed to 1:45. The rain was still falling as heavily as it had been. Around three there was a lull in the rain. I let both dogs out for the last time before we went to bed. The amount of rain which soaked us was around 3 or 4 inches but not enough to get us out of drought conditions.

My laundry has made it to this floor. The two bags are stacked in the hall. One bag was so heavy it fell down the stairs and sent Nala scurrying. I need to do a few household chores including changing my bed. Despite the damp, I did run over the kitchen floor with a wet mop. I know they’ll be tons of new paw prints today, but I couldn’t take the dirty floor anymore. I’d have to close my eyes every time I went into the kitchen.

I do need to go out today. I wish I didn’t. Nothing about today makes me want to be out and about. I’ll need a sweatshirt.

Today is cloudy, hot and humid. It will be in the mid 80’s but will drop to the 60’s tonight. The rain, a remnant from Ida, will be here on Thursday. The winds could gust up to 40 mph, and the storm could drop 3 inches or 4 inches of rain. That’s another reason (think excuse) not to wash the kitchen floor: more dog paw prints from the upcoming rain. I’m glad I grocery shopped yesterday.

Today I have a malaise. My stomach is bitterly complaining about something. It can’t be dinner as I actually had a salad. Last night was an unquiet sleep, a portend of this morning. I’m wearing track shoes (symbolism here) so I can sprint to the bathroom. The dogs watch me from the hall. That too is unsettling.

On the shoe/slipper front, I didn’t find it, but I haven’t yet checked through the brush in the backyard. I’m really missing my slipper.

I did go to the dump yesterday as I didn’t want the trash to sit in my car until Thursday, the next time the dump is open. A nice man helped me lug the heavy litter bags from the car to the big receptacle.

Nala chewed on my back scratcher. The five teeth have become three with spaces between them where there were no spaces. The scratcher was in one of the baskets under the den table top. Nala finds the three baskets under the table a rich hunting ground.

When I was a kid, Duke, our boxer, chewed a few things during his puppy days. Those few things included the upholstery over the windows of my father’s car and a roast beef though my brother and I managed to save it, and nobody noticed the teeth marks. Nala has no preference and no standards for stolen goods. Paper, cans, newspapers and so many more strange items are among the missing. I know she’s taken something when she rushes out the dog door and ignores my call.

My plans for today are simple: sit around, watch a little TV, read a bit and nap.

The morning started out sunny. The clouds took over for a bit then the sun returned but disappeared quickly. I think that will be the pattern though cloudy is the forecast. It is warm and humid. It is 83˚, but a wind is keeping it from being oppressive.

My slipper, the one with the hole, has disappeared. It was on the floor by my bed last night. I doubt it left voluntarily. I checked under the bed and in the yard. I didn’t find it. Later I’ll do a more comprehensive hunt.

Lately I have been a bit bored. Nothing holds my interest too long. I jump from activity to activity. The laundry pile is getting tall enough for mountain status. The kitchen floor is filled with paw prints. The dust in this room is thick, Miss Havisham type dust. The plants cry out for water when I walk by them. My sheets are ready to walk themselves to the cellar. I need to get motivated.

My dump run is slated for today as it is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. The only trash bags waiting to be hauled to the car are filled with used cat litter, heavy used cat litter. I need a Sherpa.

When I was growing up, we lived in a project. We even called it the project. Each house was a duplex, one side the mirror image of the other. We never thought of project as a pejorative word. It was just our house. The five rooms were sort of small. In the kitchen we all couldn’t sit at the table, squeezed against the wall, at the same time, just the four of us kids ate together. That was okay as my mother aways ate at the counter, and my father got home late. The living room was where we spent most of the time. The TV was there, in the corner of the room, mostly across from the couch. The living room had a picture window. Upstairs were the three bedrooms and the bath. My room overlooked the back and side yards. The double bed I shared with my sister took up a good deal of space. The rest was taken up with a desk and a bureau. I never used my desk much. My mother and father brought it down to me here. It is in the cellar piled with boxes. I haven’t any space. We had a huge cellar where my mother did her washing and where we sometimes played when it rained. The Christmas boxes and some toys and games were also stored in the cellar. The house I live in by myself is bigger than the house where the six of us lived for a long while, before we moved here to the cape.

Everything is quiet. I can hear only the rustling of leaves from the backyard when the tree branches twist in the wind. The dogs are having their morning naps. Even pesky Nala is quiet and probably dreaming about chewing slippers.

The sky is cloudy, and the air is perfectly still. The morning is a bit noisy. From the street behind mine, I can hear a lawnmower. The operator of said lawnmower does not realize he is breaking Sunday protocol. Lawns are mowed on Saturday. It is a long tradition.

It is only 72˚ right now, and the temperature won’t get much higher, maybe a degree or two. The high humidity makes the air feel a bit chilly. The clouds are staying around all day.

I haven’t yet decided what to do today. I have been loading trash into the car but am saving the dump for tomorrow. I need something to look forward to, and I still need to change the cat litter.

Alexa and I had another useless conversation this morning. She told me it was time to reorder cat litter, the blue crystals I tried a while back. Did I want it on my shopping list? No, I said. No, what, Alexa asked. I said do not add the blue crystals to my shopping list. She said I had no shopping list. Did I want to start a shopping list? I told her to shut up. She did.

When I was a kid, just about every kid I knew had a bike and a sled. Bikes were mostly regular size. Little two wheelers with training wheels weren’t around. It didn’t make much sense to go from a tricycle to a bike with four wheels. I learned to ride on the street in front of my house. My mother taught me. I don’t remember falling, but I suspect I might have. I didn’t have elbow pads or a helmet. Scrapes were part of the learning curve. I always thought a little blood was an incentive to learn to ride quickly.

Nala and I play catch down the hall She starts by bringing me her round, fluffy pink ball with a face and ears. I throw it. She runs then returns it. The game doesn’t usually last too long. Nala gets distracted easily. Usually Henry is the reason.

Speaking of Henry, he came in the dog door today. It fit his purpose to run to the front door and bark at the woman walking her dog. He went out again, and in a bit, he banged the door for me to let him in. I did. Without an emergency, Henry will stay outside that door waiting. I did try to wait him out the other day. It didn’t work. I felt guilty after a half hour.