Keep the Coffee Comimg

Today was sunny when I woke up, but since then clouds have arrived, and the day is getting a bit dark. Rain is predicted for tonight, but maybe it will arrive sooner. I’ll be glad for the rain and glad, even more, for the thunder and lightning. 84˚ is the current temperature. I turned on my air conditioner when I got downstairs. and the dogs are lolling on the couch.

Last night I woke up and called Henry to come upstairs. I turned on the hall light and saw Jack downstairs lying on the floor. I was happy to see he gets out of his cat room to roam a bit. He loves Henry so Jack must have felt safe. Nala, the terror dog, was asleep on my bed. She cries at Jack. He just stays out of her reach near the hole in the gate protecting the cat room. Jack drives Nala crazy.

We got our first kitten when I was sixteen. We waited until my father was not home except for weekends. He had been transferred, and we would not be moving until after school ended. When my father found out, he told my mother to get rid of the cat. My father was not a cat lover. Dogs were masculine. Cats were feminine. We didn’t rid of the cat. My father wasn’t happy until he was lying in bed watching TV, and the cat jumped on the bed, licked him and snuggled. My father was smitten. From then on, my parents had two cats and a dog. That first cat, Gideon, loved my father more than any other human. The rest of us just happened to live in the same house as my Dad. Gideon even went in the car with my Dad, slept behind him on the top of my Dad’s seat and leaned on him for the whole ride. My father became a cat lover, and my parents always had cats after that.

When I was a kid, I always felt safe. I knew bogeymen weren’t real and neither was the guy with the hook, but I do remember once, I think I was probably ten, when we were visiting my grandparents in East Boston. We, including me, my brother, my uncle, two years older than I, were going to the MDC pool near the science museum. We were taking the subway. While waiting in the station for the train, I was approached by a man who offered me candy if I went with him. He told me I just had to move to the other side of the station. I remember the guy had bad teeth and was wearing a hat. I said no but that didn’t deter him. He tried again. That’s when I got scared and ran to my brother and uncle. They asked what was the matter. I said nothing was the matter. I never told them or my parents about the guy who, after that, just disappeared off the station platform. I felt relieved and safe and even a bit brave.

The morning ran away from me. I woke up late, took my time reading the papers, chatted with my former neighbor, also my landscaper, and watched a bit of the news. I don’t know why I watch the news. It seldom changes. Inside my house, my world may be small, but it is a good world. The air conditioner is keeping the heat, extreme for this time of year, at bay. The dogs love the coolness and chase each around the house. Groceries from the organic store were just delivered. I treated myself to Tate’s chocolate chip cookies and some chocolate wafers. I now have tomatoes, raspberries and bananas. The dogs will be happy. They are banana fans. My groceries filled just one bag, and I am $60+ poorer. My trash pile is mounting. It is mostly used cat litter, heavy used cat litter. I am toying with the idea of calling Skip, my factotum, to do a trash run, cut down the tall weeds in the back yard, gather the fallen branches all over the back and finally open my deck. I just hope the weather cools enough for outside work.

The only sounds are birds. I did see the baby rabbit when I got my newspaper. It scurried to hide in the flowers, well buds not yet flowers, in the front garden. The rabbit seems to have found a home here much to the amusement of my dogs. They love watching out the front door. Nala is a trash bag picker. Like Gracie did, she sneaks stuff out of the bag and runs outside so I won’t catch her. Last night I found the remnants of cardboard trash bag container in pieces on the deck. She also stole a bag of exotic tea bags I was saving for a friend. She got them from a box in my room. She didn’t like the tea but she loved the mesh bag holding the tea. I took from her mouth and found another piece outside.

When I was a kid, I went to Girl Scout day camp. We were the oldest campers. I remember when we had to take down the flag each afternoon, fold it and put it away for the next day. Facing each other during the folding was our undoing. We had to look away or we would have laughed out loud. The counselors were not happy. We got the role model speech. I enjoyed the camp. I learned how to make hobo stew. We went hiking through the pine woods. It always felt cool on the paths under the trees. Our last camp activity was an overnight in the lodge. The lodge smelled of camp fires. The walls were all pine wood. The kitchen was inside as was the counselors’ room. The bathrooms were a step away. They had plumbing. We slept on cots, the old canvas cots with wooden legs and end pieces. They were folded and tucked away in storage under benches. Opening them was like trying to solve a puzzle. During the night sometimes, a cot would collapse at one end. That was always funny and a counselor always told us to go back to sleep. Fun was easy when I was a kid.

Today I spent almost two hours trying to find a place from which to post music. YouTube blocked just about every video I tried to post. The copyright code is imbedded in many of the downloads so I got that black square forbidding the posting. Next I hunted for alternatives to YouTube. I found a couple of songs on other sites, but not the songs I was searching to find. Finally I gave up after posting three videos, one from YouTube, an old song, and the other two from other sites. I am frustrated. If you know a YouTube like site, please share. I’d appreciate it.

The closed house still holds the chill from yesterday when the AC blasted most of the afternoon and evening. Another hot day is predicted for today. Even now it is already 86˚, but worst than the high temperature is the humidity at 72%. I will be staying close to hearth and home today and will be wearing the least amount of clothes decency will allow.

Oh, to be young again when weather hardly mattered. I could play softball at the park even under the heat of the afternoon sun. Hydrate was an unknown word and never encouraged, but I would stop to drink, if I needed water, at the bubbler close to the field in the park. Even my dog Duke drank from the bubbler. He’d stand upright on his back paws and slurp the water.

Yesterday, the new renters next door were on their deck. One woman laughed like a horse neighing. Every time she did Henry barked and ran to the front door. He couldn’t be convinced it wasn’t from a horse draw carriage rolling down the street. That was when I shut all the windows and turned on the AC.

When I was a kid, I remember lying in bed with my head on my pillow and feeling water drain from my ear. It was warm water. It was ocean water from swimming at the beach. I used to love swimming underwater. I always kept my eyes opened hoping to find a treasure. I never did. I never saw much except a few shells and peoples’ legs and feet.

I found a tick on Nala. It was still moving around. I checked the rest of her and didn’t find any more. I checked Henry and found none. Both have short fur making hunting easier. Yesterday’s tick makes it 3 to 1: three for me and one for the dogs.

I don’t remember my mother ever making pancakes. That was fine with me as I didn’t like them. They had a weird consistency. I liked eggs for a more formal breakfast than cereal. My mother took requests. Scrambled with cheese or fried eggs over easy were my favorites. There was a technique I always employed when eating the fried eggs. I’d eat the white around the yolks first then I’d break the yolk. One piece of toast was used to mop up each egg’s yoke. If I did it right, the dish was clean. The dog was always disappointed.

The morning is lovely, and the breeze is a strong one coming from the north. I suspect it is a gift from Mother Nature to compensate for the heat wave starting tomorrow. Humidity is already seeping into the air. I’m indelicately sweating, and all I am doing is sitting on the couch typing.

Nala woke me up this morning. I could hear her crying. I got up to check and found her trying to get through the cat room barrier, the gate. She was crying as if she something had happened to her. I looked and Gwen, the cat, was the cause. She was sitting just out of reach of Nala’s head. It made chuckle. Cats are sly and intelligent, a fun combination. After the crying, Nala and Henry chased each other on and off my bed. They drove me crazy. It was all because I didn’t bar the bedroom door last night to keep Nala inside the room. I hoped she’d last through the night. She didn’t. Nala peed on my dining room floor again. She lasts all night in my bedroom but uses my dining room if she is free. Right now both dogs are sleeping. Nala is beside me on the couch. I really want to keep waking her up, but that makes little sense.

I watched a Hallmark Christmas movie this morning. Every house is decorated outside, and each inside is a Christmas wonderland, even in the houses of people who don’t want to celebrate Christmas. Every movie has a happy ending. That is a lot of sweetness to swallow, but after the year we’ve all had, nothing beats the sweetness of a Christmas movie.

When I was a kid, summer Sundays were different than Sundays during the rest of the year. In the winter, we stayed around the house to be there for Sunday dinner, and in the afternoons we often went to East Boston to visit my grandparents. We always had to go to mass regardless of the weather or the season. In winter, it was whatever mass at no particular time. In summer it was early mass so we could have the rest of the day to go to the beach. Other people had the same plans so the church was overflowing, even to people standing in the foyer. I remember sitting on the top step, and people were standing right behind me. I always thought the stairs were the best seats in the house, in the church but out of the church. I could talk and not even in whispers. I always left early.

The morning is damp, cloudy and a bit chilly. It will be warm today, around 76˚, and we are almost there at 75˚, but the air still holds the dampness. A breeze blows leaves and high branches and is helping to keep the day a bit cool. I have no plans for outside today. I have a list, an inside list. The laundry needs to come up from the dryer as it has been there long enough for everything to wrinkle. The kitchen floor is covered in muddy dog prints all the way from the door down the hall. I’ll do a quick mopping. When I walk into the cats’ room, it sounds as if I’m walking on the beach with all the sand the cats kick out of the litter boxes. Vacuuming is on the list. I’m also thinking a nap might be a great idea.

My eye is still mending. One side is painful, but it mostly hurts only if I look to the right. Okay, time for a fun question: why would I look to the right if it hurts?

One afternoon in Ghana, there was knock on my front door. The door was open to the screen, and when I looked, I saw a man I didn’t know. I went to the door and asked him what he wanted. He said an American woman, me. I told him no. He then asked me if I knew any Canadian women. Again, I said no. He said thank you and left. Ghanaians are quite polite.

My two years in Ghana were when Peace Corps was still young. The first volunteers went to Ghana in August of 1961, a few short months after Peace Corps was founded. When I got there in 1969, the Peace Corps was still evolving. We were told not to call them. They would call us. We could go wherever we wanted, even out off the country, without telling Peace Corps. I lived a long way from Accra, the capital of Ghana, so I went to north to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso for weekends, sort of short vacations, but the country I loved to visit the most was Togo. Lomé is its capital. The city was filled with the most amazing shops. It had boulangerie pâtisseries. The windows were filled with bread and pastries. I salivated when I saw them.  I always bought gooey, wonderful desserts. Other shops sold crème glacée, ice cream. In Togo, French is the national language. I knew all the words for food in French. As for the rest, I was limited to hello, thank you, numbers for bartering and asking for directions though I didn’t always understand the answers. I was big on left and right, gauche et droite.

I can still order an entire meal in French.

Just as I woke up, the rain started but fell for only about five minutes. It left the morning damp, dark and still. I haven’t turned on any lights. The dark house is comforting in a strange way. The dogs ran the yard. Nala ran the perimeter. Henry ran to the brush, squatted then ran back again. My kitchen floor is filled with wet, dirty paw prints.

Today will be warm, 76˚. The low will be in the 60’s. All the windows are open. I can feel the dampness.

Last night was a wonderful evening. The first part was spent with catching up and grazing at the charcuterie board. I thought the board was artistic. My friend thought it beautiful; of course, I didn’t think to take a picture. The board was groaning, filled as it was with meat and cheese, spreads, cinnamon bread, cashews, crackers and gherkins. I rolled all the meat and cheese and covered watermelon with prosciutto. I used my new little bowls, well new last winter, and their bright colors enhanced the food and the board.

Next came the Christmas carols and presents. I was delighted with my presents. I will look through them again today. That is part of the fun of presents. Nala was delighted with the paper. She thought it a toy. We decided on Thai food for dinner, and it was scrumptious. We ate all of it except the beef dish which Nala pulled off the counter and finished. I think she liked the veggies.

The wonderful part of last night was spending it with friends. The evening felt so normal just to sit there and laugh and joke with each other. Henry was on his best behavior. Jay could not believe how changed he is from when they last saw him. He stayed in the room with us. Nala wasn’t on her best behavior. She was a puppy. She tried to sit on laps, grab the food on the table and beg a bit. She enjoyed the company.

Last night, I didn’t sleep well. The pain in my eye woke me up several times. I think all the shopping and preparing were at fault. This morning, though, my eye was easy to open, not as gunky (sorry for the graphic description). I think it is on the mend. Today I’ll help it along by doing nothing. I excel at doing nothing.

I am writing this on Wednesday night because the electric company will be working on my street tomorrow and will turn off the electricity somewhere between nine and one, my blog time. I could wake up really early and write it, but I enjoy sleeping and hate the intrusion of an alarm. Even the dogs jump when one goes off.

I do have a new story. Last night, that would be Tuesday, I was out with the dogs. Nala was being Nala and trying to get under the wire fence protecting the strawberries, or rather where the empty strawberry plants are, so I went to Nala and the fence in the dark and bent down to close it. I couldn’t see so I missed the upended tomato cage on the fence post when I bent down. One spike hit my eye. It hurt enough that I sat on the ground and put my hand over my eye and moaned for a while, a longish while. After the pain had subsided a bit, I got up and went inside. This morning my eye was really painful. There was blood on the eyelid and below the eye. I went to my uke lesson anyway but left half-way through. I called my ophthalmologist and was told to come on over. By then my eye was bloodshot and a black and blue had appeared in the corner by my eye. Come to find out I had lacerations on the left side and a puncture on the right. I was given an antibiotic, told to use cold compresses, and that it would take a few days to heal. It is painful and ugly and more, but I’ll leave out the graphic details. I have decided that Nala can now dig to China, and I will not interfere.

Friends are coming to dinner on Thursday. I have chosen the menu, written the shopping list and finished my flow chart, but after the eye fiasco, I decided I would just do the appetizer, a charcuterie board, but have the rest of the dinner delivered. I won’t tell my friends until they arrive as they would insist on postponement. I can be a wonderful hostess. I just can’t roll my eye or look sharply left or right.

When I was a really little kid, I fractured my wrist jumping off a fence backwards. I do remember the fence, a wire fence gate, and the cast, but I don’t remember the fall. Once I fell off a ladder when washing windows and broke a bone in my elbow. That was 25+ years ago. Since then, I have been lucky when I fall. Knock on wood!!

Last night got cooler around midnight, down to 71˚, but the humidity hung around. For late afternoon today a thunderstorm is predicted. We haven’t had rain for a while so the storm is welcome. I love the rumble of thunder and the flashes of lightning. I remember when I was a kid I used to watch out the window hoping to see jagged lightning across the sky. I’d count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, five seconds a mile. Storms never scared me. The more tremendous the storm the better I liked it. That hasn’t changed. I still wow at thunder and lightning.

When I was a kid, my family played games together. The games we played the most when I was little are Go to the Head of the Class and Candy Land. I still have our old Go to the Head of the Class game. The booklet is yellow, but the pieces are intact. My brother always wanted to be Cowboy Joe. I was Bonnie. The favorite of all which even followed me into adulthood is Sorry. I introduced it to my friends. They love and hate the game. Nothing is worse than being close to winning and have your opponent get a Sorry card and happily knocked you back to start. Cursing is an appropriate response.

My friends are coming to dinner on Thursday. It has been so long since I last saw them I told them to wear flowers in their hair. I will plan the menu today and shop tomorrow. For myself, I don’t cook so much. I eat fruit or crackers and cheese, a sandwich or hot dogs, my most elaborate meals of late. If I am feeling especially energetic, I toast the rolls and add cheese.

When I was a kid, my favorite lunch meat was bologna. I’d cut it from the roll, add chopped hot peppers and slather it with mustard, the old stand by yellow mustard. The bread was always soft and squishy. Sometimes the pepper juice leaked through the middle of the sandwich. That just made it tastier.

The high today is 82˚, the current temperature. The low will be 58˚. I can hardly wait to feel cold.

The morning is so humid I sweat when I walk. It is not a pretty picture. The day is overcast, and it is still a bit foggy. Currently it is only 74˚but as we say around here it isn’t the heat but the humidity. I have to go out later. The dump is calling.

Yesterday I finished my laundry hauling three loads up two floors. I cleaned the cats’ room, my daily chore. I cleaned up the glass of tea I hit which spread all over the table and the newspapers. I also cleaned in and around the animal treats when I knocked one of the containers off the shelf. I picked up what broke and the treats on the floor. Going down one step at a time, I brought the storm door to the cellar. It was so heavy I had to keep stopping, but at least the screen is in the front door giving the house some fresh air. The backdoor screen needs to be repaired. I whacked my hand on the door knocker, and it hurt. I sat on the stairs, covered my eyes and moaned. Nala came over and gave me a hug. That was the best part of the day.

When I was a kid, I don’t think I ever really noticed the heat or the humidity. Nothing stopped me from enjoying summer days. Sweat was just one of those things. I didn’t ever give it much thought. I’d even used my blouse to dry my hair. I got grimy. Yesterday, I relived my childhood and got grimy. It wasn’t anywhere near as pleasant.

Africa was hot. The first blast of heat hit me when I exited the plane upon my arrival. I lived in the hottest part of the country. 100˚ was a dry season average, but I was still young enough to abide the heat without a fan. I even took a nap sometimes in the afternoon when many things, including the post office, closed for a couple of hours during the hottest part of the day. My students had a rest period in the dorms which all had to abide. During the hottest nights, I slept outside on the concrete in my yard on the mattress from my bed. A cold shower was a welcome end to every day.

When I first moved into my house, I often slept downstairs during the summer. A southern breeze came through the back door. I slept well. Now, I’m far older, and the heat and I do not abide each other. I started with a bedroom window air conditioner and a while back I air conditioned my whole house. I hate getting sweaty and grimy, but here I am getting ready to load my car for the dump. The heat has made me crazed.