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Happy Spring!

I set my alarm to get up to greet the sun but nobody told the sun. It was gray and cloudy. I sighed and turned over and fell back to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later, it was sunny. Right now it is 44˚. The high will be 48˚. and without the wind, it feels warmer. I’m staying in today as I have no place I need to go. The dump is scheduled for tomorrow.

When I was a kid, I loved spring. I loved shedding the layers of clothes for my light jacket, my spring jacket. It didn’t matter if the morning was cold, I was determined to wear that jacket once the seasons changed. My mother did convince me to add a sweater one morning when there was a late frost.

When I was seven, I became a Brownie. My mother brought me to Jordan Marsh where there was a section selling Girl and Boy Scout equipment and clothing. We bought my Brownie uniform, the brown round beanie and a brown belt with a small coin purse attached. On the purse and the beanie was the Brownie logo, a sort of joyful, dancing sprite. My mother sewed my troop number on the sleeve near the shoulder. My troop used to meet in the cellar of the school which had a bench around three walls, high small windows and the girls’ bathroom. On troop days we could wear our Brownie uniforms instead of our school uniforms. I was always so proud. I remember we marched in the Memorial Day parade, a really home town parade filled with a few floats, Girl and Boy Scouts, little league teams on the back of trucks and the high school band and cheerleaders. A family story is still being told to my chagrin. It seems when I got home from my first parade I told the family that everyone was out of step but me.

I remember Fly-Up Day. It was a ceremony when we Brownies became junior Girl Scouts. Even parents came. We received actual badge wings to put on our Girl Scout sashes right at the top. The gold wings had a green background and were symbolic of our flying to the next Girl Scout level. Our uniforms were green. Our hats were green with a white trefoil on the front inside of which was a GS in white lettering. We wore a sash to hold our badges. I remember the thick Girl Scout Handbook. It had all the requirements for each badge. I remember the rows of the badges I earned. I remember becoming a senior scout. I was so proud.

I have a hat collection. I have my Brownie hat and my worse for wear Girl Scout hat. They carry so many memories.

Today is brightly sunny, window beautiful. It is so windy even the heaviest pine tops and the thick oak are swaying. It is cold, in the low 30’s, and won’t get much warmer. I have no need to go out. My house is warm and cozy, also pretty dusty so I’m going to spot clean today, very few spots. I do see a dump run in my near future. The animals are having their morning naps, not to be confused with their afternoon naps or their evening naps.

After the dust has settled, so to speak, I’ll probably just read the day away, a half sloth day.

When I was a kid, I had my own bookcase in my bedroom. It was filled with mostly Whitman books, 49 cent cardboard hard covers I used to buy uptown at The Children’s Corner. A few Bobbsey Twins and several Nancy Drew’s were also on the shelves. I had some Harty Boys and some classics like Little Women and Zorro. The Whitman books were mostly in a series. I had all the Trixie Belden. She was a girl detective who lived in Sleepyside-on-Hudson. I loved that name. Her best friend was Honey, that much I remember. They solved mysteries. I also had Donna Parker books. She solved dilemmas and a couple of mysteries. I had more but those two I remember the most.

In my bedroom now is a short bookcase with two deep shelves. In the bookcase are most of the Whitman books from my childhoods bedroom. My mother and father brought the books down when I first moved into my house thinking something old would be welcomed. They were right. I filled the new bookcase I bought with most of my childhood books. The top became a side table.

I’m careful when I open those books, Most of their pages are yellowed and brittle and sometimes drop corner pieces, always corner pieces, on the floor. I was probably around nine when I read most of those books, except Little Women. I was ten when I read that book. It had been a Christmas present, and I didn’t put it down until I had read every page. It is also upstairs.

Today is cloudy. Rain is predicted. It is in the high 40’s, a typical March day on Cape Cod. I have a couple of errands to do and neither one is the dump. I’m saving that for another day. Oh, joyous! My piled beside the cellar door laundry is now a memory. I did three loads yesterday. The last load, a few sets of sheets, are still in the dryer. I suspect they are quite wrinkled but I don ‘t care. They can sit for a while.

I have been bored of late. I find myself cleaning the fridge, clearing cabinets, dusting and moving stuff around for a different look. I wish I could woodwork as I would make a small shelf to fit under the butcher block so I can use it for kitchen storage, for mostly marina sauce storage. I noticed three jars of it when I was rearranging, and I think there is another in the back. I have been thinking of clearing a bookcase shelf in the kitchen so I can fill it with some of my appliances like the panini press, but that too is for another day.

When I was a kid, I liked days like today, overcast with light gray clouds and no wind. The sounds in the classroom seemed subdued, as if the cloud cover was a shroud of sorts, maybe a cone of silence. The loudest sounds were papers rattling, desks opening and rosary beads clicking. We went from subject to subject with no break until lunch and recess. After lunch the afternoon always seemed to go so slowly. The clock was in the front of the room over the blackboard. I used to watch the hands move and click from minute to minute. I’d almost hold my breath waiting for those last couple of minutes, the go to the cloak room for your coats minutes. I can remember running out of school when the nuns finally let us go.

There is something about the rain. When I was a kid, I’d watch the rain hit the glass in the window. I’d follow one drop from when it hit to when it disappeared below the panes and the sill. Lightning and thunder added excitement to the rain. I’d watch hoping too see a bolt of lightning jagged against the sky. Many times the light caught my attention but afterwards, too late to watch.

Ghana had the best rainstorms. After the dry season, the rains came and flooded the roads and fields, both hard packed from no rain for months. The lightning was dramatic against the almost black sky. I know I have mentioned it before, when I saw the lighting bolt hid the ground in front of my house, but I had never been so close to lightning, and it still amazes me. Before that, lightning had always been high in the sky and a distance away. When I close my eyes, I can still see that bolt of lightning strike my front yard. Maybe I clapped and maybe I just kept repeating, “Wow! Wow!”

Today may be chilly, cloudy and grey but the sun always shines on St.Patrick’s Day, even proverbially.

I am wearing my shamrock earrings and my deep green Ryan sweatshirt. We played Irish music on our ukes this morning. I sang along. I was loud and festive and off key. Neither Henry nor Jack cared.

My relationship with St. Patrick started when I was a kid in the first grade. I attended St. Patrick’s Elementary School and would for eight years. We always had St. Patrick’s Day off from school. Boston’s official commemoration for today is not St. Patrick’s Day but rather Evacuation Day which celebrates the evacuation of the British from Boston during the Revolution but don’t be fooled. It is St. Patrick’s Day. Ask anyone.

For years I marched with a drill team called St. Patrick’s Shamrocks. We even had a woven shamrock in the centers of our uniform tops. We wore green and white. I remember marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston. It was usually cold. Sometimes a few of the parade watchers offered to march with us. Usually a bit of drink prompted the offer. We’d politely refuse and keep on marching.

My mother made corn beef and cabbage for today. Her giant pot was filled with meat and vegetables including turnips. I always think of turnips as an Irish vegetable. The Irish used to carve turnips with scary faces to ward away jack-o’-lantern who nightly wandered the earth because he was not allowed into Heaven or Hell. It always seemed a bit odd to me as turnips are so darn difficult to peel. I have scars from peeling attempts.

I am celebrating today with Irish music and corned beef and cabbage with all the fixings including Irish soda bread. I have a green shamrock plant sitting here on the table with my St. Patrick’s Day cards. Henry is sporting his green collar. I’ll share a bit of dinner with Henry and Jack, but only a bit.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

The snow arrived for maybe 4 or 5 minutes yesterday afternoon. After that it got really cold then it got even colder overnight. While I was reading in bed, I heard the wind. It was tremendous, a howling wind. This morning is only 20˚ with a still heavy wind. The expected high is 24˚. Where did I put my sunscreen?

The weekend was quiet. I did nothing except change the cat litter. I rested after the exertion.

My dance card has turned yellow and its corners have curled. The ink is faded. I can’t even read the last entry. My table is empty of stickies. I have no lists. I could do my laundry, but I am not yet that desperate. The filled pillow case still sits in the hall leaning against the cellar door.

My freezer is almost full. Every now and then I pull out some chicken or ground beef always with the best intentions. Half the time, though, I just don’t feel like cooking. The ground beef ends up fried then in marinara then back to the freezer. The chicken bakes. Usually I make a chicken salad or just leave the chicken intact for grazing. I open the fridge and pull off a few pieces and share with Jack and Henry.

Yesterday I had cheese for lunch and dinner, a different cheese and a different cracker for each meal. For lunch I finished off the white Stilton with mango and ginger on Club Crackers. Dinner was Vermont cheddar on Saltines. Henry and I shared a banana as a snack. I still have plenty of cheese. I’m thinking my Monterey Jack might serve as lunch, maybe even a grilled cheese with tomato. I hope that’s not too ambitious.

During the two+ years I lived in Ghana, I had no fresh milk and no cheese. At first I really missed cheese, but after a while, I forgot to miss it. For a snack, I’d have a peanut butter and jam sandwich. The peanut butter was groundnut paste sold in the market as a soup base. The paste was so thick I had to add peanut oil to make it spreadable and to keep my bread intact. The jam came from England.

My back still hurts and still makes me howl. I sit on the couch with pillows strategically placed behind me. My laptop is truly a lap top. I won’t be doing much moving around today.

The morning is warm and sunny at 46˚, but I’m not taken in by by the blue sky and the bright, squid your eyes sun. I checked the weather report which says rain and snow and a low of 19˚. I will not be going anywhere today. I won’t even get dressed. I will brush my teeth, wash my face and hands quite a few times and sit on the couch and read or mindlessly watch TV. I’ll probably end up getting restless and dust my way through the dining room and living room with my favorite dust cloth, my handy sweatshirt sleeve.

When I was in Ghana, I needed items not sold in the market where I got my fruits, veggies, eggs, meat, both chicken and beef though the chickens were live, and whatever surprises I sometimes found when I wandered. Everybody knew me because I was the only white woman in town my first year in Bolga. The market sellers always wished me a good morning and addressed me as madam, the title for female teachers. In small kiosks a bit back from the street I shopped for packaged goods. I bought canned margarine mostly but canned butter for special occasions like Christmas. I have no idea the shelf life of those cans. I never thought to look, but the sellers usually gave us the good stuff not because we were white but because we’d shop there again. Coffee came in cans but it was instant. Milk came in cans but only evaporated milk even though there were cows. The bread was amazing. It was sugar bread and was always sold uncut. It made the tastiest toast.

In Ghana there are chop bars and spots. Chop bars are mostly hole in the wall eating stops. In Bolga, chop bars ringed the lorry park. We had a favorite, and on Sundays we often bought take out dinner. That meant we brought a pot with a cover, filled it with Sunday dinner and strapped it to the back of our bikes hoping it wouldn’t spill. I remember fufu with light soup and goat though once in awhile it was chicken. Spots are bars. During training in Koforidua starting week 7, we used to meet at a spot on a corner of the main road. We’d pool our scant daily allowances and buy beer. We met after dinner and sat together a long time. I remember laughing a lot and complaining a lot. They sort of went hand and hand during training.

Bill and Peg and I love Ghanaian food. Kelewele, a plantain dish, and jollof rice are easy to make here. Both are favorites of ours. I could eat jollof rice with a giant spoon as my only dish at dinner. It is the same with plantains cooked any way. They are that tasty.

The morning is warmish at 41˚. Hardly any wind is a good thing. The blue sky and sunshine make the day pretty. When I look out the den window, I can see the bare branches of the oak tree against the blue, and I can watch the tops of the pines in the back of the yard swaying every now and then. I’m just hanging around the house today. I have a few projects in mind. Yesterday I cleaned, added books and organized my little library. I was pleased to see people had added books.

When I was a kid, I was gone most of the day on Saturdays. My mother would ask where I was going, and I’d tell her around town. She was content with that answer. Because my movie theater did not have matinees when the weather got warm, I’d bike or walk all over town. I had favorite stops, most gone now. One was the junk man’s house. It was on a small street around the corner from the town’s horse barn, also gone. The junk man had a porch on his house which sagged from the weight of all the papers. There was another building next to his house also filled with rags and papers inside and out. For some strange reason, I remember both buildings were gray. The junkman used to ride around town in his wagon shouting for papers and rags. The horse barn was usually open, and I could see the horses in their stalls. Sometimes I got to pat one. Another stop was the golf course where I hunted for wayward golf balls in the bushes and across the street from the course. I also got some balls out of the water hazards when I didn’t mind getting a bit wet.

I was usually by myself in my wanderings. One in a while my brother joined me, but his favorite spots were different than my favorite spots, but we did agree about the zoo and Weiss Dairy Farm being the best Saturday roaming spots, but that was too many years. Now, the farm is no longer a dairy. It sells mostly mulch and fertilizer. You can see the big mounds from the road. The zoo, though, is still here. It is even bigger and better. It is now the most interesting place in town.

What a perfectly lovely day! It is warm by Cape standards for this time of year, 60˚. I’m going outside to take books to my Little Library and fill the backyard bird feeders. It is a good day for a bit of fresh air.

I’m still wearing my winter cozies. I’m even wearing socks. When the sun goes down, it gets cold. Tonight will get down to the 30’s. That’s more like it for this time of year.

Cat update: nothing much has changed. Jack is downstairs except he often naps with Gwen in the former guest room, now the cat room. I put a new covering on Gwen’s bed to replace the furry, cracked vinyl tablecloth. The poor girl has lost a lot of hair on one side. I keep finding matted fur on the floor. I try to clean her fur a bit every night, and it does feel better when I pat her. Gwen still hisses at Henry. He doesn’t care. Henry is howling right now at the front door. I’d go check why, but usually I see nothing. As for Henry, other than the barking, he is doing well. He wags his tail end when I talk to him, and he is always glad to see me when I get home from errands. He loves to be scratched and patted.

When I was a kid, days like today made me feel almost joyful. I could unzip my jacket. At school, I could leave the hat and mittens in the cloak room, and best of all, I could go outside in the warmth and run around at recess with sheer abandonment, the sides of my unzipped coat billowing as I ran. I remember the school yard, also a parking lot on Sundays, had sand on it making it a bit slippery so skidding was common, sometimes by choice. The sand came from town trucks spewing it from the sides to try to keep the snow from hardening on the roads and parking lots.

After school, in the late afternoon, on a day like today, it was warm enough for me to go out and play or ride my bike. The day was lasting longer and longer so the streetlights came on later and later. I’d go inside in time to watch The Mickey Mouse Club before dinner. I always sang along, M-I-C-K-E-Y MOUSE. Even now those songs reverberate in my memory drawers, permanently etched. “And now it’s time to say good-bye.”

Today is warm despite the ocean. It is 59˚ but there is an every now and then cold wind. The sun is hidden but bright behind the clouds. I managed to do all my errands. I even made it to the dump. My trunk and back seat were filled with trash bags, cardboard, papers and magazines. It was cold there. The wind tore across the flat, open areas.

At night, parts of the cape are quite dark. Streetlights are sometimes far between. One of my favorite roads has almost no lights at all. It passes cranberry bogs on both sides of the road. In one of those bogs, every Christmas, a lit tree stands in the middle of the bog strung with ropes. When I pass during the daylight from season to season, I get to watch the changes in the bog. In the late fall, the bogs are flooded to protect them from the cold winds of winter. As it gets warmer, berries first appear. In a short while the bogs become red with fruit. They are harvested in the fall when the bogs are flooded again. A machine with a driver beats the bog with a paddle to stir the berries so they float to the top. Workers wearing waders move the berries toward a chute so they can be harvested. I always stop to watch a harvest.

When I was in Ghana, Peace Corps vehicles were Land Rovers, the sort which trekked across the Sahara and were chronicled in National Geographic. They always seemed exotic to me, the perfect vehicle for Africa. I remember riding up the coast from Half Assini to Accra after our mid-term conference. The ride felt almost dream-like. There I was in Africa in a Land Rover riding along the ocean road passing palm trees and family compounds, kiosks selling all sorts of goods and people selling food. I remember giant snails sold from baskets, fruits especially oranges and pineapples being hawked by women and meat on a stick cooking over a charcoal fire, its species unknown. If I ever hit the jackpot, I’ll buy myself an old Land Rover and refurbish it. I’ll feel like an adventurer even on Cape roads.

Today is warmish. The sky is almost covered in light gray clouds, but some blue is holding steady. It will get as high as 47˚ but dip down again tonight to the 30’s. We have no wind, a good thing. I could go out, but I may not. My back is still a bother.

When I was a kid, I had two pairs of regular shoes. I had my school-church shoes and my play shoes. In the summer I wore sneakers, white sneakers. For a couple of winters I played CYO basketball, and my coach had us wear black high-tops. Back then girls did not wear Converse high-tops. What had to because my coach said they would protect our ankles. The only thing I hated was how many laces I had to tie. I actually still have a couple of pairs of high-tops: one is pink, the other purple. I wear them every now and then to match whatever clothes I’m wearing. No one looks twice at my feet when I wear them.

I was at the door talking to my guy who delivered groceries from Rory’s his morning. All of a sudden I noticed flowers blooming under a bush in the front garden. Two snowdrops have flowered. Winter must be slowing as snowdrops flower in late winter.

Henry did not try to attack Ryan, my delivery guy. Henry barely even barked. I don’t know if it is a one time thing, but his fierceness at the door is a behavior I have been working on for a while. He usually bares his teeth when UPS and the mailman deliver, but this morning he only stuck his nose out the door.

Duke, the boxer I grew up with, was protective of all of us. If he barked at the door, someone was close. I remember Duke almost went through the storm door when a guy was walking near my house during a snowstorm. We had to grab Duke, and it took two of us to hold him until he quieted down. Henry barks at people walking by, cars moving on the road in front of the house, kids playing basketball on the street three houses down and the man across the street when he opens his garage door. I used to check when Henry barked constantly at the front door, but most times I found no cause for the barking so I started calling Henry the dog that cried wolf. Mostly I now ignore him, but sometimes I am surprised to find a box or two on my front steps.