Keep the Coffee Comimg

Yesterday and last night it poured. Even now it is still raining. The temperature is 41˚, winter warm. I have no reason to leave the house so I’ll hang around, do a bit of dusting, water plants and eat the leftovers.

Henry goes out in the rain. He is not enthusiastic, but he does go with little prompting. My boxers hated the rain. They’d get to the door, poke their heads out then back into the kitchen. They would go out only when they couldn’t wait. Once during a snow storm, Gracie waited 16 hours to go out.

Even when I was a kid, I loved the rain. In the summer, I’d run around outside on a rainy day to get soaked. I always kept playing. Rain never interrupted summer fun.

In Ghana, during the rainy season, it rains every day. The days are cooler than during the dry season though cool only in comparison. I love the rainy season. When I’ve gone back to Ghana, it has been during the rainy season when the dust has disappeared, and the millet is green and tall. The rain never stopped me from going to town, especially on market day, every third day. I’d buy my tomatoes and eggs and hope for a surprise like when I found the watermelon. Sometimes, when the rain was heavy, I’d find shelter. One time I stood outside under the awning of a small shop. The owner saw me, invited me into her shop and brought me a chair. That is so Ghanaian. Other times the rain was soft and easily ignored. I just went about my errands knowing the sun would be back to dry my clothes.

My memory drawers sometimes send me a single image prompted by something I’ve seen or written. Talking about the rain flashed an image of me sitting on school steps under an overhang during a soft rain. I remember it was in Winneba where we stayed for the first two weeks of training. I was alone sitting on the steps. The rain had chased the other trainees to dry places. I sat, watched the rain and marveled. I think my mouth was opened in awe. I remember thinking I’m in Africa during my first rainstorm. I am actually in Africa.

When I woke up, the first thing I did was to look out the window to see how much snow we had gotten. None. The snow started around ten. It was a nor’easter blowing sideways and falling steadily, but it was a wet snow which has since turned into rain. I just hope it doesn’t freeze.

The wind will get tremendous with gusts up to 60 MPH. Right now it is calm. Only a few hanging brown leaves are fluttering.

I was going to take a Coffee break today. Staying inside makes for poor conversation. Jack and Henry have slept the morning away. I envy them. I wander from the den to the kitchen to the living room and sleeve dust as I go. Nothing holds my interest. Today I’m thinking I’ll clean out the fridge. Obviously I’ve gone over the edge. I’ve gone stir crazy.

Yesterday I made Sunday dinner for myself. I seasoned and baked the spatchcock chicken and added sweet potatoes to the oven with the chicken. I steamed pea pods. Dinner was delicious. It will be delicious again tonight and maybe even tomorrow night. What’s left will become chicken salad. Dinner becomes lunch.

When I was a kid and always after that, math was difficult for me. Arithmetic was easy just a bit of add, subtract, multiply and divide. I used to hide my fingers under my desk so I could use them. Once I started algebra I had nightmares of murderous polynomials chasing me. X was a scary unknown. Now, I’m back to arithmetic. I mostly add and subtract and don’t need my fingers any more. I haven’t ever used algebra.

Yesterday is today. Trust me here. I am not being metaphysical. I’m just talking about the weather. It is cold and cloudy, and I saw a couple of snow flurries earlier, loners I hope.

Winter is entrenched. Any 40˚ day feels tropical. Where did I put the sun screen just in case?

The last time I did any errands was over a week ago. Everything I need gets pretty much delivered now. Henry loves it. He barks and scares people. I don’t love it so much.

According to my electric company, I use more wattage than my neighbors. At first I cared, but after careful consideration, I stopped caring. Besides the den, the only other lights on at night are one in the living room and one over the sink in the kitchen. Here in the den it is a lamp, the TV and my computer. That doesn’t seem excessive. I figure I over-watt, to coin a word, because I am up until the wee hours burning electricity while the houses around me are dark and filled with sleeping people.

When I was in Ghana, Sunday meant a service at the school with hymns and a sermon. It was held in the dining hall from which the tables had been removed. When I first met the principal, she wanted to know if I had brought my bible with me. I told her I hadn’t, but I had parts of it memorized. One Sunday I was the sermon giver instead of the white father, the imam or the pastor of a local church. I still wonder why I said yes. Well, I planned my sermon and went with the unexpected. I spoke of fables. I spoke of the ant, a fire ant in this case to keep it local, and the grasshopper, my father’s favorite tale, and the tortoise and the hare. I wove amazing links between the fables and God. Heads turned. Mouths opened in awe. I swear I heard the choir of heavenly angels. The principal was so taken with my sermon she never asked me again. My guess was she thought I couldn’t top my last sermon. Little did she know there was always Henny Penny. I was ready just in case.

The snow flurries are pillowy, sort of drifting instead of falling. The morning is cold, but it is a bit warmer than last night. Right now it is 19˚ but it feels like 7˚according to my Google. The sky is lighter than it was earlier this morning, but the flurries are still here. They are blowing north to south. I’m glad I have no need to leave the house. I’ll just experience today vicariously by looking out the den window.

Every time I walk around the house I either straighten something, sweatshirt dust a table or move stuff. I’m beginning to think I need to close my eyes and feel my way to the kitchen.

I think I’m content. My fridge is full. Books are piled on the table. The trash is gone. I don’t have enough laundry yet to pile. The house is cozy and warm. Henry and Jack are upstairs sleeping. Gwen always stays upstairs, but I think she might be sleeping too. I’m watching reruns of Grimm. The sun poked out for maybe a minute, maybe two. That’s hopeful.

When I was a kid, the floor of my closet was a jumbled pile. On the top were the shoes I last wore. I have no idea what was on the bottom. I never needed to go that far down. The pile always grew from the top.

I have bowls exactly like the ones my mother always used when I was a kid, four nested Fire King bowls with tulips on them. My mother and I were at an antique market together when we saw a lady put the familiar tulip bowls on her shop shelf. I picked them up right away, and I bought them. I have a round wooden nut bowl which has a nutcracker, an old silver metal cracker, in a hole in the top of the bowl. My mother used to fill one like it with nuts for us at Thanksgiving as a snack while we watched the parade. I use my bowl on the table at Thanksgiving as a decoration, as a memory.

I really liked finding those bowls, those pieces of my childhood, even if it was in an antique store.

The morning is freezing cold. It is 14˚ and with the wind feels like -3˚. The snow showers started around nine and will continue all day. Outside looks so very ugly and uninviting. Today is a cocoa day.

Skip, my factotum, is coming for the trash. A couple of the litter bags are so heavy I was dreading lifting them and carrying them to the car. Empty boxes have taken over my dining room. Two more boxes, with on-sale wrapping paper inside, just arrived from FedEx. I emptied them and added them to the pile, to Skip’s pile. (Skip has come and is now gone. He made so many trips to the car I stopped counting. I have no trash bags, no newspapers and magazines and no boxes. Halleluia!)

When I was a kid, snow days were the best because they came unexpectedly. I can remember waking up and seeing the world had disappeared under the thick snow. I can also remember listening for the fire horn. It was blown to announce no school days. We’d cheer then we’d hurry to get dressed to go outside to play in the snow. That was an all day affair.

When I go out to eat, I often order cheeseburgers with Swiss or Monterey Jack cheese. I like thin onion rings. I put mustard and piccalilli on my hot dogs and onions if they’re available. I like apples cold but I’m okay with room temperature oranges. Bananas never go into the fridge. I don’t like spaghetti but I love pasta. My favorite ice cream varies. It was mint chocolate chip for a while. Right now I have coffee chip in the freezer. Only the chips are the constant. Raisin Bran Crisp is my favorite cereal of late though I would never turn down plain old Corn Flakes with sliced bananas. I like all kinds of potatoes, but mashed potatoes are my favorites with gravy or butter or both. I don’t quibble.

As for desserts, I am so not picky except I don’t do cake and ice cream together. I like chocolate pudding, but I seldom have it. I like cookies, but I don’t think of them as desserts. Cookies are a snack. My favorite dessert is usually whatever I have on hand. Today that would be the ice cream or the package of chocolate chip cookies which came with my groceries yesterday. I swear it’s calling my name.

The day looks dismal from the window. The sky is grey, and the rain has started again. It rained most of yesterday. The 2 inches of snow from the other night disappeared under the onslaught of the constant rain. The temperature is 37˚, one degree from the expected high, but, without a wind, the air feels warm. The low will be 19˚ around three or so in the morning according to Hey Google.

My bedroom is cluttered. I have been ordering stuff on sale to put away for next Christmas, and the stuff is piled waiting to be put into bins I have yet to buy. Bins are on my list. I also need hooks and Molly bolts so a trip to the hardware store is in order. I always feel inept when I go to the hardware store. It is filled with nuts and bolts and all sorts of things foreign to my experiences.

Today I’m staying home. The rain is uninviting. I already have empty boxes and newspapers in the car for this week’s dump run, but I’ll wait until tomorrow and add the hardware store to my list.

Ennui is my mood of the day, maybe even my mood of the month. There we go: something new, a mood of the month. Very little holds my attention. I have watched parts of several movies. I’ve never watched the endings. I don’t get that far. Right now the movie is Night of the Blood Beast, a black and white scifi from 1958. A dead air force officer returns from space and comes back to life. Unbeknownst to anyone, even the officer, he brought an alien, a monster, back with him in the ship. Now for my favorite part: the officer’s body is the breeding ground for the mama monster’s babies.

When I was in college, my friends and I met on and off all day in the canteen when we didn’t have class. We always sat at the table next to the wall, for no reason except custom. In the mornings, we’d each get a copy of the newspaper and race to finish the crossword puzzle. We’d drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Sometimes we’d cut class. Once in a while an outlier would join us. We were always kind.

My mornings are quiet. I have my ritual. I read each paper and take my time. I have two cups of coffee. I share each cup with Henry. He gets about a teaspoon full in his own cup. Jack often disturbs my morning ritual by lying on my newspaper. That drives me crazy, but I don’t move Jack. I just put the paper on top of him. He sleeps.

When I was a little kid, my friends were all from the neighborhood. We were together every day walking to and from school. We played together, but we never rode bikes together. My friend didn’t have a bike because she didn’t want one. My pedaled explorations were by myself.

I remember the most glorious bike moments were when I was riding downhill propelled by the incline with the wind whistling around me. My bike sped all the way down the hill without my pedaling. I’d only hit the brakes before I reached the busy crossroads. I remember my back wheel sliding on the sand when I used my brakes. I used to do that on purpose, sand sliding. It made me feel like a trick rider.

My first grocery order arrived yesterday. It came in three bags. It was mostly dairy and produce with a few boxes of crackers, a small bag of potato chips, sea salt flavor, and tortilla chips. My second grocery order will be here tomorrow. It will have more produce, some beef and a few snacks, maybe more than a few. I’ve been missing snacks.

Every now and then I want salt. I don’t use salt on my food except on French fries and sometimes onion rings because salt tends to become the taste. The food disappears. My occasional need for salt gives me a chuckle and takes me back to the first TV episode of Star Trek and the character Nancy. I have never forgotten the shapeshifter’s name, the character who sucked all the salt out of the doomed crew member. Yesterday I was Nancy. I ate the bag of sea salt chips in one sitting. My lips tingled but I didn’t need salt anymore.

My dance card is mostly empty for the whole rest of the week except for an hour tomorrow morning, my weekly uke lesson. My singing voice is still so off-tune it makes me cringe, but I do know most of my uke chords, the only exceptions being ones we don’t play enough so they stay unfamiliar. I seldom need to look at my fingers anymore. I think I’m learning my uke!

When I was a kid, nobody I knew played a musical instrument. We all reached our musical heights in the first grade rhythm band. My grandparents had a piano in their living but nobody in the family, including them, played. To my grandparents a piano was a status symbol, always dusted, never played.

Today’s weather is the same as yesterday’s, sunny and cold. The sky is an icy blue. The wind is now a breeze. I can see the dead oak leaves at the ends of branches blowing, but only a little. I’m staying close to home today. My local grocery order will be delivered this afternoon. All’s well though the degree of wellness fluctuates from day to day.

My plants did get watered yesterday, and my bed did not get changed, just as I figured. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today I have started a new list of items I need at the hardware store. I think this is my first hardware store list. Maybe I should decorate the top of the list with flowers or stars (tongue in cheek here).

When I was a kid, our living room didn’t have a whole lot of knick-knacks. I didn’t notice. I think there were twin sort of shadow boxes on the wall behind the couch. They held ceramic figures. In my kitchen on a shelf is an elf or a leprechaun. I’m not sure though I do lean toward leprechaun. I bought it because my mother had his cousins of sorts on those living room shelves on Washington Ave.

I can hear Henry playing with his toys. When Lee was vacuuming on Thursday, he put the toys in the toy box. Henry will not pull his toys from the box. If I put the toys on the hall floor, he will play with them. This is yet another Henry quirk. Did I mention he won’t go out the dog door at night unless I turn on the outside light first?

When I was a kid, there was no leash law. I don’t think I ever remember seeing someone walk a dog. I remember Duke, our boxer, being let out the front door to go wherever he wanted to go. Duke had a son named Sam who belonged to my aunt who had given us Duke. Sam was a big boxer compared to Duke. Sam was silly and even grinned. I’m not kidding. Sam grinned. Duke used to go to Sam’s house to meet up with his son. They used to roam together. People talked about the two ferocious boxers roaming the streets. We laughed. Duke and Sam were people lovers. I don’t even think those people mentioned Sam grinned.

Today is cold but winter lovely. The sun is brilliant in a light blue sky. The wind is strong and the high branches, both oak and pine, sway. It is only 29˚, and the wind makes it feels even colder. I’m cozy and warm.

Every day I have a list. Some days I complete the items on the lists while other days I choose to be a sloth, to do nothing. Yesterday was a sloth day. Today my list says: water the plants and change the bed. I will prophesize. The plants will love the water.

I never see the neighbors who live across the street. Henry still barks when the man is in his yard. The other neighbors and I wave. The other day I saw a rental truck in the driveway of a house on the facing street. I’m still wondering why and have no one to ask.

When my father retired, they gave him a sumptuous send off complete with dinner and presents. A couple of the presents were a hand drill and saw. We, his family, gasped at visions of drilled or sawed off digits. My father and tools had one of those live or maim relationships. My mother asked one of the givers what had prompted the idea of tools. The man told my mother he knew my father liked to putter around the house. When my mother told us, we all laughed. By putter around the house, she meant he emptied ashtrays and did dishes. We had to figure out where to hide the tools.

When I was a kid, around this time on a Sunday, my mother would already be in the kitchen making dinner. The kitchen windows would be fogged from the heat of the oven. The aroma of the cooking roast would spread from the kitchen throughout the whole house. I can still remember my mother at the sink peeling potatoes. She always used the same pan to cook the potatoes. It had a dent. A couple of vegetables, including my favorite baby peas, would be in pots on cold burners ready to be turned on when the roast was finished and the potatoes were ready to be mashed. My mother used a masher with a wooden handle and a metal wavy masher on the bottom. Getting all the lumps out of the potatoes took strength of body and purpose. My mother excelled at serving smooth, lump-less mashed potatoes in which I always made a hole on the top for the gravy. This is and will forever be my favorite Sunday dinner.

The morning is cold. The wind is making it feel even colder. The high today will be 32˚. We’re just about there now. The sunlight appears through the clouds every now and then giving me a bit of hope for a nice day. I need to fill the bird feeders. I’d been waiting for a warmer day but warmth is not predicted. I’ll just wear mittens.

Staying inside is wearing thin. I am tired of my own company. Poor Henry is also tired of my company. I talk to him all the time. Mostly he pretends to listen but sometimes he ignores me and just gets off the couch.

When I was growing up, Saturday was my favorite day. I got to eat my cereal in front of the TV while I watched all those great kids’ shows. The whole day was mine to do what I wanted. I had so many choices. There was always my bike. I could get to five different towns from my little town. My favorite ride was around the lake in the next town over closest to me. I would sit for a bit of a rest at the bandstand. I remember how grand the houses facing the lake were. At the head of the lake was Bayrd’s Indian Trading Post which had a teepee in front and sold authentic artifacts and costumes. I loved wandering that store with its beautiful beaded headdresses and belts. That was usually my last stop of the day.

Another choice was the library. Saturday in the winter was my favorite library day. I’d wander the shelves, find a book, take a seat and start reading. The librarian never shooed me out. Usually I’d take four or five books, the limit, home with me.

There was always the Saturday matinee especially if it was a really cold, wintry Saturday. We sometimes got a ride uptown but we never got a ride home. I remember walking home from the theater around 4 in the afternoon. It wasn’t dark but it wasn’t light either. It was the part of the day without much identity. Late afternoon, maybe. Getting on to twilight, maybe even better. Street light time, the best description of all. I always hurried home.