Archive for the ‘Musings’ category

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“Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.”

January 23, 2018

The weather today is much like yesterday’s except we have a wind strong enough to whip the top branches of the scrub pines, and it has started to rain. I have to go out later so I hope the rain is short-lived.

When I was a kid, I seldom stepped over the line, but I did walk it. In school, during part of the eighth grade, I sat by the windows. The bookcases were under the windows and beside my desk. They were my hiding spots. I kept my transistor radio there and a few pieces of candy. My favorite candies were Mint Julep and Banana Splits both of which were a bit chewy so they lasted longer. When I ate one, I’d hide behind a book so Sister Hildegarde couldn’t see me chewing. I wore one ear piece from my radio in the ear facing the window, away from view, but one day all that subterfuge didn’t matter. My worst fears were realized. I was chewing a spearmint candy and listening to the radio when Sister Hildegarde called on me. I managed to spit the candy into my hand but didn’t have time to pull the ear piece without getting caught. I stood up, as we always did, when called upon. Sister Hildegarde noticed the ear piece. I figured I was doomed, but I wasn’t. Sister Hildegarde thought it was a hearing aid and wanted to know if she was speaking loud enough for me to hear. With a giant sigh of relief, I said she was. If it had been any other nun, I would had to wear that ear piece all year, but, luckily, it was Sister Hildegarde. She forgot.

In my senior year of high school, my desk in English class was right next to the backdoor of the classroom. That proved to be far too much of a temptation. I sneaked out that door more than a few times. I even convinced my friend to join me. It wasn’t that I had anywhere else else go. I just couldn’t resist the challenge. I still don’t understand why Mrs. Baker didn’t notice the sudden appearance of an empty desk and sometimes two empty desks.

Ironically, for a long time, I was a high school assistant principal in charge of discipline. It was at the same high school I had attended. Every time I did some corridor walking I walked by that back door, I always chuckled a bit.

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“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

January 22, 2018

When I woke up, I could hear the drops of rain. Still lying in bed, I looked out my window and saw a dark morning with a cloud covered sky. I looked at my clock. It was 10:55. I had gone to bed early for me but couldn’t get to sleep. I read a while until my hand was cold then snuggled under the blankets. I fell asleep but woke up a few times.  When I finally got up to face the day, I noticed my covers were askew and half the comforter was on the floor, evidence of my restlessness.

Maddie was strange yesterday, and it scared me. Her dish was filled as she hadn’t eaten the night before. She didn’t use the puppy pads but did use the floor in a variety of spots, totally not a Maddie move. She wasn’t having her usual morning nap but was following me. She didn’t eat her treats. In the kitchen, she started to squat on the floor. I stopped her. She then dragged her butt across the floor. I grabbed her and checked. Yup, she needed a little help in getting clean. I was thrilled which sounds like a strange reaction to having to clean a cat’s butt, but I was relieved she wasn’t sick. I couldn’t have dealt with that right now. She is my one and only. Maddie was fine this morning. Her food dish was clean, she’d eaten all the treats and used the puppy pads. She’s now asleep on the couch. All is well with my world.

The Patriots did it again. They were behind 20-10 at the half, but we weren’t worried.  Okay, maybe we were a little worried, but they are the Patriots, and we held on to that. They scored two touchdowns in the 4th quarter while the Jaguars scored only two field goals in all of the second half. The Pats won a trip to the Super Bowl with a score of 24 to  20.

I have nothing needing doing today. I have some stuff I could do but don’t have to do. I know that sounds a bit convoluted, but it just means I’m choosing to be lazy, a less than noble choice I know but one I love and continue to espouse.

When I was a kid, I was a busy kid. After school I played outside, and on Saturdays I roamed the town. I rode my bike all year including snowless days in winter. I never  tried to be busy. I just was. The only exception was when I had a good book or even two good books. I’d read all day long. Time passed, and I was unaware. I remember looking out the window once and being surprised it was dark. I still do that with books. I read all day and often into the night. It is never time wasted but rather time to be savored.

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“Sometimes it’s the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.”

January 21, 2018

This is not one of my better mornings. My grumpiness is wasted as I’m here by myself. I’m also tired as I was restless all night and didn’t sleep well. I’m coughing though I don’t think I have a cold, but just in case I’ve decided to stay home to watch the Pats instead of watching with friends. No Typhoid Mary here.

Today is relatively warm. The sun is shining but from behind clouds. Nothing is stirring. It’s a quiet day.

The laundry is upstairs and put away, but I have two more bags of laundry waiting to be washed. They’ll wait a while. I have plenty of underwear.

Getting older sometimes means getting a bit jaded. I think that would be the worst, to see the world as only dulled or tired. I look for the adventure in each day, for something new or something changed. When I get the mail, I stop at my car, rest my back and watch the world for a few minutes. I see the beauty. I realize how lucky I am.

When I was little, I made memories. The school corridor, wider than a river, went on for miles. Nuns were all six foot and muscular, even the old ones. The Five and Ten was magical. Everything you wanted or needed was on one of its shelves. The railroad tracks just kept going and going as far as any of us could imagine, even to China. The woods were filled with adventures. Blueberries grew everywhere. The turkey needed two people to lift it out of the oven. The Christmas tree touched the ceiling and filled the living room.

Life is gigantic when you’re little. It’s a surprise wrapped in paper and lots of ribbon. The sun is brighter, the snow deeper and the rain heavier. New still happens. Believing is easy. Santa is real and so are the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. I know the memories I share with you every day may have been tempered by time, but I swear most of them are true, except maybe the one about the nuns. A couple of them might have been five ten.

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“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”

January 20, 2018

The day is warmer than it has been. The little snow left is melting. It’s cloudy and breezy. I did go out yesterday and got my errands done so today is an around the house day. That laundry I keep talking about is still upstairs and needs to come downstairs to get washed.  I put that on the maybe list.

Last night I used the sleeve of my sweatshirt to dust the bottom shelf of the desk. It had so much dust I could have written a whole novel, okay maybe a short story, in the dust the same way Clean Me is often written on cars’ back windows. I then moved to dust around the TV. I even did the remotes. I stopped there before the dusting could take hold of me.

I get absorbed into tasks which then lead to other tasks which then go on and on with me in a bit of a frenzy. The dusting in here would have led to the living room and then the dining room and kitchen. From there I’d move on to sweeping floors and wet mopping the kitchen floor. I wouldn’t just go to bed when I was done. I’d change sheets first.

The couch in here, the den, isn’t all that old, but Fern used it to sharpen her claws so the stuffing is popping up behind the pillows, but I’m the only one who knows because the white stuffing is hidden by the pillows. Gracie slept in the same spot on the couch, but I have washed the couch covers many times. I know I’ll have to break down and buy a new couch, but the problem is you never just put in a new couch. Instead, there is the domino effect. The three baskets under the large metal table here will have to be cleaned out. Books will go down to the cellar to make the room less cluttered, but I’ll have to put up shelves for those books and clean the cellar to make room for the shelves. I’ll need a dumpster. The cellar is the repository of anything I no longer use. Most of what’s there can be tossed, but I’ll have to hire someone for the heavier stuff, maybe a couple of someones. I’ll need bins for storage on those shelves which I don’t have yet. I’ll probably need hooks from the ceiling for my bike and some of the more awkward items.

First I dusted then I wet mopped then I bought a new couch. After that, I winnowed stuff from the baskets in this room and finally moved on to reorganizing and cleaning the cellar; however, all of that, except for the dusting, is from my imagination where I choose to keep it because winter is not the time for cleaning. That would be in spring. Until then I’m very good at doing nothing and waiting, especially the doing nothing part.

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“Today, watching television often means fighting, violence and foul language – and that’s just deciding who gets to hold the remote control.”

January 19, 2018

Everyday I make a list and every day I do nothing. I’ve read a bit, and that’s about it.  Losing Gracie is still so close. I keep looking for her, and I call poor Maddie Gracie. The house is quiet. Today, though, I have no choice but to go out. I’ve made a list with three stops, maybe four if I add the dump.

Today is a pretty day with a bright sun and a soft blue sky. The air is chilly but hints at being warmer. It is a good day to be out and about.

I watch television. It has been with me all of my life. When I was a kid, we had a cabinet  for the TV. It had doors which hid the screen. It was in one corner of the living room. A chair faced it, another chair was beside it, and you could get a great view from the couch.  My brother and I sat on the floor in front of it. My mother made us move back from the screen so we wouldn’t go blind. We had an antenna, rabbit ears, for fine tuning the stations. It sat on top of the cabinet. Most of the time it had aluminum foil around the ears. My father thought the foil brought in a clearer picture. I remember how often the TV screen was filled with snow. It made a static sound. The screen sometimes had lines and the picture kept jumping. If the TV didn’t work, my father would take some tubes from the back and bring them to the TV store to be tested. He’d do that until the offending tube was found. TV tubes were like Christmas bulbs. If one burnt out, none of them worked. It was hit or miss. When my father removed the back cover of the TV, I remember the tubes looked a little like Frankenstein’s lab with the lit filaments and their lights bouncing up and down the wires.

When my father couldn’t put the bulbs back in their original spots, it was time to call the repairman. We’d watch. My father would stand beside him and chat about the TV as if he knew something about it. The repairman wore a belt with all his tools and brought in a bag with bulbs. He always found the offending bulb.

TV’s now don’t get fixed. They get replaced and usually upgraded at the same time. The set I have now was one of the first HD sets on the street. I remember my neighbors coming to dinner and wanting to watch TV. They were amazed. This TV is 13 or 14 years old, and it still works fine. My next set will be a 4K UHD. I watched one at my friend’s house and I was drop jaw amazed.

Well, it’s time to get myself in gear, a fine metaphor, a suitable ending.

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“Maybe lots of people go through life never knowing they’re peculiar.”

January 18, 2018

The sun is brightly shining, but it is only in the 20’s. Warmer weather is predicted for  the weekend when it will be in the 40’s which, at this time of year, seems more like a heatwave. I’m thinking flannel shirt weather.

The rhythm of winter life is slow. I sleep in every morning, linger over coffee and the papers and take my time getting dressed though sometimes I don’t even get dressed. I just loll.

I need to fill the bird feeders. They have been empty since the snow as I didn’t want to venture onto the deck for fear of falling, but yesterday’s rain uncovered a good portion of the deck so today I’ll haul out the seeds and fill all the feeders including the two suet feeders. I’ll  also throw millet seeds under the deck for the doves.

I used the top of Gracie’s crate for storage of sorts. I put her food, all her treats, cat food, both canned and dry, bird seeds and my flashlight on it. Now all of that is on chairs and on the top of the dining room table. My house is filled so I haven’t anywhere to put them, and it’s driving me crazy which, I suppose, isn’t all that difficult. For instance: I can’t stand crooked pictures no matter where I am. One picture in my house never stayed straight. I was driven crazy until I bought some blue clay like stuff meant to keep pictures in place. It helped me regain my sanity. Once, in a novel I was reading, an already dead character carried on a conversation, quite a lively conversion too for a corpse. The editor had missed it. That one I couldn’t resist. I had to replace the dead character’s name. My sister read the book after me and laughed when she saw the correction. My slippers are always side by side halfway under my bed when I’m not wearing them. My shoes have no particular spots and they stay where they landed when I kicked them off my feet. My bedspread needs to be even, but not the top sheet. I just tuck away the long side. My towels have to be folded in a certain way. When I’m inside, I dress comfortably. I don’t care if my clothes are tattered or if they don’t even match. I do chuckle at the thought of my passing in such an ensemble. I suspect I’d be referred to as the peculiar old lady who lived alone with her animals though I think that might even be a compliment.

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“Memories are like a garden. Regularly tend the pleasant blossoms and remove the invasive weeds.”

January 16, 2018

I woke up to the sun and a blue sky, but I knew it was just the sun with light, no warmth. The temperature is 33˚. My feet crunched on the grass when I went to get the papers. The dusting from yesterday’s snow has frozen. Nothing will melt. The snow covers the ice. I’m careful.

I don’t remember much about being really little. I have only fleeting pictures in my memories. I remember the nursery school where I lasted a single day. It was a brick building covered in ivy and was across the street from our apartment building. My mother told me I cried so much the second day she never sent me again. That part I don’t remember. I remember the backyard. It was filled with clothes lines stretched from metal poles. They were in boxes outlined by chain link fences, and each apartment building had its own lines in its own box. I remember how the lines were surrounded by the brick buildings filled with apartments. The front of my building had steps which were in a small round row.

When I was five, we moved from the city to the town where I would grow up. I don’t remember moving, but I do remember exploring and being found by the police who said I was lost. I didn’t notice. My sister lives on the same street only a block away from where I was found. Coincidence is funny. I have no recollection of my first day of school, but I remember being terrified by Sister Redempta. Mrs. Kerrigan was my second grade teacher, and she was old. I remember flowered dresses and gray hair and seeing her walk across the street from the church to the house where she lived. Her apartment was on the second floor. I loved my nun in the third grade, Sister Eileen Marie, and I remember our classroom was in the cellar of the rectory. I remember tables and chairs instead of desks, and I know I sat on the outside of a table toward the back of the room. I was eight that year. Going to school in the cellar was a sort of adventure.

From then on, my memories are more vivid, but they are fragmented as my memory drawers are nearly full. I cram the most recent memories way in the back of the drawer almost in a pile. I figure it is a good thing when I have sloth days as there is nothing memorable, nothing to keep in mind except warmth, comfort and a good book.

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

January 15, 2018

It seems I get later and later which reminds me of the nursery rhyme about the scholar who used to come at ten but now comes at noon. That fits me perfectly. My late mornings are because I have been going to bed so late or early depending upon how you see the day. It was close to 3 this morning before I went to bed, and then I read a few pages.

When I went to get the papers, there were snow flurries. I swear that happens only when I go outside. They fall for a short bit then disappear. I have a vision of Old Man Winter tossing out the flurries as soon as he sees me. It is cloudy and cold still and will stay that way all week. The weatherman probably describes it as seasonal.

Today is a sloth day. I don’t need to go out for anything so no need to get dressed. My house is clean so no strenuous dusting. I could make my bed, but it is upstairs where no one can see it. I suppose I could bring the clean clothes up from the cellar as they have been down there quite a while. No, on second thought, they can stay there for a while longer.

I didn’t watch MSNBC today. The he said, he didn’t say is still the lead story. I believe he said that. Our president has no filters when he speaks off the cuff.

The two years I spent in Ghana were the most amazing years of my life. The country and its people stay in my heart. I always speak of Africa in superlatives.

Today is Martin Luther King Day so I have posted excerpts from Martin Luther King’s speech delivered on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.”

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“It is a happiness to wonder; — it is a happiness to dream.”

January 14, 2018

No doubt about it. Winter is here. The day is cold, a biting, damp cold, and it will get even colder tonight. When I went to get the papers, there were snow flurries, and they’re still around, small flakes from the north. It is a dark, cloudy, snowy day, the sort of day which gives winter a bad name. When I was a kid, I’d stay in all day near the hissing radiator. I’d color at the kitchen table or lie in my bed and read. I’d be wearing my flannel pajamas and slipper socks. Okay, I admit that it even sounds a lot like me now. I’m talking flannel bottoms, a sweatshirt on top and new slipper socks. Add a coloring book, and I could be ten again. I guess cozy doesn’t change much over the years.

Tonight is game night. We’ll play our two games, Sorry and Phase 10, and we’ll eat something while we’re playing and then we’ll have dessert after the games. Rumor has it we may be noshing on tacos. I’m doing the dessert this week, and I’m thinking chocolate pudding. I have all the ingredients and even have heavy cream. After the games, we watch The Amazing Race saved from Wednesday. It was always on Sundays before this so we maintain the tradition of games, food, the Race and dessert.

Poor Maddie got called Fern and Gracie this morning. She didn’t seem to care. That name mixup reminded me of my mother who used to take care of her younger brothers, Jack and Joe, long before she was married. If she wanted our attention or wanted us to stop what we were doing, she sometimes went through a litany of names to get to us. She’d say Jack, I mean Joe, I mean Kat. I never took offense.

My niece just posted pictures and videos of her two boys, ages 5 and 3, on Christmas morning. The older one stood in the entry way to the living room with his mouth wide open when he saw the toys left by Santa. He was amazed. I remember those days of walking downstairs on Christmas morning and seeing the lit tree surrounded by toys and gifts. It is one of the wonders of the world.

 

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“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

January 13, 2018

My house is quiet, emptier. I keep expecting Gracie to be sleeping on her part of the couch. I know missing her will get easier, but right now it isn’t. I think dogs make us better people.

The rain poured last night. I was treated to the pounding of rain on the roof and the howling of the wind. It was weather from a Vincent Price movie. When I got up around 3 or 4, it was still raining. I fell back to sleep, and at 10, when I woke up, the rain was gone. Now it is sunny with the blue sky as a backdrop. Today will be warm. Tonight will be freezing, only in the 20’s. The weatherman described it as a quick freeze. It will be cold the rest of the week.

All of Christmas is packed away until next year. Leandro and Roseana came to clean but did so much more. Lee took down my tree and put it outside. He brought my pine tree down the cellar. He and Roseana rid the living floor of pine needles though we all know they never really disappear. One or two will pop up every few days. Lee took Gracie’s crate to the cellar leaving a huge, open space behind.

Last night my friends took me out to dinner. We went to a Thai restaurant, Bangkok Kitchen, new to all of us. It was tiny and had only 8 tables and all of them were filled. People were waiting. After tasting the food, I knew why there were no empty tables. I had a dish called Massaman Yellow Curry. It was assorted vegetables and roasted peanuts in a coconut massaman curry sauce. The coconut drew me right away. It was a great choice: the dish was a delight.

My dance card is empty for the weekend. I’ll watch the Pats play Tennessee tonight but that ‘s as far in the future as I’ve gone.

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