Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
November 9, 2017
Last night was cold, not quite wintry cold but close enough. Saturday night will be in the 30’s. That’s winter to me. The sun is resting elsewhere so the sky is all over cloudy, not a single break of blue. It is a still day.
I was out yesterday and am going out again today. I can’t remember the last time I was out two days in a row. Maddie and Gracie are my incentives today. They both need canned food, and Gracie is almost out of treats. I also need sunflower seeds. That’s the first stop, Agway. As for me, I’m out of bread and butter. It is a two stop day.
When I was a kid, my parents always went grocery shopping on Friday nights. My father had to take my mother as she didn’t have a driver’s license and wouldn’t have one until after we had moved to the cape. Saturday was my father’s day for errands and chores. When I go by the Chinese laundry still in my home town, I think of my dad. He’d go to the “Chinaman” every Saturday with his long sleeve white shirts. He wore one every day to work and liked them starched. He wouldn’t start wearing colors until much later. I gave him a button down collar yellow shirt for Christmas one year, and that was the start of colors and buttoned down collars. My father surprised me when he abandoned white.
My father seldom deviated from his usual anything. He didn’t easily try new foods and wouldn’t eat familiar foods if they were changed even in the smallest way. The key to my dad was to work around him. When he was here visiting, he ate a pork roast to which I had added garlic in slits around the meat. My dad loved the meal. When my mother was making the same dish, he caught her adding the garlic. He told my mother no way would he eat it. Only shrimp scampi had garlic. He wouldn’t eat hummus because he said it looked like wallpaper paste. Chinese food was exotic to him, a man who loved Spam, sardines and instant coffee.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Agway, animal food, Chinese laundry, cloudy, cold, dog treats, Friday nights, Garlic, going out, grocery shopping, habits, Laundry, pork, starch, still, white shirts, wintry, work shirts, yellow shirt
Comments: 10 Comments
November 7, 2017
The sun is hiding. It was here earlier but it’s gone now. Today is chillier than it has been, but not chilly enough for the heat to be triggered. The clouds are white, and there is barely a breeze, but I’ll take the clouds rather than the usual cold of November.
When I was a kid, I rode my bike all year. Only the snow stopped me. The roads were seldom plowed all the way down to street so it was too slippery for bike wheels. It was sort of the same when I was walking to and from school. The sidewalks were shoveled by the people who lived beside them, not the town, so we’d hit parts which had never seen a shovel. Rather than get all snowy and wet, we’d move to the road and walk in the ruts. Sometimes we’d have to walk toe to heel because the ruts were so narrow. Sometimes we’d fall into the snow. We always laughed.
I really didn’t mind school all that much in the winter, but I really minded it in late spring and fall when the days were still warm and bright. All I could think of was I should be outside playing or riding my bike; instead, the best weather was being wasted, and a taste of the day at recess only made it worse. All I could do each school day was watch through my classroom windows as warm days withered away. We played when we got home from school but darkness came early, and the street lights were on by four. My mother didn’t care what time it was. She went with the street light curfew.
My town had so many trees bordering the streets and sidewalks that fallen leaves were everywhere. The ones on lawns were cleared and burned, but the rest sat in gutters or around tree trunks. Yellow and orange are the colors of fall to me.
Sometimes I still think of all the other seasons in colors. Spring is green, all different, varied greens. Summer is all colors especially reds and yellows, pinks and purples as the gardens come to life. Winter is white when it snows, and red and green at Christmas, but the rest of winter is mostly brown and grey. We’re almost there now.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bike, chilly, Clouds, colors of the seasons, curfew, early darkness, falling in the snow, narrow ruts, no wind, recess, ruts, school, snowstorm, street lights, sun
Comments: 10 Comments
November 6, 2017
By now you’re probably wondering what happened to me. Well, it is nothing catastrophic. First, I made up for my lack of sleep the other night by sleeping this morning until 11:30. I decided to stick to my usual routine and read the papers. After I’d read one, my irrigation guy came and wanted to shut down the system as well as my outside shower. I turned on lights and opened doors then got back to my second paper and another cup of coffee. It was nearing two when I finished. I turned my computer on, checked my mail then tried to open WordPress. It wouldn’t open. I shut down Safari but that did nothing. I opened Chrome but still couldn’t get WordPress to load. I tried sneaking into WordPress when viewing another blog, but I couldn’t get any blogs to load. My cheeks hurt from grinding my teeth so I turned off my computer and turned on the television. TCM is having a festival of Falcon movies. I am happy.
When I went to get the papers, I was surprised by how warm the day is. It’s in the mid-60’s, more like late September than November. It was sunny then but now it’s getting dark and cloudy. Rain is forecast for later this afternoon.
When I was watching The Falcon and The Coeds, I recognized a scene from The Lone Ranger. Tom Conway, the Falcon, was riding a horse in the hills trying to catch whoever shot at him. He rode up hill between rock formations. Right away I recognized it as a scene from the Lone Ranger where Silver rears, and we hear the narrator say High Ho Silver Away. I always thought the opening of The Lone Ranger was one of the best. There he is riding Silver at top speed and shooting as he rides all to the March of the Swiss Soldiers, the finale of Gioachino Rossini’s Willian Tell’s Overture which I always thought was just The Lone Ranger’s introduction.
This is going to be a slow week. The only entry on my dance card is dinner with friends on Wednesday. I haven’t any errands though I expect we’ll do a dump run toward the end of the week. My social life seems to be winterizing early.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blog posts, Chrome, dance card, Gioachino Rossini's Willian Tell's Overture, irrigation, rain, safari, Silver, sleeping in, TCM, The Falcon, The Lone Ranger, warm, Wordpress
Comments: 2 Comments
November 5, 2017
Outside is dark, damp and cloudy. A wind blows every now and then and adds to the misery of the day. My heat went on during the night. It must have been really cold as the thermostat is set at 65˚. Before I had pets, I used to keep it set at 62˚ at night, but that’s too cold for Gracie and Maddie. I found that out when I patted them. Their ears and their body fur were cold. That’s why the heat is higher.
Last night, Gracie was panting so much I kept waking up. I did the food, treat, water thing, and she still was panting and moving around. I finally fell asleep around four. When I woke up, Gracie was in the middle of the couch lying right beside me, and my legs were bent to accommodate her. It was another bad back this morning. She, of course, is now sleeping soundly. I am tempted to keep waking her up, but that’s a human response she wouldn’t understand. Besides, she’d just go to her crate and sleep, probably snore too just to drive me crazy.
Even though all the stores are now opened on Sunday just like every other day, I still have a bit of solemnity for the day probably leftover from when I was a kid. I don’t big time shop on Sundays, and I tend to stay close to home. I watch a little TV, usually football, and I often nap. I honor Sunday as a day of rest.
I was browsing through youtube the other night looking for something to watch. I noticed the film choice of Thousand Plane Raid. Seeing that zoomed me right back to Africa but to Niamey, Niger this time, not Ghana. It was Christmas vacation, and I was traveling with a couple of friends. The trip didn’t go as planned, but trips seldom do in Africa. The bus broke down twice. Each time, we had to wait for the driver’s assistant to hitch back to Ougadougou for parts. That put us way behind time so we had to stop for the night at a post office for which the bus carried mail. The night was freezing. It was harmattan time and we were closer to the desert than in Ghana. I had only a piece of cloth to keep me warm, and it didn’t. Anyway, by the time we got to Niamey, I had defrosted. We stayed at the Peace Corps hostel. In those days U.S. embassies showed movies on Saturday nights. We found out where and went to the screening. Yup, it was Thousand Plane Raid. You don’t need to know any more about the movie. The title is the whole plot. That night was the worst. The movie was shown in an open room of sorts with 4 low concrete walls and no screens. I was eaten alive by mosquitos bigger than my hand. They mimicked the movie and dive bombed in groups to attack me. I think I left before the end of the movie, but I was so woozy from loss of blood my memories just blurred. I only remember the name of the move and the hordes of mosquitos.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad back, Bell's seasoning, cloudy, damp, dark, day of rest, dessert break down, eaten alive, furnace, heat, miserable night, mosquitos, Niamey, Niger, panting dog, Stuffing, Sunday, Thousand Plane Raid., US Embassy
Comments: 6 Comments
November 4, 2017
The morning was chilly. I took Gracie out into the backyard and sat and waited for her. I smelled a wood fire and all of a sudden my memory jumped back to Ghana and mornings during the harmattan. Those mornings were cold, as cold as I ever felt in Bolga where daytime temperatures often reached over 100˚. The morning air was filled with the aroma of wood fires burning in the compounds behind my house. I could hear muted voices and the sound of water from the tap filling my students’ buckets for their morning baths. Roosters still crowed. Those mornings were a delight.
Gracie has muscular degeneration. Signals aren’t getting to her back legs. The vet said it will get worse, but she is hoping we can slow the progress. Gracie is now getting a pain pill every day. In two weeks the vet will assess the value of her continuing to take them. After that two week mark, Gracie is going to start acupuncture. She’ll have two sessions and then an evaluation to see if it has helped.
I could barely walk this morning and my back pain was horrific. Yesterday I had to lift Gracie three times: twice to the car and once to the backseat of the car after she had lost her footing and couldn’t get back on the seat; consequently, I have ordered a back dog lift. I wish I had it yesterday.
Every time I look out at the deck, I feel a bit of sadness. All the furniture is covered. The flowers have been moved off the rails. The candles hanging off the branches are gone. Only the bird feeders remain.
When I was a kid, the preparations for winter were my father’s jobs. He took down the screens and replaced them with the storm windows. He removed the screens from the two doors and put in the storm doors. He went to the gas station and had the snow tires put on his car. Every weekend he’d rake the lawn, move the pile of leaves to the gutter by the sidewalk and then burn them. The smell of burning leaves is one of my all time favorites, and it carries memories of my dad. I can see him standing there by the flaming leaves while smoke billowed into the air. He held on to his rake and used it periodically to move more leaves into the fire. I stayed until the leaves were gone.
Categories: Musings
Tags: acupuncture, aroma of wood burning, back dog life, Bolgatanga Ghana, bucket baths, buckets, burning leaves, chilly mornings, deck, harmattan, muscular degeneration, pain pills, Peace Corps, snow tires, storm windows, wood fires
Comments: 10 Comments
November 3, 2017
Today is cloudy but still quite warm. It is 64˚ without the sun and will get warmer by the afternoon. I have given up on fall despite the wonderful weather. Skip, my factotum, is readying the deck for winter. He is putting the decorations and candles in boxes, taking up the rug and covering the furniture and umbrellas. He has done it for so many years he just moseys along from one task to another. He’s already cleared the backyard of branches including a couple big enough to be called limbs. He has removed the fallen post from my front fence which had been broken this winter when the huge pine limb fell on the lawn. He’ll replace it. He has some inside stuff as well. Yesterday my house cleaners came and today I have Skip. Life is good.
Gracie and I will be going to the vet’s today. She has a one o’clock appointment. My friend reminded me to ask if acupuncture will help. Last night was not a good night for either of us. Gracie started panting and woke me up several times. At 3, I took her outside hoping that’s what she wanted. It wasn’t though she did take the opportunity to squat. At 4, I fed her some treats. That didn’t work so I helped her off the couch to the bathroom where the water dish is kept. She ignored it and wanted back on the couch where she continued to pant. I finally got up and brought the water dish to her. She drank and drank then settled down to sleep. We were both exhausted. I’m beginning to think she has decided our roles need to be reversed. She will be pampered. I will respond to wishes and commands. She’ll find I am good with Sit!
When I woke up last night, I thought I’d left outside lights lit. Through the back window, I could see so much light the trees had shadows. It was the moon, big and bright and gorgeous on its way to being a full moon tomorrow night. This full moon is called the beaver moon by some as at this time of year beavers are building their winter dams in preparation for the cold season. Because beavers are mainly nocturnal, they will keep working under the light of the full moon. I suppose busy as a beaver would work here but would be just cause for groans.
I lament the closing of my deck.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beaver moon, branches, busy as a beaver, clearing the deck, clearing the yard, cloudy, deck furniture, Dog, fixing the fence, limbs, moonlight, panting, Sleep, vet's acupuncture, warm, water dish, winter, winter dams
Comments: 11 Comments
October 31, 2017
The wind and the rain have given way to a sunny day. It is a bit colder than it has been, 57˚ now and low 40’s tonight for trick or treating. I’m all set for my trick or treaters with candy bars for the bigger kids and Halloween pencils for the smaller.
I remember the excitement of Halloween when I was a kid. School lasted two and a half days or at least it felt that way. The hands of the watched clock moved ever so slowly, and the afternoon dragged on and on until the final bell was rung. We raced home. I’d spend the afternoon putting the final touches on my costume.
It took forever to get dark enough. My mother made supper earlier than usual. It was something quick, no big meal. She knew we didn’t want to eat. We wanted out. I remember driving her crazy by asking over and over if it was time. When she said yes, we bolted out the door.
We had a route based on our hauls from previous years. There were no fun size bars of candy in my day for which I am somewhat thankful. I say somewhat as people did buy bags of things like candy corn or those hard little pumpkins, and they’d divide the candy into individual bags of treats, not my favorites. We’d also get popcorn balls in the little bags. We knew the best houses, the ones with the nickel bars. Even now, when I drive down streets in my home town, I still remember which were the best houses on Halloween.
My mother bought us new masks. They were hard plastic and had an elastic in the back with a little metal piece on both ends which connected to the mask through a hole on each side. The elastics broke easily and got shorter and shorter each time we knotted them. The front of the mask usually had only eye holes. Some kids bought costumes which were worn over clothes and tied in the back. We never did.
My brother and I would stay out until most of the houses had turned their outside lights off. We’d check out our bags and munch a bit as we walked home. Once there, my mother would give each of us a bowl, and we’d sit on the living room rug and sort out the candy. We had piles. Our favorites were in one pile, the candy we’d never eat was in another and in the third was the rest of the candy. The good stuff went in the bowl. My mother never stopped us from eating the candy. I remember keeping my bowl handy under my bed. The candy never lasted too long.
I loved Halloween but not just because of the candy. Deciding the costume was fun. It took a long while even with hints from my mother. I’d choose one then a different one then another and another before finally deciding. We decorated the windows with those cardboard skeletons and witches. We carved pumpkins. We whispered about ghosts and witches and black cats to scare ourselves.
Walking home on Halloween night is one of my favorites memories. The sidewalks were covered with yellow leaves. It was quiet enough to hear our footsteps. The houses’ outside lights had gone dark. Only the streetlights lit our way. We whispered our conversation. It seemed right.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 40's, candy bars, chilly, costumes, Halloween, masks, popcorn balls, slow, sunny, supper, trick-or-treat
Comments: 10 Comments
October 30, 2017
Last night was amazing and scary. When the wind blew, I could hear furniture on the deck being tossed about. I could hear the rustling of the leaves on the trees and the creak of branches as the wind swept through them. The gusts got as high as 55 MPH. The rain came heavily at times and smashed against the windows. The deck and the front lawn are covered in pine needles blown from the scrub pines. Small branches and one bigger branch litter the backyard. Today is still windy with gusts strong enough to sway the tallest and strongest branches on the trees in the yard. More rain is predicted.
Gracie was heavily panting last night usually a sign she needs out or is hungry. I fed her a small can, and she ate all of it. I changed the water three or four times, and she drank each time slobbering drops of water on the tile floor. I opened the front door so she could see the rain. She backed away. Gracie wanted on the couch and off the couch. I helped her up and down as she has bad back legs. I was getting testy. By this time it was 3:30, and I had been trying to go to sleep since 1:30, but I was attuned to Gracie and her panting and couldn’t fall asleep. Finally I figured she might be frightened by the wind. I moved beside her and started patting her head and ears and talking gently to her. Gradually her breathing slowed down. She settled and went to sleep knowing I was beside her. That meant I was squashed on half a couch with my legs bent at the knees and was beside a dog with wind problems of her own, unpleasant wind problems, but I was so tired I fell asleep anyway around four.
Gracie woke me up at 7. She was moving around, and I heard her. I keep an eye and an ear on Gracie’s movements on the couch we share as it is too soft for her back legs to establish a hold. I pleaded with her to go back to sleep, and she did. I moved and got comfortable as Gracie didn’t need my reassurances any more. Outside was quiet in comparison to last night. We both woke up at 10. I turned on the coffee, got dressed quickly and drove to Agway. I was out of dog food, an emergency in this house. When we got home, I fed Gracie before getting my coffee and toast. She is now happy and sleeping soundly. I’m exhausted.
Today I have a dentist appointment but only a cleaning.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 55 MPH, Agway, branches, creak on branches, dentist, dog food, gusting winds, hungry, panting dog, pine needles, rainy, rustling on leaves, squashed, uncomfortable, wind passing
Comments: 4 Comments
October 29, 2017
It rained earlier and it’s still cloudy and damp, but I don’t mind as we’ve had such lovely days of late. There is a high wind warning for all of tonight into tomorrow. Despite the damp, it will be warmish, in the mid 60’s.
Last night I watched Lady in White, one of my favorites this time of year. Despite no blood, no masked killers and no hatchets and knives, the movie is scary. The characters, including the murderer, are regular people living in a lovely small town. It is this ordinariness which makes what happens even scarier than watching a crazy man in a mask.
Tonight is game night with added Halloween fun. We’re going to decorate sugar cookies first. If that is anything like when we make and decorate our gingerbread houses, we’ll all be concentrating so much on our artistic endeavors we won’t be conversing, just decorating.
When I was a kid, we’d all be on Halloween countdown with only two days to go. Finalizing costumes and deciding our candy route were prime topics of conversation as we walked to school. Our costumes were always homemade, and my mother was imaginative. The only thing she bought was a new mask for each of us. We carried pillowcases as they had plenty of room for all the candy. My two sisters went out early and stayed in the neighborhood. My brother and I wandered all over town.
I loved movies which made me jump from something unexpected. It was sort of fun to be scared but the fun was mostly afterwards once our breathing normalized. When I was about ten, I was watching The House of Wax and got really scared when Vincent Price’s mask fell off his burned, scarred face.
I remember seeing Jaws for the first time. When Hooper scuba dives to look for the shark, he finds Ben Gardner’s boat. He and I both jumped when Ben’s face appeared out of a hole in the boat. I think that’s the scariest scene in the movie.
Afternoon football games on Sunday always remind me of my dad. He sat in his spot on the couch to watch the games. Right beside his spot was a table which was perfect to hold his game snacks or his lunch depending on the time of the game. He loved his snacks and he loved football. My mother and I didn’t watch and were usually at the kitchen table playing a game or two. We didn’t have to be with my father to know how the game was going. He was never a quiet fan.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Ben Hooper, candy route, cloudy, costumes, crazy man, damp, decorating cookies, game night, Halloween, House of Wax, Jaws, Lady in White, ordinary, Wind
Comments: 6 Comments
October 28, 2017
My morning ritual seldom changes. I take my time. There is rarely a rush. The first thing I do is put the couch, aka my bed, to rights then I go out with Gracie, pick up the papers and put her into the yard. When we come back inside, I start the coffee, and while it’s brewing, I feed Maddie and Gracie. At this point I am into the first fifteen minutes of the morning. I grab my cup of coffee and read the Globe then toast an English muffin, grab another cup of coffee and read the Cape Cod Times. By the time I am finished with the cryptogram, I’m about an hour and a half into the day. My e-mail is next then I stir my creative juices and start in on writing Coffee. Sometimes my muse is wild with inspiration while other times I just sit and stare hoping for the whisper of an idea. I have been writing Coffee for 12+ years. The sitting and staring are getting more frequent.
When I was a kid, I sometimes had to go to confession on Saturday. I didn’t have a whole lot to confess so I used to pad my transgressions. I’d mention lying though I seldom lied. I did fight with my brother so I had that to fall back on. Disrespecting my mother or father was a good one. I think every kid used it. I wasn’t mouthy, but I was great at eye rolling or smirking. I used to give numbers like lying five times. Those were purely speculative. I never really kept count. The priest would mete out my penance. Usually it was a few Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers. I said them quickly so I could get out of there. I didn’t want people thinking I was overloaded with sins meriting a huge penance.
Today is cooler than it’s been but still sunny. The house was cold when I woke up. I turned on the heat and put on socks. I hate having cold feet.
I’m back on YouTube. Today is disaster day. I’ve watched tsunamis and volcanos and now it’s a meteor. Frantic scientists, members of the near Earth orbit emergency task force, are working to prevent the meteors from colliding with Earth and destroying life as we know it. Isn’t that always the way?
Categories: Musings
Tags: coffee, confession, creative juices, disaster, disrespect, e-mail, English muffin, games, inspiration, lies, meteor, morning, muse, papers, penance, ritual, transgressions
Comments: 10 Comments
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