Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
April 11, 2017
This early in spring is the only time I regret living near the ocean. The cold water keeps spring at bay. Look at today: Boston will be in the high 70’s and may even reach 80˚ to break the record temperature for the day. We are in the 60’s with a chilling breeze. All records are safe.
I’m sitting on the couch with an afghan wrapped around me just because it feels good. I had a 9 o’clock meeting this morning, and I wasn’t happy when Alexa woke me up. I’m thinking a nap later.
I’ve been sitting here trying to come up with a bit of history for today, a story of growing up or of growing older. I have tons of stories. I remember my 16th birthday. We were in Maine, in Ogunquit. My aunt and uncle were there as well. My birthday was their anniversary. They got married and I got born. I was a bit put out by their being in Maine with us. I wouldn’t have minded sharing any other birthday, but I minded sharing my 16th. I didn’t show up for the joint cake. I think it was one of those cut off your nose to spite your face sort of decisions.
My 21st birthday was memorable. I got to drink legally for the first time. One of my friends sent me a magnum of champagne. Other friends took me out to dinner. It was a fun meal until the bill. I expected my dinner to be paid for. It wasn’t. My friends had split the bill among the four of us, but they forgot the tip. I paid that. My friends found out when trying to reimburse one another for my dinner and drinks. They were horrified, and a bit embarrassed.
I feel as if I am emerging from hibernation. The sun and the warm temperatures are drawing me outside. It is too soon for an open window, but I can hardly wait for the closed air of winter to disappear and be replaced by the clean fresh air.
The other morning, for the first time, I heard the birds greet the new day. That smacks of spring.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 16, 30, 60's, 80, afghan, Birthday, chilly breeze, couch, irony, ocean, Ogunquit, record warmth, turning 30
Comments: 12 Comments
April 10, 2017
The morning has been a bit trying. Nothing I did made Gracie happy. I walked her down the stairs to the yard twice. I gave her treats three times. I patted her until my hand was tired. She wasn’t impressed. She sat beside me and stared. When I ignore her, she gave me the paw on my arm. When I continued to ignore her, she continued to put her paw on my arm. She drove me crazy. Finally, she got on the couch, got comfy, and went to sleep beside me. It is amazing how much my dog rules the roost.
Spring is happening all around me. Colors are coming back into the world. Hyacinths are blooming in my front garden. Purple, pink and red flowers are popping from circles of small fronds. The daffodils in the flower bed closest to the house are sun bright. Every morning when I get the papers, I see something new in the garden.
I have no energy today to do anything. I didn’t make my usual list of chores as I’m generally compelled to finish most of them. My logic insists if there is no list, there are no chores.
I heard the kids playing this morning around 8. There are 6 boys in two houses, and they are loud. They communicate by yelling. They go out to play before the school buses come. Most times they wake me up but not all the way up. I hear them, register the fact in my brain then turn over and go back to sleep. When I was in Ghana, I did the same thing with the call to prayer. A mosque was down on the street below and across from my bedroom during Peace Corps training. The mosque was small and was sandwiched between two houses. Arabic was written at the top of the smallest ever minaret. From that mosque, I could hear the muezzin sing the calls to prayer. The one at 3:30 or so used to wake me up then I got used to it. I listened knowing when it would end so I could go back to sleep. It was the same with the dawn call. Being awakened twice by a muezzin had become commonplace for me. I could never have imagined that.
Categories: Musings
Tags: call to prayer, colorful world, daffodils, Dog, dog treats, garden, hyacinths, list, logic, mosque, nap, paw on arm, Peace Corps Ghana, spring, to do list, trying day, yellow
Comments: 8 Comments
April 9, 2017
My skepticism is draining away. Perhaps spring really is here as today is another sunny, warm day, a lovely day. It is already 57˚, today’s high. Gracie and I slept on the couch last night. She had such a difficult time with the stairs yesterday morning I didn’t want to put her through that again. The rest of the stair treads should be here tomorrow so we can move back upstairs. She went outside with me helping her down the stairs. I waited, but she disappeared from view. All of a sudden she reappeared from the other side of the deck. She came up the easy stairs. That’s one smart dog.
Tonight is game night. We’re having pizza and playing Phase 10 and Sorry. We’ll watch The Amazing Race recorded the other night. That’s been a long time tradition.
When I was going through catalogs the other day, I saw jelly nougats for sale and a memory jumped into my head. When I was nearly 8, I started wearing braces. Back then, braces were not all that common. I remember closing my mouth for my school picture so you couldn’t see the braces. I was a bit self-conscious. There were only a few orthodontists. The office I went to was in Boston on Commonwealth Ave. My mother had to get a babysitter for my two sisters then she and I would walk uptown to get the bus to Sullivan Square then the subway close to the office. The office was on the first floor of a beautiful old house. It was a living room with comfy sofas. The nurse’s desk was there, and the doctor’s office was behind a door in the front of the room. His name was Dr. Nice.
After my appointment, we’d backtrack to Sullivan Square. We had to walk upstairs to the bus station. Right in the middle of that station was a news kiosk. It sold papers, magazines, and candy. My mother often let me choose a bar of candy. I remember picking the jelly nougat. I liked the colors of the jellies, and the way they looked in the nougat. With tightened braces, the nougat was a bit tricky to eat, but I managed. We’d get to Stoneham, and sometimes we’d stop to buy my lunch to take to school. I remember the bread was toasted. My mother would then walk me to school a few blocks away from the squar
I always liked the before and after of those appointments. I got to be alone with my mother, ride the subway, be late to school and eat a lunch bought from a restaurant. The day would have been perfect if we took away the orthodontist.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 57˚, braces, Commonwealth Ave., game night, jelly nougat, lovely day, orthodonist, Phase 10, Pizza, Sorry, stairs, Sullivan Square, The Amazing Race, warm day
Comments: 6 Comments
April 8, 2017
Today is another beautiful spring day with lots of sunshine. It is cooler than yesterday but not by much. I was out with Gracie for a while. She had a tough morning. The inside stairs were too slippery so I grabbed and held on until she got her footing on a mat I had moved from one step to another. That worked so I’m hoping the other mats arrive so she can feel safe going down all the steps.
My street is quiet. Earlier I could hear machine noises. When I went to get the papers, I noticed the trucks. My neighbors are having their yards cleared. That screams spring to me.
When I was a kid, I loved the woods and the field below my house. The field was a square surrounded by woods on three sides. One wooded side led to the swamp. We’d follow a path which started where the field ended, and the swamp was just a short way. Another path led to the right and the water tower. The third side was just woods. In winter the field was brown. No grasshoppers jumped when we walked through the dead grass. That was summer. In winter the field was just a route to the swamp.
That field, those woods and the swamp are gone. Brick buildings with apartments for the elderly have taken their place. My grandmother lived in one building where the woods with no path once stood. We buried our turtle in those woods, under two trees we knew we’d remember. We never thought all of it would be gone. I used to think about that turtle when I’d go with my father to visit my grandmother. The entrance to my grandmother’s street was about where I’d buried my turtle expecting it would rest under those two trees for eternity. Even the trees are gone.
Categories: Musings
Tags: elderly housing, fields, grasshoppers, memories, spring cleaning, sunny, Swamp, turtle, warm, wood path, woods
Comments: 8 Comments
April 7, 2017
We’re back from the appointment for Gracie at the vets. The good news is she didn’t have a stroke. The head tilt is probably from a lesion on her brain which may cause problems down the road, but she is fine for now. Her weak back legs are just that, weaker than her front. I should continue what I am doing to help her get around. Gracie was given a refill of her pain meds and got shots which were due anyway.
I had my MRI, but it is too early to hear the results. I figure there won’t be anything there, my lower back, as the earlier MRI’s showed nothing.
The most painful part of the last two days has been the $700 the two appointments cost me. I won’t ever be cured of that.
Yesterday it poured all day, a deluge to use my mother’s description, but today is the loveliest of days. The sky is a deep blue. The sun is bright, an almost need to squint bright. It is warm. When I left the house at nine, it was already 48˚. It is flannel shirt weather, a downgrade (or maybe an upgrade) from sweatshirt weather. I could do my outside work today. I still have that list, but I don’t want to for no reason except maybe relief. I was worried about Gracie. I still am, but it is a general worry about keeping an old dog healthy. The dread is gone. I just want to enjoy the afternoon, maybe sit on the deck with the sun on my face.
Lots of green shoots are appearing in my front garden. I saw the bumpy bud of a hyacinth this morning. Its color is starting to appear, a light purple. Daffodils are blooming. The yellow ones are first. The white ones are budded and waiting their turn. On my trip down Cape last Tuesday, I sat in a line of traffic on 6A. It was a long line so I had time to look around. I saw a tree with tiny, tiny buds. They were red and easy to see. I was thrilled. For me, that is the second sign of spring, after the bulbs flower.
My grass is squishy with mud. The ground wasn’t frozen when the days of rain began last week so the extra water just stayed right there, right on top, making the grass muddy. Footprints stay when you walk across the lawn. I try to avoid that.
I’m getting sucked in. I can feel it. Today makes me want to believe it’s really spring, but this is New England, and there are no guarantees so I’m still a bit skeptical, but the weather report is so amazing I can feel that skepticism draining away. By mid-next week, we may hit 60˚ and 50’s all the way to get there. That’s spring. No doubt about it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 50˚, 6A, buds, daffodils, deck, deep blue sky, flowers, green shoots, hyacinths, lesion, MRI, mud, outside work, rain, relief, spring, squint, sun, sunshine, traffic, vets, warm
Comments: 10 Comments
April 6, 2017
Cloudy and damp today but it is warm at 43˚. Alexa tells me the high will be 49˚, and it will rain yet again. The ground is muddy. When I step on the grass, my shoe gets soaked. The dog’s paw prints go from the back door down the hall to the rug where they disappear.
Yesterday Gracie and I got a lot done. We were out and about for about three hours. We made even it down cape to Orleans where I did a bit of shopping.
I have made an appointment for Gracie at the vets. Her legs are worse.
I am ending this early today as I have to go to Hyannis for an MRI. It seems my dog and I are falling aprt. Getting old does that!
Categories: Musings
Tags: 43˚, cloudy, damp, down cape, muddy, paw prints, Shopping
Comments: 8 Comments
April 4, 2017
The rain is heavy at times. I heard it pounding the roof just as I was involuntarily woken up by the ringing of the doorbell. It was a Comcast technician. It seems that somebody dug without calling Safe Dig, and they snipped my neighbor’s phone line. They were checking with me as I once had an invisible fence and that got snipped as well. The Comcast guy was glad to hear he didn’t have to worry about it. A couple of guys have been outside for close to 3 hours. They look miserable.
I’m supposed to take some comfort in April showers, but I figure May flowers would pop up anyway, and some sun would be a good thing. If it weren’t the crocus and the dafs in my front garden, I’d be wondering where spring is hiding.
The wind is fierce and is blowing all the pine tree limbs. They are stark and winter bare. I could lose more branches or small trees; of course, the yard was just cleared a couple of weeks ago. Isn’t that the way?
Gracie needs a vet appointment. Her back legs slide, and she has trouble keeping control on the tile floor in the kitchen and going down the inside stairs. The treads I ordered for the outside stairs are here, but I may use them inside as that’s where the problems are. I haven’t had a Boxer get this old before so I’m learning how to make life easier for her.
The Red Sox opened the season yesterday with a win over the Pirates. I am so excited that baseball is back for so many reasons, but the best reason is that opening day is the first indicator of summer for me. The countdown to summer has begun.
The second summer indicator is dinner at Captain Frosty’s with my friends. This year Captain Frosty’s opens on April 13th, and we’ll be there on opening day the same as we are every year. I can already see my plate filled with fish and fried clams (with the bellies of course), French fries, and a clam cake. I’ll have onion rings on the side to share. The last and final tradition heralding spring is Easter dinner at the Ocean House. We get dressy, and last year I added a hat. Well, it was not so much a hat as a spring fascinator, and it got lots of smiles. I’ve a new one for this year. Our small pink rabbit comes with us every year. She has a prominent place on the table.
The last and final tradition heralding spring is Easter dinner at the Ocean House. We get dressy, and last year I added a hat. Well, it was not so much a hat as a spring fascinator, and it got lots of smiles. I’ve a new one for this year. Our small pink rabbit comes with us every year and has a prominent place on the table. Dinner is always superb.
I feel happier. It may be cold and rainy, but spring is coming. One down, two more to go!
Categories: Musings
Tags: April showers, Baseball, Captain Frosty's, Comcast, doorbell, fried clams, May flowers, opening day, pine trees, rain, Safe Dig, snipped phone lines, vet, Wind
Comments: 10 Comments
April 3, 2017
Right now on TV is the Red Sox pre-game. It is opening day at Fenway. The game starts at two and Rick Porcello is pitching. I’d love nothing better than to be there on an opening day, but I’ll do the next best thing and watch it on NESN. Being home does have an advantage: the bathroom and the kitchen are close.
Today is warm, seasonable at 49˚. The sky is blue where it isn’t cloudy. The sun is here then gone then back again.
I have no plans for the day other than watching the game. Yesterday I got some inside chores finished. I swept and washed the kitchen floor, watered the plants, and cleaned the little bathroom. My maid could have done all of these if I only had a maid.
Most of the ballplayers are young, as expected. The oldest member of the Red Sox staff looked to be the bat boy. I guess the traditional name sticks regardless of age.
Tom Brady threw out the first pitch. The crowd yelled Brady over and over as TB tossed the baseball. Even though the throw was high, it flew all the way to the plate with not a single bounce. Pedroia was waiting.
I am easily distracted today. I was in the bathroom when I noticed a couple of stained floor tiles. I cleaned them then went and cleaned a wall section by the bathroom door. I returned the cleaner to the kitchen then noticed the dog dish. It needed to be scrubbed. I did that then came back to the den to watch the game. Considering I had gone to the kitchen just to get a Coke, I got a lot done, but I forgot the Coke. I’m a bit afraid to go again. Who knows what I’ll find?
Categories: Musings
Tags: first pitch, maid, NESN, opening day, Porcello, Red Sox, sun, swept the floor, Tom Brady, washed the floor
Comments: 10 Comments
April 2, 2017
The sunlight is wonderfully bright. The sky is a dark blue. It is warmer than it has been so it feels warm to me. When I helped Gracie into the yard, I stayed outside for a bit basking in the sun. She ran around the yard the way she used to when she was younger then bounded up the stairs into the house. She deserved her treat!
When I went to bed last night, it was close to 2 AM. I was watching television, going through those pesky catalogs and checking out recipes on Pinterest. I woke up this morning at 10:45. My mother would have called that the sleep of the dead.
I never used to need lists. My memory was enough. Now I need list after list. Alexa keeps my grocery list and stickies hold the rest. There is a great deal of satisfaction in crossing off completed tasks despite how mundane some of them are. I have to sweep the kitchen today. That’s an easy one to complete. One down!
Despite the season or maybe because of it, a few movies on the deck films have already arrived. Most are 50’s black and white B movies with aliens or gigantic creatures or both; also, I have ordered a few of my favorites like Gunga Din and Rear Window. Spring needs to step up so summer won’t seem so far away.
If I were to choose a favorite day of the week, I’d choose Sunday. I wasn’t keen on going to mass when I was young so I consider that the only blight on the day. Most Sundays when I was a kid were quiet. I’d read the Sunday funnies. After the Sunday matinee movies started on TV, we’d watch those in the afternoon. I remember watching Lassie, Come Home. We were all at Sunday dinner in those days, jammed into the small kitchen. On the cold days, the windows there got steamy. I remember my mother used Melmac plates and bowls. For some strange reason, I have a visual memory of a bowl heaped with mashed potatoes. Sunday night meant earlier to bed because of school, but I never really complained. I was usually tired.
Even now, Sunday is different than the rest of the week. I have two papers to read, and I like to take my time. Sometimes I make eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast. I usually have dinner though I often buy it rather than make it. More than not I have mashed potatoes.
I figure more than any other day, Sunday holds the most family memories.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 2AM, alexa, bounding, catalogs, church', Come Home, crossing off lists, Lassie, lists, movies on the deck, spring, summer, Sunday, sunny day, sweep the kitchen, warmer, watching TV
Comments: 8 Comments
April 1, 2017
“It’s raining. It’s pouring. The old man is snoring. He went to bed and bumped his head, and didn’t wake up in the morning.” My mother used to sing this to us on rainy days when we were little. I thought of it this morning when I heard the rain beating the roof.
Yesterday Gracie and I got all our errands done even though the rain started just as we were leaving the house and I was loading the car for the dump. Of course, it would start then! Rain tends to be inconvenient.
The dump was our first stop. It was fairly empty of cars. People far smarter than I stayed home. Gracie watched as I emptied the trunk. She stayed dry. Our next stop was the pharmacy to pick up Gracie’s prescription. I got wetter. Gracie kept watch out the window. We next went to the central administrative office for the school district where I worked. I needed a notary stamp on a form to prove I am still alive for the retirement board. I was thinking a picture of me holding the day’s paper might have been a neater proof of life, but I balked. Our last stop was for dinner. I bought a fresh pot pie.
I crossed off every item on my errand list and none on my to-do list because of the weather as items on that list were outside. They’ll have to wait yet another day. I did bring my laundry down to this floor where it is leaning against the cellar door. Given my laundry history, I figure it’ll lean there for a while.
I have a bunch of catalogs, assuming that catalogs come in bunches. I’ll spend the afternoon going through them, whiling away the hours. Sometimes I get lucky and even find a Christmas present or two to order.
Gracie hasn’t been out since last night. She stuck her nose out the door this morning and pulled it right back inside. I tried later and still no luck. She’s sleeping. That dog stores water like a camel.
It’s time for lunch.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bunch, catalogs, dump, errands, Go away, household chores, lists, notary, old man is snoring, pharmacy, prescription, rain, raining, to-do
Comments: 16 Comments
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