Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
February 2, 2017
Gracie news is first. Yesterday morning around 5 she stood up on the bed and that movement woke me. All of a sudden I saw Gracie start to fall over so I grabbed her before she fell. She then collapsed on the bed. I held her around the neck and talked to her as her eyes were wide in fear. I then helped her stand up. She did but just stood not moving then threw up. I cleaned the bed and tried to get her off of it, but because my bed is an old one and quite high, she wouldn’t get off it. I finally lifted all 68 pounds of her to the floor. She walked to the stairs but wouldn’t go down. I went in front of her and she went down one step at a time. I decided to take her right away to C.A.R.E., the emergency vets. We got there around 5:30 and waited a bit. Finally we went into the treatment room. The vet listened to what had happened then took her for some tests. They were all fine except Gracie was a bit dehydrated. She has a heart flutter but is on meds for that. The decision was to leave her overnight so she could be rehydrated and given some X-rays. The vet called in the afternoon and Gracie was doing well, no aftereffects. I called this morning and she is staying there until the afternoon when she is going to have a cardiac echo. My poor baby! I just hope everything is okay.
My house feels cold and is quiet.
Punxsutawney Phil has predicted six more weeks of winter. It is cold today so he might just be right, but that would unusual. Poor Phil is correct only 39% of the time, but considering the three coldest months of the year are December, January and February, this might be one of those times.
The sun is shining with the sharpness of a winter’s day. The breeze is slight. I’m hanging around the all day house though I have stuff I need to do including going to the dump, but I’ll save that for Gracie and me tomorrow. She’ll love it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: emergency, falling, Gracie, Punxsutawney Phil, shadow or no shadow, sharp sunlight, vets, winter, x-rays
Comments: 22 Comments
January 31, 2017
I walked out of the house to get the papers and was totally taken aback at how cold it was. It was sunny then but the sun was just a backdrop providing some light but no heat. Since then the sun has been replaced by whitish clouds. Snow will be coming later but only an inch or two. I’m staying home today where I’ll be warm and comfortable.
When I was a kid, winter usually meant staying inside after school. I’d do my homework and then watch TV. The only exercise I had was walking to and from school. We, the four of us, must have driven my mother crazy. My brother and I would tease our younger sisters. He and I would sit on the couch on each side of one sister and point at her. That drove her crazy and she’d yell to my mother about us. We’d yell back and say we weren’t even touching her, but my mother knew. She’d tell us to stop.
I didn’t my bike out much in the winter. Mostly I walked everywhere. Some Saturdays I’d ride with my father when he did his errands. My favorite stop was at the Chinaman’s as everyone in town called it. The shop was where my dad left his white shirts each week to be cleaned. Behind the counter on shelves were bundles of cleaned shirts wrapped in brown paper tied with string. The laundry was always steamy from the big ironing machine by the window. I used to watch the Chinaman iron.
On Sunday, if I was up and dressed early enough I could ride with my father to church. He was an usher at the eight o’clock mass. He’d give me a dime to put in the basket. I always sat in a pew where he collected the money. The ushers never sat. They just stood in the back entryway and talked in whispers until it was time for the money offerings.
One of the best parts of being retired is staying home on the coldest of days, a day like to day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Chinaman's, church', cloudy, cold morning, Laundry, Snow, staying inside, sun, teasing, white clouds, white shirts, winter
Comments: 10 Comments
January 30, 2017
I woke up in the darkness of this cold early morning. I believe winter is most defined by cold darkness. I can hear the heat trying to blow away the coldness of the house. I am sleeping on the couch: actually, we are sleeping on the couch. Gracie is better, but this is the easiest way to keep an eye on her. I heard Maddie running up and down the stairs and across the floor. I wondered why, but cats aren’t easily explained.
When I went to get the papers, I gasped from the cold. I saw my windshield was coated in ice. I think that’s the first time this winter or maybe I missed the other frosty mornings by sleeping in late. The brown grass on my front lawn also had a coat of frost. Winter has made a grand appearance.
In Ghana, in the Upper Regions, this time of year is the harmattan. The days are hot and dry. The wind blows sand which obscures the sun. Day after day is the same. The nights, though, are wonderful. The temperature drops to the low 70’s which doesn’t sound cold, but the days are over 100˚ so 70˚ is chilly. I had a wool blanket on my bed to keep me warm. My students wore layers in the morning. My lips chapped and my heels cracked from the dryness, but feeling cold for a while was worth all of that. I just have to remember that feeling, that love of the cold, when the frost has to be scraped off the windshield, the house heat is blasting, I’m wearing a sweatshirt and socks to stay warm and an afghan on my knees is comforting.
Gracie and I are going out today. She will wear her coat for the first time this winter. I’ll just wear my hoodie.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold night, cold nights, cracked lips, dark and cold, darkness, frost on the windshield, Ghana, harmattan, hot winds, rime
Comments: 10 Comments
January 29, 2017
Snow flurries just passing through are predicted then a rise in temperature to 44˚. That’s a wild weather day. Is it winter? Not this month it hasn’t been, but chills are on the way. Daytime will be in the 30’s starting tomorrow and nights will be even colder.
My first watch had Cinderella on its face. I was seven years old, and it was a First Communion present from my aunt who had taught me to tell time. When I turned 50, my mother gave me a beautiful watch with silver decorations around its face. That watch I still have.
I grew up in the days of analog, not digital time. Back then learning to tell time meant understanding things like quarter past the hour, half past and quarter to. Now it is simply 8:15, 8:30 or 8:45.
We had rabbit ears. I remember it was brown and had a dial with two choices on the front. That rabbit earred antenna sat on the wide top of our wooden TV console. Sometimes my dad wrapped aluminum foil around the ears to get us a better picture. Mostly he was trying to get rid of snow. He’d move one ear then the other then the whole antenna. He was never patient.
When we moved to the cape, we had to have an antenna on the roof or you could only get one channel, Channel 6. I remember coming home from school, turning on the TV and watching The Lloyd Thaxton Show on that channel. It was a sort of Bandstand show only it was more. There wasn’t just dancing or rating records or singers lip-syncing to their hit records. Sometimes they’d be skits and a bit of comedy. I remember Lloyd. He always wore a suit, the wardrobe of the day for men. His ties were skinny ties.
When I was a kid, TV was still wondrous. I watched it every afternoon and loved Saturday mornings with the cartoons and kid shows like Andy’s Gang, Kit Carson and Kukla, Fran and Ollie. I was a Hopalong fan, and I loved The Cisco Kid. “Cisco, wait for me,” was his sidekick Pancho’s line in the opening. For some reason that has always stuck with me. It is one of those close my eyes and see it all sort of things.
Gracie and I didn’t have a great night. She didn’t feel good, and I slept intermittently because I was worried. I kept checking to hear if was breathing. I fed her some spider plant fronds, and she felt better for it. Now she is just fine and sleeping on the couch; however, I am exhausted. I see a nap coming.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 40˚, analog time, Andy's Gang, Cinderella watch, cold, digital time, Hopalong Cassidy, S, Saturday morning TV, snow flurries, telling time, The Cisco Kid, TV console
Comments: 12 Comments
January 28, 2017
Winter is back, and my heat is blasting to keep the cold at bay. I am wearing my winter around the house clothes: flannel pants, a sweatshirt and cozy slippers. Much to my chagrin, I have to leave the comforts of home to do errands because I didn’t do them yesterday. I just didn’t have the ambition; instead, I watched the last season of Star Trek Voyager. It is sort of sad to know there no more episodes for me to watch. I’ll just have to find another Netflix diversion to keep me away from TV news.
For get-togethers, my mother used to make a couple of dips. We’d have onion dip, the king of dips, and shrimp dip. The onion dip hasn’t changed in millennia: sour cream and dry onion soup mix, Lipton soup mix. For the shrimp dip, my mother would buy the small shrimp already cooked and floating in cocktail sauce. It came in small fluted glasses. Her cupboard had several of those small glasses, evidence of the popularity of that dip. She’d put the shrimp and sauce and some cream cheese in her blender, no food processor back then, and whip. That was it. Party on!
We were never a green salad family. For cook-outs, never called barbecues, my mother always made potato salad, and if we begged enough, Italian pepper and egg salad, my favorite. It was my aunt’s recipe: peppers, onions and eggs and a bit of tomato sauce. My aunt had married an Italian, and she learned the recipe from her mother-in-law. I am so glad she did. I still love pepper and egg salad.
My mother made the best meatloaf. My favorite was when she frosted the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and baked it a bit in the oven so the potatoes sort of looked like meringue. My meatloaves are always different tasting. They depend on what I have in the fridge. I’ve used salsa a few times, and it added a great flavor. What’s great about meatloaf is the leftover makes a fantastic sandwich.
The sky is grim, but I have to go out anyway. I can’t remain a sloth. Gracie will expect to eat tomorrow.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, cook-out, dips, heater, Lipton onion soup mix, Netflix, onion dips, pepper and egg salad, shrimp cocktail, shrimp dip, slippers, Star Trek Voyager, TV news
Comments: 14 Comments
January 27, 2017
When I woke up and looked out the window, I saw a sunny day and a blue sky. The thought I might be dreaming crossed my mind, but I wasn’t. It is a lovely day, a bit chillier than it has been but still quite lovely.
Gracie and I are going out to do errands. My imagination has both of us shielding our eyes from the sun as if we’ve been living in a cave.
I have a list of places to go and things to buy. Gracie, as always, will be my co-pilot. Her favorite place is Agway. They give out free biscuits.
My return to Star Trek Voyager is almost over. I am watching the final season. Science fiction right now is far more hospitable than the real world.
When I lived in Ghana, it was during the birth of the Second Republic. The army had overthrown Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. They called it Operation Cold Chop. I love that. Chop is food in Ghana and roadside chop bars were the places to eat. We used to get food just about every Sunday from a chop bar in the lorry park. Anyway, the CIA backed coup was for a multitude of reasons, one of which was Nkrumah’s close ties to Russia.
I used to love to watch the lobsters swimming in their tank in the front window of the fish market. I remember the guys behind the counter wore white aprons with bibs. They sold fish fillets from a display case. I didn’t care about the fish. Back then, the only fish I ate was tuna from a can.
I used to wear dungarees lined with flannel when I was a kid. Girls’ dungarees had a zipper in a front pocket. I wore blouses. If I got cold, I’d put on a sweater, a cardigan. Mostly I wore white sneakers. My clothes weren’t very colorful. They were heavy on the blue. I think every girl my age wore the exact same outfit.
My brother wore dungarees and striped jerseys. He even wore dungarees all summer. He wore white, high top sneakers, Converse sneakers. Mine too were Converse. Every boy his age wore exactly the same outfit, including Beaver Cleaver.
Last night I had a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich for supper. I would have used Marshmallow Fluff instead if I had any. My supper choices are quite limited. It’s time to shop. I’m keeping a list in Alexa. I just added Fluff.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blue sky, cave, dungarees, errands, Ghana, lobsters, lovely day, Second Republic, shield eyes, striped jerseys, sun, tuna fish, white sneakers
Comments: 12 Comments
January 26, 2017
“Rain, rain go away come again another day.” When I was young, I thought this nursery rhyme had a bit of magic about it. If I sang it enough times, the sun would reappear, and I could go out to play. I’m singing it now with the same hope. It has been raining since Monday. The sky alternates between angry clouds and greyish white clouds. The rain is sometimes heavy and other times just a fine mist, spitting rain my mother use to call it. I saw the sun for an hour or so the other day. It gave me a bit of hope.
I do a couple of house chores every day. Yesterday I watered plants, changed my bed and paid my bills. I haven’t gone anywhere, haven’t wanted or needed to. Tomorrow, though, I have a list of errands so Gracie and I will hit the road. Maybe if I cross my fingers and wish for sun, it might work.
When I was young, I had snow boots but not rain boots. Nobody I knew had them either. I also didn’t have a raincoat or an umbrella. I always got wet. It was the usual thing.
During the rainy season in Ghana, I got wet. Sometimes I had to run from my house to the classroom block when the rain was heavy, but I didn’t mind. The rain was always welcome. I’d even shop in the market while it was raining, but if the rain got really heavy, I’d stand in the doorway of a building or inside a small kiosk until it lightened or stopped. The rain was a gift to make crops grow.
I love the sound of rain. Even when I was kid, I loved the rain beating on my bedroom window. In Ghana the rain on the tin roof of my classroom was sometimes so loud that I couldn’t teach, but I could fall asleep listening to the rain. Its steady beat was comforting in a way, amost like music, maybe even a lullaby.
Categories: Musings
Tags: angry clouds, Ghana, heavy rain, magic, misty rain, Mother Nature, Peace Corps, rain, rain rain go away, rainy season, wet
Comments: 10 Comments
January 24, 2017
Last night it poured. I fell asleep to the pounding on my roof and to the tremendous wind. It truly howled. This morning I woke to another dark, rainy day. It will be warm. Right now it is 49˚. The low will be 40˚. Winter has gone on hiatus for a few days.
When I was a kid, I did my homework at the kitchen table every day. I remember memorizing the times tables, spelling words and the Baltimore Catechism. “Who made you?” “God made me.” Questions and their answers from that catechism are still lingering, unused and unneeded, in my memory drawers, but the times tables and spelling words are part of my every day. Sometimes I had to do written homework, often worksheets. Mostly they were arithmetic lessons. The one I remember the most was a sheet to practice using coins. I had to add or subtract nickles, dimes or quarters.
I was never good at numbers. I used to hide my fingers under my desk so I could count. The nuns kept sharp eyes for finger counters so I had to be sly. The spelling words were easy. Every week I had to learn 20 new words for a test on Friday. I think I always got a 100, not a boast but evidence of a good memory. If I spelled the words out loud a few times, I learned them. My memory always saved me. That’s not so true anymore. As I get older, pulling answers from memory drawers gets more and more difficult because I can’t find them, but I have learned to compensate. I use my mother’s technique of going through the alphabet a letter at a time hoping one will jog my memory. I also use mnemonics. The funny thing is that often out of nowhere the answer jumps unexpectedly into my head long after I had searched for it. I hate not finding it, but I get comfort knowing the answers are still there.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 40˚, 49˚, coins, dark day, finger counting, homework, homework sheets, rain, spelling words, times tables, Wind
Comments: 10 Comments
January 23, 2017
Today is not one of my best days. My mother would say I am not up to snuff. To give you a better idea: I woke up at 9:30 and never got my first cup of coffee until 10:15. I just didn’t have the energy. I have someone who does all my yard work, a factotum who does odd jobs and plows, and a couple who clean every two weeks. Now I’m thinking I need a barista.
My Patriots gave the Steelers a bit of a football beating last night. We were on our feet more than a few times cheering their heroics on the field. Now it is on to the Super Bowl. My first thought for the big game is the menu. I’m thinking a sort of tailgating in the living room. I really wish my Dad was around so he too could cheer for his Pats and nosh with us (nosh-another one from my mother).
When I was a kid, baseball was my sport to watch mostly because it was easy to understand. The game didn’t have all the positions or plays football has. My dad watched the Giants on TV. I never did. I was a Red Sox fan. My football knowledge is much greater than it was, but I still don’t understand a lot of the responsibilities of the many positions. I understand the fundamentals of the game, and I find that’s enough.
Winter this year is weird. It is warmer. Today the high will be in the low 40’s and the low will be 38˚. It’s raining which makes it feel colder. It is also going to be extremely windy. When I was young, it was always cold walking to school. I was bundled as much as my mother could fit on me, but I swear my cheeks often went numb. They were red the entire winter. I didn’t have many colds, but I had sniffles. My nose was not a pretty sight nor, sadly, were my sleeve and mittens. Kids never carried handkerchiefs or kleenex.
My mother made the best cocoa. I drank it every winter morning. She’d dissolve the Nestle’s cocoa in some milk then add hot water to the cup. The cocoa always had bubbles on the top.
I have eaten all sorts of foods on my travels. Sometimes I had no idea what I was eating. I didn’t know the language. In some countries, I was glad I didn’t know. When I was a kid, I ate foods I’d never touch now. I ate sardines, the ones out of a can with a key on the top. I ate Spam right out of a can, also with a key on top. Those keys took a deft hand. My favorite way, favorite here used with tongue in cheek, of eating Spam was after it was fried. My mother often made us oatmeal for school day breakfasts. It wasn’t the smooth instant oatmeal they now sell. It was thick, lumpy oatmeal out of the cardboard cylinder with the Quaker on it. I never liked the lumps, but I found out that milk, a little cinnamon and lots of sugar helps the oatmeal, lumps and all, go down.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barista, cocoa, conference champs, football, football positions, mittens, not up to snuff, numb cheeks, oatmeal, Patriots, Quaker Oatmeal, Red Sox, sniffles, Spam, strange foods
Comments: 9 Comments
January 22, 2017
Today turned out to be a pretty day. It was sunny and warm, too warm for this time of year, but I’m complaining. I love sweatshirt weather in January.
When I was a kid, my mother had a great way to find out the truth. If something was found broken and no one admitted to it, my mother asked the four of us who did it. We all said we didn’t know. She didn’t believe us. She knew one of us was guilty. She told us when we lie our tongues turned black then she’d ask us to show her our tongues. The guilty party always gave himself away by refusing to show his tongue. Running to the mirror to check didn’t help. She told us only mothers could see the black tongue. We believed her. We were young.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. I didn’t know if that was true or not. It sort of sounded silly to me, but I didn’t want to take chances. I jumped over every crack. When I walked the railroad tracks, I jumped over every wooden tie with double zeros in the middle for the same reason. I did not want to be responsible for my mother’s broken back.
When I was in grammar school, if some other kid called me a name, I’d give the standard comeback: I know you are but what am I. There was really nowhere to go from there so it ended the name calling. Another, a more sophisticated comeback, was I’m rubber; you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you. It didn’t have a comeback either.
The women’s marches were extraordinary. I watched them on MSNBC for a good part of the day. I also saw Trump’s speech at C.I.A. headquarters and Sean Spicer’s denunciation of the press in the filled press room at the White House. Words fail me. I’m angry and I’m sad.
Categories: Musings
Tags: black tongue, break your mother's back, C.I.A., lies, MSNBC, Sean Spicer, step on a crack, sunny, warm day, women's marches
Comments: 12 Comments
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