Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
February 7, 2016
My tree is mostly off the deck. It is not yet totally upright, but it’s getting there. Clumps are still falling off the branches. The sun is bright in a cloudless sky. It will be in the 40’s all day then it will get colder, and the snow will make a return visit. 6-10 inches are supposed to fall before the morning. Every kid will be hoping for a snow day, the first of the winter.
Tonight we’re celebrating Chinese New Year, the year of the monkey. In case you were wondering the lucky numbers are four and nine.
My parents told lies. I’m not talking tooth fairy, Santa or the Easter Bunny, but real untruths. I figured they were protecting us. The one I still remember is they told us Chinese food was just for adults. We begged to taste it but that didn’t happen. They said it wasn’t good for kids. I believed them for the longest time.
My father used to put so much hot mustard on his Chinese food that his nose ran from the heat. He’d pull out his white handkerchief, blow his nose and then go back to eating. I also use the hot mustard, and once in a while when I overdo, my nose runs, and I think of my father. It’s a bit weird I suppose that a Chinese food runny nose brings such a strong memory.
I’m watching the original 1953 War of the Worlds, and I want to slap the lead female. She’s a crier and a screamer. She covers her ears as if to blot out the sounds of the saucers and her eyes so as not to see them; however, she is not without some redeeming qualities much appreciated in the 50’s. She can make perfect fried eggs and toast.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 6-10 inches, chinese food, Chinese New Year, hot mustard, lies, lucky numbers, melting snow, runny nose, snow storm, War of the World, warm day
Comments: 14 Comments
February 6, 2016
The sun is melting some of the ice and snow, but the shaded areas are still slick. I had to take mincing steps this morning on the icy street to get yesterday’s mail from my box. My front path and back steps are clear. This morning I put more deicer on the back steps so they won’t get slippery. I worry about Gracie. She and I are tied. We have each fallen once down those stairs. She was fine, but I got knocked out when I hit the ground. I’d like to keep it a tie.
The snow is melting off the branches and falling in clumps. I’m hoping the sun will beam its rays and melt the branches on my deck so they can bounce upright again. This happened one other time, and I used a broom stick to try to clear the branches. The snow fell on me. Now I’ll just wait for the sun.
Another storm is coming though the weatherman is not exactly sure which day yet. He is leaning toward Monday into Tuesday. I think the cause of all of this was our reveling in a warm winter with no snow. It was a jinx. We should have knocked on wood.
The knock on wood got me to thinking. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back was a kid’s idiom in my day. I don’t think I believed it, but I didn’t dare test fate so I jumped over any and all cracks. Idioms come and go with the times. You sound like a broken record makes no sense to kids today, but I heard it many times from my mother when I’d bug her for something I wanted. On the flip side goes along with the broken record. I don’t even remember the last time I heard either of those. I don’t know why saying it was a piece of cake came to mean it was easy. When my sisters bothered me, I told them to take a hike. They never did. They told my mother I was being mean.
Some sayings made no sense to me and some still don’t. Bob’s your uncle is one of them. Others have no relevance to life today. Nobody burns the midnight oil anymore. We just leave the lights on. Only Mr. Ed spoke so none of us really heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. I was a little older when I finally figured out if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I thought it was cruel to keep the cat in a bag and was glad when it was freed.
Once we were interviewing a candidate for a secretarial position. Someone asked a question and she replied, “You’ve hit the nose right on the head.” I had to leave the room.
Categories: Musings
Tags: another storm, Bob’s your uncle, falling snow, iced road, icy, idioms, jinx, kid idioms, knock on wood, melting snow, mincing steps, pat and steps clear, snow coming, Sounds like a broken record, sunny, tree branches low
Comments: 12 Comments
February 5, 2016
I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t some yet unknown connection between humans and hibernating animals. This morning I first woke up at 8:30. It was pouring and the rain was pounding the roof and windows. It was not inviting so I got comfy again and went back to sleep with Fern and Gracie as bedmates. Jump forward two hours. I finally stirred and dragged myself out of bed. It was still raining. I ran out for the papers. That’s when I noticed the rain was turning to snow. Little beads of ice were on the grass and the walkway. When I let Gracie out a few minutes later, I saw the ice on the back stairs and immediately threw out the deicer. I don’t want a repeat of last week when Gracie fell.
The prediction is for 4 to 8 inches of wet, heavy snow. It has already covered the lawns, the roads and the tops of the branches. It will snow all day into the evening.
I’m still hooked. Snow demands my attention. I like to watch it fall. I love the world covered in white. All the blemishes disappear.
I just lost my electricity for about five minutes. I didn’t panic. I groaned. I’m thrilled it returned so quickly, but now I have to go around and reset clocks on the appliances. I suppose that a minor complaint compared to the loss of electricity.
My iPad is locked. I forgot my password and tried too many combinations so it locked me out thinking I was an iPad thief. Now I have to go hunting to find out how to get into that infernal machine.
I keep opening the front door to check the amount of snow on the ground. It is falling quickly. The backyard is a winter wonderland. Some branches are already lower to the ground burdening but he wet snow.
It just happened again-the electricity went off for a few minutes. Now I’m getting nervous.
I am a picture straightener, and I want my clocks in sync so I just corrected the ones in the kitchen, a mistake. The electricity just went off for a third time. Now I’m making sure my iPhone is charged, the lantern is here with me and the heat is high for just a bit to warm the house just in case. I am not happy.
Categories: Musings, Uncategorized
Tags: 4 to 8 inches, beads of ice, covered roads, disabled iPad, hibernation, no electricity, pouring, rain, Snow, winter wonderland
Comments: 10 Comments
February 4, 2016
Some mornings I am Cinderella. Blue birds are singing and helping me get dressed. They alight on my shoulder and tweet a lovely song. The world is a happy place. Today is not one of those mornings. The phone woke me up, but I didn’t answer. I knew it was the first robocall. Several more will follow. I went back to sleep. Fern woke me up with her constant meowing. I tried to ignore her, but she was far too loud and grating. The meowing was my fault-the water dish was almost empty. I filled it and went back to bed. Gracie then got restless and went downstairs. I tried to go back to sleep. It didn’t work. I went to brush my teeth and found a cat had been sick on the hall floor. I cleaned it up. Next I went downstairs, ran out into the pouring rain and got my paper. I then noticed the dog had gotten sick on the rug. She always aims for that rug. I cleaned it up. The coffee went on. I started to read the paper and then I realized it was quiet: all the animals were sleeping. That was my morning.
On winter days the choices were limited. After school we’d bike if the weather was winter warm. Snow still on the ground meant sledding but only for a few runs. The dark came early. By twilight we were done. On really cold days we were stuck inside school during the day and in the house the rest of the time. The walk home was our only outside and it was freezing.
Most times I never minded staying inside. I’d cozy up with a book. That was all I needed. Sometimes, though, I’d get bored. There was nothing to do. I couldn’t go outside and risk frostbite. Good TV was an hour or so away. I didn’t want to read anymore. I didn’t want to talk anybody. I didn’t know what I wanted.
I still get bored. Sometimes I just throw up my hands in surrender and go take a nap. Other times Gracie and I go for a ride. I never stay bored long. There are so many choices now, but I usually seem to choose the standby, reading. The afternoon disappears while I’m caught by a book. I forget about boredom.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad morning, biking, bluebirds, bored, Cinderella, meowing, reading, Sledding, throw up, twilight, winter days
Comments: 11 Comments
February 2, 2016
Gobbler’s Knob was the place to be this morning when Punxsutawney Phil emerged and didn’t see his shadow. Start packing away those heavy coats, hats and mittens. Spring will be early this year.
Coffee is late for a lot of reasons: I slept late, mirror under the nose late, took my time with the papers and drank my usual two cups of coffee. My calendar is empty for the week so I figure I can dawdle the days away. I’m very good at dawdling.
I live alone with two cats and a dog. When I was a kid, I’d have been labeled the old lady who lives with cats. I’d be wearing house dresses and ratty sweaters, white socks and slippers bent down in the back, and I’d be driving a really old blue or gray sedan under the speed limit, always under the speed limit. The doors in my house would be locked and never opened even in the summer. I’d fix dinner, eat at the table and hand wash my dishes.
My grandmother would have been the poster child for old ladies. She just didn’t have cats, didn’t like any animals. Never in her life did she wear a pair of pants. Her tie shoes were always black. She carried a huge, square faux leather pocketbook, and when she visited, she always kept it right by her side as if we were a house of thieves. She never used kleenex, only handkerchiefs with lace edges. I never saw a dirty dish in her house or a clump of dust in a corner. She was a horrible cook, but we never ate there often. I always thought she didn’t like us all that much.
She lived in a senior housing apartment. My father was a good son who visited her on Saturdays. If I were at my parents for the weekend, he’d try to drag me with him. Once in a while, out of pity, I’d go. My grandmother talked and talked. Sometimes she’d tell us the same thing she had just mentioned a little bit earlier. I’d listen and smile as if I hadn’t heard the story before. My aunt once took her to dinner at a Japanese restaurant where the food is cut and cooked right in front of you. I heard that story at least five times. I smiled every time. I also gritted my teeth.
P.S. We have a new citizen!!
Categories: Musings
Tags: 2 cats and a dog, dawdling, early spring, groundhog day, handkerchiefs with lace edges, living alone
Comments: 14 Comments
February 1, 2016
My neighbor is taking her citizenship test tomorrow. She is a bundle of nerves even though she knows all the book answers and speaks good English. Her only speaking problem is the agreement of subject and verb, especially has and have, which throws her off every time. Nicee had only one question for me today which was how to pronoun Eisenhower. After a couple of run throughs I told Nicee no more studying: take the day off today and enjoy yourself. I know she won’t.
February is usually our snowiest month so I’m in a wait and see holding pattern. Today’s 51˚ could be a smokescreen for a blizzard. I am skeptical of a warm winter’s day. Something has to be afoot.
February is a month of expectations. Valentine’s Day is close and February vacation is not long after. When I was a teacher, I just hung around the cape or took day trips over the bridge. The joy of the week was in not using an alarm clock, staying up late and having no papers to correct or plans to make. During vacation when I was a kid our daytime plans depended upon the weather. A day like today meant bike riding all over town which gave us such a sense of freedom. We could ride anywhere we wanted, and bulky clothes were gone for the day. I could freely move my arms and legs, and my clothes didn’t make a swishing noise. If we had snow, we sledded until our lips turned blue. The actual bed time was arbitrary but mostly later than usual. Lunch was catch as catch can. Mostly it was a sandwich grabbed on the run. The week always went quickly.
There are a slew of things I never saw my mother do. She cleaned and did washing when I was in school though I do remember her taking dry clothes off the outside lines. When I left for school, my bed was messy. When I came home, it was neatly made. I figure my mother must have taken a bath at some point but I never saw her take one. The only task I was around to see was my mother making dinner. She was always peeling potatoes, endless bags of potatoes, or so it seemed to to me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 51˚, bike riding, citizenship, Eisenhower, February vacation, have and has, Sledding, Valentines Day, warm
Comments: 12 Comments
January 31, 2016
I can’t take it any more. I can’t take another political ad. It must be torture to live in Iowa right now. Yesterday as I watched my eighth or ninth ad, I wondered what we ought to call a group of politicians. Some of my favorite collective names are a murder of crows, a maelstrom of salamanders and a nest of vipers, all perfectly fitting politicians. I was leaning toward a nest of politicians figuring the vipers wouldn’t mind, they might even be honored, but then I found the perfect collective: an intrusion of politicians, borrowed from the cockroaches. That one fit all around. I also have a second choice just in case: a deceit as in a deceit of lapwings. Feel free to use either one.
It may reach 60˚ tomorrow and feel more like spring than winter. Today is already in the 50’s. We’re having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave is falling unbidden from the lips.
Zombies have trouble sitting upright. I just saw one try to get out of her coffin. I’m watching a 1943 black and white movie called Revenge of the Zombies. The evil doctor is really a German who is providing his services to Nazis. He has volunteered to provide an army which can’t be killed as they’re dead already. The Nazi is a caricature, a heel clicker. The setting is Louisiana. I never thought of it as a hotbed of spies, but I guess a zombie army was too good for any Nazi to pass up. The zombies are turned by some sort of swamp mud. The antidote is coffee though I don’t know if you can add cream and sugar. The movie is terrible so I like it. My favorite character is played by Mantan Moreland as Jeff, the driver for Scott and Larry, two of the main characters. Moreland was also the driver for Charlie Chan. Moreland sees dead bodies which are always gone by the time he gets Scott or Larry to check so they think he’s crazy and seeing things. Borland is wonderful and funny and plays up his part perfectly, “”Well, I’m sure there’s a logical scientific explanation for the proliferation of supposedly paranormal activity in this sector — er, I mean, lady they’s boogedy-boogs in the bushes!” I’ve learned Zombies walk slowly, speak in almost an echo and come when called. Good to know stuff.
Categories: Musings
Tags: an intrusion of politicians, deceit of lapwings, intrusion of politicians, murder of crows, political ads, political calls, Revenge of the Zombies, tropical heat wave, zombies
Comments: 20 Comments
January 30, 2016
A day in winter with bright sun, no wind and temperatures hovering around 40˚is a beautiful day. Miss Gracie is further proof. She is my barometer: the longer she stays out, the nicer the day. She hasn’t barked or checked in with me for a long time so I’ll take a peek just to make sure everything is okay. It is.
Saturday was the busiest day of the week when I was a kid. My father always went uptown to leave and pick up his white shirts at the Chinaman’s and get a trim at the barber’s. I never thought about the word Chinaman back then. It was just a place to me, a dry cleaner’s, owned and run by a man from China, a Chinaman. I think everyone in town called it the Chinaman’s and nobody meant anything by it. It was purely a description.
Al the Saturday activities were seasonal. In winter I went to the matinee or ice skated at the town rink, a fenced in area built at the start of every winter and taken down when the warmth of spring got too much for the ice. It was the only season my father and all the other fathers in the neighborhood were not outside working in the yards, but come spring there they were. Saturday was yard day.
My father was never really exact at some things. When he fertilized his lawn, he threw out the fertilizer by hand instead of evenly distributing it with a spreader. When the grass grew, I could always see the pattern of my father’s tosses by the condition of the grass. As soon as the lawn got taller, the whole neighborhood was filled with clipping sound of hand mowers. Every spring my father planted his flowers in the front garden though calling it a garden elevates it as the space was a small one between bushes across the front of the house.
In summer, my father continued to mow the grass every week. He also watered the grass from a sprinkler connected to the hose. My sisters used to love to run through the sprinkler, but my father was never a fan. He said it ruined his grass. He did have nice grass.
Fall was time to rake the leaves, a communal activity in my neighborhood every Saturday. After being gathered, the newly raked leaves were piled by the curb on the side of the street. Tradition dictated that the piles be burned. I watched as closely as my father would let me. I can still picture the flame coming from the middle of the pile and the smoke rising above it. I remember the smell of those burning leaves, one of my favorite smells.
Last year I burned a few leaves just for the memories. The smell, the aroma, was so familiar I could have been ten again and standing with my father.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bright sun, Chinaman, fertilizer, flowers, ice skating, movie, mowing the grass, no wind, pretty day, Saturday, spring lawns, winter activities
Comments: 8 Comments
January 29, 2016
The sun is just now breaking through the clouds to defy the prediction of rain showers. We’re going to the dump later so I’d appreciate it if Mother Nature held off on the rain. I have a trunkful.
When I was a kid, the town trash trucks came once a week. My dad would haul the heavy barrels out of the cellar to the curb. The truck always had at least two men hanging off the back. They’d jump off, grab barrels, empty them into the back of the truck then toss the barrels to the curb. The guys wore heavy gloves and grubby clothes. I liked to watch when they’d compressed the trash to make more room. Our next door neighbor was a trash man and once in a while he’d do our home route. We’d all wave and yell.
I never really thought much about the garbage can in the back yard by the steps. It was in-ground, and you had to depress a lever to open it. I hated emptying the garbage from the house. The bin smelled awful and there were always maggots. The garbage truck also came once a week. The garbage man walked to the backyard carrying one barrel slung over his back. He’d open the bin, pull out the garbage can and dump it into his barrel. I always thought being a garbage man had to be the grossest job, but I was wrong.
The grossest job is being a night soil man anywhere. His job is to go from outhouse to outhouse to empty the pails while people are sleeping. I just happen to have met one in Ghana. It was while I was visiting my friends who didn’t have running water. I was back and forth to their outhouse during the night as I was suffering from a volunteer’s common ailment which necessitated frequent visits to the outhouse. I can’t imagine the night soil man was as surprised as I was. When he pulled out the pail, I heard the noise and jumped up. He poked his head just a bit into the hole and greeted me. I greeted him back. He smiled and put the empty pail back inside. I sat down. It had been the most interesting encounter.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barrels of trash, garbage bin, Garbage truck, Ghana, greeting, maggots, night soil, pails of night soil, smells, sun, trash truck
Comments: 14 Comments
January 28, 2016
Today is sunny and warmer than it has been. The snow is almost gone. It lingers in piles on the corners of the streets and beside driveways. My deck and parking space are clear. The drama of the first snowstorm is over.
I woke up early, a relative term I realize, but decided I wasn’t ready yet to face the day. I slept another hour and a half. Gracie joined me. I took my time reading the papers. There just seemed to be lots of news. It was a three cups of coffee morning.
Today has an empty agenda. I’m not even sure I’ll get dressed. I’m not going anywhere. My car’s trunk is filled with trash but Leandro and Rosanna will be here in a bit to clean so tomorrow will be the big day, a banner day, a day to be out and about. Tomorrow is dump day, and the weatherman says it may rain. Of course it will. It is also get Gracie’s license day as the price goes up 100% after tomorrow which also happens to be the last day I can pay my real estate taxes on line. How will I pay you ask? Tomorrow is pay day.
My dad got paid every Friday when I was a kid. He’d hand his check over to my mother, the family accountant, who would cash it. It was her job to divvy the money into budget envelopes and to pay her Christmas club for the week. I remember those envelopes. On the front of each was the amount my mother put in every week. The envelopes over time became a deep tan color and were bound together inside a red cover with strings to close it.
When I bought my house, I started to use budget envelopes, but I wasn’t fancy. I just grabbed white envelopes, labeled them and put the amount on the front. I got paid every two weeks. The first couple of years I owned the house the mortgage was half my month’s salary. Those were the lean years. I didn’t travel anywhere for the first time since 1969 when I went into the Peace Corps. Restaurants, except once in a while, were not budget items. Grocery shopping was limited to needing only. I got sick of hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner.
The lean years lasted about four years. In the fifth year I went to Europe. My fiscal crisis was behind me: no more envelopes, no more scrimping and no more longing to be somewhere.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 3 cups of coffee, dog license, dump day, family accountant, lots of news, pay day, sleeping late, snow gone, taxes due, warm day
Comments: 6 Comments
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