Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
October 30, 2015
Mother Nature has blessed us with another lovely day. Though not as warm as yesterday, it is still in the high 50’s, breezy and sunny. Every time the breeze blows more leaves fall and the trees become barer. I kept the front door opened and stood for a while watching the leaves flying and twirling in miniature eddies. I can see my neighbor’s deck for the first time since the beginning of summer. Fall has begun its annual wrap up to make way for winter.
I have never had the urge to go south for the winter. I am a New Englander who abides all four seasons. Admittedly, winter is my least favorite for the cold, not the snow. Ever since I was a little kid I have loved snow. I’d stand at the picture window, my head resting on my hands bent at the elbows, and watch the snow fall lit by the streetlight below my house. I could see individual flakes in the light. Sometimes they fell sideways blown by the wind. The street would disappear. I’d see the hand-rail but not the steps which led to the sidewalk now buried under snow. My father’s car was a mound of snow. When it was time, I’d go to bed hoping for a snow day, hoping to hear the whistle blasts from the fire station announcing no school. That would give me a whole day to play in the snow, to sled down the hill and to have a snowball fight.
I still love watching the snow. I go from front door to back door to see how much has fallen. My deck disappears and sometimes I can’t get the door open. I worry for poor Gracie who tries to get out but the snow is too deep for her. Sometimes I brush away enough for her to get right outside the door where she barely squats before running right back into the house.
The morning after a snowstorm, before the plows and shovelers, is always beautiful. The snows glints in the sun like diamonds. Everyone is still housebound and the snow lies untouched. It is why I stay here in the water.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Accra, bare trees, beautiful day, flying leaves, four seasons, miniature eddies, no school day, Snow, snowflakes, winter
Comments: 6 Comments
October 29, 2015
Some days just don’t have a chance. Today is already one of them. I woke up with my back hurting, something which hasn’t happened in a while. I know why. Yesterday I was an idiot. I changed the litter boxes and hauled the heavy, used litter downstairs then to the car. I brought laundry up two flights. I went shopping and brought in several bags including new litter which I then hauled upstairs. I gave my back no thought. This morning I was reminded.
Now for today’s fiascos: I was putting on my sweatshirt and my arm knocked over the bag of dog treats. I picked up the treats and swept the small pieces. I decided to take a few Aleve’s for my back. I dropped the bottle on the floor and had to stoop to pick up the pills which were strewn across the bathroom floor. I went to change the water in the dog dish and found one of the cats had thrown up in it. At least her aim was good. I got my coffee and was walking down the hall juggling the cup with the mail and the newspapers. Yup, I spilled the coffee but not all of it, a good omen I figured. I cleaned it up and was finally able to sit and read the papers. There was no good news.
It rained all night. The fallen leaves are plastered to the deck, the walkway and the driveway. From the right viewpoint, they look like a painting of reds and yellows scattered here and there on the canvas. It is warm and the sun has just appeared. I am becoming optimistic, even rosy, about the prospects of the rest of the day.
I had plans for today, but they are now scrapped. The dump will be there tomorrow. Low lights will hide the dust on the bookcases and the shelves. I’m thinking I need a sloth day, maybe even a ride to nowhere.
The last three days have been filled with chores and errands, with me making up for lost time from being sick. I’m done with that. I’m going to brush my teeth which is about as strenuous an activity as I’ll have today.
Categories: Musings
Tags: autumn, dump, fallen leaves, hurting back, idiot, kitty litter, Laundry, making a mess, painting, plans, rain, sloths, spilling treats, spillingpills, throwing up
Comments: 8 Comments
October 27, 2015
I see spider webs. That may not sound like much, but it means I am just about healthy again. It means the weird cleaning obsession is back so I have to stop and clean away the webs and dust whenever I see them. Already the dishwasher is filling with dusty votive glasses and chimneys. I’m even going to empty the dryer.
Today is much like yesterday, sunny and in the 50’s. We’ll have warmer weather later in the week, back to the 60’s for a couple of days. I love this time of year.
My mother always created our Halloween costumes. We never bought them ready-made. Sometimes, though, we’d buy a mask to go with whatever we were, but I never really liked full-faced masks. They were hot, and most times my eyes didn’t line up with the holes so I could only see half the world. I liked the masks favored by the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet, the ones where only your eyes were covered.
We used pillow slips to carry our bounty so we didn’t have to worry about paper bag handles breaking. Those were the days of red apples, popcorn balls and little tied bags with a few pieces of candy. I remember one red apple had a nickel stuck in it. That was a treasure. I never thought about the time that went into making popcorn balls. I was a kid. All I thought about was the candy.
Fun size candy bars didn’t exist when I was a kid. Now that’s just about what everyone gives. A few years ago I decided to give out what we called nickel bars. I remember how excited we were to get them, and how from year to year we’d return to the houses which passed them out. One was a red house with a huge porch. It was on Main Street right near my friend’s house. Two old ladies usually answered the door. They loved to see the costumes and always complimented us on how good and scary we looked. They gave us Hershey Bars every year. The red house is still there though now it is a business. I always think of those two old ladies every time I go by it. We were so excited to get those Hershey Bars. That memory so filled with delight had me switch to full size bars. The first year I did, a little girl was so excited she yelled to her father waiting on the street, “It’s a big bar.” I knew exactly how she was feeling.
Categories: Musings
Tags: candy, cleaning, Clothes dryer, costumes, dust, fun bars, Halloween, masks, pillow cases, popcorn balls, red apples, spider webs
Comments: 8 Comments
October 26, 2015
Today is the epitome of a perfect fall day. The sun is shining with that sharp glint it seems to have only in the fall and winter. The temperature is in the mid 50’s. A small breeze is blowing. Some trees still have color, but others have brown leaves clinging ever so slightly. The last of my flowers are still in bloom. The rest of the garden is filled with brown stalks. Soon they too will be gone as it is close to clearing the garden time. The deck is still open but I’ve called Skip to come and cover the furniture and the umbrellas and stow away the candles and decorations which made the deck so inviting last summer. I think when winter comes I miss the deck most of all.
When I was in elementary school, in the lower grades, art was mostly cutting and coloring. I remember coloring leaves. On a single piece of paper, there were a few outlines of leaf shapes each with a vein down the middle. We’d color them with our crayons then cut them out using those little scissors which always seemed to get stuck on my fingers. The leaves were yellow or red as all the real leaves were. After we’d cut them out, we’d paste them on construction paper to make a collage. I remember the paste seemed to get on everything, including my fingers. We used a round bottle of paste which had a brush attached to the top. I could never get just the right amount of paste on the leaves. Sometimes the leaves stuck to my fingers and when I pulled them off, the leaves stuck to my other fingers. My collage took a long time to finish, and sometimes the back of the paper was wet from the paste leaking through. I’d wave it in the air hoping it would dry. I always put it between books when I was going home or it would curl.
My mother made a big deal of my art work. I beamed.
Categories: Musings
Tags: art, blooming flowers, clearing the garden, closing the deck, coloring leaves, dead stalks, fall day, sunny
Comments: 9 Comments
October 25, 2015
Yesterday, when I rebooted the crazed machine, a new problem appeared. I kept getting a box wanting the password for something saved in the keychain. I’d cancel and another box would appear. Every password I could think of wasn’t the right one. I used my iPad to look for help but no suggestions worked. I finally opened in safe mode and read my mail but couldn’t do much else. I shut the machine down and rebooted too many times to count, but the same damn box kept appearing, and I kept putting in passwords I’d tried before which didn’t work. On one such attempt, the box disappeared and didn’t reappear. Horns blew, confetti fell, bands played and I was crowned queen with a tiara and a sash reading Miss MAC of 2015.
Today is dreary. The air is damp and cold. It’s a day to stay inside cozy and warm. I am just about better. The quarantine signs can come down. My neighbor dropped by yesterday to make sure I was okay as he hadn’t seen me. I assured him I was on the happy road to recovery.
My mother never liked to spank us. That privilege she reserved for my father. The infrequent times she did we had to pretend it hurt, but it really never did. She finally caught on and her tactics changed. She’d throw things at us. We could duck, but that didn’t stop her. She had a tactic for that too. After she’d thrown the slipper and missed, she’d tell whichever of us was the target to bring the slipper back. We knew she’d use the slipper on us if we brought it back. It was for us a no win situation. Bring it back and get hit or not bring it back and get it worse later. We usually brought it back. Luckily she wore soft slippers.
Spanking wasn’t really the main punishment in our house. We were usually sentenced to solitary confinement in our bedrooms, a punishment I loved. Spanking was reserved for the worst offenses. “I’m telling your father,” was always the bad omen. He was the ogre. The afternoon always stretched forever then he’d come home. Sometimes my mother never told him, and we could breathe again. Other times she was so angry she told him and I swear she always embellished the story. He never spanked us so long after the incident, but he did find ways to punish us, usually taking away something we loved or grounding us so we’d miss something we had been looking forward to. I always preferred my mother and her slipper.
Categories: Musings
Tags: computer problems, keychain access, Mac, queen of the computer, road to recovery, slippers, spanking, tell dad, throwing things
Comments: 10 Comments
October 23, 2015
Today is windy and cold. The heat even went on this morning but it shut off once the house got warm. My street, usually quiet during the day, is aflutter with workers and noise. The roofers are still across the street and another truck is down the end of the street working on something in another neighbor’s house.
I think I’m on the road to recovery, but I’m exhausted. I still have that deep voice suited for those obscene phone calls and I still have a cough. I love my afternoon naps.
When I was a kid, we used to buy Smith Brothers wild cherry cough drops. I loved them because they tasted more like candy than medicine. It was easy to finish a box eating one right after the other. I liked the bearded Smith Brothers on the package. They looked so serious and stern befitting men who made medicine. Mark’s beard was better than his brother’s.
Cough medicine always tasted awful. My mother would come in with the bottle and the spoon, and I’d cringe knowing what was coming. The cough medicine was always thick, and if I had known the word vile back then, I’d have used it. I opened my mouth reluctantly knowing I really had no choice. My mother was relentless.
My mother had her sayings and warnings for winter, her truisms. Starve a cold, feed a fever was one of them. She believed in the medicinal power of soup be it chicken or tomato and that’s mostly what we ate when we were sick. I always believed it worked. I felt warm inside and out, and it was never too much to have to eat. We had the bundle up or you’ll catch cold admonition if we dared go without a hat because as every mother knew most of your body head escaped through your head. We would never go outside in the winter with wet hair because we were bound to catch a cold. I used to think wet hair attracted cold germs.
When I was a kid I never doubted my mother and her medical knowledge. I know better now about hats and wet hair, but my mother was right on about soup. Yesterday I had chicken noodle and saltines. I could have been ten again.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bundle up or you'll catch cold, coughing, gross cough medicine, noise, roofers, sick, Smith Brothers, soup, Starve a cold, wild cherry cough drops
Comments: 20 Comments
October 22, 2015
Yesterday I had to go out. Gracie needed her heart medication, and I needed more cough syrup. The God of parking blessed me as I got a spot right in front of the drug store. I crossed the road, went inside and dragged myself to the back of the store to the pharmacy. My head was a ball of sweat (sorry for the graphic details. I should have warned you). After paying for her pills, I decided to adopt Gracie as my daughter so she can have an insurance card because the pills were almost $70.00. My medicine was far cheaper.
I had a couple of other errands on my list, but when I got back to the car, I crumbled the list and drove home. Today I am exhausted.
My friend left tomato basil soup and snickerdoodles on my front step yesterday. She, of course, knows the house is under quarantine or at least it should be. The soup was thick and delicious. It will be my dinner again today.
I’m about done here, I’m taking a sick day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: ball of sweat, cough syrup, drug store, errands, exhausted, sick day, snickerdoodles, the God of parking, tomato basil soup
Comments: 10 Comments
October 20, 2015
The mystery has been solved. My wheezing sounds like Dr. Who’s TARDIS when it lands. Tomorrow will be the one week anniversary of my having caught the plague. I’m thinking maybe cake. I’m prone to chocolate with a nice ganache filling and frosting.
The worst part of being sick is not seeing people. I called three this morning just to have a bit of human interaction but none of them were home. Poor Gracie had to fill in. I swear she was listening with her head cocked while trying to understand my conversation. She, of course, never replied. It is an exciting day for her with activity outside each door. In the front she gets to watch the roofers across the street and in the back she gets to watch my neighbor put up a concrete wall. I’m getting desperate enough that I might just watch the roofers. I’ll pop some corn, pull up a chair and enjoy the show.
Today is supposed to be in the 60’s. I may venture on to the deck just for some fresh air. I get the papers every morning and that’s about it for the world outside my windows.
Being kids and being sick were easy. Nothing slowed us down. Runny noses and coughs didn’t keep us from playing outside after school, but I do remember how gross those runny noses were on little kids. It was as if Kleenex had never been invented. Sleeves were the substitute. I remember being with my mother and needing a Kleenex. She always had a couple in her pocketbook and would rummage through it to find them. Usually they were at the bottom and crumbled. Some had lipstick stains and loose tobacco stuck to them. I didn’t care. I had grown beyond my sleeves so I took the Kleenex lipstick and all. She never wanted it back so I’d stick it in my pocket and generally forget about it.
I keep Kleenex with me in one of those little packages. The one I have now was in my Christmas stocking and has snowmen decorations. It’s crumbled and at the bottom.
Categories: Musings
Tags: chocolate cake, Dr. Who, ganache, human interaction, isolated, plague, playing outside, roofers, runny noses, TARDIS
Comments: 22 Comments
October 19, 2015
Today is cold, in the mid 40’s. The sun is back to playing peek-a-boo. Outside isn’t all that inviting so I guess I’ll hunker down for another day or two. I’m not completely rid of the plague as I still have a voice better suited for an obscene phone call than a regular conversation. My cough didn’t wake me up last night, but it is still hanging in there. My friend is bringing me bread, cookies and a lemon donut from Dunkin’ Donuts. I’m a happy woman, albeit sick but still happy.
When I was a kid, I don’t remember missing much school. I don’t think I was really sick enough all that often. A cold was nothing. It meant bundling a bit better with a new layer or two. We walked to school on even the coldest days. I remember my cheeks turned red and raw from the wind. We’d walk backwards away from the wind when it was the strongest and the coldest. School was a refuge where we could defrost and de-layer. I don’t think we really ever complained much. That was just the way it was. We all walked to school back then despite the weather.
I used to like soup on a cold day. My mother would fill the thermos from my lunch box, add some saltines, and maybe a half of a sandwich and some dessert. Usually it was tomato soup because I could drink it instead of needing a spoon. Bologna was the most popular meat for sandwiches. We always had tuna fish on Fridays when we couldn’t eat meat. My mother added mayonnaise, chopped celery and lettuce so the tuna fish wasn’t half bad. It was always on white bread. We never had any other kind of bread. I think I was a teenager before I found out bread came in many colors and flavors.
Back when we were kids our dinners were meat, potatoes, usually mashed, and a vegetable. We had bland palates. We were seldom introduced to any foreign foods though we did count spaghetti as Italian. My friends and I now eat all sorts of foods from a variety of countries. I know it was Ghana which first introduced me to really foreign foods like African, Indian and Middle Eastern. They opened the flood gates. Now I’m willing to try almost anything though I balk at insects, household pets and rodents.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bologna, cold, Cookies, obscene phone call, plague, soup in a thermos, staying home from school, sun playing peek-e-boo, tuna fish, white bread
Comments: 10 Comments
October 18, 2015
I can’t put my finger on which one but my wheezing reminds me of sound effects from a movie. They are a bit like metal scraping metal. I’m thinking this cold and being by myself for so long are affecting my brain. Sound effects from Wheezing?
Things are getting better. The cold’s grip is weakening. I only woke up twice last night and managed to sleep 11 interrupted hours. It looks like I have to go out sometime today. I haven’t any bread or soup or anything which tantalizes my taste buds. Sweets keep coming to mind. I’m thinking chocolate chip cookies are a possible remedy. I suspect, though, I’ll probably stay home. It takes far too much energy to get up and out even for chocolate chip cookies. Besides, I think I need a nap.
The day is cold. The sun pops in and out but is merely decorative when it appears. It isn’t warmth. I turned on my heat for one cycle this morning. My bed and comforter are sounding more and more appealing.
Not being around enough people is the reason I’m sick. When I worked, I was around kids with their various ills and ailments. I developed an immunity. I don’t even remember when last I had a cold though this may be a whole different strain of something. I think I caught it during my reunion last weekend. With all those people in one room, someone must have had a germ or two and shared. How kind!
I’m combing the TV for classic horror movies. I’m thinking the Holy Trinity of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. I’m not including The Wolf Man as I always feel really sad for Larry Talbot. He didn’t deserve his fate.
I watch NCIS even though Abby and her pre-adolescent prattle drive me crazy. Just a while ago I happened on the last 5 minutes of The Brady Bunch and left it on as I wanted to watch what followed it. During those 5 minutes I had an epiphany. Abby based her character on Cindy Brady. They have the same child-like voice, intonations and the same childish indignations. Trust me on this one. The only NCIS mystery left is why the prop guy doesn’t realize we hear the echo of the empty coffee cup when Gibbs puts his coffee on the desk.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Bread, chilly, Chocolate, cold, heat, scraping metal, sick, wheezing
Comments: 11 Comments
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