Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
June 7, 2015
All glorious adjectives are springing from my dancing fingers to describe the morning. The sun is where are my sunglasses bright and the sky is the bluest blue in any palette. It is warm, the warmest in a long while. I can hear my deck calling. My book is nearly finished so it and I will amble outside later to enjoy this lovely day. Gracie is already outside and has been all morning. That is one smart puppy!
Two red spawns have found each other, and I’m thinking they’re spooning. This morning both of the red beasties were on my deck eating at the bird feeders. They ran as soon as I grabbed my hose. Later they were chasing each other up and down branches and tree trunks. That’s all I need, a family of spawns living in my backyard.
I used to think squirrels were cute standing on their hind legs begging for peanuts when I visited the Boston Public Garden. They were everywhere running and chasing each other. I think they were the first wildlife I ever fed when I was little. My dad would give me a bag of peanuts in the shell and once a peanut appeared hordes of squirrels ran and stood all around me hoping for one. I’d throw a peanut or two and the crowd of squirrels would head to the thrown nut. I thought it was fun, but then again I was too young to realize I was perpetuating a species of spawns.
My backyard has attracted a variety of animals. I saw a coyote back there a couple of times but not since the fence. Inside the fence there has been the giant raccoon, the spraying skunk, the playing dead possum, the baby grey squirrel chattering at me as I saved it from the mighty hunter, Gracie, and a mouse. The last one was sort of funny. Both Gracie and the mouse were around a tree trunk-one chasing and the other being chased. It reminded me of the tigers running around the tree until they turned to butter. I finally grabbed Gracie and the mouse ran to safety. I expect both were a bit dizzy.
Categories: Musings
Tags: begging squirrels, bluest blue, Boston Public Garden, brightest sun, Coyote, glorious day, hordes of squirrels, possum, Skunk, tigers turning to butter, two spawns aspooning, Wildlife
Comments: 8 Comments
June 6, 2015
The rain started during the night and has just stopped. Rain, even a bit of it, seems to dampen sounds. I don’t even hear birds. I did hear Gracie barking in the back yard, but I couldn’t find what prompted the warning. She has since come in and settled down for her morning nap, probably exhausted from all her barking. Fern too is napping for no other reason than just because she is a cat, and that’s what cats do.
My list did not get finished yesterday so I have to do the errands today. That’s okay as the tourists aren’t here yet for weekends, other than Memorial Day weekend, so I’ll find a place to park and not have to wait in line. I have three stops.
My father used Saturday mornings for his errands. Sometimes he would invite one of us but mostly he went alone. My Dad knew everybody in town so his errands took a while. He went to a two-seater barber shop. The one in Mayberry always reminded me of the one uptown. There was no Floyd but there was the same barber for years. He never had to ask how my father wanted his hair trimmed. He knew. The Chinese laundry also knew how my father liked his shirts. Back then my father only wore white shirts and they were always starched. I never thought about my dad taking his shirts to a laundry and not having my mother do them. That was just the way it was. Much later my father wore different colored shirts which didn’t need to be ironed fresh from the dryer. The first was a yellow button down collar shirt I gave him one Father’s Day. My mother said he’d never wear it, but he did. Another stop for my father was to visit his friend, a pharmacist at his own drug store. It was a small store crammed with anything and everything that bigger drug stores had. It even had a four stool fountain. Those stools had red covers. The last stop for my dad was sometimes at the Red Men where he’d have a beer with the guys. My dad was a member for a long time and one year was even Sachem. The organization is the nation’s oldest patriotic fraternal organization of American origin. I never knew that until I was much older. I just thought it was place for guys to sit around and have a beer or a drink. Come to find out it is both.
Some days develop personalities. Sunday is church day. Monday is the dreaded back to work day. Tuesday and Thursday are just days of the week that nobody seems to mind. Wednesday is hump day, the middle day, the starting line for the countdown to the weekend. Friday opens the weekend. We used to go out Friday afternoons when there were happy hours. It was a weekly ritual. Saturday is for chores and errands but it the best night of the week. Anything special happens on a Saturday night.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a beer or a drink, barber shop, barking dog, Chinese laundry, days of the week, errands, happy hours, hump day, Mayberry and Floyd, morning nap, quiet, rain, Red Men, special Saturdays, starched white shirts, to do list
Comments: 15 Comments
June 5, 2015
This morning is warmer than yesterday morning but still in the 50’s. We have sun and blue skies and a bit of a breeze. It’s a pretty morning. Lots for me to do today including laundry, sweeping the deck, doing some errands and painting a part of the fence.
Last night my friends came for dinner. Other than the mixed grill, everything I served was new to me. That’s taking a chance, but usually my dishes are successes so I head confidently into the unknown. Every dish from appetizers to dessert drew compliments. I was asked to share two recipes, both simple to make, and I was pleased to oblige.
Last night I used the grill for the first time this summer. There should have been fireworks and majorettes and weather warm enough for dining al fresco, but that will come soon enough.
The first barbecues I remember were hot dogs and hamburgers on a small charcoal grill. My father always did the grilling. It is a strange phenomenon that men who never touch a stove do all the outside cooking. I think it harkens back to cavemen hauling home a piece of meat to be cooked over the fire. Tending the fire was men’s work which translated over time into cooking on a grill. My father cooked the meat perfectly no matter what it was. The menu changed as I got older, and my father cooked sausages of all sorts, steak tips, pork tenderloin, chicken and one of my personal favorites, ribs. My mother made all the side dishes: potato salad was the family favorite.
My father always cooked with charcoal, but his was the light a match and toss it on the briquets type which smelled a little like chemicals when it was first lit. He waited and watched and knew exactly when to start the cooking by reading the coals. He kept a spray bottle near him in case of flares ups. He’d sit out there, have a drink or two and cook, usually by himself. His attention was all for the food, not conversation.
He’d pile the meat on a serving platter, come inside and announce dinner was served. We were ready. The salads were made, the table set, and we were hungry for that food we had smelled cooking through the opened windows. It was always kudos for the chef.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barbecues, briquets, cavemen, charcoal, cold night, dinner guests, errands, first time dishes, hamburgers, hot dogs, hunters, Laundry, mixed grill, outdoor grill, painting, pretty morning, sausages
Comments: 6 Comments
June 4, 2015
May was the dry month with barely any rain. June, though still young, is the cold month. The temperature has dipped to the 40’s at night and only the 50’s during the day. Sunday is predicted to have a high of 70˚. I can hardly wait. I’m thinking a book, some crackers and cheese, a cold drink and my deck.
Eat your vegetables. Sit up straight. Wash your hands. Wipe your feet. Take your coat off the chair and hang it in the closet. Put your schoolbag away. Change into play clothes. Brush your teeth. Do your homework. Don’t sit so close to the TV or you’ll go blind. Leave your sisters alone. Don’t slam the door. Go outside and play. Don’t stand looking with the refrigerator door open. No cookies before dinner. Get your feet off the table. Get ready for bed.
When I was a kid, life was an endless chain of commands. My mother said the same things every day, and most days she’d tempt us by asking, “How many times to I have to tell you?” I really wanted to answer her but I never did. I was learning discretion, and I also knew I’d have been sent to my room until at least college. The truth was I just didn’t hear her. It was blah, blah, blah to me. Every kid figures out at an early age how to ignore parents, especially those repetitive commands which blur together and lose meaning. We’d move back from the TV then move right back to where we were as soon as my mother left the room. The back door always slammed. What self-respecting kid is going to stand there and close it gently? Little sisters were to be picked on. It was a universal rule. If I didn’t stand looking into the refrigerator, how would I know what was there? What kid ever wants to get ready for bed? Vegetables? Clean hands?
My mother would yell, “Are you listening to me?” I’d nod or say yes despite having no idea what in the heck she’d said. I figured the truth, no, would have been the totally wrong answer. It would have made my mother madder, and I’d have been accused of being a smart aleck which wasn’t really far off the mark.
I learned early on shading the truth is sometimes the best response.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 70˚, cold month, deck weather, dry month, Eat your vegetables. Sit up straight., endless chain of commands, How many times to I have to tell you?, ignore parents
Comments: 10 Comments
June 2, 2015
The rain came last night, stayed a while then left earlier this morning. In its wake is a dank day, a sweatshirt to stave off the cold day. I don’t see much hope of sun. Gracie and I are going to the dump. Days like today are perfect dump days because most people are smarter than I and stay away when it rains. I don’t really care. I’ll dry. Gracie cares even less: she stays in the car.
Gracie’s water dish and my toilet bowl looked a bit like the beach yesterday. Gracie buried her chew bone outside, and her face and jowls acted as a shovel to push dirt over her treasure. She came inside and drank to clean her face and left behind sand, lots of sand.
When I was a kid, I never minded being dirty. My hands were sometimes filthy because I caught grasshoppers in the field who left what I figured was brown poop on my hands and grabbed frogs out of the swamp water covered with bugs and algae. I usually had black blots on my fingers and hands from my bike’s handlebars grips. My pants had grass stains and dirty knees. None of it bothered me. We played hard when we were young. It was proof of a day well spent.
I always think the amount of dirt you can tolerate is directly proportional to your age. The younger you are, the dirtier you don’t mind being. I think that makes life easier. Now I hate it if my clothes have stains or if I drop a bit of lunch on my shirt. Out comes the Tide Pen. I used to carry Shout Wipes, but the pen is much easier to use. I now espouse the cleanliness next to Godliness maxim.
I do look forward to being really old simply because stains will no longer matter. The 90-year-old on my library board often wears a shirt with a stain. I chalk it up to her age and think nothing of it. It’s a sort of freedom granted to the very young and the very old. I am stuck in the middle.
Categories: Musings
Tags: being dirty, dank day, dump day, rain, stains on clothes, swampy water, sweatshirt day, youth
Comments: 3 Comments
June 1, 2015
I apologize for the lateness of the hour. Every Monday my neighbor and I chat. It is her way of improving her English. She is Brazilian and does speak English but is hoping to learn better pronunciation. Today her son, who is graduating from high school on Saturday, joined us, and the three of us chatted about everything including corn ice cream, a favorite in Brazil. I couldn’t imagine ice cream and vegetables being a good pairing. Her son agreed.
The day is damp and cold. My house is only 65˚ so we’re back to sweatshirt weather. It has started raining, and it is a welcomed rain. My garden needs the moisture as does my grass. My pollen-covered car could use a good cleaning and a heavy rain will do the trick.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of going to faraway places. My geography book was a wish book filled with pictures of where I would travel. I was in Rio on the top of the hill standing below the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer. I went up the Amazon on one of those long wooden boats while two tribesmen paddled. Each tribesman had a bone through his nose. I wandered down the rows of banana and cocoa trees growing on plantations. I saw the sphinx in Egypt from atop a camel. Riding in an airplane was part of my dream. Though no one I knew traveled just for pleasure, I knew for certain I would.
I once walked from my grandmother’s house in East Boston to Logan Airport. My uncle, only two years older than I, was the guide. It was a long walk, miles, but I didn’t care. We wandered the terminals, the old wooden terminals. I stood on the observation deck of one of those old terminals and watched the planes coming and going. From displays scattered around the gates I took brochures describing airline routes, sights and hotels. I watched people with their suitcases getting in lines to board planes. I was both wistful and jealous.
When I got back to my grandmother’s, my parents were livid, but I thought their anger a small price to pay for what had been a grand adventure. A few days later, I started reading the brochures and cutting out pictures. I began an album of my trip. I described the plane ride and flying into and being surrounded by clouds. The pictures of my hotel rooms had arrows pointing to my bed. All the wonderful sights we saw in the different cities were pasted on the pages and described by me in a first person account. I was traveling the world.
I filled the whole album with wishes and dreams.
Categories: Musings
Tags: boating on the Amazon, camel, cold day, damp day, dreams and wishes, Egypt tribesmen, imagination, learning English, Logan Airport, Rio, strangeness of the English language, travels
Comments: 10 Comments
May 31, 2015
Clouds dot the sky this cool morning. A breeze comes and goes. The sunlight is bright. Today is another in a string of perfectly lovely days.
I didn’t do much yesterday other than potting a plant. Today I’ll plant the rest of my new flowers and sweep the deck. I do have to get a few things to make my dessert for game night, and I’ll go shortly. The morning is the best time to shop once the tourists arrive.
Last night I watched To Kill a Mockingbird. It is among my favorites and a superb movie. I used to teach the novel to ninth graders. Prior to their reading it, I gave my students a sense of the time and the place, essentials to understanding the events of the novel. Usually my kids were pulled into the book, and they found they liked reading it despite themselves. For some it was the first novel they ever finished. I remember how indignant they were with the outcome of the trial. Their senses of right and wrong were dependent on circumstances, not race or color.
My first encounter with a person of color was when I was three. My mother and I were in an elevator at a Sears, the big Sears near Fenway Park which has been closed a long time. Three of us were alone in an elevator, the other person being a woman of color. I had only seen white people all my life so I asked my mother about the woman’s color. The woman took offense and started screaming and calling us names like white crackers and white trash. My mother was embarrassed. I was scared. I didn’t understand why she was screaming. I was only three.
I don’t remember what my mother said to me afterwards, but whatever it was both comforted and reassured me, just what I needed right then.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a breezy day, bright day, lovely day, Person of color, sense of right and wrong, sunny, To Kill a Mockingbird
Comments: 10 Comments
May 30, 2015
On spring Saturday mornings, my neighborhood was filled with the sounds of fathers mowing lawns with their push mowers. All we could hear were whirrs and clicking sounds. After that came the scraping sounds of rakes. I always felt reassured in a way. The world was as it should be on a spring Saturday morning.
Today is a day much like yesterday. The morning air is cool and filled with sunlight. Some leaves on the backyard trees are in sun while others are caught in shadow. I keep going to the deck just to stand a while in the beauty of the day. While there, I’ve been watching the cardinal couple. They must have a nest nearby as they are always on one or another of the branches by my gate.
I scared a spawn this morning. It was on the back side of the feeder and neither one of us saw the other. When I was right at the rail, it leapt and I jumped.
My lawn is being mowed. The guy has one of those standing mowers which make so much noise. It took him all of five minutes to do my lawn. I can also hear other mowers and edgers being used around the neighborhood. The Saturday ritual continues but is different, noisier, much less personal, much less fun to hear.
When I was a kid, life was serendipitous and spontaneous. I had no obligations, no chores and no places to be. I never needed a list. Now I make lists. They’re my way to stay organized and push myself a bit as I love sloth days. This has been a busy week for me mostly doing errands so today is an around the house day. I have a few flowers to plant, a table to paint, a really small table, a few feeders to clean, the ones for the orioles and the hummingbirds, and my deck needs sweeping again. I have decided, though, not to put them on a list. That would make me obligated.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bright morning, chores, cool, edgers, lists, loud Saturday mornings, power mowers, push lawn mowers, Saturday rituals, serendipitous and spontaneous., sounds of mowers
Comments: 23 Comments
May 29, 2015
I looked up perfect day in the dictionary and found a picture of today. The morning is cool, the sun bright, the sky the darkest of blues and the leaves on the trees sport the look of newness which comes in spring. Both the sky and the leaves are so lovely you’d think they were painted from a palette filled with the brightest colors.
Mostly I never think about making memories. They just sort of stick and now and then something brings one out, and I am flooded with a forgotten memory. I suspect my memory drawers are overflowing because I only get snippets of that memory before it all comes back. I remember getting on the bus to high school and I remember the smell of the bus. On the route was a huge hill, and we went down it on the way to school. We took a left at the end of the hill and a bit further on was a corner store and a few houses which looked alike. On the left side of the road was a beautiful house seemingly out-of-place as all the other houses lack the stateliness of this one house, but as we rode further into Winchester beyond the downtown, all the houses were beautiful and huge. The last thing I remember of that trip I took every day was a stop where Liz got on.
We used to visit my aunt the nun once a year in Connecticut. I have several single pictures, memories, of those visits. Every time we went we’d stop on the Connecticut Turnpike at a brick rest stop. My mother would check us all to make sure we were clean, our hair was combed and our clothes were neat. I remember sitting in the visitors’ living room. We whispered because the convent seemed to engender whispering. A nun always brought us cookies and something to drink. She never made any sound. My aunt didn’t know what to do with us so a tour of her school was a part of the visit. I remember the smell of chalk.
I remember standing outside my room in Winneba, Ghana at the start of training. My room was on the second floor, and from there I could see the rusted tin on all the roofs and the greens of the trees and bushes. If I close my eyes, that scene still comes back to me.
Not all my memories are happy ones, none of us are that lucky. I think the saddest of my memories have their own drawers. Those memories come unbidden at times and bring with them the pain and the sorrow. They remind me that life is a farrago, a mix, a jumble of feelings.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a palette of colors, beautiful day, bluest sky, bus ride, Cookies, light green of the leaves, memories, memory drawer, my aunt the nun, sunny, visiting Connecticut, Winchester, Winneba
Comments: 8 Comments
May 28, 2015
The wind is gone, replaced by still, humid air. We may have rain later today, but the clouds right now look more like your usual hanging-around clouds. I have a few errands today. Yesterday was around the house day. I fixed the cabinet door for about the fourth time, watered all the plants and scrubbed the deck table and chairs. The deck is ready should the weather be inviting.
You’d think living in Africa would have made me inured to bugs. It didn’t. I am ever sensitive to crawly things. This morning I felt something on my arm. It was a tick, now deceased. I am still grossed out. The dog has none. I check her all the time. Now I have to keep checking myself.
The spiders are active. I saw a huge one I recognized as having once starred in his own scifi movie, and I saw baby spiders starting webs on the windowsill plants. The strands go from frond to frond. I don’t hurt spiders, but I do clear out their webs. I think my house would like Miss Haversham’s in a short time if I didn’t. The other day a spider was on a jar on the counter. I took him outside and shook him loose. Faster than a speeding bullet he slid down to the deck on a strand he had just made.
When I was a kid, I loved watching bugs. At the swamp, dragonflies, darning needles to us, flitted and zig-zagged across the water. They were all sorts of colors, and I remember how their wings seemed to shine and reflect the sun. Snakes, especially garden snakes, were common. They’d be in the garden, and we’d give chase, not to hurt them but to watch them slither. I always thought that was pretty neat.
In Ghana I saw poisonous snakes for the first time. I remember my students pegging rocks into the bushes outside the classroom block. I asked why. “To kill the snake, madam.” One of my hens lost a chick a day probably to snakes. That hen quickly became dinner. I saw a boa once and once was enough.
My friend Christer’s special guy Hector, “Isn’t around anymore.” Loving and being loved by a dog is wonderfully amazing. A dog loves you no matter what. Gracie’s stubby tail wags and wags when I talk to her. She looks into my face as if she understands every word. The only problem is dogs don’t live as long as we do. I am so very sorry, Christer.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cloudy, crawly things, humidity, Miss Haversham, poisonous snakes, snakes, spiders, still day, ticks, webs
Comments: 16 Comments
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