Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
March 30, 2015
Yesterday was a gold star day. I was busier than I have been in a long time. Maybe the weather prompted all the industry, maybe boredom. It’s difficult to decide. I emptied the litter boxes then checked the fridge for expired foods, packed the trash and recycle bags into the trunk then Gracie I went to the dump. My thinking had been to go late figuring the dump would be quiet. Wrong! It was filled with cars waiting their turns to get near the bins. We were lucky and didn’t have to wait long. When I got home, I filled three bird feeders and two suet feeders. This morning the birds were back. I watched them from my kitchen window. The regulars, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, titmice and woodpeckers, flew in and out grabbing seeds every time. The woodpecker stayed a while eating suet. A gray spawn ran up and down the deck rail but didn’t go at the feeders. He was looking for spilled seeds. Yesterday afternoon I fixed all the timers so the outside decorative lights come on and go off at a decent time, not three in the morning. I did two loads of wash and didn’t leave a load in the dryer, so unlike my usual habit of letting a load sit for a week or two. This time I folded them and even put them away.
All that industry still perplexes me. Usually I plan those chores over a few days or even not at all. I don’t like to tire myself. Today I was thinking of cleaning out the cabinet but I was able to stop myself in time. Maybe I have caught the spring cleaning bug. I know I wasn’t immunized against that one. I guess I’ll have to use self-control.
When I was a kid, I didn’t have any chores to do. My mother pretty much did everything. She made my bed every day and did all the cooking and all the dishwashing. Sometimes I’d help clear the table, but that was it and it was voluntary. I never thought about it. That was the way it was in my house. My brother emptied the basket. That was his chore. He complained of inequality but nobody listened. I think it was sort of idyllic.
The day is decidedly ugly: damp, cold and grey. Showers are a possibility. My dance card is filled this week. Today is my only sloth day, and I’m taking full advantage. I figure I deserve it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: busy day, chickadees, dump trip, empty dance card, filling bird feedres, gold star day, industrious, litter boxes, outside lights', showers, spring cleaning, washing clothes
Comments: 8 Comments
March 29, 2015
Yellow and purple crocus are almost blooming in the garden. I now believe in spring.
Snow is still on the deck, but I could get to the bird feeders for the time in months. I am so happy to feed the birds again and will welcome their return. I just hope the red spawn has forgotten about me as it hasn’t been around since the seeds disappeared. Maybe he found better offerings elsewhere. With the snow nearly gone, I have a few outside chores to do. I have a metal holder for string and lint and yarn which hangs from the tree. The birds grab the construction material to help with building their nests. That has to go up yet. The lights on the backyard trees go on and off at weird times because the electricity died for a few hours this winter and I could never get to the timer to reset the clock. That I’ll do today. These are fun chores, spring chores, snowless chores.
My father used to make us popcorn. He always used the big pot with the lid. First some oil and a kernel or two were put into the pot. When the kernels popped, my father knew the oil was hot enough for the rest of the popcorn. He’d put in the rest of the kernels then hold the cover on the pot and then keep moving the pot in a circle on the stove so the bottom kernels wouldn’t burn. We always stayed to watch. It took a while, but then we’re hear the popped corn hitting the cover. More and more popping sounds meant all the corn was popping. When it came down to only a few pops, it was time to take the pot off the stove. Melted butter was always added to the bowl of popcorn then my dad would scoop the buttered popcorn into four bowls, one for each of us, so we wouldn’t fight over the big bowl.
The sound of corn hitting the lid with a pop, pop over and over and the smell of popping corn are permanently etched in my memory drawers. Even now when I smell corn popping, the image of my dad at the stove immediately comes to mind, and I can see him clearly standing at that stove just a bit bent over swirling the pot.
Categories: Musings
Tags: adding butter, bird feeders, corn hitting the cover, Crocus, fun chores, hand popping, nest material, outside lights', popcorn, pot with a lid, spring, spring chores, timers
Comments: 20 Comments
March 28, 2015
Saturday has always been the best day of the week for me. Torrents of rain falling, snow covering the ground (notice I said covering) or winds tossing tree branches back and forth have mattered little to me. They are merely dramatic backdrops. On Saturday’s I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t even have to get dressed. I love Saturday’s.
Today is rainy. Yesterday was rainy. It will rain all day into the night. The snow is just about gone. That makes me happy and even hopeful.
On Easter Sunday, my sisters loved their pouffy dresses, their white ankle socks with ruffles and their patent leather shoes. I wore dresses as well until one Easter when I wanted a more casual look. I ended up with a suit and a pink blouse with a Peter Pan collar. I don’t remember my shoes, but they weren’t patent leather. Maybe I was channeling my future self who thought she’d be a lawyer. Every Easter, in the afternoon, we’d go to my grandparent’s house in the city. Everyone was there: my aunts and uncles and too many cousins to count. I remember a conversation I overheard just before going into the kitchen. My name was mentioned so I stopped to eavesdrop. My aunt wanted to know why I wasn’t in a dress and why I was totally poufless. My suit didn’t pass muster. My mother simply said it was what she wanted.
My guest has left. She is on her way to Pittsburg. We had a wonderful visit. We toured the cape, stopped at a few shops and had a wonderful shrimp dinner last night. I had to chuckle as she always introduced herself as Francisca and then went on to say Miss Ryan was my Peace Corps teacher in Ghana 43 years ago. We laughed a lot. That’s what she thanked me of the most.
Categories: Musings
Tags: chilly, Easter clothes, good-bye snow, Laughter, patent leather shoes, pouffy dresses, rainy, Saturday, shrimp dinner, touring Cape Cod
Comments: 10 Comments
March 27, 2015
Home again, home again jiggety-jig! My connection problems are a thing of the past. Happy, happy!
The weather is getting colder. I was lulled into a false sense of spring when we actually reached 50˚ on Wednesday, but Mother Nature is now cackling and rubbing her hands in glee at having duped me. They, as in weathermen, are saying possible snow showers on Saturday so spring is still in the wings.
It is raining again today, and the dampness chills the bones. Francisca and I, however, are intrepid souls, and are going out when I finish here to a few shops and to the Zion Union Heritage Museum.
I give my two friends an Easter basket and have already bought trinkets for them and am hoping for a couple of more when I shop today. Some are useful while others are just whimsical. The candy I’ll buy next week. I think I’d be too tempted to eat it if it were already around the house. We, as kids, always had inexpensive chocolate. We didn’t care. Candy was candy. Now, I buy it all at the candy store.
Our Easter baskets were the best. There was candy: a chocolate rabbit which was a tradition and a necessity, jelly beans which always tasted the same no matter the color, big, hard colored beans with white in the middle and the filler candy like a little rabbit or a chocolate egg. Small toys were also in the basket. I remember yo-yos, paddle balls, a box of crayons, an Easter coloring book, a stuffed animal, usually a small rabbit, and even a pail and shovel. The grass which covered the bottom was always plastic and the rabbit with missing eaten ears used to stick to the grass. The adult me thinks it sort of gross, but the kid me didn’t care and just pulled the grass off rabbit.
Easter will come as it must, but it will not be in spring unless all of the vestiges of winter disappear.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 50˚, chocolate rabbit, cold again, Coloring book, Easter baskets, jelly beans, paddle ball, plastic grass, Snow, yoyo
Comments: 10 Comments
March 26, 2015
I apologize for not writing today. It was way out of my control. I could not get on-line this morning around 10:30. I was on-line earlier so I was perplexed as to what had happened. I waited as sometimes Comcast does a bit of maintenance and shuts down for a while. By 1, I knew it was a problem for me; of course, I called Comcast and spoke to a variety of people. It was person number 4 who gave me a way to check to see if it was the router or the modem. I was rooting for the router (good alliteration) as they would have had to send me a modem. It was the router.
To make an entire afternoon a short story, I went to Radio Shack and bought a router. My MAC would not recognize the start-up disc but I was able to click something to chat with a Linksys tech. He and I chatted and he \gave me two pages of instructions as I had to reconfigure the router. The first time didn’t work, my mistake. The second time did. IT was 4:30.
I was patient and barely cursed during the whole afternoon.
Today has been a foggy day. It was warm, and there is still snow so the fog swirled around the trees and, when coupled with the gray sky, seemed to surround us. It rained in the afternoon, a bit of rain then heavy rain then back to a bit. After the rain the fog returned. Gracie and I were out doing some errands. My company, Francisca, was gone the whole day selling her Bolga baskets and missed a ride by the ocean in the fog, one of the best of all reasons to live on the cape.
Sorry about the rant today and the short post. I promise I’ll do better tomorrow.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a million steps, Comcast, fog, interact access, rain, Router
Comments: 14 Comments
March 24, 2015
No weather report today. Day after day is always the same. It’s depressing. The only bright spots are the large numbers of green shoots in my front garden. They give me a bit of hope.
When I was a kid, we lived in what we called the project. The houses were all duplexes, one side the mirror image of the other. Living there was only open to veterans and their families. Kids were everywhere. We first lived around the small rotary which the last of the duplexes circled. Below those duplexes was the field surrounded by woods. A long fence in the backyards separated our houses from the privately owned houses behind us. I used to climb the gate by the parking lot as it was a shortcut to my aunt’s house. I never once, in all the year’s we lived there, see the gate opened. No car ever used it. No car ever really used the parking lot either. Most cars were in front of the houses. My dad always parked his on the side road as our house was on a corner with the hill on one side.
Most times nothing much happened in the project. In the summer you could, now and then, hear people yelling at each other through the opened windows. We always listened. At supper time, mothers yelled out the doors for their kids. Once there was a fight between two men who were neighbors. I remember one man was a photographer who took pictures for the local newspaper. I don’t remember who the other man was. I do know the fight started because the wife of the photographer was German. He had met her while he was in the service on duty in Germany. This was in the mid 1950’s, and most of the men in the neighborhood had served in World War II. The guy I don’t remember called the wife a Nazi and a few more choice names and then the fight started. They rolled and wrestled on the grassy hill, and I remember the photographer’s sweater vest was pulled over his head so he couldn’t see to defend himself. Everybody was out watching. I don’t remember how the fight was ended. I figure neighbors must have grabbed the fighters and separated them as I would have remembered the police coming.
That fight was the talk of the neighborhood for the longest time. The men never spoke to each other again. The photographer and his wife and son eventually moved. That is the only time in my life I have seen adults physically attacking one another. Burned in my memory is the image of the two men rolling down the hill trying to punch one another. I remember the sweater vest had the argyle pattern popular in the 50’s. The son of the photographer wore glasses.
It is strange what our memories hold on to and what is lost over time.
Categories: Musings
Tags: back gate, climbing the fence, depressing, dinner's ready, duplexes, field and woods, fight, green shoots, insults, name calling, parking lot, people yelling, police, project, same weather
Comments: 6 Comments
March 23, 2015
If I’d only looked out the window, I’d have thought sunny, warm day, and I’d be mostly wrong. The sunny part is right, it’s difficult to miss that one, but warm it isn’t. It is really cold, winter cold, hat and heavy coat cold. It was 23˚ this morning and will stay this way until Thursday when it will reach 50˚, but there’s a kicker. It will rain all day Thursday. It is like getting a beautifully wrapped gift which is empty when you open it.
As I get older, I get a bit grumpier and far less likely to abide extremes. Too cold-I’m complaining; too hot- I’m complaining; too much snow- massive complaining. We haven’t had much rain so I’m holding off on the complaining probably until Friday. Given I live alone, I complain but no one hears me except the dog, and I don’t get a lot of responses from her. She just wags her stub tail and hopes for a treat.
Being a kid was so much easier. I didn’t care if it was hot or cold or rainy. I’d wear the least amount of outside winter clothing I could and hope my mother wouldn’t catch me. Coming home from school in winter usually meant my hat was in my pocket, my coat was unbuttoned and my mittens were probably still in my sleeves. I just didn’t notice the cold. In summer, I didn’t notice the heat. Even the hottest days didn’t stop me from playing softball or horseshoes or walking to and from the pool on the other side of town. I didn’t have a fan or an air conditioner at night. I was exhausted from the day, and that was enough.
Even in Ghana I accepted the world as it was. Complaining seemed discourteous. I was a guest. The lack of rain for months in the dry season was just an opportunity to say, “Looks like rain,” to my friends or for them to make the same observation to me. It wasn’t going to rain, and we chuckled at the humor of it all. Day after day would be over 100˚, but we’d find ways to adapt. When it finally rained just about every day, we never had an umbrella or a raincoat. We just got wet. The cold nights in December were wonderful, and we burrowed under wool blankets, happy for the sensation of feeling cold.
I miss the days of snow angels, of catching snowflakes with my tongue and of building snowmen with twig arms, but I’ll just wax nostalgic and stay inside warm and cozy. I still love puddles and seldom pass one by without whacking it with my feet and watching the water spray. I guess there are some things you just don’t outgrow.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 23˚, complaining, exhausted at night, freezing cold, Ghana's climate, grumpy, no fan, no mittens or hat, not noticing the weather, sunny day, too cold, too hot, too much snow
Comments: 14 Comments
March 22, 2015
I have not escaped winter’s wrath. My head aches, my throat is scratchy and my cough scares the dog. Luckily I have a doctor’s appointment this week. Unluckily I am entertaining. It is difficult to be gracious and welcoming when your only wish is to be in bed under the warm covers; however, I will rise to the occasion. Besides, that’s what home restaurant delivery is for.
The snow disappeared but the cold stayed. Getting the newspaper was a quick out and in. I didn’t even take time to admire the morning, but I did notice the birds singing.
March has always been one of those months when little happens. It isn’t spring yet except for the date and it isn’t really winter either as the season is losing its strength. Every warm day gives us hope then winter rushes back in and the nights are freezing.
This is a rant about things I notice on TV. Newscasters always either carry tablets or have them on the desk in front of them, but they never once look at them. During winter you seldom see the huffs of people’s breathing when they’re outside in the cold air. The cups of take-out coffee are always empty. Gibbs on NCIS has yet to drink a cup of coffee. He puts the cup to his mouth and pretends to drink, but the cup is never heavy and the coffee is never hot. On Rizzoli and Isles they mispronounce the names of Massachusetts’ cities even though the show supposedly takes place in Boston. They ride on highways which don’t exist in this state. On the Big Bang Theory nobody really eats the take-out. They toy with their food though once in a while Howard takes a bite of his lunchtime salad. I get the no eating as too many takes would mean too much food, but they could make it a bit more realistic. Really, how times does one dish of food need to be moved about with a fork?
I can watch the worst movies on the syfy channel. I loved Sharknato as ridiculous as it was, but it was intended to be that way. I just suspend disbelief, and it all works out for me, but for programs which are meant to be real life, I scoff at the little things. They drive me crazy.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, Cough, empty coffee cups, Gibbs, March, not eating on TV, sick, spring and winter, Syfy channel, tablets, take-out coffee, toying with food, TV, winter's wrath
Comments: 10 Comments
March 21, 2015
Today is a down day for me. Last night it snowed about 2 inches, and it is snowing right now. Earlier this morning, it was large, wet flakes but now the flakes are smaller and more apt to accumulate. The grass I could see is now buried. The tree branches have their layers of snow back. The winter seems endless, and I am well beyond my tolerance point.
Gracie and I are going to the dump later. I figure it will be fairly empty on a day like today. After the dump I will do nothing and continue my nothing pattern into tomorrow. This was a busy week for me. I don’t like busy weeks.
When I think back to winter Saturdays when I was a kid, they were always filled. The snow was fun. Our sleds got quite the workout all winter long. Every new snow fall meant the roads were covered, and the hill was ours. There was also the matinée. It was about a twenty-minute walk uptown to the movie theater, but we never thought about the time or distance. We walked most places all winter. Late Saturday afternoons were for inside and playing board games on the living room rug. We’d lie close to the board, each of us usually on one side of it. We played Monopoly, but it was never a favorite of mine. Finishing it usually took far too long, and it had little excitement except for hoping not to fall on a property with a hotel. We played card games like flap Jack, crazy eights and the most boring game of all, war. Sometimes, when I’d been outside too long and was still cold, I’d get comfy under my covers and read. I always had a book. Trips to the library were usually once a week, sometimes after school but mostly on Saturdays. I think Saturday was my favorite day of the week back then. When people ask me if I like being retired, I tell them it’s like every day is Saturday.
Categories: Musings
Tags: board games, card games, Crazy Eights, endless winter, layers of snow on the branches, matinee, Monopoly, Sledding, sloth day, snowing, the week was busy, wet flakes
Comments: 13 Comments
March 20, 2015
Happy first day of spring!
My friends and I went to the beach, as we do every first day of spring, to see the sunrise. The sky was spectacular colored as it was in the deepest pinks and reds in bands over the jetty. The low tide was lower than I can ever remember. The ocean was so still it could have been a lake on a warm summer morning. We heard seagulls squawking as they flew over. It was cold but bearable as there was no wind. The sand was rock hard as we neared the ocean. We watched the top arc of the sun appear over the rocks. It was huge and the brightest of yellows. We stayed until the sun had totally risen awing at its color and beauty and taking pictures all the while, but then the cold finally got to us. We went to the car where we sang our traditional welcoming songs to spring, Morning Has Broken and The Red, Red Robin. We finished our first day of spring festivities with breakfast and hot cups of coffee to warm the innards. It was a most wonderful morning.
I went back to bed for a couple of hours when I got home. When I woke up, the sky was grey and the sun had disappeared, probably exhausted from its spectacular entrance this morning. I thought how lucky I had been to see the sunrise and to see those colors framed by the blue sky and a few puffy clouds.
We will be having some snow tonight. It seems Old Man Winter is being recalcitrant and continuing to overstay his welcome. It is well past his time to pack up and leave, but he refuses and still lingers, cursed and unwanted. Leave, Old Man Winter, leave. Spring is here and welcomed with open arms.
Categories: Musings
Tags: first day of spring, grey skies, low tide, Morning Has Broken, Old Man Winter, out to breakfast, reds and pinks of the sky, seagulls squawking, squawking seagulls, still ocean, sunrise, When the Red Red Robin Comes
Comments: 12 Comments
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