Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
March 19, 2015
Last night my friends and I sat around the table enjoying each other’s company. We also shared a wonderful dinner, my St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage, a day late maybe but still a tasty dinner to celebrate the occasion. Last night was also bitterly cold. Today is sunny and warmer, but it is in no way warm enough to welcome spring.
The paper today said this winter and the first two months of 2015 were the hottest on record globally, with a chilly east coast sticking out like a cold thumb in a toastier world. Yup, that would be me.
This morning I could go back in time. On TV I had my choice of Daniel Boone, Dragnet, McHale’s Navy or Quincy. All I was missing was a bowl of cereal, my Rice Krispies, a seat on the floor in front of the TV, and my mother telling me to move away from the screen or I’d go blind.
Yesterday the window on my back door got steamy while dinner was cooking. I was reminded of the kitchen in the duplex where we lived until my sister was born. The kitchen was small, almost a galley kitchen. At one end of it was a window and the table and chairs were in front of the window. Every night my mother cooked supper and every night that window got steamy. I’d sit at the table and use my sleeve to clear the window so I could look outside. I’d watch my mother cook. She’d stand over the stove stirring whatever was in the pots and would sometimes open the oven to check on the meat. I know potatoes were in one of those pots. We always had potatoes.
Today is an empty dance card. I’m glad as I’m tired from the last couple of days of kitchen duty, of setting the table, peeling veggies and cleaning up after dinner. All that’s left for today is to empty the dishwasher and take a nap.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cooking dinner, corned beef and cabbage, Disney's Zorro, Dragnet, freezing cold, McHale's Navy, old timeTV, potatoes, Quincy, steamy windows
Comments: 10 Comments
March 17, 2015
We’re back to rainy and bleak. We’re also back to cold as it will get down to 18˚ tonight. This melt and freeze cycle is creating potholes all over the roads. I’ve been lucky so far as I’ve seen the holes in time to avoid them. Some people weren’t so lucky as a few hub caps are lying near the biggest holes.
What’s left of the snow is ugly. More of it will disappear because of the rain. All the roads are finally clear of the icy ruts. I’m just hoping the combination of the clear roads, rain and 18˚ won’t cause black ice.
My mother, father, two aunts, my 80-year-old grandfather and I visited Ireland together. It was my second trip there. It was the first for everyone else. I loved traveling with my parents and my grandfather was a trooper. He kept right up with us. One aunt always went with the flow; however, the other aunt I would have sold to the Irish Travellers whose caravans we saw throughout Ireland. She had a couple of heavy suitcases filled with enough clothes for an around the world trip. Every night my dad had to haul them out of the van to her room and then back to the van in the morning. We generally stayed only one night in each spot, usually a B&B, so why she needed both suitcases I never understood. I did ask and she said she didn’t know we would be stopping night by night. She thought we’d stay in one place. That still didn’t explain the amount of clothes and why both suitcases every night. I suggested she bring in what she needed just for the night and the next day, and she got huffy. That aunt is only five months younger than I am; she is number 8, the baby of my mother’s family. That gave her a strange sense of entitlement. Huffy should have been her middle.
My father loved boiled dinners, corned beef and cabbage for those of you living outside of New England. My mother would make the dinner a couple of times a year and always on St. Patrick’s Day. My favorite memory is one dinner when the potatoes disappeared. My mother was filling my dad’s plate with the carrots, cabbage, onions and meat. She used her spoon to hunt for the potatoes. There were none. She saw a couple of lumps of what might have been potatoes floating but that was the only sighting. When she brought dinner to my dad, he wanted to know right away where the potatoes, his favorites, were. My mother admitted she thought they disintegrated. My dad rushed out and hunted through the pan. He didn’t find any either. It became a family legend: the year of no potatoes.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Categories: Musings
Tags: 18˚, black ice, bleak, Boiled Dinner, corned beef and cabbage, heavy suit, Ireland, Irish Travellers, onions, potatoes, potholes, rainy, St. Patrick's Day, ugly snow
Comments: 14 Comments
March 16, 2015
Yesterday Boston broke the record for most snow ever in a winter. There were no celebrations, no sparklers or fireworks, just groaning and complaining. Snow stopped being pretty about 13 or 14 inches ago. It snowed here as well, and the night was cold with a howling wind. I was lying in bed listening and thinking in black and white about Dracula or the Wolfman.
The morning was busy starting with the dentist at ten. It was an interesting experience. First I had a different hygienist then came the coup de foudre. The new hygienist’s chair was heated and had three different massage settings. It was wonderful. My back felt better and my teeth were whiter.
I also stopped in a couple of other places for St. Patrick’s Day stuff, and I wanted to check to see if the store had cut up turnip. They did not but did cut it for me. Now I just have to skin it. Tomorrow will be the rest of the shopping.
I went to St. Patrick’s Grammar School so we always had March 17th as a holiday. The public schools in my town didn’t have the day off, but those in Suffolk County which included Boston did. It was for Evacuation Day which celebrates the date when the British troops evacuated Boston during the American Revolutionary War. Nobody really calls it that. They all call it St. Patrick’s Day.
When I was a kid, I walked everywhere and was never late. In winter I got to school in the morning with enough time to freeze while waiting in the school yard for the bell. At the movies I ended up eating half my candy before the cartoon even started. In high school I’d wait for the bus, and if it was raining, my hair and shoes always got soaked. I used to tell my students that punctuality is the sign of a civilized society. They were never impressed.
I don’t like waiting for people who are late. It seems as if they don’t care about keeping me waiting. They always have an excuse.
If I’m alone and not expected anywhere, time doesn’t matter. I move at my own pace. The day is broken into activities, not hours. I don’t even wear a watch.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Dracula, Evacuation Day, howling wind, punctuality, Snow, snow record, St. Patrick's Day stuff, turnip, walking everywhere, Wolfman
Comments: 6 Comments
March 15, 2015
Yesterday it rained all day and into the evening. Much of the snow is gone and whatever is left is sad-looking, beaten down and dirty. A whole section of my backyard has reappeared, and in the front I can even see sections of my lawn on both sides of the house. The first things I saw when I went to get the papers were the white buds of the snowdrops by the steps. That made me glad. I know now the green shoots survived winter’s onslaught. Now they can thrive with the coming of spring.
I would have said today is cold, but it is actually 40˚. The chill is from the dampness. Nothing seems to dry. The rain has left the streets still wet and the above freezing temperature is melting the snow. Water is everywhere. The giant mounds on the sides of my street are shrinking, and the water from the melting snow is rolling downhill. There are no sewers so the water rolls until the hill ends and then it puddles.
My house seems coziest in the daytime darkness. I am warm and comfortable. I have plugged in the different strands of lights so the house is gently lit. The kitchen has a red glow from pepper lights. The living room has lights on branches standing in tall stoneware bottles in the corners. Small wooden houses in the dining room are lit and the light shines from their windows. The bathroom has a nightlight, a snowflake, whose season has finally passed. This room, my den, where I spend the most time has a lit lamp on the table and no other lights. It shines on the pages of my book, and that’s all I need.
At night I still like looking at the colored lights left on the deck rail and on trees in the backyard. When Gracie goes outside in the dark, she triggers her yard sensor lights. The shadows of the trees are beautiful. They stretch the width of the yard. I like to see the lights so I stand on the deck and Gracie, when she’s finished, usually joins me. We stay until the light finally goes out then we go inside the house.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 40˚, aboce freezing, colored lights, cozy house, green shoots, lawns reappearing, lit trees, melting snow, no sewers, pepper lights, rain, reading lamp, seashell lights, small houses with lights, snowdrop flowers
Comments: 8 Comments
March 14, 2015
The day is bleak and rainy. The house was cold when I woke up so I turned on the heat and then finished the rest of my morning rituals. I made the coffee, got the papers, filled the dog’s dry food bowl, changed the water in the dog dish and then sat down to read the papers. The animals got their morning greetings then they went back to sleep. They are, of course, in their usual spots. Mornings never change around here.
Last night my palm tree was lit for the first time since the big snowstorm. It was unexpected. The tree had stopped lighting in February, and I hadn’t been able to check the connections as they were under feet of snow. All the melting this week uncovered the cord, and I saw the plug had disconnected from the timer. Reconnecting it didn’t work. The plug looked as if it had taken too much of a beating under all that snow. I put it back into the timer as best I could. Whatever I did to the plug seemed to work. When I was checking for the dog last night, I was happily surprised to see the lit palm tree. It is a tradition. Even the neighbors made comments when it wasn’t lit. They’ll be happy to see it again.
The first palm trees I ever saw were in Ghana. My geography book had come to life. I was thrilled. We were headed to Winneba and the road to that first training site was along the ocean. It was lined with palm trees. I could see coconuts hanging from below the fronds. Some trees looked bent in odd ways. I was finally somewhere exotic and not a scrub pine was in view. Little did I know what else awaited me.
Categories: Information, Just Because, Just Complaining, Music, Musings, Old Time Radio, photo, Spoken Word, TV Theme Music, Video
Tags: bleak, coconuts, Ghana, lit palm tree, morning rituals, rainy day, real palm trees, sleeping dog lies, tropical, Winneba
Comments: 4 Comments
March 13, 2015
I read it in the paper so it must be true. Spring is finally on its way. Although today’s forecasted high will be 32˚, there will be more sun, a sure sign of the changing season says the Cape Times. Fern agrees. She has started lying on the floor in a crescent of sunlight shining through the front door. Her fur is warm to the touch, on one side anyway.
Some of my deck furniture is no longer hidden by snow, and my road is almost completely clear of ice. Three more shoots and a whole section of grass have appeared in my front yard. The sky is the deepest of blues. More and more birds sing every morning. I get seed and flower catalogues every day in the mail. My papers are easy to retrieve. They are no longer sliding out of reach on piles of snow. I get out of bed happy to greet the morning, to welcome one day closer to spring.
Yesterday I went out to lunch, to a new place down cape. You sort of have to know where this place is as it doesn’t have a sign. It was filled with people who knew where and why. The food is excellent, the restaurant has wi-fi and offers lots of coffee drinks. I went with a cappuccino and a porchetta sandwich with pickled onions on a toasted ciabatta. It was a good choice.
The older I get, the longer my list of doctors. I refer to them as my stable of doctors because there is no group name. You just add an s to the singular which pales in comparison to a murder of crows or an intrusion of cockroaches. I seemed to have scheduled most of my stable for days in March. Two come with blood tests, the same tests, but they don’t share. Monday is my sixth month dental check up. I still do PT twice a week for my back. I suppose I should be glad that all parts of me get checked and probed. I just hope they don’t find anything, not even a cavity.
Categories: Musings
Tags: an intrusion of cockroaches, blood tests, cappachino, cats in the sun, ciabatta, deck furniture, deep blue sky, flower catalogues, green shoots, more sun, murder of crows, new restaurant, porchetta sandwich, PT, singing birds, spring is coming, stable of doctors, sun on the floor
Comments: 8 Comments
March 12, 2015
The morning is downright cold. I’m thinking winter is trying to hold on, trying to keep spring away, but it’s too late. The temperature no longer matters. I have dismissed winter. I haven’t quite welcomed spring, but I figure we’re in the shoulder season betwixt and between and winter is losing ground, literally and figuratively. A snow storm isn’t an impossibility as we sometimes have one in March and even in April but they are the swan songs. This morning, after getting the papers, I saw a green shoot in my front garden. It survived the snow. I figure I have too.
The Boston Globe reported that the Red Sox are trying to entice young kids to the ballpark. It seems kids think the game is boring to watch, and they’d prefer their baseball as a video game. I get that. The games are long, especially Sox games. Other sports seem to have constant, or almost constant, action. The best played baseball games have low scores with nothing much going on. The fun games are usually when balls are hit out of the park and the score is high. When I watch at home, there is always plenty of time for bathroom breaks or a trip to the kitchen for snacks. I seldom miss any action. I wouldn’t dare do that during a Pats’ game. Nope, I wait for the commercial. There are new rules this year to speed up the game. My favorite new rule is pitchers no longer have to throw those silly way outside the strike zone balls on intentional walks. The manager can simply signal the umpire. The one I expect to cause the most problems is hitters must keep at least one foot inside the batter’s box at all times. David Ortiz comes to mind. He steps out of the box, leans his bat between his legs, spits on his gloves and then pounds his hands together after just about every pitch. I always think it’s a bit gross, but baseball players have rituals and superstitions which must, in their minds, be honored. Stepping out of the batter’s box to spit on gloves to David is essential.
I’m thinking a cattle prod might be more helpful. Give the players a couple of warnings then the next time they run afoul of the rules bring out the cattle prod. A zap or two should work.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Baseball, baseball rituals, cold morning, good-bye winter, green shoots, hello spring, long baseball games, no more intentional walk ptiches, Red Sox, spring, superstitions, voodoo, winter
Comments: 16 Comments
March 10, 2015
The alarm went off at 7:15. It was an unfamiliar sound, even an intrusion. I jumped out of bed to turn it off and also took the battery out of the clock, a noisy clock with a loud ticking. I then had to shake away the grogginess of the early morning and figure out why I’d set the alarm. I remembered I had a 9:00 library board meeting and had added extra time for papers and coffee, the morning rituals I seldom forego.
Gracie and I got to the library early so we listened to the radio then I noticed the bird, a bright red cardinal, sitting on the branch of a still slumbering tree surrounded by snow. The red was vibrant, and the bird was kind enough to stay for a while. I watched the whole time.
Only one other person came for the meeting, the meeting that wasn’t. I dropped my library books into the return slot then came home and rang the librarian who told me the president of the board had broken her arm and was now in rehab. I expect calling about the meeting was low on the list of priorities for our madam president.
Did I mention the sun? It waited until later in the morning to make its appearance but here it is for the second day in a row. Last night it was cold enough to frost the car windows and re-freeze all the melted ice and snow, but today the sun will be warm again and the temperature will rise throughout the morning. It will be in the 40’s, almost tropical. For the rest of the week that weather cycle will continue: a sunny, warm day followed by a freezing night followed by another sunny, warm day. The sun is accompanied by the constant sounds of dripping, melting snow. I’m beginning to think of that sound as music.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 7:15, Alarm clock, bright red cardinal, intrusion, library board, papers and coffee, slumbering trees
Comments: 12 Comments
March 9, 2015
The sun is shining and today’s temperature will be in the high 30’s. All week the daytime will be warm, even hitting the high 40’s by Wednesday. All I can hear is dripping, and it almost sounds like rain. The icicles are melting. Most are already gone. The roof has very little snow left. I can see some of the road in front of my house. The ice path on my walk melts a little every day and is getting narrower, smaller. It freezes again at night, but there is less of it in the morning. The piles of snow on the deck are shrinking. That sure as heck sounds like the stirrings of spring to me.
My hyacinth has bloomed. Its flowers are white. It reminds me that under the snow in the front garden are bulbs just waiting to pop their green shoots above the ground. I love it once they finally appear. I check their progress every morning on my way back from getting the papers. I am a bit impatient waiting for the shoots to grow taller and for the first glimpses of buds. I watch as those buds grow higher than the shoots and begin to show the first hints of color. Usually the dainty snowdrops bloom first followed by the dafs. The irises and hyacinths take a bit longer.
Every season has its own smells. In spring the air is fresh and filled with hints of grass and flowers. I love the first warm, spring day when I can open my windows to clear the house of winter’s stuffiness, but they stay open for only a while. By late afternoon, the air is chilly, and it’s time to shut the windows until the next warm day.
Today is an empty dance card.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bulbs under the snow, dafs, fresh air, hyacinth, irises and hyacinths, open windows, seasons and smells, snowdrops, warmer days
Comments: 14 Comments
March 8, 2015
When I went to get the papers, I could hear a bird singing. Its song was so beautiful I stood outside in the cold to listen. All of a sudden it was a spring morning when every bird greets the first light of day and the air is filled with music. This one bird is the beginning of that chorus. Though it was perched on a branch covered in snow, it still found reason to sing. The bird had found its own spring. Now I’m looking for mine.
Warmer weather is on the way. I used to think warmer was the 40’s this time of year. Now I’m happy with above freezing. Yesterday, a sunny day, I could hear the snow slide off the roof and fall to the deck. The thick icicle on my outside front lamp has melted and only a few icicles are left hanging off the edge of the house. Maybe, just maybe, we’re starting to turn the corner from one season to another.
Gracie and I are doing some errands today. She gets her dump run, her stop for dog food, and I get my stop for human food. Tonight is our Amazing Race night. We DVR it on Fridays and do our traditional Sundays starting with games and appetizers and ending with the Race and dessert. I’m the designated appetizer server. We’re having one with apples, walnuts, honey and cheese; another, a hot appetizer, with cherry tomatoes, bacon, mozzarella and goat cheese and, if I have the time and energy, a third with feta, tomatoes and scallions. They all sound so delicious on paper I hope they translate well to real life.
This is a quiet week for me. Last week was totally busy with something every day except the storm day. This week I am booked for a couple of hours of PT and lunch with a friend. That’s it for the whole week so I am adding a bit of excitement by trying a new spot for lunch. I also need to buy a new toilet seat. My cup runneth over with delight.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Amazing Race, appetizers, bacon, bird songs, dog food, dump run, feta cheese, greeting the morning, human food, icicles, melting snow, scallions, snow on branches, spring birds, tomatoes, warmer weather
Comments: 8 Comments
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