Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
May 3, 2014
Yesterday it was a joy to be out and about doing errands. I think I smiled the whole time. The day was brilliant with a bright sun and a temperature in the high 60’s. Poor Gracie had to be left home as I had too many long stop errands and didn’t want her stuck in the car in the heat. This time of year she comes when I go to the dump or take a ride. She was out in the yard most of the afternoon and spent part of it stretched on the deck enjoying the sun.
For breakfast when I was a kid, I had cocoa, oatmeal or eggs and toast during the winter, and in the summer I had cereal or toast with juice or milk. For lunch it was mostly a bologna sandwich. I was never good at slicing the bologna so my sandwich was always misshapen. Some of the bologna pieces had thick edges on one side and thin on the other. I added hot peppers from a jar and yellow mustard. Dinner was my mother’s choice. She knew what we’d tolerate and served it. Mashed potatoes were almost always part of the meal, and there was at least one vegetable. Hamburger in a variety of dishes was the most common meat. I didn’t realize why until I was older. Hamburger was inexpensive. My mother was creative. She made terrific meatloaves. She also cooked American chop suey without the onions and a Chinese dish with bean sprouts, water chestnuts, hamburger and crispy chow mein sticks on the top. Salisbury steak in gravy was another meal. Just plain hamburgers were mostly summer fare with hotdogs cooked on the grill. Sunday was the big dinner and we never had hamburger. Mostly it was a baked chicken or now and then roast beef. The last Sunday dinner I had before I went into the Peace Corps was roast beef, mashed potatoes and peas.
In Ghana I was still a creature of habit when it came to food. I had two eggs, toast and coffee for breakfast, fruit for lunch and beef and yam for dinner. I’d also have chicken now and then. Sunday was food from a chop bar, a hole in the wall eatery at the lorry park. Mostly it was fufu and soup. After the Christmas package came, Sunday was eat something from home day. Macaroni and cheese was a dish fit for the Gods.
I hadn’t good at making meals. I’m far too lazy. I’d have brie and crackers for dinner or eggs and toast. Lately, though, I’ve been using meat from the freezer and have had real meals: chicken thighs, mashed potatoes and a vegetable. Last night it was my old stand-by, peas, and a baked potato for variety. Dinner was delicious, and I felt accomplished.
Categories: Musings
Tags: American chop suey, bologna, eggs and toast, errands, fufu and soup, Ghana Peace Corps, Hamburger, macaroni and cheese, oatmeal, real meals, Sandwiches
Comments: 14 Comments
May 2, 2014
The sun is breaking through the clouds. Today will be spring.
This shoulder season is my least favorite time of year. Of late, I have been tired and bored. The cold and the rain have made exploring less inviting. Afternoon naps while away the time but make me no less lazy. A few errands force me out of the house, and even though I complain, I am grateful for the change. Today is one of those days.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have decks or porches or patios. We just had backyards, unfenced expanses of grass dotted with clothes lines close to each house. The little kids mostly stayed in those yards. My sisters sat on the back-steps right outside the door and played with their dolls. My mother could hear and see them, but she never really worried. They wouldn’t stray and the whole neighborhood kept an eye. We older kids would never be caught playing in the backyard during the daylight. We had the freedom of bikes. My mother would do her parental duty and ask where we were going. We seldom had an answer as we seldom had a destination. “Just around,” was our usual reply, and that was exactly where we went. We never had any money, not even the wealth of a dime or a quarter. Sometimes we made lunch, mostly a sandwich and some Oreos, and we’d stop somewhere to eat at no given time just when we got hungry. If something caught our eyes, we’d investigate. We’d stop, use the kickstand on our bikes and walk to see what was around. Sometimes we’d ride uptown, walk our bikes on the sidewalk and look at store windows. My favorite window was at the fish market. A tank took up most of the window and lobsters took up most of the tank. We’d stop at the Woolworth’s window and Kennedy’s Cheese and Butter Store where barrels sat out front and the window had chunks of cheese which was foreign to us. My mother never bought cheese in chunks. We’d usually end our uptown tour there and head down the street pass the fire station, the town hall, our school and church and the convent. By then it was late afternoon, and during this time of year it was getting cooler as the sun set. We’d get home, maneuver our bikes down the stairs into the cellar and go up stairs to watch a bit of TV until my mother had dinner ready. I remember lots of westerns and hot dogs, beans and brown bread.
Categories: Musings
Tags: backyards, beans and brown bread, bikes, cheese and butter store, fish market, hot dogs, just around, lobsters, Lunch, oreos, riding around town, shoulder season, spring, sunny day, Woolworth's
Comments: 18 Comments
May 1, 2014
Yesterday the rain started and last night it poured. I know this because I took Gracie to the front garden to eat the grass there. The rain was pelting my back, and I got soaked. Gracie had trash picked the garbage bag yesterday, and I caught her but not until after she had eaten something. Last night she started swallowing over and over as if she was going to be sick. She kept gagging as well. That was what made me think she must have eaten something or had something stuck in her throat. After the grass frenzy out front we went to bed. Within a half hour it started again, the swallowing. We got up, and I gave her spider plant fronds to eat. I turned on the TV and waited a while. She seemed better so we went back to bed. By this time, it was around 2 o’clock. She fell asleep but then it started again. We went back to the grass in the front. It wasn’t raining as hard. After a while, we came back in, and I decided to try to sleep with her on the couch. It was 4 o’clock when we fell asleep. I woke up around 7:30 because my legs were contorted to give Gracie room and they ached from the odd position. That’s when we went upstairs to bed. I slept until 11. Gracie seems okay. She is having her morning nap and ate two treats earlier. I’m exhausted.
Today is dump day which may perk Miss Gracie’s spirits. Rainy days make the both of us unenthusiastic about doing much. I love staying inside my cozy house with a good book and a fresh pot of coffee while I listen to the rain.
Today is May Day, a time for the May Pole strung with ribbons, a May queen with flowers in her hair and the Morris dancers. Today I will buy some flowers for the house to bring a bit of spring and to celebrate May Day.
I have taught the red spawn how to fly. It has moved to a smaller feeder and can’t see me because the deck rail hides its sight line. I slowly make my way stopping every few steps in case it hears me. I run the last few steps to the feeder, and the spawn has nowhere to go but down. It jumps off the feeder to the ground, almost a couple of stories down then runs up a tree, sits on a branch close to the deck and starts yapping at me with squeals and squeaks. Yesterday the spawn flew twice. I gave its landings an 8 and a 7.
Categories: Musings
Tags: dump day, flying squirrel, May Day, May pole, May queen, rain, sick dog. eating grass, staying up late
Comments: 10 Comments
April 29, 2014
Today is a stay at home and be comfortable sort of day. It’s cold and, surprise, surprise, it’s cloudy. The errands got finished yesterday and the bird feeders were filled. I added cayenne pepper to the seeds in the big one, the one the red spawn loves. This morning he was at a smaller feeder, the one with a cage around it. I ran out and he was stuck for just a bit in the cage. He panicked and was gone in a heartbeat. Maybe that cage will keep him away.
Speaking of rodents, there have been no more mice in the trap. I’m still at two in the trap and one in the washing machine.
I don’t remember seeing critters when I was a kid. I remember bugs the most. My favorites were the grasshoppers. In the field, every step I took disturbed a grasshopper who leapt into the air then landed back down into the tall grass. Sometimes I’d run through the field just to watch the grasshoppers leap one after the other almost like a choreographed show. At the swamp we watched the tadpoles morph into frogs. We’d lie at the edge of the swamp on our stomachs and watch the tadpoles dart through the water. Their dark bodies were easy to see and follow. Sometimes I’d poke a finger into the water just to watch all of the tadpoles scatter. Mostly I remember their tails and how those tails disappeared over time through the spring into the summer. My favorite part of the cycle was when they still had tails but looked like frogs in their upper bodies. They could have been from a black and white 50’s science fiction movie when giant bugs and oversized creatures destroyed cities and ate people. My favorite bug of all was the praying mantis. It was neat looking with those forelegs which always reminded me of a fighter ready to box. I watched one for a long time once from the front steps to the garden. It hid in the plants and caught and ate a moth. I was delighted.
Once in a while, while we were riding in the car, we’d see a deer in a field near the side of the road. The first one to see it would always yell deer and point so we wouldn’t miss it. We had Weiss Dairy Farm in our town, and I loved going by it to see the cows in the field or in the corrals. I don’t remember ever seeing a skunk or a possum amble through the yard. I never even noticed they were missing.
Around here I have seen wild turkeys, coyotes, deer, foxes, possums and raccoons. The pond at the end of the street has spring peepers. I can already hear their calls. I wonder if there are tadpoles yet.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 50's science fiction, cayenne pepper and bird seed, cold and cloudy, cycle of the frog, deer, frog tails, frogs, grasshoppers, spawn of satan, tadpoles, Weiss Dairy Farm
Comments: 20 Comments
April 28, 2014
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I woke up. There it was, the sun, shining through the bedroom window. The sky was even blue. I ran downstairs trailed by Gracie and Fern and opened the front door. The sun streamed through the glass and Fern got comfy on the rug in the heat of the sunlight. Gracie went into the yard, and I went onto the deck. There was a bit of a morning chill, but I didn’t care. We have sun, glorious sun.
One side of my den table is covered in sticky notes. A list of perennials for the garden fill one note. I chose flowers of varying heights because I particularly want some taller ones for the back. Another sticky has a small shopping list for today: bird seed, cat food and toilet paper. A third note is a reminder I need to go to CVS. The last note has a list of authors I want to read and a few apps I want to download to my iPad. Sticky notes are my salvation.
When I was around twelve or thirteen, I got a diary as a Christmas present. The cover was pink vinyl and had a cartoonish teenage girl on the front talking on the phone. The diary came with a small gold key, but I really didn’t need to lock it. Little in there was ever something I wanted hidden. In my first few entries I mostly talked about school and drill (I was on a drill team) and what my friends and I were doing which wasn’t much. I did mention sneaking out of school at lunch time pretending I was going home to eat. I also admitted to my diary that I had lied. I arrived back to school late after lunch some days and told the nun I was with Father somebody or other. She always bought the lie.
I didn’t have enough teenage angst to fill my diary. I wrote about being angry with my mother or father, but that anger never lasted long. I wrote about what a jerk my brother was, but that was no revelation. Life for me was really pretty easy. I got tired of that diary after only a few months and stopped writing in it. I put it in my drawer and just left it there. It got covered with stuff, and I forgot all about it until we were moving to the Cape. I was clearing out my bureau where I found the diary and started reading. It was about the most boring thing I’d ever read.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blue skies, boring life, Diary, leaving school, lists, morning chill, sticky notes, sunny day, teenage angst
Comments: 12 Comments
April 27, 2014
Today is the same as yesterday: rainy and damp, the sort of damp which brings a chill. It’s socks and sweatshirt weather.
Today while I was watching the rain fall I realized I have seen wonders all of my life. When I was a little kid, falling snow was mesmerizing. Each flake fell gently and silently and glistened in the street light. I watched from the front window to make sure the street was getting covered. That gave me hope for a snow day. Thunder and lightning never scared me; instead, I was delighted. The flickering black and white TV screen was like magic. Every day brought delights some as lowly as a grasshopper caught in a jar and others as lofty as an airplane with a white tail.
When I was older, a teenager, the wonders didn’t cease. My friends and I wandered Harvard Square, went to museums and watched movies at the Orson Wells. We rode toboggans at the golf course and went to drive-in movies for the fun of it. We celebrated Mardi Gras on the third floor of the library with our forbidden food. We felt like rebels. We were there to watch the start of the space race. All of my science fiction stories were coming to life. It was amazing.
College was the wonder of learning new things, of being on my own and of meeting new people from all over the place. My insular life started to disappear. I began to look way beyond my boundaries wondering what was there for me to find. I wanted to experience the unfamiliar, the unexpected and even the uncomfortable.
I couldn’t believe I was actually living in Africa. Everything was a wonder: the colors, the smells and the sounds. Each bus ride was an adventure. Market day was the most fun. I wandered the stalls, bargained and picked out my chicken. The amazing became the commonplace, and I loved every day.
In the summer, I watch the fireflies. In August I sit outside for the meteor shower. I still watch snowflakes fall under the back light. I love Christmas. In my backyard the trees have white lights which shine every night. I love looking at them through the windows. They give the yard a bit of fairyland.
It seems wonder stays with us all of us lives.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Africa, Christmas, flickering TV screen, grasshoppers, market day, snowfalling, space race, thunder, widening boundaries, wonder
Comments: 10 Comments
April 26, 2014
It’s not winter even though my heater is going so I’m stuck calling this spring despite the cold and cloudiness. I suppose it could be sprinter, a new name for the shoulder season which isn’t one or the other. Rain is expected later, and I can already feel the dampness and the chill. I just put on some socks.
That weird trap caught another mouse yesterday. That’s two for the trap and one for the washing machine. I checked around 10:30 last night, and there it was inside the trap circling the small perimeter. I got Gracie and the two of us went for a ride. The mice are being freed at a different spot than last year’s just for novelty sake. This second freedom run went rather quickly because I had already figured out on the first run how to get the mouse out of the new trap. I watched it running toward the woods lit by my headlights and wished him well and hoped he’d find his friend, the mouse freed the other day. Today’s update: no mouse this morning.
When I run into weird words, I always wonder how I know their meanings. They’re not everyday words, were never vocabulary words and are used mostly by pompous people who scatter their conversations with archaic words so as to appear learned and intelligent. I chuckle. Pomposity does that to me.
My mother made great tapioca pudding. I liked it hot, scraping the pan hot, and I liked it cold. It was also one of my dad’s favorites. My mother made it more often than any other pudding, even more than chocolate. Sometimes I buy already made tapioca, and none of it ever compares to my mother’s.
I loved my mother’s pepper and egg combination. She made it for the beach and for road picnics when we were young. When we were older, it was often a side at barbecues at my parent’s house. My mother originally got the recipe from her sister which, I figure, gives it the stature of a family recipe. The squash dish always on our Thanksgiving tables came from another of my mother’s sister, but my mother unknowingly tweaked it. She switched butternut for zucchini. My uncle’s sausage cacciatore is one of legend. My sisters and I make it.
Food ties us to each other more than anything else.
Categories: Musings
Tags: chill, cold morning, family recipes, mouse trap, peppers and egg, pomposity, rain, sausage, squash, tapioca pudding, vocabulary
Comments: 8 Comments
April 25, 2014
The red spawn of Satan is driving me mad. I am Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. I swear the spawn sits and stares at me then blatantly jumps onto the feeder with a swish of its tail. Today I am super- soaker shopping.
Around where I lived when I was a kid, there were woods, the all-season swamp, blueberry bushes and a huge field filled in the summer with grasshoppers by day and fireflies by night. On one exploration we, my brother and I, found a small box-like shack in the side woods. It was made up of odd boards and must have been newly constructed or we’d have seen it before then. When we looked inside, we saw magazines, girly magazines as we used to call them. We left them there and high-tailed it out of the shack. Later, when I was older, I figured the shack probably belonged to some teenage boys who were hiding the magazines, but I never saw anyone there. I never went back inside. I think I was afraid.
Some things stay with you. I remember the sound of the roller skates on the street and the different sound they made on the black top. I also remember how odd my feet felt once I’d stopped roller skating. They sort of tingled on the bottoms. It was different with ice skating. The sides of my feet hurt and walking felt strange. Downhill on a bike was the best feeling of all. It was speed, and I loved it when the wind whipped my hair. I never used the pedals. I let the incline do the work. While walking home from school in the rain, we’d stomp a big puddle over and over and watch the water fly. The puddle would get smaller and smaller until almost no water was left. We got soaked. My shoes were so squishy bubbles broke through at the laces. Once we got inside the house, my mother right away made us take our shoes off.
Every late afternoon we sat and watched television. We sat on the floor close to the set. My mother was always in the kitchen making dinner. My father wouldn’t be home until later. He’d come in the door wearing his topcoat and his fedora. He’d put the fedora on the top shelf of the closet by the door and he’d hang up his topcoat. He always wore a suit underneath.
When I was a kid, my life was filled with constants. They made me feel safe and comfortable.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bike riding, blueberry bushes, downhill bike ride, field, girly magazines, ice and roller skating, puddles, rain, red spawn of Satan, shack in the woods, Swamp
Comments: 14 Comments
April 24, 2014
The morning has already been a busy one. I let Gracie out then heard a bang. I turned and saw the gate had flown open. I looked for Gracie hoping she hadn’t escaped and then I saw her still in the yard, close to the gate. I yelled stay as if that had any meaning for Gracie then ran down the stairs and shut the gate. Catastrophe was averted.
The second problem started last night when I went to do laundry. I was about to stuff the clothes in the washer when I noticed a baby mouse in the tub of the washing machine. I used my sweatshirt, captured the tiny thing and just threw him over the fence. I imagine he’ll be back. Figuring there were more, I went looking and found my have-a-heart trap. I tried to set it but one end wouldn’t work. The mouse would have eaten the goodies then left on the side which didn’t close. I decided to use the weird trap I’d bought a while back. It is small, a circular wire cage on a piece of wood. The top has a hole but when the mouse enters the hole it can’t get out because of wire prongs circling the bottom of that hole. In the front is a small escape hatch with a wire hook which I have to open to free the beast. I decided to give it try, threw in some bread and put it in the cellar in a spot I can see from the stairs. This morning I looked and lo and behold I had my first mouse. Gracie and I went for a ride. I stopped to free the beastie, but I couldn’t get it to leave the trap. He held on no matter what I did, including a bit of tail tugging. Finally I banged the wood with the trap door facing the ground and out the mouse fell. He was gone to his new neighborhood in a heartbeat. At least he’d been well fed before the trip.
I changed my bed, finished my book, emptied the litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, did two loads of laundry, caught mice and watered the plants. I need a vacation.
Yesterday it rained all day. At times we had thunder and even some hail. Today is sunny but still a bit chilly. Gracie and I have a leftover errand postponed from yesterday, and that’s it for the day. I’m done in!
Categories: Musings
Tags: baby mouse, busy morning, freeing the beastie, hail, mouse, mouse trap, open gate, rain, thunder
Comments: 18 Comments
April 22, 2014
The morning was sunny but has since begun to get cloudy. Gracie was on the deck earlier when I heard her critter alert bark. I went out and she was trying to get at something hiding behind the deck box. I looked and nothing was there. The mighty watch dog had missed the critter leaving from the other end.
Yesterday was a wonderfully quiet day. I went back and forth between watching baseball and the marathon then read all afternoon. I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, but I didn’t get dressed, and I didn’t make my bed. Today, however, my dance card has a few entries, mostly errands, but I’m also having lunch with a friend, Thai food, one of my favorites. I’m even going to change my bed. I feel like a whirlwind of activity.
When I was a kid, I never had set chores. My brother had to empty the basket into the barrel, and he always complained about being put upon. Sometimes, though, I had to empty the inside garbage outside. My mother had a plastic triangular garbage holder with holes in the bottom. Its shape fit perfectly in the corner of the sink. When it was full, one of us took it outside to the garbage pail. The pail was in the ground and you used a pedal to open the lid. I remember all the maggots crawling on the garbage, but I was too young to be horrified by maggots. I was mostly fascinated. The garbage man came once a week and would haul out the pail and empty it into the big barrel he carried. I thought that was the grossest of all jobs until I met the night soil man in Ghana who emptied the outhouse pails. Now that was and still is to me the grossest job of all.
Almost none of the workers who came to the house had names. They were always men and each was defined by his job. We had the garbage man, the trash man, the mailman, the milk man, the newspaper man, the junkman and the scissors-knife sharpener man who rode his bicycle on the street and rang a bell to announce his arrival. The only name we knew was Johnny, the ice cream man. We never thought it strange that we didn’t know the names of the men who came so often to our house.
Now I know the names of the people who come to my house. There are far fewer than when I was a kid. Bob is my mailman, Lori is my newspaper deliverer and Sebastian is my landscaper. The milk now comes from the store and my knives and scissors need sharpening. I am the trash and garbage man who goes once a week to the dump. I haven’t seen a maggot in years.
Categories: Musings
Tags: critter bark, garbage man, garbage pail, Ghana, gross jobs, maggots, marathon and baseball, nameless workers, night soil man, quiet day, reading, sunny and cloudy, trash man
Comments: 10 Comments
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