Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
January 31, 2014
The day isn’t pretty, but it’s warmer than it has been so I’ll take it. Icicles are dripping and falling off the eaves. Gracie barks at the sound of them falling thinking we have an intruder. The snow is melting off the roof to the deck and sounds like rain. Miss Gracie has been in and out all morning, another sign of a warmer day. Her paw prints cover the kitchen’s tile floor. Maddie the cat, on the other hand, sits with her head inside the lamp shade close to the bulb. I’m thinking it is her way of fighting seasonal affective disorder. The light isn’t needed for reading any more but I’m leaving it on for Maddie.
I am bored with winter. I am sick of staying inside and tired of being cold. I want the snow gone. I want spring. This weariness, this languor, isn’t unexpected. It happens the same time every winter, at the beginning of February, two weeks from pitchers and catchers and three weeks from position players reporting for spring training. My mind gets filled with images and sounds. I can see the grassy, plush outfields and hear the crack of the bat hitting the ball. I think about watching the ball arc and sail over the wall followed by shouts and cheers. I can’t wait for baseball to start. I check the sports pages every day for even the smallest tidbit about the Sox. Forget the Celtics, easy to do this year, and the Bruins. Bring on my Red Sox.
My sister gave me a Red Sox sweatshirt for Christmas. I now have three: a blue World Series 2007, a green one with Red Sox across the front and now the new red one with Boston emblazoned on it for all to see. No one will doubt my allegiance.
I’m more than ready to hear Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Baseball, grey sky, icicles, melting snow, paw prints, Red Sox, Red Sox sweatshirts, spring training, tired of cold, tired of winter, warmer
Comments: 14 Comments
January 30, 2014
If someone was giving out gold stars, I’d get a few. I feel so accomplished. This morning I had blood drawn, went to the bank, the dump, the pharmacy and Dunkin’ Donuts, all by 9:30. Yesterday the @#$%$$#dump was closed because of the snow on Tuesday night. My trunk had been filled with potentially smelly trash so I was not happy. Luckily it stayed cold. Now I am done with errands and intend to stay inside cozy and warm. I have earned it. A sloth I will be.
Both my papers had stories about Atlanta. One headline was “City Brought to Standstill by 3 Inches of Snow.” It gave me the chuckle I suspect was meant. We got between 4 and 5 inches overnight on Tuesday which is not even considered a snow storm, a dusting maybe. The schools were even open. I swept the walk all the way to the car which plowed easily through the snow in front of it to the road without needing any shoveling or sweeping. By late morning the sun was shining, and the road was down to pavement. Today the sun is shining again with that shimmering light that only comes with winter and the sky is stark blue, both helping the day take on the illusion of warmth. It was 20˚ went I went to the dump.
The threshold between childhood and adulthood is hazy and comes in steps. Thinking of snow as a bother is one of those steps. When I was a kid and it had snowed, I was just so excited. I’d grab my sled and we all, the whole neighborhood, sledded, and flew down the hill whizzing by those trudging up the hill, those who had already flown. We’d build snow forts and use water to ice and reinforce the walls. They’d last for weeks. We had snowball fights. The world was a giant play-land. Some time or other all that stopped and snow on the ground meant shoveling and not much more. That’s still my current stand about snow. Once you cross the line, it’s usually forever.
The sledding and the snow forts may go, but a few pieces of that childhood and snow never disappear. I think snow is lovely when it falls, when the world is hushed. When I was young, I’d watch the flakes fall in the shine of the street light by my house. Now I turn on the outside lights and stand at the door to watch the flakes falling and sometimes I put out my hand to catch a few.
After the storm, I used to pile on the winter clothes, put on a hat and mittens, shovel the walk and then free my car. Sometimes it took hours depending upon the amount of snow, and I’d come close to freezing. The snow had stopped being pretty and had become a nuisance. Now I stay and wait for Skip, my plowman. The snow is pretty again.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 4-5 inches of snow, accomplishments, cold day, dump, dusting of snow, errands, shoveling, Sledding, Snow, snow flakes, the fun of snow
Comments: 19 Comments
January 28, 2014
Cold isn’t enough of a descriptor for the weather today. Bone-chilling comes a bit closer but even that seems inadequate. Yesterday was “…Just spring when the world is mud-luscious.” The snow was soft, perfect for snowballs. The streets had reappeared and the icicles were melting from the roof. It was like a day in early March when the first green shoots start appearing and winter begins its swan song. Today, though, is pure winter. The snow is hard and the water of yesterday has frozen making it slippery especially along the sides of the road. I walked gingerly and carefully to the driveway to get my papers. The high today will be 20˚. The only bright spot is we will not be getting any snow. That will fall in the most unlikeliest places like the Virginias and the Carolinas where more than six inches are predicted. Forecasters have called this storm a once in a generation winter storm. I have to think kids will be thrilled with their first ever snow day.
I have errands, but they’ll have to wait until tomorrow because of the dump. It is closed on Tuesdays, and I really need a dump run so I might as well lump all of the errands together for tomorrow. I do fear the dump most of all. It is open ground and like the frozen tundra with the wind blowing and howling and with no place to find shelter. I will even wear my winter coat for the first time this season. I swear I saw a polar bear on the last dump run.
My mother used to keep her heat so high we wore t-shirts around the house when we visited her in winter. She was always cold. I finally understand why. The older we get the less resistant we are to the cold. I always wear a sweatshirt around the house now. I used to wear only a long-sleeve shirt and was plenty warm. That won’t do any more. Socks with my slippers are now a necessity. Nothing is worse than cold feet. I haven’t moved my thermostat any higher to combat the cold. I’ve decided to layer, even in the house.
I got an energy report from the gas company. It seems I burn more gas than my neighbors. That makes perfect sense considering four of the neighboring houses are empty most of the winter and my two closest neighbors heat with oil. I guess I win the prize by default.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, dump run, errands, howling wind, layers, mud-luscious, once in a generation winter storm, Snow, socks, sweatshirts, tundra, winter
Comments: 18 Comments
January 27, 2014
Today is a lull from winter. The sun is bright against a blue sky and the temperature is already 42˚. But today is just a ruse: Mother Nature is chortling at our expense. Tomorrow will be 30˚ and winter will hold sway again.
January was always the dullest of months. We had no school holidays and nothing to celebrate. Our weekdays were filled with walking to school, sitting at our desks doing lessons all day then walking home. Day after day was endlessly cold. The afternoons were dark. The only bright spots every day were The Mickey Mouse Club and Superman. I think watching them was relief from tedium and kept us from killing each other. From Monday to Friday, we hungered for Saturday and the afternoon matinée, a wonderful, welcomed change in routine. We’d walk up town. The weather never mattered. We were going to the movies.
In winter every seat in the theater was filled for the matinée. Sometimes we were even allowed in the balcony, usually off-limits. My movie theater was kind of neat as it had a physical set-up which was different from most. The ticket booth was not a booth at all but was part of the side wall. After you bought your ticket you walked up an incline to the candy counter. It was the whole wall between the two aisles of seats so everyone had equal access. I remember the crowd was sometimes three deep in front of the candy counter, and everyone was trying to get the attention of the woman who manned the counter. She was Al’s wife and Al owned the theater. I can still see in my mind’s eye the counter in front, the mirror on the whole wall behind where Mrs. Al stood, and the glass popcorn machine on the left side of the counter. I loved to watch the kernels fly out of the popper to the bottom of the machine. That’s where the popcorn was scooped and put into the red and white boxes. The candy counter was glass with three shelves of candy inside. I always went for the candy which lasted the longest. Some of the guys went for candy which flew the farthest.
I forget when I grew too old for the matinée. It was probably around the eighth grade. I missed it at first as it had been so much a part of my growing up and my Saturdays, but there was a silver lining. I got to go to the movies at night.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 42˚, candy counter, cold day coming, January tedium, Mother Nature, popcorn machine, Saturday matinee, ticket booth, walking to school, warm day
Comments: 14 Comments
January 26, 2014
Today is sunny but really cold. Last night when we left the restaurant, it was snowing, that heavy wet snow you know will be trouble when temperatures drop later at night. Now the old snow has a new top layer, a crunchy layer because those flakes became ice, and all the surfaces are slick making walking potentially dangerous, especially for me, prone as I am to falling. It is going to be 40˚ on Tuesday. These changes in weather are making me crazy.
When we were in the Peace Corps, conversations often revolved around food, usually the food we didn’t have and missed. Cheese was big on the list. Ghanaians don’t drink or sell milk so nobody makes cheese. We had to make do with evaporated milk from cans and eave cheese to our imaginings. Mostly, though, we missed vegetables. We could only get tomatoes, onions, garden eggs, FraFra potatoes in September and yam all the time. Back then even the lowly green pepper reached an exalted status. Bill, Peg and I ate dinner together every night. It was generally beef which had been cooked in a tomato-based sauce or roast chicken and both were served with mashed yams, a far drier version of mashed potatoes, or rice. One year the rains were late so the crops were late, and we ate so much rice that when I got home I didn’t eat any rice for a couple of years. I had had my fill.
All of us have been back to Ghana recently: Bill and Peg this last September and me in 2011 and 2012, and we were all surprised by the foods we found in the markets: exalted green peppers, watermelons, avocados and even pumpkins, some of the foods we dreamed or talked about over dinner, the same dinner we had night after night. Accra has pretty much anything you want for food, and you can even find cheese in the obruni (white person) stores. All you need is lots of money.
Bill and Peg just left to go back to New Hampshire. The weekend went far too quickly. I will miss their company, the laughs we had and the memories we shared. They are old friends who are among the best of my friends.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Cheese, cold weather, Ghanaian food, Ghanaian markets, Good Friends, ice, memories, Peace Corps Ghana, vegetables, wet snow
Comments: 17 Comments
January 25, 2014
We are in the middle of a heat wave. It may even reach 40˚ today which sounds like deck weather, the time to start on a summer tan. I am tired of being pasty white with winter written all over my face, but we have no sun or blue sky; instead, we have a grey sky, the possibility of rain and a wind advisory. The dead leaves are being blown and the branches are swaying. What a waste of warm weather.
We had a wonderful evening last night. We reminisced about Ghana and told funny stories about each other. We talked about riding our motorcycles around town and in the bush, and how we met up with a man who cursed us for not giving him money and how Bill’s motorcycle stopped dead just as we were leaving. No curse though-the bike eventually started. Dinner was my curry, and Peg brought hummus, brownies and her own hot fudge sauce. For breakfast we had the blueberry muffins she also brought. They are now my favorite guests.
Today we have a craft fair then a ride around the Cape. Bill has never been here before so I wish we had the sun so he could see the cape in all its beauty with the light reflected off the water and in the marshes. I will take him down 6A, about the prettiest road around. I can be a great tour guide. I’ll tote my camera so I can post a few Cape pictures.
It is a short entry this morning as I am the only one yet dressed, and we’re shortly hitting the road. I’ll be back to post some music this afternoon. I promise!
Categories: Musings
Tags: cape cod, Curry, Ghana, heat spell, motorcycles, tour guide, Wind advisory
Comments: 16 Comments
January 24, 2014
A brilliant sunny day with a deep blue sky greeted me this morning, but it is still very cold. The snow, which was soft and fluffy, is now hard and crunchy. When I went to get the papers, the sounds of my footsteps on the snow seemed to echo in the quiet of the early morning. Tomorrow will be in the 30’s, almost summer-like say I with tongue in cheek.
My friends Bill and Peg are coming today for the weekend. We were in the Peace Corps together and were even neighbors my second year. I met Bill and Peg in Philadelphia during staging, the time for finalizing everything before the flight to Africa. We even skipped a few lectures together to do some sightseeing. One of my favorite stories of that time is about Bill. We went to the top of the William Penn Building to see the view of Philadelphia below us. The site is manned by rangers in green uniforms. Bill spoke to one and asked the name of the river to which he was pointing because the name is so difficult to pronounce. Without missing a beat, the ranger looked at him and said,” Del-a-ware.” Peg and I couldn’t stop laughing.
Bill and Peg were to be stationed in Tamale, a hundred miles south of me and the closest town in that direction with volunteers. I knew I’d get to see them often, but it wasn’t to be; instead, they were posted down south in Tafo, closer to Accra, when they found out Peg was pregnant. Peace Corps decided to let them stay anyway as an associate director and his wife were also expecting and weren’t leaving. I visited them as often as I could which wasn’t all that often as they were a distance away. I usually stopped on my way back up north after a visit to Accra. Their house had no running water, and you had to use an outhouse in the yard. On one visit to them I was sitting in the outhouse when I heard a noise below me. I stood up and saw a hand take the bucket and then a face looked up at me and the man said hello or good morning, madame, I don’t exactly remember which being a bit shocked by the circumstances of the greeting. It was the night soil man going about his work. He put the empty bucket back, and I sat down to finish my business.
Before our second year I talked to our principal about asking Bill and Peg to come to Women’s Training College where I taught. The school needed a maths teacher and would get an English teacher in the bargain. The principal, Mrs. Intsiful, agreed and Bill, Peg and Kevin, their son, moved to Bolga. We were neighbors in a duplex.
I have quite a few stories of our adventures, but I’ll save them for the weekend!
Categories: Musings
Tags: blue sky, Bolgatanga, cold, outhouse, Peace Corps staging, sunny, Tafo Ghana, Women's Training College
Comments: 6 Comments
January 23, 2014
The blizzard did not live up to its hype. The Cape Cod Times reports this morning we have 7 or 8 inches of snow here in Dennis though it looks like more in some places because of the drifting. My car had very little snow on it, but my back step had so much snow Gracie chose to jump over it rather than step into the drift, but she had no problem going down the stairs into the backyard as the snow wasn’t too high for her. Today is sunny and cold with a temperature around 19˚. Tonight will be in the single digits, but by Saturday it will be in the 30’s. Maybe I’ll even sit on the deck and catch the sun. I’d have to shovel first of course.
This is only our second snow storm so I suppose complaints aren’t warranted, but I hate how cold it is and how cold it has been from all those incursions by the polar region. Given a choice, though, I choose being cold over being hot. When it’s hot, there are only a few ways to get cooler, excluding central air of course. You can sit in front of a fan going full blast, take cold showers or go swimming, a temporary reprieve at best. But when you’re cold, you can bundle up, snuggle under a down comforter, layer or just stay in the warm house with the heat cranking. It is just so much easier to get warm.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, the heat in the Upper Region was interminable this time of year. I’d sit in my living room reading, and when I’d stand up, my sweaty imprint would be on the chair cushions like the chalk outline of the victim at a murder scene. I had no fan so a cold shower was my only way to beat the heat. I’d take one just before bed, not dry off, go inside to sleep and let the air dry me, sort of my own cooling system. Most times I could fall asleep. During the day, though, I lived in a condition of perpetual sweat whenever I did anything. It wasn’t pretty.
I’ll complain about the cold now and in August I’ll complain about the heat. That seems to be part of the human condition, the complaining I mean.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blizzard, bundle, central air, cold, cold versus heat, cozy, drifts of snow, fan, Ghana, layer, Peace Corps, single digit, Snow
Comments: 16 Comments
January 21, 2014
Snow is coming. It will start this afternoon and go all night. The sky already has the look of snow about it. It is quite cold and will get colder. Yesterday I filled the bird feeders. Today I have a few things to pick up, and I assume I’ll be jockeying with the bread and milk crowd for a parking space. It always astounds me that everyone is out of bread and milk just before the snow falls. It must be a cultural phenomenon.
The weather men are hedging their forecasts. One station predicts between 8 and 10 inches while the other says between 8 and 12. The only thing they agree on is the Cape will get more snow than the rest of the state. Oh joy!
I remember when I was a kid hoping for a snow day. I’d watch the snow fall looking through the picture window in the living room. A street light was just at the bottom of the front lawn, and I’d watch the snow fall in the light. It was always so pretty glinting as it fell. In those days, the TV didn’t scroll the closed schools, but the fire station in town blew the signal early in the morning. When I was older, in high school in a different town, I had to listen to the radio to find out if my school was closed. It never mattered how old I was, a day off from school was cause for celebration. It was like an unexpected present.
My dad never let a snow storm slow him down. He always went to work. He’d get up early and shovel to the car then clear it to get it on the road. In the old days he had chains on his tires then when they went out of style, he had snow tires put on his car at the start of every winter. The other tires were stored in the cellar waiting for better weather. We lived on a hill, and it was tough going up and down. About in the middle the hill rose a bit, and that’s where cars would slide going up. Sometimes going down was so slippery cars would take the side road and avoid the hill altogether. For us kids, a no school day meant a day sledding on the hill. I can still remember the excitement of holding the sled, running, jumping on and speeding down that hill. We had the joy of flying.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird feeders, bread and milk crowd, chains, cold, fire station signal, Sledding, Snow, snow day, snow sky, snow tires
Comments: 12 Comments
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