Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
May 26, 2013
The house was winter cold this morning. I actually turned on the heat to warm it up. 61˚ is just too uncomfortable, and I refuse to dress in layers inside the house. My cousin in New Hampshire had snow. The weather has gone topsy-turvy. My sister in Colorado had her air conditioning blowing at full force. Hope, however, springs eternal. If the weatherman is right, tomorrow will be 68˚.
Turner Classic Movies has been my go to channel all weekend. World War II has been the subject of most of the films. Yesterday seemed to be submarine day. Today I get to go back to Bataan, and I just watched John Wayne, the captain of a German freighter, being chased by a British destroyer at the start of the war. Yup, John Wayne was a German, but a good German.
I do need to go out today and I fear the roads. It may not be raining but it is cloudy and damp. I suspect people will be looking for something to do, and they need to ride up and down the main roads to find it.
It’s time to decide my theme for summer movies. Last year it was movies made in Boston. This year I’d go with B science fiction, but I don’t think those movies would get a warm welcome from some members of my audience. July 4th is, of course, reserved for Jaws and Independence Day. I am not a fan of musicals so they’re out except for West Side Story. I’ve always liked that one. Westerns are also not among my favorites though She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is one I could watch, and there’s always Blazing Saddles which makes me think of a Mel Brooks medley of movies. Young Frankenstein always makes me laugh as does The Producers. I’m thinking to put them on the marquee. I love old movies, black and white movies, but they don’t have the best sound for the projector, too low for a couple of people.
For the first film of the season, whatever it is, we’ll have the red carpet and dinner, a deck dinner from the grill. I’ll put out my movie signs and get the popcorn ready. All I need is summer.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, heat, John Wayne, Mel Brooks, movies on the deck, popcorn, Snow, summer movies, tourists, Turner Classic Movies
Comments: 12 Comments
May 25, 2013
Last night I again fell asleep to the sound of the rain, but it was far gentler than the torrential rain of the night before so I didn’t need to shut my window. The rain has left the day chilly and damp. More rain is expected later. My grass has grown to such a monumental height several snakes could be hiding in it.
I need to get out of the house. It has been two days of staying home and watching bad movies, really bad movies, all the way through to the end. The worst by far was Dino Wolf. The plot was simple: human DNA was mixed with a prehistoric dire wolf skeleton and resulted in a hybrid monster with a taste for human flesh. The monster was the best actor in the movie, and it had no lines, just a lot of snarling and grunting. I sort of recognized one of the human actors but couldn’t come up with his name. It was Gil Gerard. I’d fire my agent if I were Gil.
I have a high tolerance for bad movies. They make me laugh. My sister Moe shares the same fondness for B movies. Each Christmas we try to out-do each other in finding and gifting the worst movie. Last year I gave her The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a favorite of mine, and the year before I gave her the Christmas movie Santa Claus made in 1959 in Mexico. Santa lives in outer space and is helped by Merlin. He goes to Earth and must defeat the devil who is bothering poor little Lupita. My sister has been out-done the last two years. I think nothing will ever be worse than Santa Claus. In the comment section I’ll leave the link to YouTube and the movie. I watched it all the way through when I bought it. I wanted to see if Santa would win!
The bridges are filled with on-coming cars this morning. I have no idea why. The weather is supposed to be bad today and tomorrow, but it seems the weekenders are not deterred. Next door, at the rental, there are two cars from New York. They come every year for this weekend and usually sit on the deck and party a bit, but they won’t this year. As for me, I’m staying off the main roads. They’ll be clogged with people looking for something to do. Gracie and I will meander on the side roads with no destination in mind. It’s the meandering we want.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad movies, cars on Cape, chill, clogged main rods, Dino Wolf, Dire Wolf, grass, long weekend, meandering, Mexican movie, monster, rain, Santa Claus, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Comments: 26 Comments
May 24, 2013
Last night the rains were torrential. When the dog barked and woke me up, I could hear the rain beating on the roof. I called Gracie back upstairs, and she came but was unsettled. She doesn’t mind rain or thunder so I figured she had rung her bells to go out, and I hadn’t heard. The barks were her next hope of waking me. We went downstairs, and I opened the back door. The rain was in sheets and so heavy I could barely see the yard. Gracie poked her head out then right back in again. I insisted she go out, and she did for far longer than I expected. I had translated well Gracie’s barks. When she came inside, she was soaked so I used a towel to dry her. It was 1:30. We both went upstairs. Gracie jumped on the bed and immediately fell asleep. I did not so I started reading and did so for about an hour before I could fall back to sleep. It is still raining but only slightly. Gracie is asleep.
Yesterday Grace, my former student, not to be confused with Gracie, called and said she had been denied a visitor’s visa. I was devastated as I have been so excited about Grace coming to visit in August. For her visa, we had researched everything she needed to bring to the embassy for the interview, including a letter of invitation from me. She even brought a picture of the two of us together plus a deed to her house, copies of her bank account and several other pieces of documentation proving she has ties to Ghana and will return. Not a single piece of all that documentation was read. She was asked a few questions including whether I lived alone and whether she was married. She is and had a letter from her husband supporting her vacation. Visa denied ten minutes later. No reason was given. I am so furious I can’t speak without spitting. I wrote a letter to the embassy with a copy to the State Department visa section, but I suspect that was an exercise in futility. I spent the morning going from US official site to site, made a few phone calls and listened to each menu none of which addressed my need. I’m stymied. We had all our ducks in a row, and the woman at the embassy didn’t care or even notice. I’m not stopping until I find a way for Grace to be heard!
Okay, I feel a bit better for having ranted a bit, but I just don’t get it. We did everything right, and it didn’t matter. Grace and I are but small voices crying in a sea of bureaucracy, and I am bound and gagged by red tape, compliments of the American Embassy in Accra. (Okay I admit those last two might have been a bit over the top!).
Categories: Musings
Tags: American Embassy Accra, denied a visa, documentation ignored, Gracie, State department, torrential rain
Comments: 22 Comments
May 23, 2013
I wish it would rain. The day is cloudy and a dampness has given the house a bit of a chill so I’ve lowered the downstairs windows. Yesterday I did a few chores and a couple of errands. One stop was for cat food and clay flower pots at Agway. Tomorrow I’ll shop to fill the pots and also get herbs for the herb garden and the deck window boxes. Next week I’ll buy some front garden flowers. I noticed a few empty spots.
The spawns have found a new way to harass me. The tall bird feeder holder with the anti-squirrel baffle at the bottom had to be moved. The spawns were jumping from trees to get at the top of the pole where there are holders for four feeder stations, and the spawns have enjoyed dining at each one. When Skip came last week, I had him move the pole away from all the trees. Now the spawns are flying off the deck to the feeders. The problem, though, is getting off. There is no easy way so they sort of just fall unto the fence below the pole, the fence which is protecting my vegetable garden. The spawns knock over the posts and the wire gets bent down from the force of their bodies falling from so high. It has happened three times and I have fixed the fence three times. Now I have this dream of a hunter dressed in khaki, wearing a pith helmet, also khaki, sitting on my deck steps with an elephant gun in his hand just waiting for the spawns. I think I’ll have them mounted. Meanwhile, the feeders remain empty until I can figure out a solution.
The hunter’s pith helmet got me thinking about hats. When we were little kids, we had two main hats. One was for winter, a woolen hat with ear flaps and a pretty design, and the other was an Easter hat, usually a new one each year to match our dresses. The Easter hats had ribbons in blue, yellow or spring green, but it didn’t matter to me how pretty or flowery or filled with ribbons the hats were because I never liked hats. My mother, however, insisted I wear a hat when I walked to school on blustery cold winter days, but it never helped all that much to keep me warm. My head might have been fine, but my face was always freezing cold with bright red cheeks. Mittens were more essential. The Easter hat went into the closet and was pulled out only for Sundays.
I don’t wear hats any more. In the winter I sprint from the house to the car and back again when I get home. On Easter I wear one to my friends’ house: it’s a wide brim pink hat like those models during the 50’s wore. I don’t wear it to dinner when we go out though I might one year as a lark.
Maybe in my future is me as an eccentric old lady wearing a hat every place I go, even the dentist. I think I’ll start with the old faded red band hat with the plume. I’ll drop feathers everywhere I go.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird feeders, chores, clay pots, Clouds, Easter hat, elephant gun, hats, herbs, hunter, rain, spawns of Satan, Sunday hat, winter hat
Comments: 10 Comments
May 21, 2013
The day is cloudy and has a bit of a chill, a long sleeve shirt sort of day. Everything is really still and quiet. I like a day this way. Sun all the time makes for a dry lawn and garden while clouds all the time make for gloom so I’m happy with a mix of days. Yesterday was a perfectly lovely day so I don’t mind today’s clouds.
A chickadee is building a nest in one of my bird houses or at least I think so as I have seen her going in and out of the house which is a flamingo with swaying legs. It is pink as flamingos are and has a small opening, perfect for a chickadee. I’ll keep an eye.
Dandelions get a bum rap. They appear in the lawn and are dug up or summarily destroyed. They were the first flowers I ever gave my mother. Nothing so beautiful could possibly have been anything but a flower to me. Dandelions reminded me of the sun: round and bright yellow. My mother always took my gift, the bouquet of dandelions, with profuse thanks and put them in a vase in the middle of the table. She never saw them as weeds. They were a gift.
Before I visit my sister, I go up the hill to the house where, other than this house, I have lived the longest time. I know every part of that house and can close my eyes and see each room. The kitchen was small with only a little counter space, a corner which barely fit the table and chairs and a small stove on the same wall as the table. The fridge was beside the back door, my mother’s bugaboo. The door was wooden and painted green and in the summer had a screen instead of a storm door. My sisters, who played in the yard most summers, went out that back door which always slammed behind them. That drove my mother crazy. Her warning, “Don’t slam the door,” always seemed just a bit too late, drowned out by the sound of the slam. For some reason my mother and that door are a strong memory from that house.
I have this mind which seems to hold on to so many things though words and some names are beginning to escape me. I have to think long and hard to remember some of them. The other day I was trying to come up with Pierce Brosnan, don’t ask me why as I don’t remember, and I was with a friend who couldn’t remember either. I gave her hints: he was Remington Steele and James Bond. Neither one of us came up with his name. In the background, while we were talking, music from the mid 60’s was playing, and we knew every word. Once I told a friend how many traffic lights she would encounter on her route through Boston. I just closed my eyes and drove the route in my head. I remember odd things of little importance, but sometimes I forget why I am in the kitchen or I lose forever that small list I thought I’d memorized. Even mnemonics don’t help as much any more. I sometimes forget what they mean. I do, however, have a hold on so many past memories, long ago memories, the best memories like the dandelions and the back door.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird house, chickadee, chilly, cloudy, dandelions, flamingo, forgetting names, forgetting words, memories, quiet, screen door, slamming door, small kitchen
Comments: 16 Comments
May 20, 2013
Last night it rained, not a furious rain falling in sheets but a steady drop by drop rain. I had my bedroom window opened, and I fell asleep to the sound of the drops. This morning when I woke up, the day was cloudy and damp. Since then the sun has taken over the sky and brightened the day. It’s a pretty morning.
The window view from here in the den is one of my favorites. The branches of the tall oak tree fill the window, and I get to watch the tree change every season. The leaves now are young and a bright green. Hanging off a couple of the branches are bird feeders, and I get to watch the birds zoom in and out or stay for a while at the suet feeder. The winter view through that window is bleak. I can see only bare branches and dead leaves fluttering in the wind. When the first buds appear, it’s time for a celebration as I know the tree will soon be full and beautiful. It’s almost there now.
Sometimes I ponder my life and every time I do, I realize how lucky I have been. First of all I had great parents though I didn’t always appreciate them, especially when I got sent to my room or yelled at or had a slipper thrown at me by my mother who had absolutely no aim. She never once got any of us. We always ducked if it came close. I got to wander my town and go to the zoo or the swamp or play in the woods. I had a bike which took me even as far as East Boston to see my grandparents which scared the bejesus out of my mother as we had to travel on Route 1A, a busy highway which didn’t always have sidewalks. That bike was one of my childhood joys. My parents took us to museums which developed in us all a love of museums. They let us dream our dreams. I went to college and had no debt when I graduated because my father thought it was is responsibility to pay for school. My parents once told me they never thought any of their kids would go to college as no one in our whole family had ever gone. They were thrilled one of us did and so was I as I had chosen well. I loved Merrimack. The Peace Corps was the defining moment in my life which gave me a love of teaching, two years living in Africa of all places and friends for life.
I have traveled many places in the world and have filled my memory drawers with those adventures, those vistas, the bumpy roads and crowded busses, the tastes of unknown foods and the joy of seeing all those pictures from my geography books come to life. Every year I went somewhere foreign, somewhere to satisfy my wanderlust. I got to retire early and since then have been to Africa three times: once to Morocco and twice to Ghana. My retirement has been so much fun: greeting the sun on the first of spring, sloth days, game nights with my friends, sitting on the deck doing absolutely nothing, movie nights and on and on and on.
Every now and then, like today, I give thanks for the life I have been privileged to lead. I don’t ever want to forget that.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Africa, bike, college, Dreams, games, Ghana, life, love of life, Luck, Morocco, museums, pondering, retirement, thanks, travel
Comments: 4 Comments
May 19, 2013
The day is again beautiful with that deep blue sky and plenty of sun. The air outside has a morning chill which I think will get warmer as the day gets older. Gracie has been outside all morning and barking every now and then. I went out with her while the coffee was brewing and saw nothing to prompt the barking, but I’m keeping an eye out for a coyote. My friend saw one twice yesterday morning, and the second sighting was right by my house. None have been around lately as the rabbits are fat and greedy. Two were eating in my garden yesterday. When we have coyotes, we have no rabbits or skunks.
Next week I’m going to buy the flowers for my deck planters and the herbs for the window boxes and the herb garden. A few herbs are up already: thyme, oregano and chives. I need lots of rosemary, one of my favorite of all scents. I try to find summer recipes which call for the fresh rosemary, and I love rubbing my hand up the stems and then smelling the rosemary on my hand. Even the dead rosemary from last summer still in the window boxes had that great smell.
While I was driving the other day, all I could think of was how beautiful everything is. I saw the contrasting greens of the trees, the leaves finally out and unfolded, flowering bushes in so many different colors and a bright sun glinting through all the branches. The lilacs are out. I saw white and the usual purple. Mine too have flowered, but they are a deep, deep purple, a color I don’t usually see. My violets and lilies of the valley have flowers. Both plants came from my mother’s yard, from her back yard. Like her lilies, mine have taken over. The side bed is filled with them. I put a few in the backyard and they came up this year and have spread a bit. They can have the whole yard. Gracie won’t mind.
Having memories of my mother in the garden every spring gives me joy.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful spring, cold house, cool mornings, coyotes, flowers, lilacs, lilies of the valley, new leaves, rabbits, violets
Comments: 12 Comments
May 19, 2013
The day is again beautiful with that deep blue sky and plenty of sun. The air outside has a morning chill which I think will get warmer as the day gets older. Gracie has been outside all morning and barking every now and then. I went out with her while the coffee was brewing and saw nothing to prompt the barking, but I’m keeping an eye out for a coyote. My friend saw one twice yesterday morning, and the second sighting was right by my house. None have been around lately as the rabbits are fat and greedy. Two were eating in my garden yesterday. When we have coyotes, we have no rabbits or skunks.
Next week I’m going to buy the flowers for my deck planters and the herbs for the window boxes and the herb garden. A few herbs are up already: thyme, oregano and chives. I need lots of rosemary, one of my favorite of all scents. I try to find summer recipes which call for the fresh rosemary, and I love rubbing my hand up the stems and then smelling the rosemary on my hand. Even the dead rosemary from last summer still in the window boxes had that great smell.
While I was driving the other day, all I could think of was how beautiful everything is. I saw the contrasting greens of the trees, the leaves finally out and unfolded, flowering bushes in so many different colors and a bright sun glinting through all the branches. The lilacs are out. I saw white and the usual purple. Mine too have flowered, but they are a deep, deep purple, a color I don’t usually see. My violets and lilies of the valley have flowers. Both plants came from my mother’s yard, from her back yard. Like her lilies, mine have taken over. The side bed is filled with them. I put a few in the backyard and they came up this year and have spread a bit. They can have the whole yard. Gracie won’t mind.
Having memories of my mother in the garden every spring gives me joy.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful spring, cold house, cool mornings, coyotes, flowers, lilacs, lilies of the valley, new leaves, rabbits, violets
Comments: 12 Comments
May 18, 2013
The house is always colder than outside this time of the year. I had to put my sweatshirt on as soon as I woke up. The cats, of course, ran to the sun streaming through the front door as soon as I opened it. I went outside while the coffee was brewing. Gracie was investigating the yard. The air felt a bit chillier today than it had yesterday. I watched the birds for a while, and it seems one of the chickadees is checking out my flamingo bird house. I hope she nests there. My other bird house fell, and I don’t have a ladder to put it up high enough, and my tree climbing days are long over so I’ll have to see if I can get a bit of help. The deck looks great. All it needs is some warm weather.
The Star Trek movie was excellent. The two hours went by quickly, and it was easy to get into the characters again and fun to recognize bits from the other Star Trek movies, the ones with the original cast. Roles were reversed in this version. Spock did a Kirk and Kirk did a Spock.
Reviews are funny. The Globe gave the movie 3 and a half stars. Today in the Cape Times it got 2 and was called humdrum.
When I walked into the theater, I could hear two people chatting. They were sitting a row apart so they weren’t with one another. I missed the beginning of the conversation, but I did hear the man say he had to go through his 8 thousand stamps. The woman asked him if he was a stamp collector. I laughed and tried to imagine other reasons to have 8 thousand stamps. Lots of pen pals maybe? A wall in his house looking for a different treatment? A bit of hoarding? I wished they’d have chatted a bit more but my walking in stopped their conversation. I guessed they figured they’d lost their privacy. A fourth person joined us, the couple and I, in watching the movie. A weekday afternoon is a great time to see a movie.
I have one event on my dance card today. A speaker at the library at 2 o’clock talking about the dune shacks. It’s my turn to bring the cookies.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird houses, chickadees, chilly morning, dune shacks, Kirk, movie reviews, Spock, stamps, Star Trek
Comments: 17 Comments
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