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“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

July 12, 2013

The day is actually in the 70’s, and there is a cooling north breeze, but it is still dark and cloudy with a bit of humidity when the breeze dies for a bit. This morning was my monthly breakfast with a fluctuating number of women whom I worked with for years and who are now all retired. Today there were ten of us. I have nothing else planned for the day. My friend is coming to take my trash to the dump, and I’m thinking of moving the laundry from the hall to the cellar with a simple toss down the stairs. The laundry is getting closer and closer to the washing machine every day.

My friend used to say that once July 4th is over so is the summer. I actually saw a back to school ad the other night. Now I’m waiting for a Halloween or Christmas ad. Summer Santa was on the cape yesterday doing a six month naughty or nice check. He was wearing summer Santa gear and Boston Red Sox socks. The paper showed a little girl on his lap who was mesmerized by being with Santa.

When I was little, I was filled with wonder and made new discoveries all the time. The world was still fresh and unfamiliar. I got older and the mysteries disappeared but not the wonder. I love to sit on my deck in the evening and watch the fireflies in the backyard flit among the trees like fairies taken to wing. The male gold finches are so bright and beautiful they take my breath away. I remember the hummingbird at my feeder. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. A starry night is another wonder, a night so bright you can read by the light from the heavens. The summer meteor showers in August are so amazing I say things like, “Wow,” out loud but never figure anyone hears me as all the other houses are usually dark. Thunder and lightning and a heavy rain are favorites of mine. I watch from the window and see the sides of the street flooded and filled with swirling rain. Sometimes the rain is light enough that I can sit outside under the umbrella and not get wet. The rain hits the umbrella and that is among the best of sounds.

Getting older doesn’t ever mean losing our sense of wonder. The beauties of the world are still here. We just have to remember to look.

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“There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.”

July 11, 2013

Last night I re-entered the world. I went to my first Wednesday play of the season. We always have dinner at a friend’s house first so I bought a few appies then drove, a new adventure for me, to Harwich, had dinner then went on to Chatham. Wouldn’t you know it but this play had three acts so I sat far too long. By the time I got home, at close to 11, I was exhausted and the house was stifling. I closed windows and put the air on. Gracie was panting, a barometer of sorts about the heat and humidity. It was close to 12 before it was cool enough to go to bed. I slept until 9:30 and am still tired. That first foray into the world has exhausted me.

We have a breeze and we have rain, not a lot of rain but rain nonetheless. The breeze is enough that the chimes hanging from the trees are making a sweet sound. I have all the windows and doors opened. Gracie loves it as she can come and go as she pleases. Even if I could muster the energy, l’d go nowhere today as the roads must be clogged with tourists looking for something to do. This is the summer of the tourist. Cars are everywhere. I’m guessing people have a bit more money to spend, and the cape is a great spot not too far away and one with all sorts of accommodations and restaurants and then there’s the ocean, the beautiful ocean which surrounds the cape.

I didn’t get my first job until the summer just after I’d graduated from high school. Back then none of us worked summers. Until I moved to the cape, I lived in a town which didn’t offer a lot of jobs for a teenager even if you wanted one. Parents never pushed. We just had to live on the paltry allowance they gave us. We managed.

The summer after high school I worked in Woolworth’s in down-town Hyannis which was a huge store. It had front and back entrances and a long counter for food. I remember the menu slots on the wall and the plastic menus with pictures of the food. I usually took my break at that counter. Working there was an okay job as I worked all sorts of places in the store and wasn’t bored. I worked the jewelry counter, the register, the pet corner and the souvenir section. The only problem was it didn’t pay a lot, but I could understand why as it didn’t take a whole of expertise or talent to work there. The pet section kept me the busiest as I had to change cages and feed the animals every day. There were fish, birds, hamsters and Guinea pigs. Little kids used to come to see the animals and watch the fish. The register was an okay spot to work. I could make change which made me a valuable employee. The souvenirs were mostly from China and included shells, fake driftwood, small boats and t-shorts. People bought a lot of souvenirs. I worked there until Labor Day which gave me a few weeks off before I had to go to college. All in all, it wasn’t a bad first job.

 

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“The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats…”

July 8, 2013

I have turned off the AC and opened the doors and windows. The morning is cooler than it has been for days, and there is a slight breeze. Gracie is in heaven. She gets to go out and come in as much as she wants as her dog door is accessible. The temperature is still in the 80’s, but I decided to brave the heat for some fresh air. The forecast is for thunder showers tonight which will be welcomed after all these steamy days with no rain. If the weekly forecast is correct, it will be in the high 70’s by Friday.

Yesterday afternoon the backup was 25 miles long to get off cape over the Sagamore bridge. I can’t imagine how long it took to go those 25 miles, and I can’t imagine sitting in a car going inches at a time. I’d have been crazed.

The open windows have brought the world back. I can hear the sounds of mowers and trimmers but even better I can hear the songs of birds. Yesterday I watered the plants on the deck and filled all the feeders. Even the two suet feeders were empty. Today I’ll sit on the deck for a bit and read. I haven’t had the inclination to read in a while. Usually I read a book or more a week, but since the surgery, for whatever reason, I haven’t be able to focus for too long. Maybe a new book will kick-start my reading.

In the mornings, Maddie is my only companion. She sits on the couch beside me. When I got Fern and Maddie from the shelter, they were both five and had grown up together. Fern right away took to the house and to Maggie, my dog. Maddie, on the other hand, spend at least three weeks under the bed. Part of it was the new house and part of it was Maggie who chased her, not with any malice or intention to do harm but for the fun of it. I used to lie on my stomach and give Maddie treats under the bed and talk to her. She came out but stayed in the guest room on one of the beds. I put a gate up so Maggie wouldn’t bother her and added a hole in the gate so Maddie could go to the food and litter. It took a while but she came downstairs and chose the dining room table as her safety spot. Gracie came only a few months after Maggie died, and she chased poor Maddie. It was puppy fun for Gracie. Poor Maddie ran for her life, but she didn’t hide. She stayed on that table. Now Maddie will even sit on the couch where Gracie is sleeping. She heads butts me for pats. During the day she sleeps on my bed and during the night she sleeps on the rug in my room. She won’t go so far as to join Fern, Gracie and me on the bed, but she stays close. Miss Maddie is a sweet, lovable cat. It’s nice to have her around. Now if she and Fern would stop hissing at one another, this would be a happy home.

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“Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?”

July 7, 2013

It was only a couple of weeks back when I complained about what seemed to be endless days of rain. Now I get to complain about endless days of heat. The weatherman says thunder showers maybe today but probably tomorrow. I’ll keep checking the sky with my fingers crossed.

I get to go out today. Gracie needs biscuits and dog food, and I need ant traps. The buggers found an open box of confectionary sugar and multiplied in numbers gorged on the sugar. I plan on no less than total annihilation.

We lost electricity last night for about two hours. All of the neighborhoods around me were dark. It started around 9:30. I fell asleep on the couch and was jolted awake by the TV when it came back on. I haven’t read the Cape Times yet to find out the reason but overload is a good possibility.

This morning I filled a few of the bird feeders. More of them still need filling and the suet feeder is empty. The deck plants will need water again so I’ll take a deep breath and go out in the heat of the day. I was barefoot at one point on the deck yesterday, and my feet were burning as if I were walking across beach sand.

As if great whites weren’t enough, now Portuguese man o’ wars are being seen close to the beaches on the Vineyard. Lifeguards scooped up around twelve of them. The man o’ wars are weird-looking: purple with what looks like a balloon at the top, and they have quite a sting. They  drift with the current buoyed by the balloon.

This has been a boring few weeks for me. I haven’t seen anybody, and my one trip was to the dump. I am so excited about Agway today. I get to talk to people.

Short post today-being housebound has caused me to be a bit unimaginative. It’s a good thing I’m not going to a cocktail party. I’d have absolutely no patter. “What do you think of the heat?”

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“One man’s fish is another man’s poisson”

July 6, 2013

Boston is officially suffering through a heat wave. We aren’t because the cape is a few degrees cooler. Today will be 88˚, but the humidity is making the weather even more unbearable. Walk around outside and it smothers you, draws the life right out of your body. I, however, will never suffer that fate. I have become a hermit in the comfort of my air-conditioned home. Yesterday I went out about three times to the deck. The first time was to water the plants and the other two times were to warm up my feet. Yup, the AC forced me to put on socks. I felt sort of silly.

Gracie loves being in the cool house. She goes outside and squats then runs right back to the door to be let inside. The cats, however, have a different take on the AC. They find sun spots on the floor from the windows and sit there taking in the warmth. Fern, especially, misses the warmth. Usually in the morning she would lie in the sun streaming through the front door and sleep so deeply I could hear her small snores.  The poor babies will have to wait a bit before it is cool enough to turn off the AC and open doors and windows.

Where I lived in Ghana was about as far from the ocean as you could get and still be in Ghana. The only fish you could find in the Bolga market was smoked and dried and looked disgusting, almost leathery. I didn’t even try it. It always seemed a bit strange to me that many Ghanaians actually preferred the dried fish to fresh. I used to think it was because they didn’t get fresh fish, but Grace, who lives in Accra, which is right on the ocean, buys dried fish. She won’t eat it fresh, thought the whole idea was a bit disgusting, but for those of us who love fish the Ghanaian seaside is like paradise. Some of the best fish dinners can be bought at small thatched huts along the shore. The huts have a few tables with benches, always a bit unsteady on the sand, and brightly colored umbrellas with beer logos to shield diners from the hot sun. The owners, who are generally the cooks, buy the fish right off the boats. The fish is usually wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over charcoal. The taste is amazing. Red snapper is my favorite.

In Togo, a country bordering Ghana, I had my first taste of barbecued lobster. It was dinner on the patio of a fairly large, sort of posh hotel, where we could never afford to stay but eating on the patio was within the budget of a Peace Corps volunteer: translation-it was inexpensive, maybe even cheap. My friend Ralph and I sat under an umbrella and watched as the lobster was cut down the middle then cooked. It was delicious.

Our mid-tour conference was at Dixcove, a neat little fishing village down the coast from Accra. We stayed in small cottages right on the ocean. I don’t remember anything about the technical parts of the conference, but I remember the rock lobster. We’d went to the village and paid a few guys small money to dive for the rock lobsters then we paid to have them cooked. Eating them was a divine experience I’ll never forget.

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“Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I’m halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God….I could be eating a slow learner.”

July 5, 2013

Yesterday was a quiet July 4th for me. I watched the Sox win from the comfort of my air-conditioned house. At game time it was 92˚, and I couldn’t imagine sitting in the bleachers in all that heat. Fenway must have been awash with sweat. Last night I could hear the sounds of firecrackers from all over the neighborhood. I watched Independence Day. That and Jaws are my traditional July 4th movies, “You yell ‘Shark,’ we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.” Last night I watched the Boston Pops on the esplanade.  All in all it was a good day.

My father loved to fish, mostly in the winter for smelt. He also dug quahogs. He’d fill his basket, bring them home and open the shells. My mother would make stuffed quahog, put the stuffing into the shells, and we’d have some right away while she froze the rest. I loved smelt though they were so small it took several to make a meal. Baked, stuffed quahog is still a favorite of mine.

My mother didn’t serve fresh fish when we were growing up. I remember meatless Friday nights and having French fries and fish sticks for dinner. As we got older, my mother got a bit of courage and started serving fresh fish. She started with a casserole, sort of fish in disguise, and we ate it up. That casserole also had shrimp, and I remember it was heavenly. We’d ask for it often. I still make every now and then, but somehow it just doesn’t taste the same as my mother’s. I swear she had a golden touch.

I love fish and shellfish. Lobster is one of my favorites. Sometimes when I’d visit my parents for the weekend, my dad would take my mom and me out to dinner for twin lobsters. The only problem was there was nowhere to hide. Sitting beside or across from my father made you a target, and you knew there was no way to avoid the squirts as my dad devoured his lobster. He was the best lobster eater I’ve ever seen. Even the small amount of meat from the legs got eaten. He was also one of the noisiest as he sucked the meat from those legs and hmmed his way through the lobster. When he was finished only shells were left, never a trace of lobster meat.

My sister and I learned to eat lobster by watching our dad. We are also messy, and we are never quiet. We eat every piece of meat, even from the legs. We pride ourselves on our prowess in devouring a lobster. Without question, it is one of the best life lessons my dad taught us.

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“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”

July 2, 2013

The day is thick with an intermittent breeze. Rain is again predicted, maybe even thunder showers. The sun won’t be making an appearance until tomorrow when the weather report predicts partly cloudy. I think they could have thrown us a bone and said partly sunny instead.

I used to like to miniature golf. I admit, though, that the windmill sometimes gave me trouble even with its three openings to the hole. My ball usually hit the wall between the openings and bounced right back at me. I’d keep count, one stroke, then try again, two strokes, and hope the ball would go through and maybe even into the hole. Nope, that never happened. It usually went through but to a corner, and I’d have to move the ball a club head length away from the side so I could putt. Par was like a magic number to me. The best thing about the miniature golf course in my town was it took just a minute or two to walk to the Chinese restaurant after a strenuous 18 holes.

We used to spend the whole day at the beach, usually Sunday because Saturday was my dad’s errand and chore day. We swam, walked the beach, collected shells, ate sandy food and were never bored, not the whole day. My mother wasn’t a swimmer. She had never learned how. She used to sit on the blanket and read and keep an eye on my two sisters who never strayed far. She wasn’t worried about my brother or me as we could swim, and she could see us walking along the shore or throwing rocks into the water. I remember she’d go crazy if we stepped on the blanket with sandy feet. That meant taking everything off and shaking out the blanket. The picnic basket was always on one side to anchor the blanket and keep it from blowing. We’d eat lunch and then periodically comb the basket for a snack as the day lengthened. Usually we’d find cookies or fruit. In the late afternoon, it was time to pack everything up and trudge to the car. My dad always put a towel on the seat to keep the seat dry and the sand out of his car. He’d then have us sit on the edge of the seat while he dunked our feet in a bucket of water to get the sand off and then we’d inside the car so the next sandy feet could be cleaned. The ride home was usually a blur as I slept most of the way.

I remember lying on my pillow as I was falling asleep and feeling warm water drip out of my ear. It was the weirdest sensation.

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“If you can see the aliens in the UFO, it’s already too late.”

July 1, 2013

Gee, are those drops I hear outside my window? I bet it rained earlier this morning and last night, and I figure you can even guess what comes next: the rain left a damp, cloudy day. If it weren’t for the sandy cape soil, my world would be afloat. I’ve lost track of the number of rainy days in a row. I think it is edging toward forty days and forty nights. Oops, that would be Noah’s count, not mine, but I am beginning to feel a certain kinship to him and his plight. The weather in the paper said sun on Wednesday, but I am a skeptic with a wait and see attitude.

I am not a happy person today. The tweeting bluebirds have gone elsewhere, and there are no singing mice wearing little jackets or dresses and wielding needles. Did you ever notice the boy mice wear only jackets? I never did. As always I digressed so back to my bad mood, and back is the key to that mood. I woke up sore and in pain. I expected a full recovery by this time, a click my heels in the air and dance recovery. I know it hasn’t yet been two weeks, but I figured the pain would be gone by now. The nurse is coming in about an hour so maybe she’ll give me more information. She’ll check the redness which I hope the antibiotics have attacked with great ferocity.

Everything is just so green and lush from all this rain, but with all the water and lots of puddles, I do worry that the mosquitos will lay millions of eggs and take over the world. I saw that movie; of course, I did. Mutated mosquitos just picked up people and flew off to munch their prey at their leisure.

I remember telling my mother there was nothing to do in the whole town when she wouldn’t give me money to go horseback riding. I feel a bit like that now. I get bored easily. I start to read, and my mind wanders. I play hearts on the computer and lose more than I win. I’m now watching a movie I’ve seen before, Battleship. It’s kind of a fun movie though and better, I think, than its reviews. The aliens are believable. The good guys win. You can’t ask more than that.

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“The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.”

June 30, 2013

My mood and the day are a perfect match: dark and dismal. My back is fine so I have no complaints there, but my leg in the morning is always unhappy, and it takes a while for modern medicine to work its magic. Until then the leg goes up on the couch, off the couch and back up again a few times while I try to find a comfortable, less painful spot. Most times I am not all that lucky. As for right now, the marvel of medicine has done its job.

I still think of Sunday as a do nothing sort of day. When I was a kid, it was a quiet day. After breakfast, I’d dress for church. Unless I was up early enough to go with my dad, my brother and I walked to mass together. My dad was an usher, the guy who passed the basket. It was a neat basket with a handle so long the basket reached to the middle of the long middle pews. My dad did the center first then one side while his partner did the other. Those were the days of suits, even in the summer. My dad didn’t have a light weight suit. I don’t even know if they had them back then. His suits were dark black or blue or gray. He always wore a starched white shirt. On the way home he’d stop to get the Sunday paper and a dozen donuts. He was a plain donut man. My mother was never a coffee drinker, but she loved dunking her donuts in coffee, her plain donuts. Back then I was a jelly donut fan and was a pro at catching the oozy jelly from the bottom hole before it hit my shirt. It is a skill in which I still excel though now I prefer lemon to jelly, but my favorite of all is a butternut donut. I don’t get donuts often, but yesterday my friend brought me iced coffee and a lemon donut. That donut was perfectly fresh and delicious, and not a drop of lemon fell.

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“The grocery store is the great equalizer where mankind comes to grips with the facts of life like toilet tissue”

June 29, 2013

I don’t think I have ever heard such thunder in my whole life. It roared overhead as if a jet were flying low to the ground and passing over my house. Gracie and I were both jolted from sleep, no waking up and stretching to the morning. We sat up and looked at the ceiling as if we could see the sound. When the thunder finally faded away, we both went back to sleep only to be jolted again by as loud a clap as the first. The ceiling gave us no hint this time either. Gracie and I admitted defeat and got out of bed. I showered. She laid down and waited.

Last night’s heavy rain left a damp, dark day, the same sort of day as yesterday’s when we never did see the sun though Fenway Park had sun for the Sox game last night. Maybe it was sun or just maybe it was the god of baseball shining on the home team.

My Peapod order is due sometime between now and 3 o’clock. I took the wide window to save a couple of dollars. That made me chuckle. I am not generally the save a few bucks sort of shopper. I never check weight against price or buy something simply because it’s on sale. I don’t know what prompted me to choose the crazy time, but I did feel a bit proud and certainly quite parsimonious.

I started going through the recipes I’ve torn or cut out from newspapers and magazines. I made several piles like appies, dessert, chicken, beef, pasta, foreign, potatoes, salads and on and on and on. My piles got out of hand, I ran out of space and I got bored. I decided to redo the piles so I went to appies, sides, meats and desserts. I got about a third of the way through my cuttings and decided I’d had enough. I put everything together in one pile and put it away. I’m just about back where I started. I don’t care because when I’m old and bed-ridden, this will give me something to do.

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