Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
March 24, 2013
What a bright, sunny day it is with the bluest of skies. Though still a bit chilly, only in the high 30’s, the sun makes it feel much warmer. The breeze is slight and only gently rocks the branches. The snow is just about gone. Today must be an apology of sorts from Mother Nature for the grayness of the past week.
This morning I watched a spawn of Satan be thwarted by my bird feeders. It tried all three sunflower feeders but got nothing except frustration. Its paw jabbed and jabbed inside the wires and still came back empty. Take that, you spawn of Satan!
I have high hopes. My back is getting better, my outlook on life is rosier, Easter is next week and baseball starts April 1st. Life is good.
When I was a little kid, small things gave me joy. Blowing puffy dandelions into the wind, catching fireflies, picking and eating blueberries or watching pollywogs at the swamp were the best ways to spend part of a summer day. Getting dirty while doing it was a bonus. I’d lie on my stomach and look into the water at the edge of the swamp because that’s where the pollywogs first appeared. We’d go and see them every couple of days and watch them grow. They were the tiniest black specks at first darting so quickly I could almost miss them but then came the arms and legs, and they were easy to see. When they were full-grown, they just disappeared, moved on to somewhere else in the swamp, probably in the back among the trees and bushes where we seldom went.
That swamp was my favorite of all places when I was young. It had a wide open area in the front where we watched the pollywogs in spring and where we’d ice skate in the winter. Small channels on both sides led away from the wide front. In the summer these channels were bordered by overgrown bushes and trees growing on what we thought of as islands. Exploring into the swamp meant jumping from island to island, getting scratched by the briers and getting wet feet if you weren’t careful, but at least once every summer we’d explore as far as we could. In the winter it was easy. The channels froze and the trees and bushes were bare. We walk and follow the channels as far as they went holding on to limps to keep from slipping and falling. We’d get on our hands and knees to look into the ice. It was like looking at a tiny world. The ice was so clear we could see all the dead leaves, the vines and the limbs of trees which had dipped into the water and been frozen. I can still see it all in my mind’s eye. I thought it was beautiful.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blue sky, blueberries, dandelions, ice, ice skating, pollywogs, spawn of satan, sunny day, Swamp, winter swamp, \exploring
Comments: 16 Comments
March 23, 2013
When I woke up, it was closer to afternoon than morning. I suspect it was the combination of pills I’m taking for my back. Gracie and Fern were still with me, both asleep. I imagine they too had excuses for sleeping so late, but I have no idea what they are. They don’t share. It took me a while to get out of bed, but I yelped less than yesterday. I guess that’s a barometer of sorts for my back getting better.
The sun is out and the sounds of drips are in stereo from the front and back of my house. Mostly they are falling from the roof onto the deck. The snow is quickly melting. I can see grass again and the streets are perfectly clear. The sky has more blue than it has clouds so I’m thinking it’s a lovely day. I filled the bird feeders yesterday, and they are now fully occupied. The woodpecker seems to be enjoying the new suet which is a far better alternative to the shingles on my house he was pecking yesterday.
The other day I thought of Mrs. McGaffigan. She used to live in the huge house on the corner at the bottom of my street. She was the other half of our party line. My brother and I used to try to listen to her conversations, but we usually giggled and got caught. She was never happy about eavesdropping and was brusque about our hanging up right away. We usually did but once in a while we only pretended so we could keep listening. I remember picking up the phone to make a call and hearing Mrs. McGaffigan. She’d tell me to hang up as she was already on the line as if I couldn’t hear her. I don’t remember exactly how we knew which calls were ours, but it had something to do with the ringing. Those were the days of clunky black phones and letters as part of the phone numbers.
I remember my mother making sure I had a dime when I went out with friends in case I needed to call. Phone booths were everywhere. I never walked by one without checking the coin slot. Sometimes I’d get lucky and find a dime. In the rain, a phone booth was a great place to wait out the storm for a while. Two and sometimes three of us would jam ourselves inside. We’d be dry but none of us could move. A phone booth always looked kind of cool in the dark when the light went on as you shut the door. I didn’t like it when the booths started to disappear and the phones with small shelves took their places. Now, though, pay phones have pretty much disappeared, and soon enough no one will even remember they existed.
I have this image. It’s a room filled with all the stuff from my childhood, like phone booths, rabbit ears, skate keys and bottle tops on shoe bottoms, and one by one a piece disappears and no one notices.
Categories: Musings
Tags: coin slots, dimes, listening to phone calls, memories, party line, phone booths, rabbit ears, skate keys, sleeping in
Comments: 37 Comments
March 22, 2013
Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane, on the grass and on the deck, the snow is glistening. It started snowing around 10 last night, and we probably have about 5 inches of spring snow which sounds like an oxymoron to me. A dusting is spring snow. 5 inches is winter. The snow is heavy. I swept the walk to get my papers, and when I got to the street, I found slush under the snow. I left wet footprints. The branches of the pine trees are covered with a layer of the heavy snow and the bushes in the front are leaning from the weight. If I were a kid, I’d love this snow. It’s prime snowman snow: thick and heavy and sticky.
The Christmas cactus in here has a flower. I think of it as a gift as the plant was once my mother’s. It sat at the end of her kitchen table near the window. The table was in a niche in front of a bank of windows but one end of the table, flush with a window, had a cabinet beside it so we couldn’t sit on that side. The plants sat there instead. I remember when all of the cactus on the table were in bloom. The flowers were beautiful. Now I have one.
Today is just one of those days. I finished my monkey poop coffee, my back has soured my mood, and I am so tired of gray clouds. The sun was out for maybe a half hour yesterday, another taunt from Mother Nature. I can’t imagine what we did to anger her but it must have been a doozy.
I had two lady of the manor moments today. Skip, my factotum, came and plowed my driveway then shoveled in front of my car and mailbox. He brought in the bird seed and case of dog food I had left in the trunk because I couldn’t lift them. While Skip was here, Peapod delivered my groceries; he even put them on the kitchen counter. Now I’m wondering where my upstairs and downstairs maids are.
I am supposed to get an x-ray, but it won’t be today. I’m going to be a sloth again, and I’m using my back as an excuse, not that I really need one.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cactus flower, gray clouds, lady of the manor, moody, sloth day, slush, Snow, snowman, winter
Comments: 12 Comments
March 21, 2013
The clouds still blanketed the sky when I woke up, but I am passed caring. The dull, dark days have been the norm for months or even years: I’ve lost count. The sun appears periodically during a piece of the day, and I get so excited by the sight of if I think we should all dance in the streets wearing brightly colored clothes and flowers in our hair to commemorate the occasion. Then the sun disappears and toys with us no more. Today has just become one of those days. The sun has broken through the clouds, and the sky is turning blue. It’s cold, but it’s sunny. I’m okay with that.
Happy spring! We celebrated yesterday with our annual ceremony: sunrise at the beach, a few songs and then breakfast. Yesterday, though, was a bit different. It was so cold Clare, Tony and I sat in the car and waited. When the sun rose above the water, we ran out for pictures and sang Morning has Broken at a quick pace then ran back into the car to sing Rockin’ Robin. Usually we find a shell to remember the day, but this year we didn’t. The sand was hard and the wind was whipping so much none of us wanted to brave the elements to go down by the water. We watched the sun for a bit then left the beach and went to a new spot for us for breakfast called Good Friends. It is a small place with a paneled pine wall on one side, very old Cape Cod interior decorating still found in some rental cottages. My breakfast was delicious. When I got home, I went back to bed.
My back is troublesome, wincing, yelping troublesome. Luckily I had my yearly physical yesterday, and the doctor gave me some pills to alleviate the pain, and he wants my back x-rayed. I’ll do that tomorrow. I’ve already taken this morning’s pills, and now I’m ready to dance. I will, of course, be wearing my brightly colored clothes.
When I was little, I had a million dreams. None of them had to do with money or being rich. They were dreams of adventure and daring and seeing the world. I’ve been lucky and have lived many of those dreams. This morning, while I was waiting for the monkey poop coffee to drip, I watched the birds through the window and thought about dreams, my now dreams. Amazingly they haven’t really changed much though money has crept in as a part of those dreams. I want to go to Botswana on a safari and see the Okavango Delta, and I want one more trip to Ghana. Both of those are expensive so I got to thinking about an austerity campaign to save money. I like my creature comforts, but I figure giving up a few is a small sacrifice to fulfill some dreams.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blue sky, Botswana, breakfast, Dreams, Ghana, Good Friends, happy spring, Morning Has Broken, Rockin' Robin, sun, travel
Comments: 26 Comments
March 19, 2013
The snow started last night and left about an inch before it stopped. The rain started early, before I woke up, so now we are a slushy place. I left watery footprints from the house to the driveway and back again when I went to get the newspapers. The birds aren’t even around. They don’t like this weather any more than I do and the filled feeders aren’t at all tempting. I have three quick errands today and have mapped out the shortest route so I can hurry home to warmth and coziness.
My sister got around 10″ of snow, and she is welcome to her winter wonderland. My father would call my snow poor man’s fertilizer. I never knew what he meant then I found out it is a spring snow when the ground is soft. It is good for crops and helps everything turn green. The nutrients and moisture in the snow penetrate into the soil and benefit the plants that will grow later on in the year.
Poor man’s fertilizer got me thinking about sayings and pearls of wisdom I don’t hear any more. I think they’re generational, and many disappear when each generation is replaced by the next. My mother had a whole arsenal of things she’d say to us. We were all pretty much subjected to the underwear accident warning, but there was also the peril of going outside with a wet head because we were bound to catch a cold. A little “birdy” told me drove me crazy. I wanted the source, and I knew it wasn’t any bird. A few times she was talking to brick walls, and she found that annoying. Her next question was,”What are you, deaf?” One of my favorite warnings was,”Don’t touch that. You don’t know where it’s been.” I was a kid. Where it had been was of little consequence. Because she was squeamish we were denied the pleasure of some wonderful find. If I told a lie, my tongue would turn black. I dare not make a face as it might just stay that way, and I was afraid I’d have to wear a hat with a veil the whole of my life. I would never join my friends in jumping off a bridge. I’d have to find one first. My town had no bridges. My favorite, though, was always the,”It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.” My mother could pick up even the tiniest hint of sarcasm. Though I was too young to know the word sarcasm I knew the tone she meant. I said it on purpose.
I still turn out the lights when I leave a room, and I keep the outside door shut. My mother always reminded us in that voice none of us wanted to hear that we didn’t own the electric company and we didn’t live in a barn.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a little birdy, brick walls, jumping off a bridge, motherisms, mothers, poor man's fertilizer, rain, sarcasm, sayings, slush, Snow, wet hair and a cold
Comments: 46 Comments
March 18, 2013
Monday has always been my least popular day. Because work started again, the horrific sound of the alarm jolted me from bed, disoriented me and made me bemoan my fate of five more days until the weekend. I was always tired on Mondays regardless of how much sleep I got on the weekends. I don’t work now, but I am still not fond of Mondays. The papers are thin. It seems there is never much news on a Sunday to write about on a Monday. I suffer from lethargy, not as severe as on a work day Monday but it’s still a lack of enthusiasm to do anything of substance. I keep staring at the laundry bags sitting in the hall waiting to go downstairs to be washed. This would be the perfect time for laundry elves who would leave my clothes cleaned and folded. I have to fill the bird feeders, a small task grown out of proportion by the day of the week. I’m already tired or maybe I’m just still tired.
It was sunny when I woke up, a strange phenomenon, but the world has righted itself and now it’s cloudy. A rain snow mix is expected tonight. We’ll have mostly rain, less than a half-inch. North of us will have snow.
I could do an errand today, but I won’t. I’m staying home. I’ll get it done tomorrow. Tuesdays are nothing days which have no innate negativity, no descriptions of any sort and no nicknames. Nobody says TGIT and hump day is Wednesday. Tuesday is the forgotten day unless we count monumental events like Black Tuesday or Super Tuesday. I don’t.
Yesterday I watched a baseball game. It was the Sox and the Jays. The Red Sox wore green hats and green shirts for St. Patrick’s Day. Lester pitched six great innings. I was envious of the people in the stands who were dressed in summer clothes. I hoped they were hot and sweaty. I am not above a bit of spite.
My coffee this morning was monkey poop coffee my nephew brought back from Bali.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Clouds, disorientation, elves, Laundry, lethargy, Mondays, rain, Tuesday
Comments: 18 Comments
March 17, 2013
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!! I am, of course, wearing green. With a name like Ryan, green is an essential part of today’s wardrobe. Gracie too is dressed for the day and is wearing her St. Patrick’s Day collar. Tonight I will dine on traditional corned beef and cabbage with my friends. I checked the TV for St. Paddy’s Day movies and had two channel choices. I can watch TCM and Finian’s Rainbow or Syfy and Leprechaun, a movie about a maniacal, murderous leprechaun. I’m opting for Finian.
I went to St. Patrick’s Grammar School, and we never went to school on St. Patrick’s Day. Boston schools never did either only because it is also Evacuation Day, the day the British left Boston harbor during the Revolutionary War. Why that event has a holiday of its own I’ll never understand, but that piece tends to get overlooked and even forgotten. It is St. Patrick who is honored today.
My parents had many parties. I remember their smoke-filled kitchen was always packed with people, mostly relatives, and they always sang. I, with the worst of all voices, comes from a family which loves to sing. On St. Patrick’s Day they sang every song, and that’s how I learned the words. Of all the people, it’s my Dad I remember the most. I can still see him standing by the counter near the table. He had this great voice, and he sang with such vigor his face would sometimes turn red from the effort. He loved the Irish songs. My Dad also loved corned beef and cabbage, and my mother always made it for him. When I was there for one St. Patrick’s Day dinner, my Dad gave my dog Shauna a dish of corned beef. It was her first St. Patrick’s Day, and my Dad thought she ought to celebrate. One time the potatoes in the corned beef and cabbage disappeared: they fell apart and were absorbed. My Dad hunted through that pot in vain. He just couldn’t understand where they went. He was horrified when he realized there were no potatoes. He was a lover of meat and potatoes, and the loss of those potatoes was a blow he never forgot. It became a family story: St. Patrick’s Day and the disappearing potatoes.
Even if you’re not Irish, celebrate the day. We don’t celebrate enough so grab any day you can and enjoy it!!
Categories: Musings
Tags: corned beef and cabbage, disappearing potatoes, Evacuation Day, green, Singing, St. Patrick's Day
Comments: 29 Comments
March 16, 2013
The sun was shining earlier but has since disappeared. I don’t really care. A cloudy day seems to be the norm. Sunny days are anomalies. It is also really cold, but March on Cape Cod is seldom warm. When I went to get the papers, I stood a while at the front garden. The crocus (or croci if I use my Latin) are fully bloomed and so beautiful. The yellow even brightens a day like today.
I am amazed by how quickly the world has changed. I used to be content with a flickering black and white TV, even for cartoons. Now I have this big HD television and am even thinking of upgrading. My typewriter is in the cellar. It was a high school graduation present from my parents. I was then and still am the worst typist. Wite-Out was my friend as was that white tape you typed over to correct the errors. Now my computer makes corrections, most of the time without my help. I don’t chop onions. My food processor does that. I have three different size processors. I use the smallest one for when I need a tablespoon of something chopped. The microwave cooks dinner in minutes. I use my oven for storage. I do use it other times to bake, but the last time I did I burned a box of crackers I forgot was in there. I have a blender and an immerser. The only machine I don’t have is a can opener. I still use a hand opener. I used to sleep downstairs on the couch in the summer with the back door open. Upstairs was too hot. Then I got an air-conditioner for my bedroom and sometimes I’d stay in the cool all afternoon. Now my whole house is air-conditioned. I remember Sunday drives with all six of us crammed in the car and all the windows opened, but it was still hot and sticky. I sometimes got car sick. Who’d blame me? The car air-conditioner solved that problem. No more encyclopedias. We can just Google anything and get more answers than we imagined existed. My first transistor radio was big, but every year radios got smaller. I had a cassette recorder with me in Ghana. The last time I went I brought my iPod with I don’t know how many songs. My iPad came with me also and was my source for books and amusement. My Instamatic took pretty good pictures back in 1969, but my parents had to send me film as none could be had in Ghana, and I had to send it to them to be processed. In two years I took 290 slides. On my last visit, using my digital camera, I took over 400 pictures in three weeks.
When I was a kid, dreaming of the future, I figured by now, like the Jetsons, we’d have cars which can fly. I expected to be anywhere in the world in a short time, but it still takes 10 1/2 hours to get to Ghana. I want to be beamed, here one minute and there the next. Maybe a bit of cryonic sleep will preserve me until then, but wait! We don’t have cryonic sleep yet.
Categories: Musings
Tags: clothes, Clouds, cold, computers, digitial cameras, flying cars, future, iPads, iPods, modern machines, simple life
Comments: 24 Comments
March 15, 2013
This morning is winter. When I left for breakfast at 9 o’clock, it was 27˚. I saw people wearing winter coats, hats and gloves while walking their dogs, also sporting coats. While I was eating, the temperature rose to 32˚, but that cold didn’t stop me from being hopeful. I still believe that spring is taking hold. The front garden is filled with blooming crocus, and the birds are singing and greeting the morning. The sound is joyful.
The other day I bought a small pot of pansies for the kitchen. The flowers are yellow, my favorite color this time of year, the color of the sun. The daffodils I bought have finally bloomed and they too are a bright yellow. The sun is shining today, and the sky is blue. I am content despite the cold.
Today I have a few errands so I’ll go out in the afternoon. I’m sure Gracie will be glad for the ride. I try to take her all the time now because when summer comes, Gracie stays home except when we go to the dump where I can keep the car and the air conditioning running between stops. The heat is otherwise too much for Miss Gracie.
When I was a kid, I had three pairs of shoes: well, two pairs of shoes and a pair of sneakers. One pair of shoes was for school every day and church on Sunday. The other pair was for playing. That pair started out as school shoes then got worn and eventually demoted to play shoes. I wore those mostly in the winter or on cold days. In the summer I always wore sneakers. Nobody wore sandals back then except little kids. My sisters had white sandals with straps. My sneakers were red or blue when I was little. When I was older, they were white. We all wore white sneakers, mostly Keds, which narrowed at the toes. We kept them as white as possible. Sometimes we even used white shoe polish to cover marks. That had its disadvantages as the polish would seep to our socks and through to our feet, but that didn’t matter. White sneakers were a point of pride.
For my eighth grade trip, my mother bought me new clothes: a pair of sneakers, a blouse and clam diggers. I don’t know if that was a purely regional name. They were also called pedal pushers, and they looked a lot like Capri pants, the Mary Tyler Moore type, but to us they were clam diggers. It was the perfect name. Not many clothes boast a name which fits their function. If you wore those pants while clamming, they’d stay dry and out of the mud. We never did, but we could have.
Categories: Musings
Tags: clam diggers, cold, dafs, dump, heat, pansies, school shoes, shoes, singing birds, sneakers, spring, white sneakers, winter, yellow flowers
Comments: 11 Comments
March 14, 2013
Yesterday was a delight. Though it was a bit chilly, the sun shined all day. I left my self-imposed hibernation and went outside to do some yard work and Gracie came with me. When I’d finished, I stood on the deck for a while and watched Gracie try to figure out how to carry a slightly deflated basketball in her mouth. She managed and ran around the yard in triumph. I did a laundry, changed my bed and the cat litter, filled the feeders and went on an errand. It was an industrious day all brought about because of the sun. It was like I had my battery recharged. Today is cloudy.
The mouse trap sat in the cellar for over a week, and I only caught two. It is now on the kitchen floor, and I haven’t caught any. Once there were mice. I cleaned out a kitchen drawer and found cloth and cardboard had been gnawed into small pieces, and the mice had left their familiar droppings. I threw stuff away, put most in the dishwasher and hand-washed other stuff. When I took out the drawer, I found piles of chewed paper and more droppings underneath it. With a vengeance, I scrubbed the drawer and under the drawer, and now that everything is clean, I keep checking both drawers, but there are no more tell-tale signs of current mice in residence. I’ll leave the trap for a few more days, but I’m guessing it was Maddie who rid this floor of rodents.
I never saw wild life when I was a kid. I don’t even remember seeing a skunk. I saw lots of fireflies, grasshoppers, tadpoles, frogs and a few snakes, but that was it. The only wildlife I saw was in the zoo. It never occurred to me I was missing anything. I got to see the cows at the farm and the horse in the pasture not far from my house, and that was enough. Here on the Cape I have seen coyotes, foxes, deer, possums, raccoons and skunks. The latest are the wild turkeys. They are numerous and don’t mind strolling down the street as if in a parade. I love it when I see any of these animals. It means the Cape still has space for both of us.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Clouds, coyotes, deer, fireflies, foxes, grasshoppers, industrious, mice, mouse trap, recharged battery, sun, turkeys, wild animals, wild life
Comments: 16 Comments
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 