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“The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.”

October 12, 2012

Today was an unexpected sleep in late day. I won’t even admit what time it was when I finally crawled out of bed. Because I had no cream, the dog and I, as soon as we came downstairs, went to Dunkin’ Donuts to buy my morning coffee. Good thing they have a drive-up as I didn’t even bother to get dressed.

As soon as the sun goes down, it gets cold now, a lingering cold, the sort you know is here to stay. Tonight is supposed to be in the 30’s, yup, I said the 30’s. This morning, during my jaunt, the sun was out, but it has since disappeared and has left us with a gray, ugly day, the sort of day which invites coziness and a good book, but, alas, I do have to go out to get the cream for my coffee.

My mailbox will soon disappear. Everyday the pole on which it sits sinks further into the ground weighed down by the   catalogs my mailman has to deliver day in and day out, but, luckily, this is a rural route so Bob, my mailman, has a truck which is a good thing as I figure most of his route, maybe even much of the world, is being inundated by catalogs. Yesterday there were twelve catalogs in my mailbox. Three of them had threats, “This is your last catalog unless you order;” however, I am undaunted by these threats. Go ahead, stop my catalogs. I dare you!!

I admit some catalogs make me salivate. William Sonoma and Crate and Barrel are two of them. I also love Napa Style and VivaTerra. I look through each of them and make a mental list of what I’d buy if I had money and room for all the purchases. I even turn down the corners of the pages so I can go back and be tempted.

Back when we were kids we only needed one catalog, the king of catalogs: the Sears Catalog. It had everything anyone ever needed. I always thought it had a bit of magic about it. From its toys pages came our lists for Santa, including catalog numbers so Santa would have no doubt exactly what we wanted. We looked through those pages so many times they got wrinkled and dirty, but we still looked over and over again. Maybe we’d changed our minds or just maybe we might have missed something the first ten or twelve times we looked through those pages.

 

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“Do the unexpected. Take 20 minutes out of your day, do what young people all over the world are dying to do: vote.”

October 11, 2012

Earlier this morning, Fern and Gracie vied for the prime spot on the mat in the sun by the front door. Gracie beat out Miss Fern, but the wily cat found her own spot where the sun shined through the glass onto the floor. I don’t need a thermometer. I have the two of them letting me know the house is cold.

Caller ID saves me. The number of political calls is outrageous, but I don’t answer. The robo-callers tried to disguise themselves by phoning from everywhere: California, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Washington, state that is, but I’m not deceived by their duplicity. Most of the calls seem to tout Scott Brown for the senate. The calls don’t endear him to my heart.

I was excited when I could vote for the first time. I turned twenty-one in late summer before my senior year in college and immediately registered at the town hall as an independent, a designation I still have. I needed an absentee ballot to vote during my first election, the Nixon versus Humphrey one, as I was at school. When the ballot came in the mail, I didn’t ponder at all. I knew right away who would get that historic vote. It was Hubert Humphrey.

I love to vote and seldom miss even the smallest of elections. I vote in presidential years, off-years and in my town elections for the selectman, the school committee and the other offices small towns always seem to have. It amazes me when people proudly declare they never vote. I consider voting an obligation of citizenry. Most times local questions or state referendums are also on the ballot so not liking any candidates is only an excuse, not a reason, for staying away from the voting booth.

I vote at the police station where I can count on one thing every time I go to vote: someone will have set up a bake sale, usually for a school club or a sport at the local middle school. Not only do I exercise my franchise, but I also get cookies, usually peanut butter or chocolate chip, more good reasons to vote.

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“Do the unexpected. Take 20 minutes out of your day, do what young people all over the world are dying to do: vote.”

October 11, 2012

Earlier this morning, Fern and Gracie vied for the prime spot on the mat in the sun by the front door. Gracie beat out Miss Fern, but the wily cat found her own spot where the sun shined through the glass onto the floor. I don’t need a thermometer. I have the two of them letting me know the house is cold.

Caller ID saves me. The number of political calls is outrageous, but I don’t answer. The robo-callers tried to disguise themselves by phoning from everywhere: California, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Washington, state that is, but I’m not deceived by their duplicity. Most of the calls seem to tout Scott Brown for the senate. The calls don’t endear him to my heart.

I was excited when I could vote for the first time. I turned twenty-one in late summer before my senior year in college and immediately registered at the town hall as an independent, a designation I still have. I needed an absentee ballot to vote during my first election, the Nixon versus Humphrey one, as I was at school. When the ballot came in the mail, I didn’t ponder at all. I knew right away who would get that historic vote. It was Hubert Humphrey.

I love to vote and seldom miss even the smallest of elections. I vote in presidential years, off-years and in my town elections for the selectman, the school committee and the other offices small towns always seem to have. It amazes me when people proudly declare they never vote. I consider voting an obligation of citizenry. Most times local questions or state referendums are also on the ballot so not liking any candidates is only an excuse, not a reason, for staying away from the voting booth.

I vote at the police station where I can count on one thing every time I go to vote: someone will have set up a bake sale, usually for a school club or a sport at the local middle school. Not only do I exercise my franchise, but I also get cookies, usually peanut butter or chocolate chip, more good reasons to vote.

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“In quiet places, reason abounds”

October 9, 2012

Today is socks and sweatshirt weather. It rained again last night into this morning, and the day is bone chillingly damp. I had a library board meeting this morning, and I turned on the heat in the car: the first time this fall.

We’ve had days and days of dark skies and periodic rain. The temperature has dropped to the 50’s during the day and the 40’s at night. I figure this is a shoulder season: the time between the beauty of autumn and the cold of early winter. The blanket was welcome warmth on my bed last night as were Fern and Gracie huddled beside me.

Sunny, warm days are delights and give the birds reason to sing. Squirrels, the spawns of Satan, are active and jump from branch to branch and run across the top of the gate. The chipmunk who lives under my lawn scurries in the sun. Gracie sleeps on the deck. The cats sprawl in the sunlight streaming through the doors. I sit outside, read and take in those days, but they’ve been gone for a while. The warmth has been replaced by cold, rainy damp days. which are cause for staying inside, staying warm. I had to turn on the lamp as the house is so dark. It’s also quiet. Gracie’s snoring is the only sound I can hear.

I haven’t much ambition. Yesterday all my chores were completed except for the laundry which I’ll finish today, but then I’ll do nothing else. I have no list. As soon as I finish here, I’m going upstairs to take off my outside clothes and put on my cozy clothes. I’ll come back downstairs and let the afternoon unfold as it will.

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“I’d like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can’t be what you aren’t.”

October 8, 2012

I woke up to a blue sky and a sunny morning. It was late, as late as I’ve slept in for a long time, but I didn’t go to bed until close to three. It was just one of those nights when Hypnos and Morpheus were elsewhere. I didn’t mind. I kept busy.

It’s a stay home day with lots to do around the house. I have to pay the bills, a drudgery I hate, and I need to take the screens off both doors and replace them with glass as the back door stays open so Gracie can come and go, but it was really chilly last night so I eventually had to close that door. Gracie, of course, then wanted out over and over again. She rang her bells and kept ringing them until I got up. Sometimes she didn’t even go out. The rest of my chore list includes changing the litter boxes, watering the plants and doing the laundry. It’s a long list, and somewhere in there I’d like to fit in a nap, maybe I can put off the laundry.

It rained most of last night. I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and I could hear the rain on the roof. It wasn’t a heavy rain, but it was a steady rain.

Last night, with all that time on my hands, I went into my memory drawers and thought about when I was in grammar school. I remembered my first couple of grades when we had desks which probably dated from the opening of the school in 1910. The desks were wooden and were attached to the floor by screws through the bottoms of their metal legs. The chairs were also wooden but had metal parts which ended in circles flush with the floor and these were either screwed or nailed into the floor so they didn’t move either. We had trouble finding our books which were stored inside those desks. We had to bend over to look and sometimes we’d have to pull out a book or two before we’d find the right one. On the top of the desks were the grooves for our pencils. We didn’t use pens in the early grades. On the floor, below the chair, was where we’d put our lunch boxes. Our jackets were always in the cloak room.

When we got older, our rooms had newer desks. Those desks were also wooden, a blond wood, but the tops lifted and we could see everything kept inside but then so could the nuns. They weren’t happy with messy desks, with desks filled with crumpled papers or pointless pencils, so we had periodic clean our desk afternoons, usually late on Fridays when the nun had probably already lost our attention. One boy would slowly walk up the aisles holding the basket, and he’d stop at each pair of desks to give us time to throw everything away. The basket would get filled so the basket boy would have to take it to the basement to the trash barrels then he’d come back and do it all over again: up an aisle and stop, up an aisle and stop then back to the basement. I always wanted to be the basket person who got to leave the room, and I’d raise my hand and wiggle it in the air hoping to be chosen, but the nuns never chose me or any other girl. It was not a fit job for a  young lady.

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“Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.”

October 6, 2012

Today is a lovely day, sunny and warm; however, it’s a teaser. Tomorrow will be in the 50’s and tomorrow night in the 40’s. I figure days and nights so cold this time of year are just promos getting us ready for what’s to come. In a few months, the 50’s will seem a heat wave.

I bought a zombie. He is crawling out of the hearth, and when he senses movement, his eyes turn red and he makes horrific noises. The first couple of days after his arrival I jumped when I noticed him out of the corner of my eye, but now he and I are on good terms. Yesterday he was joined by the mummy’s hand and a bat. The hand moves.

I have boxes of Halloween decorations which I’ll bring up this week to turn my house into a monster fest. My favorites are the rats, the disgusting rats, and they always have a prominent spot in my living room. When I was a little kid, it was witches and ghosts which haunted my Halloweens, but now it’s rats, giant crows and zombies.

I was never an easily scared kid mostly because I didn’t believe in monsters under the bed or ghosts, but strange noises in the dark of night gave me pause. I’d hear the wind blowing the leaves on a bush, and my imagination would take hold, and I’d conjured the man with the hook, the one my father told me about, the one who stayed with me for years. He could have been real. I knew ghosts weren’t, but a man with a hook for a hand could have been.

I remember calling out to the sound, “Hello, anyone there?” and I remember hoping with every fiber of my being that no one was there. I don’t know what I would have done if I ever got an answer. Besides, what would he say? “Yes, hello, I’m here. It’s me, the man with the hook, and I’m coming after you.”

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“You can’t teach people to be lazy – either they have it, or they don’t.”

October 4, 2012

Today is another grey, rainy day, but it’s warm which sort of compensates. Yesterday was busy for me, and I got a lot done. We, Gracie and I, went to the dump then to the garden shop for pumpkins, gourds and mums. They now adorn the front steps. I had two other stops, but I brought Miss Gracie home first as she found the car a bit warm. Today I’ll also be going out: two days in a row is unheard of for me. I’ve been home over two weeks, and the gas tank is still half full.

A while back I saw the Facebook picture of someone I’ve known since the first grade. We were friends and college roommates, but my time in the Peace Corps was when I lost track of her and most of my college friends as the distance between us became more than miles. In that picture I mentioned she was wearing a hat, a dress and pearls. She was June Cleaver or Donna Reed. We have definitely drifted very far apart.

I haven’t a whole lot of ambition today. Over the weekend I made pumpkin cookies, did a laundry and polished this room. The other day I did a couple of errands and yesterday I crossed more errands off my list. I think I’m exhausted. When I worked, all of those would have been done on Saturday except for the dump. That was always on Sunday. Now I spread my chores and my errands over a week or even two weeks and still I complain. It hasn’t anything to do with getting tired or being older. It has to do with jealously guarding my time. I want every day. I want to read all day or take a nap or not even get dressed. I want to fun shop. I want to play. I want to loll on the couch with bon bons. I deserve all of it!

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“Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, sober steadfast, and demure, all in a robe of darkest grain, flowing with majestic train.”

October 2, 2012

It is another beautiful fall day with lots of sunshine. The breeze is ever so slight and just ruffles the leaves. When I closed down the deck, I left out a table and a comfy chair so I can enjoy days like today. That’s where I’ve been for the last couple of hours. I fed the birds and read a while then figured it was time to get on with my day. I came inside but oh so reluctantly.

I have a couple of errands today, left over from yesterday. One I couldn’t do and the other I forgot to do. Looks like I’ll be putting four or five more miles on the car this week!

I wore uniforms for almost my entire time in school, from grades 1 though grade 11. They made it easy to choose what to wear, and uniforms made us all equal. My grades 1 though 8 uniform was a blue skirt, a white blouse and a blue tie: a cowboy tie is what we used to call it. The skirts had to be at least half-way down the knee. I remember the eighth grade when crazy Sister Hildegarde was my teacher, and she went after a girl who had rolled the waist of her skirt to make it shorter. Eleanor Garland was the girl’s name. It is a name I’ve never forgotten as the incident was so awful. To make it even worse, Eleanor was somehow related to crazy Sister Hildegarde, and we all knew it. I can still remember Sister Hildegarde storming down the aisle to the back desk, her veil blowing behind her, where she made Eleanor stand up. We always thought of her as poor Eleanor even before the incident. She had teeth which needed braces, was too skinny, not all that bright and was really shy. To have rolled her skirt so high was a defiant, rebellious Eleanor none of us recognized but should have applauded en mass when the incident happened. I’ll never forget Sister Hildegarde standing in front of poor Eleanor berating and yelling at her. Crazy Sister Hildegarde then  grabbed the hem of Eleanor’s skirt and pulled it down to where the rules said it should be. Eleanor never moved and crazy Sister Hildegarde never stopped yelling. Poor Eleanor cried silently, tears streaming down her face. She was humiliated and we were horrified. When Sister Hildegarde was finally finished her attack, Eleanor was told to sit down. She did so without a word. None of us said anything either. We turned around to let Eleanor have as much privacy as a room full of kids and a crazy nun could give her.

After graduating from the eighth grade, I went to a Catholic high school where every one of the nuns was sane. It was in a different town. I never saw Eleanor after the eighth grade. I sometimes wonder about her.

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“He who is outside his door already has the hardest part of his journey behind him.”

October 1, 2012

I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but I upgraded my OS today and started to write Coffee on my iPad as the Mac was doing it thing. I wrote the blog but it disappeared. Come to find out I hadn’t put it on the dashboard but in some unknown place which ate the entry. I started again and got most of it written then, glory be to God, my Mac finished so here I am.

This morning I woke up at 8:30 which is the latest I’ve slept since I got home. It felt like the middle of the afternoon.

After I get up, the first thing I usually do is check out my window to see what sort of day Mother Nature has sent us. I was thrilled to see the sun and feel the warm air when I went to get the papers. I came inside and opened both doors. Fern ran to the sun streaming through the front door, and I wanted to join her. Lolling in the sun is a fine way to spend the day.

I keep track of the number of miles I travel each week. When I worked, I generally traveled over 100 miles a week with the comings and goings, the off-cape meetings and the occasional trips to Boston. Last week I managed 48 miles. Some weeks, my sloth or hibernation weeks, I do around 24 miles. At that rate my car will last forever.

I find it a bit intriguing that I am more than willing to travel around the world, but I carp and complain about a trip to Hyannis. It isn’t as if I have to travel far, but that doesn’t matter, I still have to steel myself for the trip. To that end, I always promise myself a treat for having made the trek. Usually it’s a stop at Barnes and Noble or lunch out, sometimes at the Indian restaurant or the Thai place on the way home. I chuckle at the absurdity of it all, but that doesn’t change my reluctance to get on the highway and head to the big city, big at least for these parts. Never could I have visualized that Hyannis would seem the ends of the earth to me.

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“Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.”

September 29, 2012

The thunder woke me up last night. It rumbled and roared for the longest time then the rain started, the downpour, a torrent of rain. It rained all night. This morning the rain was heavy then just in time for me to get the papers the rain became a mist. Gracie has been out twice, a barometer of sorts as she only goes out if the rain is light.

Maddie presented me with another gift this morning: her third mouse since my return. That makes the count 3 to 1. Maddie is the three, and I’m the one. Gracie had cornered a baby mouse the other day, the tiniest of things, and I saved it. I managed to get it into a box then I took it outside, but I swear this new casualty could be the same mouse or its twin. Both were dark grey and both were babies.

My house is really quiet. The only sound is the keys as I type. The three animals are asleep. They each have a spot. Fern is on the afghan on the back of the couch, Maddie on the chair and Gracie sprawled beside me on the couch. Every now and then she snores.

I used to love Saturdays when I was a kid. It was the one day I could do whatever I wanted, at least until bath time. The day always started with cereal and all those wonderful Saturday morning programs. My brother used to sit on the floor between the TV and the chair where I usually sat. If my mother caught him, she always made him move back away from the screen. She believed that watching the TV so closely would harm his eyes. After our shows were finished, it was time to get dressed and go exploring. We never had a destination. We just wandered. On rainy days Saturdays like today, we’d stay home. I liked to lie in bed, comfy under the covers, and read. Sometimes we’d play in the cellar. I used to imagine that the bottom of the railing was a horse. I’d saddle it with a blanket and then ride. I was Annie Oakley.

We never tired of Saturday night’s dinner. It was a ritual of sorts, a New England specialty meal of hot dogs, baked beans and brown bread. I always passed on the beans. We used the yellow mustard on our dogs which, for the whole of his life, was my dad’s favorite. Howard’s piccalilli was our other topping. We were never ketchup fans on hot dogs. Every now and then I buy brown bread; it’s a sort of trip in time.

Saturday night was bath night. My sisters shared the tub while my brother and I each had our own bath. The night always ended in screaming. While my mother was combing the snarls out of their wet hair, my sisters would cry and scream. My brother and I, ever sympathetic, always turned up the TV so we didn’t have to hear them.

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