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“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach”

July 1, 2012

The line outside my Sunday breakfast spot was long. I even had to put my name on a list. The air conditioning has been on since early yesterday afternoon. Gracie pants every time she goes outside. Barely a leaf moves, just the few every now and then at the tips of the branches. This is a summer weekend!

I remember weekends at the beach when I was a kid. Nothing tasted better after swimming and playing in the sand than a cold cup of Zarex and a sandwich with a gritty crunch. The Oreos my mother always packed tasted best with an ocean view. We always went shell hunting and came home every time with a pile of them. Our house should have been filled with them, but after a while they disappeared, finally tossed by my mother when she cleaned. After a day in the sun, I don’t think I ever stayed awake on the ride home. I remember going to bed with my head on the pillow and having hot water trickle from my ears, water the result of diving in the ocean, mostly at the sandbar where the water, when the tide was out, was warm enough to enjoy.

I remember an Easter Sunday at the beach in Ghana. I don’t remember which beach, but it had clean water, a place which sold food and few people. We walked a long way on the sand and played ball with a palm tree branch bat and a coconut ball. I got the worst sunburn.

In Togo, the beach sand was so hot your feet could barely stand the walk on it. We always hurried to the small thatched cabanas here and there on the sand. They were usually empty. Very few people went to the beach. The water there was wonderful though I remember one time when I was swimming and a dead pig floated by me. I wasn’t all that grossed out-I had been in Arica over a year and was just about beyond being grossed out by anything. There was a hotel with a restaurant across from the beach, and we often stopped there to eat after an afternoon swimming and lounging under the cabana. We usually ordered bifteck and pomme frites with a coke. The restaurant wasn’t fancy, but I can still see it in my mind’s eye. It was white with a blue trim, had outside tables and a view of the beach.

Beaches fill so many of my memory drawers it is no wonder I live on the Cape.

 

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“If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe…”

June 30, 2012

Today will be warm, 85˚ warm. Right now, though, the house is still morning cool, especially this room. The dog is sleeping in her crate. I can hear her snoring. She and I both slept in this morning. Last night I was up until after 2am watching the Red Sox playing Seattle first then some really bad movies. My taste definitely changes when the choices are so few. I’ll tolerate almost anything to pass the time until the Sandman comes.

My acorn squash has flowers, and I have already eaten some of my tomatoes. I figure my first year with a vegetable garden is a success. Not only that, it’s been fun watching everything grow. Today I’ll have my cherry tomatoes in a small salad. The first tomato got popped right into my mouth. It was wonderful!

Today is quiet. Usually on a Saturday I can hear people’s voices and lawnmowers and the occasional car going down the road. I don’t know where everybody is, but I’ll take the quiet. I have  new book called The Leftovers which is calling for me. I figure a cold ice tea, the book and some cheese and crackers will be terrific on the deck later.

Fall is my favorite season here on the cape, but summer is a close second. It is when spend my days outside, even to taking an outdoor shower. I grill my dinner. We have movies on the deck. Some afternoons I fight Gracie for the lounge and I take a nap. The nights are filled with the wonder of fireflies flitting around the trees and the mornings are bird songs. Even the sounds of lawnmowers are welcome.

Sometimes I look at the cape as if I were on vacation. I drive on all the scenic roads and along the shore. I visit shops instead of stores. Sometimes I stop for lunch and have clams or shrimp and French fries as take-out. Every now and then I eat at A&W Root Beer and always have hot dogs. A sunny day is the best time for meandering. Everyone else is at the beach. The roads are mine. The last time I roamed I went all the way to Wellfleet. I took Route 28 down and Route 6A back. Before I went home, I stopped for an ice cream cone. It was a perfect day.

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“Summertime is always the best of what might be.”

June 28, 2012

There is something wonderful about summer mornings. The house still has a nighttime cool, the birds are singing to welcome the new day and the lawn’s grass blades glint in the sunlight their tips still dewy damp. I love to walk across that cool, wet grass with bare feet when I go to collect the papers. I leave footprints on the driveway.

This room is in the back of the house and is always cooler and darker in the mornings. The sun rises at the front of my house, stays on the backdoor side all afternoon then wends its way to shine on the deck before setting. My yard is natural with plenty of trees and weeds which get their comeuppance a couple of times a summer. I planted a dogwood over where Shauna is buried and two fir trees over my Siamese kitties. Poor Maggie still needs a tree which I’ll plant this fall. Those animals lives enriched mine so much that I want them commemorated and something growing seems perfect.

Gracie woke me up early this morning and I was not happy. She jumped from the bed to the floor, started scratching at the mattress and whining in my face so I’d wake up. I did and came downstairs and opened the backdoor so Gracie could go out her dog door. She didn’t. She followed me back upstairs, jumped on the bed and fell asleep after a giant sigh of comfort. I wanted to break at least one paw. She fell back to sleep. I didn’t. Right now she’s out napping on the lounge on the deck. Life is tough if you’re Gracie.

I went to my first Wednesday play last night, and it was wonderful. 1776 was the play, and I think the men’s voices were the best they’ve had in a long while. The crowd gave them a standing oration, something I don’t remember seeing at that playhouse before this. Tomorrow night is my second Friday play; it’s As Bees in Honey Drown which I knew nothing about until I read the review, an excellent one so I’m looking forward to the play. So far I’ve seen only two movies this summer: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom. Both were at the Cape Playhouse Cinema which presents movies not shown in the usual theaters. This time of year I only go to movie theaters on beautiful sunny days. On rainy days there are few parking spots and fewer seats. Even the Cape Cinema fills though its audience is older than those at the regular theaters. Sometimes when I go there I feel young in comparison.

Today is an agenda less day. They are my favorites of all no matter what time of year.

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“All will come out in the washing.”

June 26, 2012

Last night I woke up to thunder and lightning, and I was so glad I did. I’d have hated to miss that storm as I’ve been hoping for such a boomer with all its sight and sound effects. My room lit up several times. The animals didn’t even move; Fern and Gracie stayed asleep on my bed while I enjoyed the display. Today is damp and cloudy, leftovers from yesterday and last night’s rain. The morning is cool the way damp mornings always are, even in summer. On one hand I really like a cool day but on the other I don’t because a day like today removes any and all excuses about doing chores. I can’t say the heat is too much so I’m stuck doing what I’ve put off for a few days. The first wash, all the dog’s blankets and stuff, is already in the machine. The kitchen floor has been swept, and I used my foot to swab the kitchen tiles with a Lysol wet cloth. When the dog wash is done, I’ll bring down one of the storm doors then I’ll bring the other when my washing is ready for the dryer. I feel like I should be wearing a t-shirt which says I am crazy for cleaning, and I mean that in a couple of ways.

I put off doing laundry because I hate to fold it after it dries, and I hate hauling it up two flights of stairs. Usually I leave the clean laundry sitting in the dryer wrinkling away until I need to do another wash or I’m just about out of clean underwear. I guess I shouldn’t complain as I remember my mother doing a load of wash just about every day, and she had a wringer machine when I was a kid and no dryer. Our cellar back then had two huge, deep sinks at one end, and the washing machine water flowed into one of them. I remember watching my mother push clothes through the wringer then catch them on the other side. When I see a pasta machine being used, I’m reminded somehow of that wringer.

Well, the machine just beeped so I need to move the clothes to the dryer. Is a woman’s work never done?

 

 

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“Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.”

June 24, 2012

I should be outside wabbling “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” as today is perfect. The humidity is gone, the sun is shining and it is only 72°. Last night the sky darkened and winds blew from the north so I expected a tremendous storm. We got one for about five minutes. The huge drops pounded the deck, and I was hoping for thunder and lightning. I’m still hoping. The storm was a bust.

I declare today a deck day. I’ll haul out my iPad and the magazines I got yesterday and sit and enjoy the day. I do have to fill the bird feeders and water the veggies, but those are my only tasks of the day.

My first cherry tomato is ripe. Fireworks are in order!

The roads were filled this morning when I went to breakfast. I found a booth right away in my diner, but within a short time, crowds were waiting outside for seats. The crowd is a sign summer has definitely started here, but, for those of you who are skeptics,  I even have further proof of this change in seasons. As I was going to the diner, the driver in front of me for what seemed like forever put his blinker on four times before he turned. I cursed. The air turned blue. Yup, that’s my summer color!

It’s a short post today as I can see the deck out my window from here in the den. The breeze is ruffling the leaves, the birds are singing and I swear I can hear my name being repeated over and over again.

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“Life is like a B-movie. You don’t want to leave in the middle of it but you don’t want to see it again.”

June 23, 2012

 

Today is cloudy and only 71°. I’ve put the screens in the doors and opened the windows. After three days of the AC and isolation, the world is back all around me. I can hear the neighbors next door chatting on their deck, lawnmowers, cars and voices from down the street. The breeze from the windows is a delight and welcomed after the horrific heat of the last three days. It will be in the 60’s tonight and by Tuesday down to the 50’s. Gracie isn’t even panting.

The world is in danger of a new ice age on syfi because of volcanic eruptions in Iceland, but an ice age mightn’t be all that bad an idea as alien insects will be by later, and the cold might deter them from world domination. Today is disaster/bug day on syfi all leading up to an earthquake unleashing monstrous spiders on New Orleans in tonight’s movie. Where’s the popcorn?

It won’t be long before the deck movies start. My friends have never seen Ferris Bueller so it will be the first movie. After that, I’m in a quandary. My taste is different, and I have no ideas as to which movies they’d find entertaining. I struck out last year a few times, but I do have some musicals, not to my liking, but I can sit through most movies as long as I have popcorn and nonpareils. I’m thinking West Side Story which is the one musical I actually like.

In Ghana, the Hotel d’Bull in Bolga, used to show movies on the white wall in the courtyard. I always bought super seats for about a quarter and sat on roof  which had patio chairs and tables. I ate kabobs, mostly beef but a few liver, and saw really old movies: American westerns and Indian movies, pre-Bollywood but still filled with singing. When I went to Accra, I’d always go to the movies. West Side Story was one of the films I saw. Is Paris Burning and The Thomas Crown Affair were a couple more. They too were old but at least were in color. The theaters had seats you placed wherever you wanted, and the screen was outside. If it rained, you picked up your seat, moved to the overhang  and continued watching.

When I traveled in other countries during school vacations, most American embassies had a movie night. I remember being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Niamey, Niger while I was watching a really bad WWII movie, but my standards back then were pretty different based on the rarity of movies. I’d watch just about anything.

Now that I’m thinking about it, my taste hasn’t really changed all that much.  Nothing better than a B movie to while away the day!

 

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“One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”

June 21, 2012

Already it is 86°. I ventured out to get the papers then hustled back into the coolness of my house. Yesterday afternoon I turned on the AC, and by last night the temperature was so low my nose and feet were cold. I couldn’t help the nose but my feet got slippers.

I noticed my neighbors have their screen door in while I  still have the storm door. The paper predicted it will be our usual June weather by Monday, 59° at night, so I’ll wait on that screen just a bit longer.

Cue the Jaws’ shark theme! Two great whites have returned to Chatham lured by the bounty of food, by all those seals lolling on the rocks. The sharks had been tagged last year, and it appears they enjoyed their vacation enough to return.

I just finished a Clive Cussler, easy, breezy summer reading. I knew from page one that our hero, Kurt Austin, would be in harrowing situations and forced to face death at least a few times; however, I knew he would save the girl, as there always is a girl, and triumph over the bad guy, a meglomaniac controlling weather and rainfall in his bid to take over the world. You’ve got to love a bad guy with a vision!

I am of the opinion that summer reading should never be taxing, never really need a whole lot of thought. Clive is the perfect example. You already know the outline of the plot and his heroes are interchangeable, but it doesn’t matter. The books are fun to read. I  heard the summer reading program on NPR a year or so ago and laughed at the comment that every summer at least one book should be about Nazis. I have a whole bookcase filled on my iPad with books like a John Sandford and his hero, Lucas Davenport, a Victorian mystery where ladies swoon, two books about baseball, a James Patterson and a couple of spy/espionage thrillers by authors I’ve never read before-it was the genre that caught my eye.

With the Red Sox on the TV in the background, I spend the evening mostly reading but watching when the Sox come to bat. I’m nice and cool dressed in my t-shirt, my gaudy Hawaiian looking Capri pants, worn only in the house or the deck, and my flip-flops. A cold drink is on the table. The dog is asleep on the couch. It’s a perfect summer evening!

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“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.”

June 20, 2012

Hello Summer!

Those words seem almost magical. It wasn’t that long ago we were longing for the summer and trying to stay warm during the dark nights of winter. Our feet froze in the snow. We cursed the shoveling. We huddled on the couch under afghans. Sure, the snow was lovely falling down but then we had to contend with it for days. Would summer never come? Well, here it is in all its glory, and today we’ll usher in the new season with the hottest day so far. Boston will be at least 95°, and here we’ll reach the low 80’s. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but I don’t care! Finally it’s summertime, deck time, movies outside on a Saturday night, barbecues and outside showers.

I was on the deck earlier with my coffee and papers. It got hot. Gracie was in the shade and panting so we both came inside and the house felt wonderfully cool. This room gets the afternoon sun so it’s lovely in the mornings. From my perch here, I can see out my window. The leaves on the trees by the deck are barely moving. The sunlight is dappled. The sky is azure. Mother Nature did herself proud.

The beginning of summer always reminds of all those last days of school when we were finally free. The day felt like a holiday, not as good as Christmas but still high on the list of kids’ favorite days. No more getting up in the mornings and being grumpy at having to walk to school despite the weather. No more coats or hats or mittens or even spring jackets. The bike could stay out of the cellar until it started to get too cold again. Every day for the next couple of months was ours: unplanned and waiting to be filled with all the fun of summer. The street lights didn’t come on until really late so back out we’d go after dinner. I still remember the  sounds of those summer evenings: the shouts and laughter of all the kids in my neighborhood, including me, as the day disappeared and the summer night was upon us. It was time to watch for the fireflies.

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” I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.”

June 19, 2012

The weather is the same as it’s been. The paper calls today partly cloudy. I always think of that forecast as a half-full or half-empty sort of weather observation. Why can’t it be partly sunny? For tomorrow, the first day of summer, Mother Nature is doing herself proud. She’s bringing on the sun and the heat, maybe even into the 80’s. Finally I get to shed this sweatshirt!

I have the Weather Channel app on this computer. It is set to give me the weather in South Dennis and in Accra. If I were in Accra, I’d be writing about the weather being the same every day: highs in the low-80’s, lows in the mid-70’s and the possibility (60%) of thunder showers every day. It is, after all, the rainy season. I loved the rainy season and the fierce thunder storms which came after winds strong enough to blow furniture over and whip trees. Where I lived was savannah grassland. Most of the year it is brown and dead, but when the rains come, the grass is green and tall. Millet grows in all the fields, and the market stalls are filled with fresh produce. That is why I have chosen to go back to Ghana and Bolgatanga in August again this year. The rains will still come every day. Some will be drenching while others will be misty and cooling. We always went about our business  in the rain. We never had umbrellas. I don’t even remember seeing any. We knew when the rain stopped the sun would return and dry us, but I remember well the feeling of being wet and cool while walking in the rain.

When I was a kid, nothing was better than a summer rain. We’d run and play and get soaked doing it.  We’d kick water at each other from the rivers roaring through the gutters on the street. I remember my hair soaken wet and plastered to my head. I remember my arms stretched out to the sides as I stood in the rain, and I remember laughing from sheer joy.

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“No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap.”

June 18, 2012

Okay, today is like yesterday which is like the day before. It is cloudy and cool. Gracie woke me up at eight which to me was the middle of the night as I didn’t go to bed until after two. She was barking loud enough to wake the neighbors so I went downstairs where she was standing by the front door. I opened it, but nothing was there. I let her out back into the yard, and there was a dog outside the fence who started barking at Gracie who then tried to jump the six foot fence to get at the interloper. Gracie was as fierce as I’d ever heard her, and she managed to get her front paws on the top of the fence but, luckily, never made it over. When she came on the deck to get a better look, I grabbed her and brought her inside. The dog took off through the yard behind mine. I kept Gracie in the house, drank my morning coffee and read the papers. When I finished, I started my morning chores. I went upstairs and changed the cat litter then was going to change the bed before my shower, but I decided the bed looked inviting, and I was tired so I went back to sleep for another two hours.  I just woke up.

I like naps. Even when I was in college, I took naps so age is not a factor. My father was a napper so I am from a line of nappers. My favorites are winter naps in the cold darkness of the late afternoon while I’m snuggled under the down comforter with the animals beside me keeping me even warmer. Rainy day naps are a close second, and I love to fall asleep to the rhythmic sounds of drops falling on the  overhang below the roof right outside my window. My friend Jay calls it his nippy nap. I always liked that. His wife is not a napper, but she understands naps. My sisters, who are also not nappers, don’t understand the lure of the nap. My mother never did either, but my father did.

I have no agenda for the day other than finish those chores and do a laundry then I’m going to read for the rest of the afternoon. I think it sounds like a wonderful day!

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