Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

“My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m Happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?”

April 7, 2011

The morning is beautiful with bright sun and a deep blue sky. It is sweatshirt warm. When I went to get the papers earlier, I noticed my forsythia has buds. Spring is getting closer and closer.

Yesterday was a busy day. Every item on my list got crossed off. I felt accomplished. Today I have only a few errands to do then it’s trivia tonight. We won three weeks in a row then the last two weeks we have been just awful. Last week we had only three team members and huge spaces in our memory banks. Tonight I know we’ll have at least four. Maybe that will help.

I watched the movie The Phantom this morning. It reminded me how much I loved reading the Sunday comics, especially the Phantom. I followed his exploits every week. It’s sad that so many comics from my childhood are now gone, relegated to memories. Lying on the rug reading the comics was a Sunday ritual for me. The comics were always in color so I knew about the Phantom and purple and how Nancy always wore that red skirt. I also remember Jiggs and Maggie who were usually on the front page. She had pretensions, and he wore spats and always smoked a cigar and frustrated the heck out of his wife. I read Dick Tracy but he wasn’t a favorite. I always felt sort of bad for Nancy as she had no parents, but she did have a really nice aunt and her friend Sluggo. Steve Canyon was a military pilot. All his pals had the strangest names, but I don’t remember any of them. Strange is all that stuck. It was just too long ago to keep the particulars safe in my memory. I read Annie and Dondi, both orphans. I remember Dondi had huge eyes.

I read the comics first every Sunday.

April 5, 2011

April 4, 2011

April 3, 2011

April 2, 2011

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”

April 2, 2011

The day is sunny and is supposed to be in the high 40’s, but the wind is making it feel far colder. Gracie, though, has been outside most of the morning. I guess wearing a fur coat helps.

Oh the pain, the pain!! My Red Sox lost the opener. Jon Lester was off his game and Carl Crawford didn’t get a hit. He actually struck out three times. The highpoints were few but heartwarming. David Ortiz hit a home run, Adrian Gonzalvez went two for four and Jacoby Ellsbury stole his first base of the season. My friends and I wore our Red Sox sweatshirts and socks and cheered and moaned in unison. We ate appetizers and then had pizza delivered. If it weren’t for the loss, the evening would have been great fun.

Today is my do chores at home day, but I can’t really complain as I have so few of them. Most times my stay home day is reading and lounging and being a sloth. Among my chores today are laundry, trash and litter boxes then it’s back to being a sloth.

My front garden has blooming flowers in yellow, pink and purple. I don’t know the names of all of them, but the crocus have been up a while, and I can see the flowers of the hyacinths so they aren’t so far away. I planted these bulbs last year, but I thought the squirrels had eaten most of them. How lovely a surprise to see so many survived.

I can still see all my neighbors’ houses through the naked branches of the trees in the backyard. Once their leaves arrive, though, the houses will disappear, and I’ll sit on my deck among the trees and think I’m Tarzan and Jane’s neighbor. Gracie and the birds will provide the sounds, not quite from the jungle though, but still enough to make me think I’m far away from my street and my town and the suburbs.

I have organized all my Ghanaian pictures on my new Mac. Next I’m going to figure out how to add music. I’ll then make a duplicate with captions and send it along to Tim, another RPCV from Ghana. He has already made a DVD from his slides and those of two other returned volunteers. Peace Corps Ghana has been asking for archival items as part of the 50th anniversary. I hope to bring them copies of my slides and the combined ones. I look at my slides and can’t believe how young I was. Forty years has passed far too quickly.

April 1, 2011

March 31, 2011

March 29, 2011

March 28, 2011