Keep the Coffee Comimg

The day has yet to decide. Rain? Sun? When I woke up, it was sunny. Right now it is cloudy and humid. This is the last week of meteorological summer. Labor Day is next week, an early Labor Day heralding the arrival of fall.

I remember how excited I was to vote for the first time. Back then you had to be 21 to vote. My first vote in a presidential race went to Hubert Humphrey. He lost to Richard Nixon. My second presidential vote went to George McGovern. Massachusetts was the only state he carried, but we felt vindicated when Nixon resigned because of Watergate. I remember a bumper sticker from back then which gave me a chuckle, “Nixon has a staff infection,” and another one which said, “Don’t blame me. I’m from Massachusetts.” I voted when I was in Ghana, an absentee ballot, but it didn’t come by air so it arrived a long time after the election. I sent it back anyway, airmail. I always vote. I believe it is a privilege.

In my mind, one of the most disgusting dishes is refried beans. I don’t even like beans let alone refried beans. They remind me of the results of a baby’s biological function, unnamed, but I suspect you can imagine.

My brother once ate some berries we found in the woods and had to have his stomach pumped. I wonder how many people ate foods they found growing and picked the wrong ones to try. Who opened a durian, smelled that awful smell and decided to eat it anyway? It even looks alien. Hummus resembles an odd color of wallpaper paste. The horned melon reminds me of the head of an alien I saw in a Star Trek episode. Even a pomegranate is a little weird looking.

Before Ghana, the only pineapple I had ever eaten was from a can, and I had never eaten or even seen a pawpaw, aka a papaya, or a mango. Every day my lunch in Ghana was a bowl of cut fruit, pineapples, oranges, bananas and pawpaw and sometimes mango. Lunch was always a delight.

Right now it is thundering, and it has started to rain, a small rain, a gentle rain.

The rainstorm is now a beaut. The thunder is loud and overhead. The lightning has started, the wind is blowing the trees left and right, the lights have flickered and gone out a couple of times and the rain is tremendous. The dogs don’t usually mind thunder, but this storm is too much for them. Both are shaking and clinging to me. I have an arm round each of them. I feel so bad for my babies!!