Keep the Coffee Comimg

Winter is reminding us that a few warm days does not a spring make. Last night it poured again. The wind blew strong, and it was downright cold. The rain has since stopped, but the wind and the cold remain. It is in the mid 30’s. The blue sky is disappearing and being replaced by light grey clouds, but no rain is predicted until the weekend.

Today is fill the larder day. My fridge and cabinets are empty, and all three pets need food. I have a shopping list. Most items are essentials, but I’m in the mood to add Snickers to the list. Come to think of it, I am always in the mood for a Snickers.

When I think back to when I was a kid, I am amazed at what I would and wouldn’t eat. Beans, of course, were on the never eat list. The sizes of Lima and kidney beans were appalling. I would eat sardines which amazes me now. I didn’t eat a whole lot of vegetables except for potatoes and the carrots my mother hid in the mashed potatoes. I did eat peas and corn. I didn’t even know what cauliflower and broccoli looked like until I was older. I’m still not a fan though I will eat fresh broccoli with a dip. I’m thinking the dip hides the taste and makes the broccoli palatable. I ate oatmeal, the sort you make on the stove, the sort which had lumps no matter how much you tried to stir them away. I have never liked pancakes, even pancakes drowning in maple syrup and a bit of butter. White bread was king, but I also ate Italian bread, scali bread from the bakery.

My taste in foods changed as I got older. It widened even more when I started to travel. Each trip was an adventure in eating. In Ghana, I ate Ghanaian food, but I also ate Lebanese food and Indian food for the first time. I ate Guinea pig in South America, goat, snake, bush meat aka rodent in Ghana, and some meats I still can’t identify. I figure sometimes you are better off not knowing.

Today is a day to be out and about. It has bit of spring about it at 54°. Green shoots have appeared in my front garden. They will be yellow daffodils.

Nala was out for a while so I went to check. I know she didn’t get out of the yard, but memories of Gracie always get me to check. Nala is lying on her favorite spot, a patch of grass in the sun.

My house is celebrating spider season. I saw the biggest spider this morning. It was walking by the butcher block on its way to a chair rung. I don’t know the sort of spider it was, but when I was a kid, we used to call it a daddy long-legs. I watched it.

When I was a kid, we lived in a project. It wasn’t what you’d imagine a project looks like. The houses were duplexes. They all had small front beds for flowers and small grassy lawns. The backyard was shared. My house sat on the corner on a hill. The front of my house was a bit different than the front of the other houses because of that hill. We not only had a grassy lawn on the front and side of the house, but we also had a grassy hill down to the street. The front walk led to some steps which went down to the sidewalk. My father parked right by those steps.

Everywhere near the project where we roamed is gone now. Even when I lived there they started replacing the field and the swamp with brick houses containing small apartments for the elderly. My father used to call it wrinkle city. His mother lived in one ground floor apartment in a building where the woods used to be. Every time I was cajoled to go with him to visit her I’d remember how it used to be.