Keep the Coffee Comimg

The rain is pounding the roof. It is supposed to rain all day, but I’m okay with that as I have nowhere I need to go. I love to listen to the sound of rain while I stay cozy inside surrounded by warm, sleeping dogs. The day is fall hottish, in the low 60’s. The air is still. Rain is all there is.

When I was a kid, one of my all-time favorite books was Little Women. I got it for Christmas one year and got so involved with the March family I read the book every chance I got. Jo was my favorite. She was out of the ordinary. She spoke her mind. She cut her hair against all convention so her mother could travel to Washington DC to tend to her father. She was brave.

Yesterday the concert was at an adult day care. Five of us played. The audience was in a semi circle in front of us. I watched them. In the back a couple of men sang along so quietly moving lips were what gave them away. On one side three women sat. One of the woman looked especially attentive then the next minute she was asleep. She woke up a few times, listened for a bit then napped again. I think they liked the concert. We got applause from the men in the back.

I do love chocolate in all of its incarnations. I think I inherited that from my father, the king of sweets. When my parents came to visit, I always had a chocolate cream pie for my dad. He didn’t share. I had biscotti for my mother, but I didn’t make it. I bought it at the bakery. She loved to dunk it in coffee though she was never a coffee drinker. She was a biscotti eater.

I love jigsaw puzzles. When my mother was here, we’d sit by the table in the den and do the puzzle together. She had one going on the dining room table at her house. I got a new puzzle every Christmas. As I got older, the pieces got smaller and more numerous. Now I favor 500 pieces. They fit best on my table.

I knew someone who used to steal a piece of whatever puzzle my friends and I were working on. She thought it was funny. We never did.

Nala has all her toys out of the basket onto the floor. I can hear squeaking. The one toy she wants is always at the bottom. Such is life.

The day is dreary. Rain is predicted for today and the next few days, but it is warmish, in the low 60’s. I have a concert this afternoon, but after that I will resume the sloth life at which I have become adept.

Today, my muse has deserted me. I keep writing then erasing when I hit a dead end. I guess this will have to be a stream of consciousness, scattered thoughts and ideas.

I remember sitting on a bus where a couple of women were facing each other at the front and chatting. One of them took took out a cigarette, lit it and absent mindedly put the wrong end in her mouth. She sputtered and spit.

I seldom sleep on planes, even long flights. I remember reading Gone with the Wind the entire flight to London. On my last trip to Accra, I read and played games on my iPad, all ten hours overnight.

My mother, sister and I went to Iceland. It was a cheap trip because it was winter. Our hotel was a short bus ride away from the center of Reykjavik. We had to wait outside for the bus. It was freezing, numbingly freezing. We wandered around the city where somehow we found an Irish pub. The Irish coffee warmed my mother.

Around the seventh or eighth week of Peace Corps training, a few of us, actually three of us, hitchhiked together to Accra for the weekend. We wandered the city getting to know it. I was carrying my pocketbook, a straw one with leather straps. It had a little bit of money, cedis, but nothing much else. I remember we were walking across a bridge when I felt a tug on my bag. A guy had grabbed one strap and was trying to steal it. I held on to the other and we both pulled in a tug of war. His strap gave and he ran off with the one strap. The two guys I was with just watched. They said I seemed to be doing just fine by myself and didn’t seem to need help.

In Finland I seldom knew what I was eating. The second language is Swedish which didn’t help. I pointed at pictures of food to order my meals. I was mostly lucky. It all tasted good. Besides, not knowing what I was eating was probably a good thing.

I backpacked through many European trips making me the typical young American traveler. Later, I used suitcases instead. I always figured that was adulthood.

I figured out long ago how to enjoy life. I still do every day.