Posted tagged ‘beautiful day’
February 10, 2017
It is 1:30. The wind is still raging, but the snow has stopped. Most of the snow was wet and heavy, and in the late afternoon a downed wire cut off my electricity. I sat for a while reading, but because the house was getting a bit cooler, Gracie and I headed upstairs to take a nap. I was thinking warm down comforter. I don’t know what Gracie was thinking. I could hear the branches brushing against the house, against the wall in my bedroom. Then I heard a crash. I ran downstairs, opened the front door and saw nothing but branches. They extended from a giant branch, half of a pine tree, now lying across my front yard. It was torn off the tree by the wind. Its branches are near the front door and have cut me off from the outside world. Poor Gracie had to go out among the branches. It took three times before she decided it was branches or nothing.
I went to bed around 2:30. Gracie woke me up around 4. She was shaking. She was also panting: signs that Gracie needed to go outside. She wouldn’t get off the bed so I had to help her. We got down the stairs to the door and she went outside and did her business just this side of the branches.
I’m hoping my landscape guy comes today to free me. I know Skip will be here to plow and shovel as soon as he can. Right now the day is beautiful to look at, all sunny and bright, but that’s deceiving. It is only 20˚. I guess I’m okay for now with being stuck in the house, the warm house.
This was a terrific snow storm. It even had thunder. We probably got near a foot of snow. It covers everything. I couldn’t see out the back windows until a little while ago, but the sun is still the sun so the windows are clear again.
Looks like we have to postpone dump day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: -20˚, beautiful day, bizzard, branches, clear yard, Dog, fallen tree, landscaper, pine tree, shovel and plow, thunder, Wind
Comments: 14 Comments
January 20, 2017
The clock just struck one. I’m not even tired. I went up and down the TV dial and checked out Netflix, but I didn’t find anything I wanted to watch. I tried to read, but I just couldn’t settle down and pay attention. Gracie and Maddie had slept most of the night away, but Gracie just woke up, had a snack and a drink of water then climbed back on the couch to go back to sleep. In about two minutes she was snoring. I envy her.
The weather stayed lovely all day. It hit 43˚. Gracie and I did our errands. We went to the dump, and she got her nails cut at the vets then we took a ride. Gracie liked the window down.
When we got home, the alien took over my body again. The kitchen is gleaming. This sudden spurt of housecleaning has to end.
When I was a kid, I read all of the time. I visited the library just about every week in the summer and every couple of weeks in the winter. I can close my eyes and still picture the children’s side of the library. The librarian sat behind a round counter made of wood set in the middle of the room across from the door. The shelves filled with mysteries were against the wall behind her. The tables and chairs were all wooden. The chairs were spindlebacks though I didn’t know back then that’s what the style was called. Some of the chairs had arms. The tables were different lengths. I’d sit for a bit and look through books to decide which ones I wanted to read. When I was ready, I’d bring the books to the librarian who would stamp the lined sheet in the back with the due date.
I loved mysteries. My favorite detectives were Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. The library didn’t have those books, but I’d use my fifty cent allowance to buy the Trixie Belden books and just about every birthday and Christmas I’d be given new Nancy Drews. I loved that they were girls solving mysteries. Nancy drove a roadster. I had to look up what kind of a car a roadster was. Trixie was much younger, closer to my age. I always envied their sleuthing. I would have loved stumbling on a mystery.
Well, I finally settled on a Netflix film about conspiracies. Hitler and Eva were replaced by doubles who were shot. The two of them were then spirited out of the country. Now I’m going to find out what really happened to Nazi gold. This program was a great choice. I’m getting sleepy from watching it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 1 AM, 43˚, aliens, beautiful day, cleaning, dump, errands, library, mysteries, Nancy Drew, reading, sleeping animals, spindle back chairs, vets
Comments: 12 Comments
December 1, 2016
Today is more than enough to make up for all that rain. Mother Nature is back in my good graces. The day is warm. I went to get the papers in a short sleeve shirt and wasn’t even cold. The sun is brilliant and perfectly framed by the blue sky. A little breeze has the brown leaves dancing at the end of their branches. I made a list of places to go today so I can enjoy the day.
The dog door is complete. Yesterday I ran into my friend and explained my problem with the plastic part of the dog door. His dog also has one so I figured he might have a solution. Washers! That was it, all I needed. I went to the hardware store and gave the man one of the small screws, asked for some with larger heads and some washers. He brought me both for the grand total of 98 cents. Two of the holes used the larger headed screws while the other holes needed the washers. Gracie has been in and out that door all morning.
It rained again yesterday, but I still went to do errands. Gracie needed dog food. That was enough incentive to get me out into the rain, but I did treat myself and bought lunch and some anise cookies. Life is good.
This week I will start decorating my house for Christmas. One side of my cellar is filled with bins of decorations. I have a whole collection of plastic lighted figures, mostly Santa Clauses. On the back wall are bins I haven’t opened in a few years. I’m hoping I can make my way back there to see what’s in those bins. I like surprises. Many of my decorations, like the Santas, are vintage and some are mighty ugly, but I don’t care. I think everything Christmas has an intrinsic beauty, even the ceramic angels, Santa mugs and really gross elves with scary faces. I was thrilled last Christmas to find out my nephew collects those vintage plastic lighted figures. He got a snowman as a gift last year. I didn’t know anyone else shared my taste.
That load of washing is still in front of the cellar door. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow. But then again, maybe not.
Categories: Musings
Tags: anise cookies, beautiful day, dancing leaves, dirty laundry, elves, lighted plastic figures, Lunch, rain, screws, sunny, vintage Christmas, washers
Comments: 8 Comments
August 21, 2016
Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day! It is cool and sunny with that clear light of morning. Last night I didn’t even need air conditioning. Tonight we’re getting rain, but not just rain; we’re getting a thunderstorm. I don’t even remember the last time it rained.
I have noticed the darkness creeping in earlier now. We are losing two and a half minutes of light every day. According to the weatherman, a couple of nights this week will be in the high 50’s, a warning that cool nights and crisp mornings are getting closer. They are harbingers of fall. I love when it when late flowers color the front garden. The white clematis are starting to appear on the sides and tops of the front fence. Black-eyed Susans are still in bloom. A white flower whose name I’ve forgotten is budding in the garden next to the house. Soon it will bloom. That unnamed flower has spread across one whole side of the garden. When it blooms, it looks so lovely with the green house as a backdrop.
Tonight we are having our first movie. I have chosen Dick, but it is on order from Amazon prime, and they are saying by eight tonight. I’m hoping for sooner or we may have to choose another movie. The main dish for this evening is hot dogs. I have a hot dog machine which rolls the dogs over and over and also warms the rolls. It needs no tending. I’m going to pick up an appetizer or two, popcorn and some movie candy. We have birthday cake for dessert. I’m hoping my friends find Dick as amusing as I do.
I have two errands to do which makes this the third day in a row I have joined the outside world. Goodbye to comfy clothes.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, beautiful morning, clematis, cool, Dick, flowers, front garden, garden, hot dogs, movie candy, popcorn, sun, sunny
Comments: 13 Comments
June 20, 2016
Today is the longest day of the year. The summer solstice, the first day of summer, starts at 6:34 tonight. Mother Nature, usually quite fickle, did her part and came through with a glorious day. The sun is squint your eyes bright, the sky a deep blue, the breeze cool and strong and the temperature is in the 70’s. I can hear my chimes from the backyard.Their sound is lovely. I think today is glorious.
I have always been a fan of fantasy and science fiction, and I mean always. Even as a young kid I read all of the books on the science fiction shelf in the children’s section in my town’s library. There weren’t many. I wouldn’t discover Bradbury, Asimov or Heinlein until I was a bit older. The Lord of the Rings was in my book locker from Peace Corps. It was quite a gift. I think I read them twice. It wasn’t until later I found out about The Hobbit. I read the whole George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Fire and Ice twenty years ago. I waited a long while for books four and five, and I’m still waiting for book six. I have watched HBO’s Game of Thrones from the start. It has been excellent. My sister is the only other person I know who watches. I called her this morning as I really needed to discuss last night. It was the battle for House Stark to reclaim its home, Winterfell. I have never seen a battle such as that with mounds of the dead. Even the wildling giant did not survive, but before he died, he did get the gates of Winterfell open. Ramsey, the heinous enemy, was beaten to a pulp by Jon Snow, the hero. Ramsey wasn’t killed. He was tied up and put in prison where Sansa Stark, who had been abused by him, visited, “Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear,” was what she told him just before freeing his hounds who hadn’t been fed for days expecting they’d dine on Jon Snow. Ramsey screamed and Sansa smiled as she walked away.
Today is dump day. I went the other day but didn’t have a new sticker so I couldn’t leave my trash. It waits in the trunk.
Our trip to Ghana is rolling along. We have our tickets and reservations for a hotel in Accra. We are now working on reservations at Zaina Lodge in Mole Game Park. It is a luxury experience for $350.00 dollars a night which includes all food and beverages, the room and two safaris. They will pick us up at the airport for an added fee. At the end of our stay, we can hire a car from there to take us to Bolga.
Grace, my former student, says she is counting the days. I am too!
Categories: Musings
Tags: A song of Fire and Ice, beautiful day, breezy, chimes, Game of Thrones, Jon Snow, Mother Nature, Ramsey, Summer solstice, Winterfell
Comments: 12 Comments
June 17, 2016
Today is beautiful. The breeze is keeping the air cool. The sun is bright and shines with the deep blue sky as its backdrop. When I went for the papers this morning, I checked my front garden. Every day something new is in bloom. Today it was a tall purple flower. I don’t know its name. I never know the names of my flowers. I buy them for color. The purple flower was a wonderful choice.
Today is dump day. I haven’t yet told Gracie. She tends to get a bit excited at the thought of the car ride and the dump. It will be a surprise.
My neighborhood is quiet today. The kids are still in school. Only the songs of birds break the silence.
I have a list for today, but none of the items make for too much effort. I bought a new flag which needs to be put on the flag pole in the front yard, my new hose will be connected to the outside faucet, plants in and out need watering and I have to connect the umbrella to the adaptor. They are all silly tasks but they still need doing.
We have a place to stay in Accra. It is where I stayed in 2011 for a week. The people are wonderful, the rooms big and clean, and they’ll pick us up at the airport. There is even a Lebanese restaurant right down the street. Ghana is where I first tasted Lebanese food. We used to go to a place called Talal’s. It was close to the PC office. I had hummus for the first time there. They served it in a flat dish with hot pepper around the top of the hummus and sesame oil in a well in the middle. I also had falafel, kibbeh and tabbouleh for the first time. I came to love Lebanese food. I had it often. The fact it was a cheap was also a good draw. I still love hot pepper sprinkled on my hummus and sesame oil in the middle. What I miss here is the fresh pita they always served.
One of the best parts of my Peace Corps experience was all the different foods I ate. Chinese food was considered a bit exotic when I was a kid, and I brought that with me to Ghana. The first day there I was served what looked like leaves from the tree and a soup of unknown origins. I didn’t eat it. I ate only breakfast as I recognized eggs and bread. Eventually, though, I started trying the Ghanaian food. Some I came to love, but I never did like kontomire, that soup from the first day. It is made with cocoyam leaves. That I know that makes me chuckle a bit. I went from Chinese food to cocoyam-a huge leap.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Accra, beautiful day, blue sky, cocoyam, falafel, flowers, Hummus, kontomire, Lebanese food, list of chores, sesame oil, sun shining
Comments: 21 Comments
May 21, 2016
Such a beautiful day it is today. We have sun, a breeze and some white clouds hiding the blue. Rain is predicted, but I can’t remember when.
I have a mystery. Every day at different times I find the corner of the living room rug turned up. Nothing is on or under the rug so I don’t understand why, and I certainly don’t know who, but Gracie is tops on my list of suspects. I’m thinking it’s a Gaslight thing.
Today I have little to say. The week was a busy one but it was mostly because of medical appointments for me and Fern. Nothing much to report except Fern needs more potassium. It’s coming in the mail.
Lawnmowers are disturbing the quiet of my neighborhood. Even my lawn is getting mowed though it hardly seemed tall enough to merit the cutting. I understand the attraction of gas powered mowers, but I miss the click clack of hand mowers, another sound from my childhood which has disappeared.
Snow on the TV is long gone. I remember my father adjusting the rabbit ears to get rid of the static sound of the snow. The ears were wrapped in aluminum foil to give the antenna greater reach. Lots of houses had antennas on the roof.
I remember when I was in Morocco and sitting at a table on the top floor of a restaurant in the old city. It seemed every house had a dish attached to its roof or to the side of the roof. Even the calls to prayer were computerized. I remember being in Bawku, Ghana living with a family for three weeks as part of my Peace Corps training. My room was close to the small mosque on the street below my bedroom so I could hear the call to prayer. The one around 3:30 always woke me up, but after a bit, I knew when it would end so I could go back to sleep. The call became part of my night. The singing of the prayer was beautiful.
I am not a Luddite. I have all sorts of machines, mostly in the kitchen, which make my life easier; however, I am saddened at the disappearance of so many things and so many sounds. The click clack always brought my father to mind. He never bought a power mower. I miss the bells on Sunday mornings. I miss the clinking of milk bottles, and I miss the milkman. I could go on and on. It is just one of those days. It all started with the sound of lawnmowers.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Bawku Ghana, beautiful day, book genres, breezy, call to prayer, click clack, Gaslight, lawnmowers, Luddite, mysteries, mystery, Peace Corps training, Snow, sun, TV antenna
Comments: 14 Comments
April 8, 2016
Today is sunny and beautiful. The ever-present wind is making the chimes play. The trees are swaying. More bird than I’ve seen for a long while have been at the feeders all morning. I’d label today hopeful.
At one I have a doctor’s appointment to discuss my MRI. I saw a line description of the results and it said: abnormal, referral to Doctor so and so. The doctor listed, aka so and so, was my surgeon on the last back operation. That didn’t make me too happy; however, I did see a bit of humor. I love the movie Young Frankenstein. When the doctor is putting together the parts of his creation, Igor is sent to get a brain. Something goes wrong and the doctor asks whose brain Igor chose. He says Abby Normal. That’s what ran through my head when I saw the one line results. I couldn’t help but chuckle.
When I was a kid, we never regularly saw dentists or doctors. My parents as kids hadn’t either so they just followed tradition. I did finally see an orthodontist for braces which were rare in those days. We even had to go to Boston by bus and subway to see him. I was seven or eight. The doctor’s name was Dr. Nice. I have a school picture of me in the third grade with my mouth closed, no smile. I was hiding my braces.
When I was about ten, I fell down the stairs which started my tradition of falling. We went to the doctor the next morning. He just cleaned it. I swear he used an SOS pad. All the way through high school I never saw a doctor. There wasn’t any need. Visits to doctors and dentists were based on pain.
Once when I was in the eighth grade I had a toothache and did go to a dentist, my father’s childhood dentist. I think his nickname was Butcher. He was about ninety, didn’t use novocaine, and I swear he pedaled to make his drill work. That was my last visit to the dentist until my senior year in college when I had to have my teeth checked for Peace Corps. I think I needed hundreds of fillings. That dentist didn’t hurt.
I saw the doctor once when I was in high school. It was for allergies. When I was getting ready for Peace Corps, I had to have a physical. I went to the same doctor as I had seen seven years earlier.
Now we’ll jump ahead. I have so many doctors I forget some of them. Other than check-ups I don’t see them more than once or twice a year except for my regular doctor. I see him when anything has gone awry. He’s the one I’m seeing today.
When I was in Ghana, if anything was wrong, I had to send a letter to the doctor in Accra to describe my symptoms. Luckily though I was healthy for the whole two years. I don’t think I even fell once. The closest I came was in the Sahara when a camel took off with me riding it. By the time I stopped the beast, I had just one leg thrown over the wooden saddle-like thing, and I was still holding the one rope rein. The camel and I were face to face. It spit at me. I am not a fan of camels.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Abby Normal, beautiful day, camel riding, dentists, doctors, falling, Igor, MRI, novocaine, sunny, warm, windy, Young Frankenstein
Comments: 14 Comments
December 7, 2015
Today is wonderfully warm. The sky is a bit grey. There is no breeze so the dead leaves sit quietly at the ends of the branches. I have one errand today, and I was with my neighbor earlier for our Monday session of talking English and learning questions for the citizenship test. She is from Brazil. Her husband is already a citizen so she is hoping to become one. We covered a bit of early America and the few questions about World War II. “Why do I need to know that?” was her question about the Axis powers of World War II. I gave her an answer she didn’t seem to understand then I said because it’s in the book and they might ask you. That answer she accepted.
I got two Christmas boxes of goodies when I was in Ghana. Both arrived about a month after Christmas. They weren’t filled with the usual presents like clothes or jewelry or books. They had Mac and Cheese, sauces, ready made dinners, beef jerky and some fun stuff like origami and paddle balls. To make all those goodies last longer we had them only one day a week. Sunday was eat from the box day. The rest of the week we ate Ghanaian, and on Saturdays we often bought the food from chop bars in the lorry park. Chops bars sell food. Most are small shacks with a few wobbly branches and tables. We usually bought fufu or T-zed.
Sunday was always a special day. We’d go through our boxes and decide what we wanted to eat. Kraft macaroni and cheese was a feast. Noodles with Alfredo sauce almost made us swoon. We’d eat a few M&M’s after dinner, but only a few so they’d last longer. We were in food heaven.
I never thought that I would consider macaroni and cheese sublime, but in Ghana I learned to appreciate so many things because I didn’t have them. They were little things and they were food things. I still remember how much I wanted cole slaw.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Axis, beautiful day, citizenship test, dead leaves, food nd diseases, no breeze, Peace Corps volunteers, WWII
Comments: 12 Comments
November 3, 2015
Today is absolutely beautiful. The breeze is slight, the sun is strong and the temperature is in the 60’s. I think Gracie and I might be taking a ride later. I have a few errands to do then off we’ll go with no destination in mind, a ride just for the fun of it.
Every now and then we’d skip part of the way to school. There was a sense of exhilaration, of joy, when we’d skip. First we’d hop on one foot then we’d hop on the other and we’d keep hopping until we were so tired we had to stop. Skipping wasn’t as fast as running but it was faster than walking and was more fun. Learning to skip looked easy but it wasn’t. My feet seemed to get tangled in the hopping, and I’d lose the rhythm. Finally after many starts and stops I got my feet to work and I was finally a skipper.
Jumping rope was another one of those get your rhythm and your feet working together. We used to jump rope at recess. It was a single rope as none of us knew about double Dutch. We had rhymes we said while jumping. They helped us keep the cadence, the rhythm. I was okay at the slow jumping but once we hit the fast jumping, pepper, I was doomed. I always ended up being the rope swinger.
Probably around the sixth grade we stopped jump roping. We were on the second floor of the school and felt older. We thought jump roping was for kids. During recess we’d just stand around in small groups of friends and talk. Boys started to be a conversational item. We were still too young for dating but we were poring the foundation (sorry-that was the only analogy I could come up with). We’d decide who among the boys in our class was the cutest. We never talked about the nicest or the smartest. It was always the cutest.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, jumping rope, recess, Shopping, skipping, sunny, taking a ride, talking abut boys, warm day
Comments: 12 Comments
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