Posted tagged ‘beautiful day’
June 20, 2015
Today has been an interesting day around the Ryan homestead. First I had to go toilet shopping. The one on this floor cracked and pieces of tank and lots of water ended up all over the bathroom floor. I, however, was in New Hampshire when this happened so my friend Clare kindly cleaned up the flood and made sure the water was off. I had to run to the upstairs bathroom the last couple of days and sort of had to plan for the extra time to get there. Last night I decided I’d had enough planning so today Skip and I went to three places shopping for a new toilet, though I hesitate to call it shopping, and we were unsuccessful. One didn’t have the toilet in stock and the other two were closed. It was in the fourth place we finally found my new toilet. Skip mumbled his way through the parts and instructions but it is now in and functional so I no longer have to run upstairs. Skip then went outside and dug a hole for my little free library, http://littlefreelibrary.org, attached it to a 4 x4 then filled in the hole. My friend Bill made the library, and it is beautiful and even has cedar shingles on the roof. Skip is now completing his final task: putting a new mailbox for me across the street.
I like to shop, no question about it. Mostly I like off-beat stores where you can find odd or vintage. This week I have shopped for toilet seats, a new toilet, a new mailbox and a 4×4 pole. That is just not shopping by any definition.
It is a gorgeous day with a bright sun and a cooling breeze. When I was outside with Skip, I was reminded of Saturdays when I was a kid. I could hear a lawnmower, people talking and kids yelling to one another as they rode their bikes up and down the street. This is a neighborhood where people greet each other, catch up on the news and wave while passing by in a car. We are on our second generation of kids. The first generation grew up and now have kids of their own. On my street are nine, soon to be ten, kids under 10. There are two more but one just graduated from high school and his sister will be a senior in the fall. Many of us on the street are now retired. Four homes have the original owners. I’m one of them. I guess in a way that makes me an historian of my street.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, bike riding, blue sky, little free library, neighborhood, new mailbox, new toilet, Shopping, water all over the floor
Comments: 4 Comments
May 29, 2015
I looked up perfect day in the dictionary and found a picture of today. The morning is cool, the sun bright, the sky the darkest of blues and the leaves on the trees sport the look of newness which comes in spring. Both the sky and the leaves are so lovely you’d think they were painted from a palette filled with the brightest colors.
Mostly I never think about making memories. They just sort of stick and now and then something brings one out, and I am flooded with a forgotten memory. I suspect my memory drawers are overflowing because I only get snippets of that memory before it all comes back. I remember getting on the bus to high school and I remember the smell of the bus. On the route was a huge hill, and we went down it on the way to school. We took a left at the end of the hill and a bit further on was a corner store and a few houses which looked alike. On the left side of the road was a beautiful house seemingly out-of-place as all the other houses lack the stateliness of this one house, but as we rode further into Winchester beyond the downtown, all the houses were beautiful and huge. The last thing I remember of that trip I took every day was a stop where Liz got on.
We used to visit my aunt the nun once a year in Connecticut. I have several single pictures, memories, of those visits. Every time we went we’d stop on the Connecticut Turnpike at a brick rest stop. My mother would check us all to make sure we were clean, our hair was combed and our clothes were neat. I remember sitting in the visitors’ living room. We whispered because the convent seemed to engender whispering. A nun always brought us cookies and something to drink. She never made any sound. My aunt didn’t know what to do with us so a tour of her school was a part of the visit. I remember the smell of chalk.
I remember standing outside my room in Winneba, Ghana at the start of training. My room was on the second floor, and from there I could see the rusted tin on all the roofs and the greens of the trees and bushes. If I close my eyes, that scene still comes back to me.
Not all my memories are happy ones, none of us are that lucky. I think the saddest of my memories have their own drawers. Those memories come unbidden at times and bring with them the pain and the sorrow. They remind me that life is a farrago, a mix, a jumble of feelings.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a palette of colors, beautiful day, bluest sky, bus ride, Cookies, light green of the leaves, memories, memory drawer, my aunt the nun, sunny, visiting Connecticut, Winchester, Winneba
Comments: 8 Comments
May 7, 2015
We have had such beautiful days, warm days, short-sleeve shirt days. The sun is even so bright it makes me squint. By the afternoon the sun has made its way around the house to the back so I go and sit on the deck to take in the warmth. Gracie stands beside my chair and watches the birds until she gets sleepy and lies down for a nap in the sun.
Yesterday I was sitting at a red light when I noticed a hawk high above me riding the thermals in ever smaller circles. I got lost in the hawk, and it took a honk from the driver behind me to bring me back to the now green light.
I have seen foxes, rabbits, coyotes, wild turkeys, deer, skunks, opossums and the common raccoon around here where I live. Actually it was only one deer which ran across the road in front of my car just down the street from my house. I pulled over to watch until it disappeared near the power lines.
I don’t remember seeing many animals when I was a kid even though we spent a lot of time roaming the woods. I remember snakes the most. They seemed to be everywhere. They were, for the most part, garter snakes. We’d pick them up just to check them out, but we never hurt them and we always let them go. They’d slither so fast when freed they seemed to disappear. I can’t remember the last time I saw a snake around here.
I liked scary when I was a kid. I don’t mean afraid. I never wanted to be afraid. Scary was mostly a product of my imagination when I heard footsteps behind me or that hook scratching the screen. Scary made me giggle a little, a sort of defensive reaction to prove I wasn’t really scared. Once, when I was an adult, my dog Maggie, another boxer, woke me from a sound sleep when she leapt out of bed, stood at the top of the stairs and barked her fiercest bark several times but then she just turned around, jumped back on the bed and went to sleep. I wasn’t as fortunate as it took me a while to calm down enough to go back to sleep. I wasn’t sure what to think about Maggie’s barking. Maybe she had a nightmare was one thought, but I didn’t really think so because she usually just sort of barked in her sleep when she was dreaming. I really believed she heard something, something loud enough to put her on alert. Whatever it was left because of Maggie’s deep, fierce barking. She was my protector, and I was really glad to have her. Gracie has that role now, and she is great at her job.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, Coyote, deck, footsteps, fox, hawk, opossums, rabbits, riding the thermals, scary, snakes, sun, the hook, turkeys
Comments: 8 Comments
April 12, 2015
Today is glorious. The sun is bright, the sky a lovely dark blue and it’s warm, in the mid 50’s. The morning is loud with the songs of birds. I stopped out front with papers in hand just to smell the sweet spring scented air. The daffodil buds are bigger, closer to blooming. Purple croci have bloomed in the front. I swear my grass has shoots of green instead of just winter brown. I finally believe in spring.
The Globe had a column this morning in the travel pages about a woman who went to Togo to visit her Peace Corps son. She described where it was in West Africa, that it is a Francophone country and you spend French African francs (CFA). She was struck by the poverty, the trash and the lack of infrastructure. Many of the roads are unpaved red dirt which covers you and everything you’re carrying in red dust when your bush taxi takes you away from the coast. She went to the Grand Marché In Lome and described it just as I remember it. The building is concrete. The cloth market is on an upper floor. On the bottom floors are the food markets. The Grand Marché was always one of my stops during my frequent visits to Togo, an easy bus ride from Accra along the coast. You rode to the border at Aflao, got off the bus and walked across to Togo under an arch which says Bye-Bye Safe Journey. The other side of the arch says Welcome to Ghana.
In Lome I ate ice cream and pastries and rock lobsters from a grill on a hotel’s patio. I ordered bifteck and pomme fries using my halting high school French. I burned the bottoms of my feet running on the hot beach sand. Once I was swimming and a dead pig floated beside me. I took my life into my hands by renting a moped and driving on the crowded city roads. I went up-country on local busses.
I never thought of living in Africa as an adventure. It was home for 27 months, and always felt comfortable. I was never lost but easily found my way from one place to another. My French got better, and I could give or ask for directions, order more than steak and French fries and bargain in the market in French. Without realizing it, I became a traveler. That has held me in good stead all of my life.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, Crocus, daffodil, Francophone country, Grand Marché, living in Africa, Lome, loud with birds, sunny, Togo, warm day
Comments: 12 Comments
January 20, 2015
Today is pretty with a blue sky and sun. It is also cold, in the 30’s. Gracie and I are venturing out this afternoon as I have a couple of errands. She’ll be happy for the car ride but Gracie is usually a happy dog, a tail wagger.
I cleaned out my closet of clothes I haven’t worn in years, since I retired. It amazed me how many clothes I had, but I wore a dress or skirt to work every day and hated to wear the same things too close together. Now my closet has plenty of room. In it are my current outfits. There are four dresses which I seldom wear. Easter was the last time I wore a dress. Flannel shirts, polo shirts and a few dressier tops don’t take up a lot of room. Two of my tops are floral. Why I bought them I have no idea. I am not a floral type. I have summer and winter pants and sweatshirt type tops with hoods. My Ghanaian clothes are now hanging in the closet. One is a dress and three are shirts. They used to hang on the back of my bedroom door. They are colorful and stand out from the rest of my clothes. Anyone could guess they come from Africa or some other exotic place. My guest room closet is next on the list to be cleared, but I’ll save that for another day or month or even year.
I know the world hates the Patriots. According to many they only win if they cheat. That to me is poor sportsmanship and sour grapes. The latest accusation comes from the Colts, no surprise there after the beating they took. They are accusing the Pats of using under-inflated footballs to gain an advantage in the rain. It is being called deflate-gate. I loved the CNN post by Mike Downey which called this, “a weird, wild, farcical, you-gotta-be-kidding-me “controversy” that has, uh, blown up unexpectedly.” Mr. Downey filled his article with puns and jokes befitting the accusation. His conclusion was, “I believe the Patriots win most of their games because they score more points than the other team does.” Jimmy Fallon was hysterical with his opening monologue last night about inflated and deflated balls. You had to know that was coming.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bags of clothes, beautiful day, casual clothes, cleaning, closet cleaning, deflate-gate, Dresses, dressy clothes, floral tops, Ghanaian clothes, nice day, pants or dresses, Patriots, sweatshirts
Comments: 16 Comments
September 12, 2014
The morning is a bit chilly with a cool breeze. The sun may be bright, but it hasn’t the strength of a summer sun. Soon enough it will merely give us light, not warmth, and will spell the end of bare feet and arms and move us into slippers and sweatshirt weather.
I ordered flowers for the garden. My choices were determined by color. The company sent a $20.00 coupon if you spend $40.00 so I couldn’t resist the half-off. I was going to shop locally, but I saved money, on-line, even with shipping.
I seldom remember the names of flowers. People look at blooms in my garden and want to know their names. My face goes blank and my eyes glaze. I have no idea of most of them. I know white hibiscus is already in the garden so I ordered red. I also can name the seagrass so I ordered rose fountain grass and dwarf fountain grass. If I get asked, I can always remember grass.
As the weather cooled, my mother would sometimes send soup in my thermos for lunch. It was either tomato or chicken noodle. My mother would also pack Saltines for dipping and a dessert. I used to eat a little soup, mostly the chicken and the noodles, then crush the Saltines in the broth. They would get soft and mushy after having absorbed all the liquid. They were delicious.
My thermos generally broke before the end of the school year usually from being dropped while in the lunch box. I’d pick up the lunchbox from the ground, open it and then shake the thermos. I’d hear the dreaded sound of broken glass, of slivers of glass from the thin layer. I knew what it meant, and I knew how my mother would react: she’d get angry and get that disappointed look. I was always a bit amazed by her reaction because the broken thermos was generally a yearly event. Using kid logic, I figured she should have expected it and not gotten angry, but I was never foolish enough to her that.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, breakfast, chicken noodle soup, chilly morning, hibiscus, ornamental grasses, perennials for the garden, Saltines, soup for lunch, sweatshirt weather, the sound of glass, thermos
Comments: 10 Comments
September 8, 2014
The weather today is perfect. The morning is cool, the sun bright, a breeze stirs the air and the sky is brilliant blue with just a few clouds, small and wispy. It is a read on the deck day. I have a new book, and my dance card is empty.
I remember learning about coins. It was a kind of neat when I realized that a nickel was the same as five pennies and the dime was 2 nickels or ten pennies. I gave up the notion that the bigger coin, the nickel, was worth more based on its size. The worksheets had pictures of groups of coins and two different kinds of work problems using the pictures. The first sort of problem was to figure which coins to use to reach a given amount of money and the second was to add up the coins and figure how much they were worth together. I did all the problems, even the ones with quarters, though I seldom had a quarter, a rare amount of money for any kid in those days, the days when pennies had value.
One year we learned Roman numerals and did math problems using them. Mostly we added and subtracted. It was fun to learn ancient numbers though I never expected to need the skill, this recognition of V or X or D, but Roman numerals have never disappeared and pop up in the unlikeliest of places. Luckily I can still translate the numerals because every Super Bowl has a Roman numeral designation. I went looking and found out why: because the playoffs occur in a different calendar year than the regular season, the league can’t have the Super Bowl identified by year, like the NBA Finals or World Series. It’d be too confusing. For example, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2014 but are the champions of the 2013 season. It’s easier to say the team won Super Bowl XLVIII, but there is now a glitch. For Super Blow L in 2016 they are ditching the L for the equivalent 5o because the NFL thinks the L by itself would be too confusing for the average person. The next year, though, we’ll go back to the tradition for Super Bowl LI. I guess average people understand two numbers.
A totally useless skill I learned was how to read and notate Gregorian chant. I liked making and coloring in the square boxes, but I have had no occasion to use it since.
Algebra, though, still remains two years of wasted time. Why I had to take algebra at all or even worse Algebra 2 or II is one of life’s mysteries. I haven’t ever used it. I know it has applications. I even found descriptions of a few. At the playground if you knew the weight of a person at the top of the slide and you knew the height of the slide you could roughly calculate how fast you would be traveling as you exited the bottom of the slide. Why would I care? What if the slide is sticky as some are? Then there’s dropping a rock off the roof of a house and wondering how long would it take to hit the ground. If you didn’t get caught climbing on the roof and somehow dropped a second rock 100 times as heavy off of the same roof of the same house, how long would it take to hit the ground? Then there’s the never going to happen part of the application which is used mostly for effect: If you somehow brought a bulldozer up to the roof of the house and dropped it, how long would it take for the bulldozer to hit the ground? Now you get to use your algebra and you’ll have the answer in no time.
Categories: Musings
Tags: algebra, beautiful day, coins, Gregorian chant, Roman numerals, Super Bowl 50, work problems with coins
Comments: 21 Comments
August 12, 2014
I know it’s late, but I met an old friend for lunch. He found me on Facebook and we decided to get together. It was a great day of drinking coffee, eating lunch and catching up with one another. I haven’t seen him in years so we had a lot of this and a lot of that to share.
Yesterday the red spawn lost its mind. I know this because it kept coming back to the feeder despite being hosed by me with the nozzle on jet. I was inside when I first heard the red spawn chatting, clicking and yelling at something so I went outside to investigate. It was on the feeder. I streamed the hose water, and it ran. I sat for a few minutes, and it came back to the feeder. I let him have it again, and he got soaked but not enough to deter him because he came back from a different direction. His spawn brain must have thought I wouldn’t figure that one out. He got squirted then jumped on branches close to me. I actually wondered if he was headed to get me, but when I hosed again, the spawn finally left the yard to go next door. It was chattering the whole while, and I have a feeling he was talking about me.
Today is another lovely day. It is about 76˚ and sunny. Tomorrow it will rain but then on Thursday we’ll be back to another beautiful summer day. We have been spoiled by the perfect weather this season: warm days and cool nights.
When I was young, I really didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to time especially in summer when one day was the same as another. The only exceptions were, of course, the weekends. On Saturday my dad was home. He did yard stuff like mowing and raking and also went up town to do his own errands: shirts to the Chinese laundry, a trim at the barber shop and a stop to say hello to his friend Pulo, the pharmacist in his own drugstore. Once in a while my dad asked me to come, and I would. I liked the Chinese laundry even though it was always hot and steamy. The double ironing board, with a top and bottom, was by the window, and the Chinese laundry man was always ironing pants. He’d hold the top down and steam would shoot out from the sides. He’d then lift the top, turn the pants over, close the machine and steam would shoot out again. I loved watching that machine. My dad’s shirts were always folded and wrapped in brown paper. From the laundry, we’d walk a little bit to the barber shop. Years later I realized that Floyd in Mayberry could very well have worked at my dad’s barber shop. It had only two seats and one barber. All the men sat waiting and chatting with each other. I stood and watched the barber trim my dad’s hair then my dad and I headed over to Pulo’s. While my dad and Mr. Pulo talked, I was given a drink from the soda fountain, usually a vanilla coke. Pulo’s was a small drug store, and there were only four stools at the fountain. Mr. Pulo always wore a white coat and would step from behind the pharmacy part of the store to talk to my dad. That was our last stop. My dad and I would walk back to the car and we’d go home. It didn’t matter how many times I went with my dad on Saturdays because I loved every time as if it were the first.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: barber shop, beautiful day, Bird feeder, Chinese laundry, coffee and lunch, cool nights, hose on jet, red spawn, Saturday errands, sunny, vanilla coke
Comments: 28 Comments
August 12, 2014
I know it’s late, but I met an old friend for lunch. He found me on Facebook and we decided to get together. It was a great day of drinking coffee, eating lunch and catching up with one another. I haven’t seen him in years so we had a lot of this and a lot of that to share.
Yesterday the red spawn lost its mind. I know this because it kept coming back to the feeder despite being hosed by me with the nozzle on jet. I was inside when I first heard the red spawn chatting, clicking and yelling at something so I went outside to investigate. It was on the feeder. I streamed the hose water, and it ran. I sat for a few minutes, and it came back to the feeder. I let him have it again, and he got soaked but not enough to deter him because he came back from a different direction. His spawn brain must have thought I wouldn’t figure that one out. He got squirted then jumped on branches close to me. I actually wondered if he was headed to get me, but when I hosed again, the spawn finally left the yard to go next door. It was chattering the whole while, and I have a feeling he was talking about me.
Today is another lovely day. It is about 76˚ and sunny. Tomorrow it will rain but then on Thursday we’ll be back to another beautiful summer day. We have been spoiled by the perfect weather this season: warm days and cool nights.
When I was young, I really didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to time especially in summer when one day was the same as another. The only exceptions were, of course, the weekends. On Saturday my dad was home. He did yard stuff like mowing and raking and also went up town to do his own errands: shirts to the Chinese laundry, a trim at the barber shop and a stop to say hello to his friend Pulo, the pharmacist in his own drugstore. Once in a while my dad asked me to come, and I would. I liked the Chinese laundry even though it was always hot and steamy. The double ironing board, with a top and bottom, was by the window, and the Chinese laundry man was always ironing pants. He’d hold the top down and steam would shoot out from the sides. He’d then lift the top, turn the pants over, close the machine and steam would shoot out again. I loved watching that machine. My dad’s shirts were always folded and wrapped in brown paper. From the laundry, we’d walk a little bit to the barber shop. Years later I realized that Floyd in Mayberry could very well have worked at my dad’s barber shop. It had only two seats and one barber. All the men sat waiting and chatting with each other. I stood and watched the barber trim my dad’s hair then my dad and I headed over to Pulo’s. While my dad and Mr. Pulo talked, I was given a drink from the soda fountain, usually a vanilla coke. Pulo’s was a small drug store, and there were only four stools at the fountain. Mr. Pulo always wore a white coat and would step from behind the pharmacy part of the store to talk to my dad. That was our last stop. My dad and I would walk back to the car and we’d go home. It didn’t matter how many times I went with my dad on Saturdays because I loved every time as if it were the first.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: barber shop, beautiful day, Bird feeder, Chinese laundry, coffee and lunch, cool nights, hose on jet, red spawn, Saturday errands, sunny, vanilla coke
Comments: 28 Comments
August 9, 2014
If I were to look up the word beautiful in the dictionary, I would see a picture of today. It is a cool, bright sunny morning which will be warmer by afternoon, in the mid to high 70’s, and by tonight will be back to the 60’s, perfect for sleeping. The long-range temperature looks the same for the whole week.
Today on syfi is unfriendly alien day. They are fighting for world domination and the total destruction of the human race. Despite early setbacks, we always win. A day watching a few science fiction movies would make aliens beware. Right now lizards are causing global warming to make Earth habitable for them. Nothing is worse than intelligent lizards.
When I was a kid, around this time or a bit later in August, I’d start to get bored. What entertained me in June was tiresome as the summer was ending. School wouldn’t start until after Labor Day so there I was trying to find something to keep me busy. The playground closed in August, there were no matinees on Saturdays all summer, I’d read more books than I could remember and I’d biked all over, including to East Boston, a harrowing trip on Route 1A, or at least that’s what my mother thought. As for me, it was fun. Anyway, I remember wanting to go horseback riding, but my mother said no and wouldn’t give me the money. “There’s nothing to do in this whole town except to go horseback riding,” was my response. I think it rated a Tony. No one is more dramatic than a 12-year-old girl.
Last week I was busy. This week my dance card is empty. I haven’t a single appointment or social event. I’ll do laundry mid-week but that doesn’t rate an entry.
Categories: Musings
Tags: aliens invading, beautiful day, bored with summer, empty dance card, horseback riding
Comments: 12 Comments
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