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“You can wear anything as long as you put a nice pair of shoes with it.”

August 26, 2013

Today I’m tired for no reason as I slept just fine. It may be the clouds and the coolness giving me a bit of a down day. My to do card has change litter, change bed, shower, do a wash and go to the dump. I’m thinking that list has something to do with my mood. Not one thing is fun. If I were a Disney character I could just sing The Happy Little Working Song and the spawns of Satan, the chipmunk who lives in my lawn, the mice probably still hiding in the cellar and the birds from the feeders could join in the cleaning. Then again I could just Whistle While I Work and even make it a happy tune. Somehow, though, none of that is appealing. I choose to wallow in my mood.

This is it: the final week before school starts. It was a mad dash for my mother to get us all ready. Mostly we needed new school shoes and whatever parts of the uniform we had out-grown over the summer. I usually got a new blouse or two, always white, and my brother generally needed new pants and new white shirts. The shoes were always sturdy, meant to be worn most of the school year. We didn’t have much money, but my mother never skimped on school shoes and clothes because we had to wear them every day. She always figured it was cheaper in the long run to buy more expensive clothes rather than constantly replacing them. The rule, of course, was to get out of our school clothes into our play clothes as soon as we got home.

I don’t remember when the categories disappeared and all of what I wore just became clothes. When I was little, we had school clothes, play clothes and church clothes. None of them were ever interchangeable. Most of my clothes were play clothes because I wore a uniform to school and a dress to church, usually an old Easter or Christmas dress. My Sunday shoes were also dressy, sometimes patent leather with a strap. My play shoes were usually sneakers or shoes which in a former life had been school shoes demoted because they were worn and scuffed with a sloping heel.

I really liked going to the shoe store, putting my feet in the x-ray machine to see the bones and having the shoe salesman check my size using the sliding silver sizer. I’d wander to look at the shoes on display, always only one shoe of a pair, and them pick out some to try on until I’d found the perfect pair: the pair my mother and I could agreed upon. She’d pay for them, but I always proudly carried the bag with the shoe box inside. They were my new shoes.

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“Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.”

May 11, 2013

The morning is damp and cloudy, and every now and then it rains a bit then stops. The whole day is supposed to be like that: a bit rainy, but I don’t mind. I have laundry to do, a bed to change and a book to read. It’s Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly who’s not a favorite of mine but the book so far has been interesting.

I can hear lawn mowers: a Saturday sound ever since I was little. Now, though, it’s the gas mower and not the click clack of blades. Also missing is the sound of voices, of men talking to one another across lawns.  Mowing was traditionally a man’s job. Women worked inside the house except when hanging laundry and men worked outside. The yard was my father’s realm.

Saturday has always been my favorite day of the week. When I was a kid, it meant no early bedtime on Friday, a matinée in the afternoon during the fall and winter and staying up late until I was tired. This time of year it was a day to roam, to ride bikes, to have no destination in mind and no real plans. Saturday was spontaneous. When I was older, in high school, Saturday meant sleeping late, and Saturday night was reserved for friends. We’d go bowling or to a movie or just hang around together. My friend Tommy would invite us over his house, and his mother would make us pizza, great homemade pizza. When Bobby got his license and a car, we’d go to the drive-in, all of us. I remember laughing a lot.

College was a whole different set of friends and Saturday was party night. Sometimes we’d go to a hockey game and sometimes we’d party before but we always partied after. I remember going for breakfast around two or three in the morning at a local hole in the wall diner. Those were the best eggs I ever tasted. I’d get to bed around four.

When I was in Ghana, Saturday was sometimes go to market day and sometimes it was go see a really old movie outside at the Hotel d’Bull, like a drive-in without the car. Saturday was chore day for the students. They did their laundry and worked  around the school compound, but on Saturday night they had entertainment. Tribal dancing was one of my favorites. Usually Bill and I would roam all over to see the dancers. Peg usually stayed with the baby. Other nights we’d see a movie or a play completion or a singing competition among the houses.  It was, in its own way, a special day.

When I taught, Saturday was grocery shopping day and clean the house day, but it was still the best day of the week. I got to sleep late and I usually needed it. Friday was happy hour day, a day to celebrate the end of the work week, and Saturday was the day to recuperate from all that celebrating. Most Saturday nights I was busy with friends, sometimes we’d see a movie or just hang around together.

Now I joke that every day is Saturday, but there are still a few hold-over traditions. When it gets warmer, Saturday will be movie on the deck night. I love that. It’s like a return to the matinée days but without getting hit by a JuJu bead or having a flashlight shined in my eyes.

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“Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.”

February 26, 2013

Gracie is my barometer. She has been in and out all morning so I know it’s warm outside. When she first went out, I watched her run the perimeter of the yard at top speed. When she came inside, she was panting and had the usual amount of spit on her face. I also have the front door open for her. She loves to sit there for hours and look outside. My street, though, is so very small I can’t imagine what holds her attention except in the late afternoon when people walk their dogs by the house. That sends Gracie into a frenzy of barking and jumping at the door. She is not a lover of dogs unless she can meet them on her own terms: face to face with plenty of sniff time and no human interference.

Today is another I have nothing on my list to do day. Yesterday I finished all my chores and also swept and wet mopped the kitchen floor. I have no idea what compels me to do these household chores. I just know that every now and then I get the cleaning bug, a virus for which I wish there was a cure.

My mother didn’t work outside the house when we were kids. She spent the day at home doing laundry and cleaning. I know I always had clean clothes, my bed was made every day, the rug in the living room was vacuumed, my blouses and skirts were ironed and the dust was gone, but I seldom saw her cleaning. It was almost like the shoemaker and the elves, but it was really because my mother did it all when we were in school. The only thing I did see was my mother making dinner every night. In my mind’s eye, I can see her at the kitchen sink, her back to the door, as she peeled potatoes, cut them up and put them on to cook. The stove was behind her to the left on the wall opposite the sink. It was white. All the appliances were white back then. Harvest gold and avocado hadn’t yet made an appearance. The kitchen was small with very little counter space. The fridge was beside the sink with a small counter in between them. That’s where my mother kept her dish rack with a rubber mat underneath. The mat was opened at one end so the water from the dishes went back into the sink. My mother believed in air drying dishes. I do too.

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“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

February 24, 2013

I heard the most welcome of sounds when I woke up this morning, the sound of rain on the roof. I didn’t hear people shoveling or a plow working its way down the street. I heard heavy rain, and I was glad. The day may be dismal and dark, but the rain is a bright spot, sort of oxymoronic I know, but that’s the way it feels.

I am going to Hyannis today. It is really not very far, but I sometimes think of the journey as a trek of sorts. I’m attending a luncheon with the Cape Cod Returned Peace Corps group. We get together every now and then. The last time was in October for the dedication of a stone we’d purchased with a plaque on it celebrating fifty years of Peace Corps and honoring all who served. This luncheon is to recognize Peace Corps week. It starts early so I should be home early which is perfect as I have promised Gracie we will go the dump even if it’s still raining.

When I was younger, not young, but younger, never did I imagine I would pamper myself so much. My groceries were just delivered by Peapod, and they’re already put away. I didn’t have to go up and down aisles silently cursing the aisle hogs or make three or four trips from the car to bring the groceries into the house. When snow fell the last two weekends, I waited for Skip who plowed out my car, the driveway, the mail box and the place in front where I usually park. He shoveled two walks. My front lawn is covered in small, broken pine branches felled by the winds. The back yard has several larger branches on the ground, also victims of the wind. I know in a few months my landscaper and his crew will come and spring clean both yards. Roseana and Lee will be here this week to clean the house. They come every two weeks. I do cleaning in the off-week but usually as little as possible. I have had cleaning people for years, even before I lived here. They date back to when I had a roommate and we shared a house. We both worked, and that was our excuse for housecleaners. She got married and sold her house so I bought my own house. For a long while I cleaned it myself due to finances, not a work ethic, but as soon I could afford it, I hired housecleaners again. When I stopped working, I still kept the housecleaners. Age and a bad back finished off my shoveling career. When I redid the yard, I used a landscaper and decided he was the best choice to keep the grass green and free of weeds. I am, for the most part, a woman of leisure though I am still stuck making and changing the bed and doing laundry. I guess we all need a bit of suffering to keep us humble.

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“You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty.”

January 10, 2013

Some days are memorable. Others are a matter of course. Most days I just go about my business whatever it happens to be. I have my sloth days, favorites of mine, when turning pages is the most activity I get. The industrious days aren’t all that frequent by choice. I figure I was industrious every week day for years, and that was more than enough. The last two days have been rotten days, an adjective I seldom use. I don’t care for it much, but right now it is the only word which comes to mind. My sister called them typical days for me, but they didn’t include falling off a ladder, tripping over something or falling downstairs so they weren’t all that typical. They were just plain rotten. The events which soured the days weren’t all that memorable so you can stop here if you want. If you’re curious, read on, but I warn you that in the course of human events these don’t really merit much attention. Because they happened to me, I’ll remember.

Tuesday early evening and yesterday afternoon were fiascos. On Tuesday I cursed, sweated and screamed in frustration as I cleaned the refrigerator because I couldn’t remove the bottom drawers and the shelf which held them as the left fridge door, the exit point, was blocked by the microwave table. I had to move the microwave, the table, the cookbooks under the table (it’s really an old student’s desk, but I figured you didn’t need that information) and the jars around it. By then I was exhausted and dripping sweat, an ugly sight, but I couldn’t stop. Finally one drawer came out easily. By manipulating the other this way and that I finally got it out and then I tried the same technique on the the shelf which holds the drawers, but it wouldn’t budge. One side did but not the other. I was so frustration I went outside on the deck to cool down and to scream just a bit with clenched fists. When I came back inside, I was able to get the shelf out by turning it sideways. I washed the drawers, the glass top of the shelf and the shelf holder, manipulated them and got them back in the fridge. I was done until Wednesday.

Om Wednesday, I decided to clean the deli drawer which was easy to get out as was the piece which holds the deli drawer, but while removing it, I knocked over a bottle of apple cider on the shelf beside it, and the cider spilled all over the bottom of the fridge, the same bottom with the drawers about which I ranted and cursed the day before when I cleaned it. Luckily, I had some curses left over I could use, and I did. I also spent nearly an hour cleaning up the mess I had made.

Meanwhile, Gracie was sick. She had been salivating all afternoon, hadn’t eaten and couldn’t settle down. I gave her green fronds from the spider plant. They settled her stomach for a bit but then it started again. A few more times of green fronds and settling a bit brought us to 11 when we went upstairs to bed. Gracie settled right beside me so that her body was against mine. Not comfortable for me but comforting for her. At 12 and 1:30, Gracie started again so we went downstairs where she ate some more greenery. I decided to stay downstairs and fetched my pillows, cleared off the couch and tried to find room around Gracie  who was in the middle of the couch. The afghan I used as a blanket was crocheted so it has holes and wasn’t warm. I was cold despite the sweatshirt, pants and socks. I was also uncomfortable and tired. Gracie woke again at 3:30, and I figured it was just about emergency vet time, but she ate more fronds and fell asleep for another hour. No fronds and no sleep for me. At 4:30 Gracie rang her bells to go out. When she came back inside about ten minutes later, she jumped on the couch and fell asleep until 9 Wednesday morning. She was fine all day. She ate her dry food and her supper and had her usual naps. All is well with Miss Gracie.

Meanwhile, I am exhausted from wrestling with a refrigerator and barely sleeping on the couch. I have used all my allotment of curses for the next three months. The only good thing is I have a really clean refrigerator. I’m hoping for company so I can show it off!

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“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

November 27, 2012

The weather is back to cloudy, grey and bleak. Rain is expected here while off-cape will be getting a little snow, an inch or two. I figure it’s just enough to remind people that winter is impatiently waiting in the wings. Yesterday I actually did some cleaning, a bit of polishing and dusting. I also filled all of the bird feeders and put out new thistle and suet feeders. Today I have to bring up the laundry from the cellar and do a few errands. Gracie will be glad for the errands. I’m not so glad about the laundry.

When I worked, I was able to fit in all the errands and chores despite the long work day. Weekends were filled with laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning and a run to the dump. I was usually in bed on school nights by 10 as the day started around 5:15 or 5:30. The alarm went off at 5, but I always hit the snooze button so I could feel as if I were cheating the clock in some small way.

Since my retirement I have noticed strange phenomenons. Though I have all the time in the world, I don’t get a whole lot done. I procrastinate as there is always tomorrow or the next day or the next, on and on. I also noticed I have become protective of my time. The phone gets answered reluctantly though I’m okay if it’s a friend or a family member. I hate appointments. They usurp my time. This week I have two, both of which I voluntarily made: one is to have my car checked for servicing and the other is stuffing envelopes at the museum where I am a volunteer. Based on past performances, I’ll regret having made them and will have to force myself out the door. I’ll whine and curse a bit.

When I was a kid, if my mother put on lipstick, it was a signal she was going out, and we always wanted to know where. I usually wear slippers around the house. If I put on shoes, Gracie is on the alert. She knows I must be going somewhere so she  plants herself by the front door. Lipstick meant a complete change in routine and now it’s slippers. I guess I just don’t go out often enough or I should wear shoes inside more often.

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“All will come out in the washing.”

June 26, 2012

Last night I woke up to thunder and lightning, and I was so glad I did. I’d have hated to miss that storm as I’ve been hoping for such a boomer with all its sight and sound effects. My room lit up several times. The animals didn’t even move; Fern and Gracie stayed asleep on my bed while I enjoyed the display. Today is damp and cloudy, leftovers from yesterday and last night’s rain. The morning is cool the way damp mornings always are, even in summer. On one hand I really like a cool day but on the other I don’t because a day like today removes any and all excuses about doing chores. I can’t say the heat is too much so I’m stuck doing what I’ve put off for a few days. The first wash, all the dog’s blankets and stuff, is already in the machine. The kitchen floor has been swept, and I used my foot to swab the kitchen tiles with a Lysol wet cloth. When the dog wash is done, I’ll bring down one of the storm doors then I’ll bring the other when my washing is ready for the dryer. I feel like I should be wearing a t-shirt which says I am crazy for cleaning, and I mean that in a couple of ways.

I put off doing laundry because I hate to fold it after it dries, and I hate hauling it up two flights of stairs. Usually I leave the clean laundry sitting in the dryer wrinkling away until I need to do another wash or I’m just about out of clean underwear. I guess I shouldn’t complain as I remember my mother doing a load of wash just about every day, and she had a wringer machine when I was a kid and no dryer. Our cellar back then had two huge, deep sinks at one end, and the washing machine water flowed into one of them. I remember watching my mother push clothes through the wringer then catch them on the other side. When I see a pasta machine being used, I’m reminded somehow of that wringer.

Well, the machine just beeped so I need to move the clothes to the dryer. Is a woman’s work never done?

 

 

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“Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.”

March 15, 2012

This morning I stood outside admiring my flowers. Several crocus (I know it has a first declension Latin masculine ending so it is really croci) are blooming. Most are purple and yellow. Any day now my daffodils will open and so will a few flowers outside the fence. I always want a party when the first flowers bloom. It seems a celebratory time needing funny hats, horn blowing and colorful mismatched clothing.

The sun is bright, but it is only 43°. After the Cape finally reached 60°, my expectations have risen. The weatherman says a warm spell is on the way, and Boston will be in the high 70’s so we’ll be in the 60’s again. I’ve got to remember my sunscreen.

I cleaned another cabinet and the bookcase in the kitchen. The bookcase is filled with special cookbooks I collect, those with recipes inspired by novels, and neat stuff like Davy Crockett bowls and a glass, a Hopalong Cassidy milk bottle, an old A&W mug and lots of other stuff including tacky souvenirs from places I’ve never been. I took everything knickknackty off the bookcase and washed or polished everything. Now I wear sunglasses to protect me from the glare in the kitchen. I have a couple of other cabinets I still need to tackle but not today. It’s my day off the mundane.

Tonight is trivia night, and the whole team will be there. It’s dinner out, a few drinks and several  futile attempts to rack my brain for answers I should know but have totally forgotten. It is sometimes a humbling night.

Sorry was our favorite family game but second to that was Go to the Head of the Class. I have my family’s original Go to the Class Game from around 1955 I think. My mother gave it to me for my school-themed bathroom. One of these nights I’m going to pull it out so my friends and I can play. The questions are age-related so adults can play. My parents used to play with us. They got to be Mommy and Daddy, two of the cardboard pieces. I think my brother was Cowboy Joe and I was Sis. The originators (Milton Bradley) weren’t too  imaginative with the names. The board is filled with desks and you keep moving to the top row, the head of the class. It was one of our favorite games.

I remember endless games of Slapjack and War. The problem with Slapjack was the first person to slap the Jack got slapped by everyone else trying to snag the card, and the backs of  our hands stayed red most of the game. We’d actually play War until its conclusion. I can’t imagine that.

Well, I’m done. I have some prep for tonight’s trivia. I have to check out a map of the world. I’m okay with most parts, but I’m really bad with which countries abut each other in Asia and parts of the Middle East.  I want to be ready for all the geography questions tonight.

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“There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”

January 17, 2012

The warmth is back but no sun. The day is cloudy, a leftover from last night’s rain. The breeze is slight and the tops of the pine trees sway just a bit. Yesterday I didn’t leave the house. I cleaned this room. It took a long while as the room is filled with hats, snow globes, books and old toys. Gumby and Pokey were especially dusty as were the B-movie people  and the wind-up toys. I felt accomplished when I was finished.

These spurts of energy are sporadic. For that I am thankful. I hate wasting my time cleaning the house though I love a clean house. Every other week Rosana and Lee come to clean, but they don’t do the shelves in this room and my room or the top of the desk filled as it is with the wind-ups. I am stuck with those. When I can write a novel in the dust, I know it’s time to clean. Rosana always notices.

I never thought about a clean house when I was a kid. My mother did the cleaning when we were in school so it was like magic. Leave in the morning to a dusty house and come home to a clean one. Sometimes I wish I were Samantha, and I could just wiggle my nose and everything would get done. Not only that but I’d wiggle my nose and travel: dinner in Marrakech or breakfast on a rooftop overlooking the pyramids. I wouldn’t even need a dog and cat sitter.

Last night I watched Alcatraz. Inmates and guards disappeared in 1963. Their disappearance was covered up in a variety of ways, but now the inmates are reappearing and are deadly. Last night had a high body count. Those who have reappeared haven’t aged and are still wearing their prison uniforms. I wondered if the families of the guards disappeared too as they lived on the island. Nobody mentioned that. The reappeared have what they need in their pockets. One had a ticket off the island on the tourist boat, money and a key to a locker. He knew exactly where to go to find and open the locker. I like strange programs.

Poor Gracie hasn’t been herself the last couple of days. She was sick three times, didn’t eat and had nausea most of the early part of last night. Today she seems her chipper self. We’ve already played throw the toy down the hall, and she ate a couple of lamb bits. She’s sleeping now and has been for a while. Yesterday she never slept too long: she’d start swallowing then get up and go outside. I always worry when one of my animals gets sick.

Well, that’s it for today. I think all that cleaning drained my creativity.

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“I have sporadic OCD cleaning moments around the house. But then I get lazy and I’m cured. It’s a very inconsistent personality trait.”

May 31, 2011

The day is perfectly lovely, the sort of day I dreamed about when the ground was covered with snow and the air was so cold it froze my nose. The morning has been strange: one small task has led to another then another. When I went to get the papers, I took down the red, white and blue buntings from the front fences and gate then saw the one off the deck and made a mental note to get that one too. I came inside, read the paper and drank my coffee then went to get another cup for drinking with my second paper. When I walked into the kitchen, I noticed the kitchen floor needed sweeping so I took out my broom and swept the dust and such out the back door. I noticed the bunting and went outside to bring it inside. Once I’d gathered it, I went to sit for a minute on the deck to watch the birds then I noticed the spawns of Satan had knocked down the glass candle holders from the chandelier hanging from the tree. I went down to the yard to retrieve them and saw where my outside living room light was disconnected so I connected it. In the process I saw gifts from Gracie in the yard so I dug a hole and buried them. I also found two big, flat rocks, just what I needed. My umbrella stand wobbles even though it weighs 100 pounds, and it makes the umbrella stand crooked which drives me crazy. When I got back to the deck, I put the rocks under the stand and righted the umbrella then sat for a short time and watched the birds. It was then I noticed the cardinal’s untouched grape jelly feeder was covered in pollen so I took it down to be washed. While I was at that side of the deck, I saw the three Japanese lanterns hanging from the tree branches just didn’t look right so I played around with moving them until I found the right combination. By then I was ready for my coffee and paper. I left the bunting outside.

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