Posted tagged ‘cold’
March 2, 2017
The last few days Mother Nature has played with our heads. It has been spring warm. Even with yesterday’s rain, it was warm. Today is another warmish day with bright sun and a daytime temperature in the mid-50’s, but I’m not deceived. Mother Nature is still playing us and our weariness with winter. Tonight she’s dropping winter right back at us. It will be in the mid-20’s.
Yesterday I went to Hyannis for a doctor’s appointment. Ordinarily I would shop after my appointment but I decided, instead, to meander home on Route 28, the garish road filled on both sides by motels, restaurants, miniature golf courses and souvenir shops. Most of them are seasonal so they’re closed. Traffic was light. In the summer, that road is sometimes bumper to bumper as cars go slowly so people can gawk. The only places open yesterday were regular businesses and some of the restaurants. I saw some construction and was able to remember what used to be. One old house is gone, replaced by a park. My friend’s grandmother’s cottages are long gone, replaced by a hotel. They were the old time cottages, individual with a small porch and one outside metal chair. I helped paint them a couple of times. Each one had a view of the ocean. A couple of restaurants used to be hangouts when I was in high school. Jerry’s was prime. It is still there and still serves fried seafood, hot dogs, and hamburgers. The parking lot was always filled. Further up was the A&W with car service. I still miss that one. The building is there but it is a roast beef sandwich spot. The biggest loss was the drive-in. It was sold because it was prime land right next to the water. I don’t know who bought it but nothing has ever been done with that land. They could have left the drive-in.
I know things change. I expect it. It is nostalgic as I grow older. What used to be is important to remember. It is part of my story.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 20's, 50's, A&W, cold, doctor's appointment, Hyannis, Jerry's, mid 20's, rainy, Route 28, spring, winter, Yarmouth Drive-in
Comments: 12 Comments
February 4, 2017
Today is a cold, clear winter’s day, the sort of winter’s day when the chill takes your breath away. The sky is an amazing blue with not even a cloud in sight.
I took a ride back in time this morning. First, I happened on Lassie, my Lassie with Jeff and Porky. I watched it without a critical eye. Ellen, his mother, wore the same outfit every 50’s mom wore, the same outfits Donna Reed and June Cleaver wore: dresses, high heels and some sort of jewelry, mostly pearls. The wall phone in the kitchen was one of those with a mouthpiece, a piece you hold to your ear and a crank you keep turning until the operator answers. I remember one vacation when we stayed in a huge, old house in Vermont. It had one of those wall phones, but when I tried it, I got a shock. I have no idea why that stuck with me. Anyway, back to Lassie. Ellen kept cranking. Jeff and Porky needed saving from drowning so Lassie came to the rescue and showed Gramps where the boys were.
If I were sitting on the floor in front of the TV and eating Rice Krispies, I’d swear I had been transported for a time back to the Saturday mornings of my youth as The Lone Ranger was on next. Right away I knew the voice of the Ranger wasn’t Clayton Moore’s. This episode was dated May 28, 1953 and was Season 3, Episode 38. I looked it up. It was John Hart who played the Ranger for 54 episodes from 1950-1953 because of a contract dispute. The narrator set the time, “In the raw, crude early days of the west.” Some of the scenes, especially the beginning and the end, were filmed outside but most were just a set with lots of rocks, bushes and a painted backdrop of more rocks and trees. I never noticed when I was young. I guess being a kid means a major suspension of disbelief.
Every Lone Ranger episode had a couple of common lines. “Don’t let this mask fool you. It is on the side of the law,” and, at the end, one character aways asked, “Who was that masked man?”
Hi Ho, Silver, Away!
Categories: Musings
Tags: clear, cold, crank phone, dresses and heels, ear piece, Ellen Miller, Jeff, Lassie, Lone Ranger, Masked Man, Tonto, Vermont
Comments: 20 Comments
February 3, 2017
Gracie is home. A multitude of tests gave me nothing new. She has a heart flutter, but she has been taking meds for that. That she was dehydrated was the only concrete diagnosis. She is still skittish about the backstairs and wouldn’t go down them this morning so I took her out front. I’m going to try and get her down the other outside stairs which aren’t as steep.
I have decided not to lift 68 pounds again.
We are at the midpoint of winter. Behind us is only a little snow and too warm for winter temperatures. Ahead of us is February with the reputation of often being the snowiest month. It has already started out a cold month. My windshield has been covered with ice every morning. I notice it when I get the papers. In the old days, I would have been out scraping, but not anymore. It just melts.
I used to like to color. I always got a new box of Crayola crayons to start school and another new box in my Christmas stocking and sometimes one in my Easter basket. Crayons almost never got thrown away. I used to keep mine in a cigar box. The crayons were all sizes from almost brand new to stubs with barely enough room for fingers and no paper left to identify the crayon color. They became just blue or green or red and lost fancy names like Venetian Red, Cerulean Blue or Pine Tree. We didn’t have sharpeners for our crayons back then so the tips would blunt and could only be used in big areas. I never used the white. You couldn’t see it, only feel it. Faces got left uncolored. My finished works got more sophisticated as I got older. My young stuff was mostly in the lines and I used basic colors, nothing fancy. My older coloring, when I was 9 or 10, was shaded, nuanced. I’d spent time choosing just the right colors as if my pictures were works of art. My mother always put them on the fridge.
When I was in Ghana, in one of my Christmas boxes, was a paint by number. It was one of my favorite gifts. I took time finishing it as I wanted the fun of it to last. When it was done, I hung it on the wall. It was a vase and flowers, a still life masterpiece.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Cerulean blue, CNN, cold, coloring, crayon colors, CSNBC, dog medicine, icy windshield, midpoint of winter, paint by number, scraping, Snow, works of art
Comments: 10 Comments
January 29, 2017
Snow flurries just passing through are predicted then a rise in temperature to 44˚. That’s a wild weather day. Is it winter? Not this month it hasn’t been, but chills are on the way. Daytime will be in the 30’s starting tomorrow and nights will be even colder.
My first watch had Cinderella on its face. I was seven years old, and it was a First Communion present from my aunt who had taught me to tell time. When I turned 50, my mother gave me a beautiful watch with silver decorations around its face. That watch I still have.
I grew up in the days of analog, not digital time. Back then learning to tell time meant understanding things like quarter past the hour, half past and quarter to. Now it is simply 8:15, 8:30 or 8:45.
We had rabbit ears. I remember it was brown and had a dial with two choices on the front. That rabbit earred antenna sat on the wide top of our wooden TV console. Sometimes my dad wrapped aluminum foil around the ears to get us a better picture. Mostly he was trying to get rid of snow. He’d move one ear then the other then the whole antenna. He was never patient.
When we moved to the cape, we had to have an antenna on the roof or you could only get one channel, Channel 6. I remember coming home from school, turning on the TV and watching The Lloyd Thaxton Show on that channel. It was a sort of Bandstand show only it was more. There wasn’t just dancing or rating records or singers lip-syncing to their hit records. Sometimes they’d be skits and a bit of comedy. I remember Lloyd. He always wore a suit, the wardrobe of the day for men. His ties were skinny ties.
When I was a kid, TV was still wondrous. I watched it every afternoon and loved Saturday mornings with the cartoons and kid shows like Andy’s Gang, Kit Carson and Kukla, Fran and Ollie. I was a Hopalong fan, and I loved The Cisco Kid. “Cisco, wait for me,” was his sidekick Pancho’s line in the opening. For some reason that has always stuck with me. It is one of those close my eyes and see it all sort of things.
Gracie and I didn’t have a great night. She didn’t feel good, and I slept intermittently because I was worried. I kept checking to hear if was breathing. I fed her some spider plant fronds, and she felt better for it. Now she is just fine and sleeping on the couch; however, I am exhausted. I see a nap coming.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 40˚, analog time, Andy's Gang, Cinderella watch, cold, digital time, Hopalong Cassidy, S, Saturday morning TV, snow flurries, telling time, The Cisco Kid, TV console
Comments: 12 Comments
January 28, 2017
Winter is back, and my heat is blasting to keep the cold at bay. I am wearing my winter around the house clothes: flannel pants, a sweatshirt and cozy slippers. Much to my chagrin, I have to leave the comforts of home to do errands because I didn’t do them yesterday. I just didn’t have the ambition; instead, I watched the last season of Star Trek Voyager. It is sort of sad to know there no more episodes for me to watch. I’ll just have to find another Netflix diversion to keep me away from TV news.
For get-togethers, my mother used to make a couple of dips. We’d have onion dip, the king of dips, and shrimp dip. The onion dip hasn’t changed in millennia: sour cream and dry onion soup mix, Lipton soup mix. For the shrimp dip, my mother would buy the small shrimp already cooked and floating in cocktail sauce. It came in small fluted glasses. Her cupboard had several of those small glasses, evidence of the popularity of that dip. She’d put the shrimp and sauce and some cream cheese in her blender, no food processor back then, and whip. That was it. Party on!
We were never a green salad family. For cook-outs, never called barbecues, my mother always made potato salad, and if we begged enough, Italian pepper and egg salad, my favorite. It was my aunt’s recipe: peppers, onions and eggs and a bit of tomato sauce. My aunt had married an Italian, and she learned the recipe from her mother-in-law. I am so glad she did. I still love pepper and egg salad.
My mother made the best meatloaf. My favorite was when she frosted the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and baked it a bit in the oven so the potatoes sort of looked like meringue. My meatloaves are always different tasting. They depend on what I have in the fridge. I’ve used salsa a few times, and it added a great flavor. What’s great about meatloaf is the leftover makes a fantastic sandwich.
The sky is grim, but I have to go out anyway. I can’t remain a sloth. Gracie will expect to eat tomorrow.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, cook-out, dips, heater, Lipton onion soup mix, Netflix, onion dips, pepper and egg salad, shrimp cocktail, shrimp dip, slippers, Star Trek Voyager, TV news
Comments: 14 Comments
January 15, 2017
This morning I just didn’t want to get out of bed. It was 9:15 when I first woke up. Considering how late I went to bed, I figured it was too early to get up so I snuggled under the covers and went back to sleep. I slept until 10. Maddie started howling. Gracie was snoring. I decided the bed was too warm and I was too comfy so I went back to sleep. It was easy. I slept another hour so it was close to 11 when I dragged myself out of bed. I have no guilt at sleeping the morning away. I have no obligations, no errands and no chores though I could do a laundry, but I won’t.
Last night I want the Patriots beat the Texans. It wasn’t the Pats best game as Brady was intercepted and sacked, but my Pats prevailed. The game started late, 8:15, and ended late so my friends and I decided to make it an evening. First, we ate Chinese and played Phase 10, our favorite game. I happened to win. Clare and I alternate winning. Tony hasn’t won since last March. We’re planning a gala for his anniversary of one year without a win. He isn’t looking forward to the festivities.
It was cold last night, 24˚, so today at 34˚ feels warmer. The low this evening will be 19˚. When I lived in Ghana, it was hot and dry in January. It was harmattan. Dust blew over everything. The sun was obscured. Rain was months away. My candle melted without being lit. The water was often turned off. I took bucket baths, and I had to take a few before I got the knack. I got good at it.
During Peace Corps staging, a time when we all came together for nearly a week before leaving for Ghana, I was asked if I minded going to the north. My response was to ask why the question. What was it about the north? The psychologist asking the question didn’t know the answer. I told him I didn’t care where in Ghana I was to be posted. That settled it. I went to the far north, the Upper Region. I even knew before I left staging I was going to be in Bolgatanga. The remote posting areas were filled first. That was Bolga. That was the place with a long dry season when days reached 100˚ or more. I think of that this time of year, the coldest time of year here in New England, but if I were given a choice between the two, the hot, hot dry days or the freezing days and nights, I’d chose the cold. I couldn’t escape the heat, but I can always bundle up to escape the cold.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 24˚, 34˚, Bolgatanga, close to 11, cold, football, Ghana, harmattan, hot, howling cat, Laundry, New England Patriots, obligations, Peace Corps, sleeping, sleeping the morning away, snoring dog, Upper Region
Comments: 14 Comments
January 13, 2017
Today is the last of the warmth. Cold is coming tonight when it will be down to the 20’s. Luckily, though, the snow is gone, and the ground is far drier than it had been. The mud is back to dirt. It is time to wash the kitchen floor. It is filled with paw prints. I can’t remember when it was ever this dirty.
Gracie and I will be out and about today. I have a couple of stops to make. She would be disappointed if I didn’t take her.
My days lack structure. I read the papers and drink coffee in the morning, and that’s my only routine. Sometimes I make my bed but mostly I don’t. I eat when I’m hungry. Cereal and eggs are often lunch and even dinner, seldom breakfast. My fridge is filled with food easy to eat just as it is like tabouli, yesterday’s lunch. If I’m in the mood, I cook dinner. Chicken is a favorite. Mashed potatoes already cooked are generally my side of choice. I eat a vegetable if I have one. I buy salad in the bag and add things like dried cranberries. My bread is naan or pita bread for the hummus and tabouli. Around the middle of the month when my larder starts to get empty, I treat myself to take-out. My favorite place is Spinners where I can get Mexican, soup or pizza. I’m also a fan of Chinese food.
My bedtime is whenever I’m tired. It is usually after midnight, sometimes as late as two or three. I wake up whenever. This morning a phone call woke me at nine. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. The phone call was a robocall. I made coffee.
I pretty much wear the same type clothes every day: pants, a shirt and, in winter, a sweatshirt. Seldom do I go anywhere which demands dressy clothes. That’s just fine with me. If I go out to eat, I skip the sweatshirt.
My life is uncomplicated. I really enjoy it that way.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bedtime, bored, chinese food, cold, dirty floor, dried cranberries, Eggs, making bed, mashed potatoes, mud, routine, salad, Spinners
Comments: 10 Comments
January 5, 2017
With the back door open, I can feel the cold coming in through the dog door. I think Gracie will have to ring her bells to go outside as I’m shutting the inside door. She’s already been out three or four times, once just to bark, so I figure I won’t be jumping up and down to let her out. Snow is coming tomorrow. A winter weather advisory is in place for the cape. The snow should start after midnight so I’ll be waking up to a white world. We’re expecting 2-4 inches from this storm then more on Sunday. This is the first snow of the season for us.
When I was a kid, the TV didn’t have a rolling list of no school announcements. We listened for the horn from the fire station. I don’t remember what the pattern of beeps was, but back then, we all knew and we waited then cheered after we’d heard it. We were all familiar with that horn. It blew every day at noon and for any fires. In the town phone book was a list of what the beeps meant, where in town the fire was. We all used to stop to listen and count.
Snow is never a burden to a kid. The more snow that falls the better the sledding. My street was never plowed all the way down to the road so the hill made for a great ride. The cars going up and down the hill helped. Their tires would tamp down the snow. The sun would sometimes melt the top layer which would freeze at night when it always got colder. The first rides down were at blazing speeds on the ice cover. Sledders at the bottom would warn us if a car was coming on the cross street below the hill. We’d use our feet as brakes or, as a last resort, we’d throw ourselves off the sleds. No one ever got hit, but I think it was mostly luck because we hated stopping our sleds. They’d whiz over the cross road into a field where the higher snow would finally stop us.
We’d sled all day long. Our mittens got soaked. Our boots always had snow inside them because we’d walk through the high snow on the field to get back to the hill. Our cheeks got red and so did our legs under our ski pants. Late in the afternoon mothers started yelling out front doors for us to come inside. We’d sneak one more ride pretending we hadn’t heard them. When the yelling got a bit louder and more strident, we’d walk to the backyard, jam our sleds upright in the snow then slide down the snow covered stairs to the cellar. We’d leave our wet clothes on the lines so they’d dry overnight. We wanted to be ready for the next day and the ice on the hill.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blazing speeds, cold, down the hill, dunes, fire beeps, fire station beeps, ice, icy ride, no school announcements, sea level, Sledding, Snow, winter weather
Comments: 8 Comments
December 20, 2016
The sun decided to make an appearance today. I guess it is a bit of a reward for surviving the cold of last night. Today is about 40˚, warm for the depths of winter.
My mother never disappointed us at Christmas. When I was really young, Santa always brought me something from my list. Under the tree, they’d be my big gift, a new game, books, and even clothes. I loved the clothes as they were what everyone was wearing. I remember some of my favorites over the years like the white fluffy sweater, the gold necklace, the ski pants with the loops, the over the head parka with a zippered pocket across the chest, and a wool skirt. The books were classics or mysteries. The games were ones the whole family could play. Santa didn’t take the time to wrap our gifts. They were arranged under the tree. I remember looking over the banister as I walked down the stairs and being thrilled and excited. I might have even squealed with joy.
We had Christmas stockings when we were young, but when we were adults, my mother used all sorts of pseudo stockings like a basket, a really neat shopping bag or something old she’d found like a coal hod. She wrapped every stocking stuffer which heightened the excitement so I always wrapped every stocking stuffer for her and later for my sisters. Now I do the same for my friends. I am a wrapping phenomenon at Christmas.
My dad was never all that excited about Christmas. He would reluctantly open his presents long after the rest of us had finished. When he was a kid, Christmas was not a big deal. It was socks and underwear. My mother, though, loved Christmas and my dad just went with it. He always told my mother not to mention what she’d spent. He had a favorite part of Christmas, the food. He loved all the goodies and would make himself a plate and pour a glass of milk to take into the living room so he could nosh and watch.
Today has no lists. I’m going to hang around the house, maybe do laundry, but the laundry bag is still upstairs. It needs to sit in front of the cellar door for a couple of days before I get to it or I need to run out of underwear, whichever comes first.
Categories: Musings
Tags: baskets, Christmas, clothes, cold, games, list for Santa, parka, ski pants, stocking stuffer, sun, toys under the tree, unexcited, unwrapped gifts, wrapped gifts
Comments: 10 Comments
December 19, 2016
Jack Frost is nipping at my nose. It is cold, 32˚. A flurry of tiny flakes started when I was going to the store. They were wet on my windshield. By the time I got home, the flurry had stopped. The sky is a whitish gray. The sun is somewhere else. The day isn’t all that inviting.
Five days until Santa.
I remember going to Jordan Marsh to see Santa. The line was long, and the store was hot. I had to carry my bulky coat. I kept moving it from arm to arm. The Enchanted Village, windows all along the line’s route, kept our attention so we didn’t whine about waiting. We thought it amazing that all the characters moved. The shoemaking’s hammer went up and down. Children dressed in velvet finery decorated the tree in their living room. They held tinsel or an ornament and moved up and down. Some characters waved moving side to side. It was remarkable.
Where the village ended, we could see Santa just a bit beyond. Every kid pointed him out. He was at the end of the line and worth the long wait. Jordan’s Santa was always the best looking. He wore an embroidered suit like Father Christmas does. His boots were shiny, and his beard was to my eyes real. I told him what I wanted for Christmas then I smiled for the picture, an easy thing to do when you’re on Santa’s lap.
This morning I dropped cookies off for the library’s Christmas open house. It was a tray of Italian cookies from the bakery. I bought myself a cinnamon bun, a bit of Christmas indulgence.
Tonight I’ll wrap my friend’s presents so I can clear out the den. Tomorrow I’ll start baking. All the preliminaries are almost finished. Bring on Christmas!!
Categories: Musings
Tags: 32˚, cold, Enchanted Village, Jack Frost, Jordan Marsh, moving characters, Santa, Snow flurry, velvet, white sky
Comments: 23 Comments
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 