Posted tagged ‘Dunkin’ Donut’

“Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.”

April 30, 2016

My house was chilly this morning. Even Fern’s fur felt cold. I finally remembered my thermostat has its own mind on the weekends so I checked and found the house was 64˚. I turned the thermostat to manual and cranked up that heat to a respectable 68˚. It is blowing now, and I can already feel the difference.

The color of the sky is so lovely it almost doesn’t look real. It is as if a painter mixed his blues until he found the perfect one. The sun is bright but hasn’t yet the strength to warm the air. It is sweatshirt weather so I suppose I shouldn’t complain as winter coat weather wasn’t that long ago.

My current funk continues. I figure a really warm day, a ride in the car with the windows down and a Dunkin’ Donut butternut donut would go a long way in brightening my weekend.

I can’t remember the last time I jumped from grumpy into a funk. Usually grumpy goes away quickly because I take a ride and sometimes find something entertaining or funny or I shop and happen upon exactly what I wanted or what I needed or, even better, a surprise I never expected. I think shopping at little stores will be what I’ll do today. I’d love a surprise.

If the weather changed enough and got much warmer, I could while away the hours on the deck and that would totally upend my mood. I always think of Cinderella and the blue birds. I loved the one in the kerchief.

That blue bird reminded me nobody wears kerchiefs any more. My mother would sometimes wear one to hide the bobby pins she used to curl her hair, but even bobby pins are gone. If I needed one, my mother would rummage through her purse and almost always found one at the bottom. She also used to find pennies and tobacco. I remember each curl was held by a bobby pin. It must have taken hours to do that.

I am the only one awake. I think I’ll have another cup of coffee and maybe some toast.

“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!”

January 13, 2014

The trip to Boston was uneventful. Bridge work slowed me down a bit as did work on Route 3, but it was still a quick trip. When I got home, I realized this one trip had mileage equal to four weeks of local travel. I have to get out more. While driving, I did notice the shadows of birds as they crossed over the road; I watched two hawks riding the thermals over the tops of trees and I saw a sign with the name Ichabod on the back. That one gave me pause so I drove along and pondered. Is there a person named Ichabod who wants a transient piece of immortality? Is a reader enamored with Washington Irving’s character and wants us to remember him too? How about that new TV show called Sleepy Hollow? Was this a free ad? After a while I forgot to think about it and just kept driving.

When we went on family drives, I always had the window behind my mother. The highways then were far more interesting than the interstates are now, and we liked the ride for the views on each side of the car. We could choose from all sorts of restaurant as MacDonald’s had not yet staked its claim on American highways. Small motels and cabins dotted the sides of the roads. I remember their signs boasted air-conditioning and TV’s in every room. The cabins looked so small I wondered what more than a bed could be fit inside, and they were built close together side by side sometimes in a half circle connected by a dirt road in front of the cabins. We never stopped in one. There were too many of us. We did stay in a cottage once on the shore of Lake Ontario. The cottage was huge and we could see the lake from the porch. Lake Ontario went into my memory banks as my first Great Lake. I remember being surprised by small waves hitting against the shore. I thought only the ocean did that.

I was hungry driving home today, but my choices were limited and all off the highway. I almost talked myself into a coffee and donut at Dunkin’ Donut’s but decided I could wait. When I got home, I made a sandwich. It was okay, but I decided I should have had that  donut.

“Oh, hon, it’s the little courtesies that make life bearable, I find, wouldn’t you agree?”

July 26, 2013

Last night the rain started, kept up all night and has just now stopped. This morning, during what my mother would have called a deluge, Gracie and I went out. Between the house and the car, a short distance, I got soaked. Now you’re probably thinking why didn’t this fool use an umbrella or at least a jacket. Well, the umbrella is in the car, and I didn’t even give the jacket a thought. Gracie and I just ran. She got in first. By the time I did, my shirt was soaked, and I was already cold. Why did I go out in the middle of a Noah rain you might be wondering? I needed a blood test, a fasting blood test, and I wanted it over as quickly as possible as my body was screaming for its morning coffee. I was dressed and on the road ten minutes after I woke up. I go to a lab that never seems to have any other people so I was in and out in five minutes, got even wetter running back to the car and right away headed to Dunkin’ Donuts. The line at the drive-up window was long, but it was fast. I got two cups of a coffee and a lemon donut, my treat to myself for getting the errand done and for being soaked. The first things I did when I got home were to change into dry clothes and take a towel to Gracie.

This is the first rain in weeks, and it was a good one. I even had to shut windows last night as it was so chilly and damp. The paper predicts today will be rainy on and off. I’m going nowhere!

I am on a rampage of late. Sometimes I wish I had a cow catcher on the front of my car. I’d use it to move the cars in front of me going around 20 or 25. The driver is usually a gawker who looks to the left and right, never behind. I let people out into traffic all the time, especially those crossing into the other lane. A few wave and thank me. Others just go as if the space I had made was a God-given right of passage. Common courtesy is becoming rarer and heading toward extinction. Because of my surgery, I had to give up 4 seats, two each to two different theaters: one theater’s two seats weren’t super expensive but the other two were, over $60.00 each. I didn’t ask for any money, After all, I had already paid for the season tickets, but a thank you would have been a nice gesture. Not one person bothered to do that. The other day I got cut off by a car coming out of a side street. Sometimes that’s the only way to get on the road here in the summer, but not this time. There wasn’t a single car behind me. A wait of about 5 seconds was all the driver would have needed. I guess that was way too long to wait.

The other day I told a person, “You’re welcome,” after I had held the door for him because his arms full of packages, and he was walking away. He muttered, “Thank you,” under his breath, a coerced response, but I’m hoping he’ll pass it along, this small bit of courtesy.

My mother taught me to be courteous when I was little. Please and thank you were the first lessons. I’m wishing for a resurgence.