Posted tagged ‘heat’

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“I want to write a book about shoes that’s full of footnotes.”

March 15, 2013

This morning is winter. When I left for breakfast at 9 o’clock, it was 27˚. I saw people wearing winter coats, hats and gloves while walking their dogs, also sporting coats. While I was eating, the temperature rose to 32˚, but that cold didn’t stop me from being hopeful. I still believe that spring is taking hold. The front garden is filled with blooming crocus, and the birds are singing and greeting the morning. The sound is joyful.

The other day I bought a small pot of pansies for the kitchen. The flowers are yellow, my favorite color this time of year, the color of the sun. The daffodils I bought have finally bloomed and they too are a bright yellow. The sun is shining today, and the sky is blue. I am content despite the cold.

Today I have a few errands so I’ll go out in the afternoon. I’m sure Gracie will be glad for the ride. I try to take her all the time now because when summer comes, Gracie stays home except when we go to the dump where I can keep the car and the air conditioning running between stops. The heat is otherwise too much for Miss Gracie.

When I was a kid, I had three pairs of shoes: well, two pairs of shoes and a pair of sneakers. One pair of shoes was for school every day and church on Sunday. The other pair was for playing. That pair started out as school shoes then got worn and eventually demoted to play shoes. I wore those mostly in the winter or on cold days. In the summer I always wore sneakers. Nobody wore sandals back then except little kids. My sisters had white sandals with straps. My sneakers were red or blue when I was little. When I was older, they were white. We all wore white sneakers, mostly Keds, which narrowed at the toes. We kept them as white as possible. Sometimes we even used white shoe polish to cover marks. That had its disadvantages as the polish would seep to our socks and through to our feet, but that didn’t matter. White sneakers were a point of pride.

For my eighth grade trip, my mother bought me new clothes: a pair of sneakers, a blouse and clam diggers. I don’t know if that was a purely regional name. They were also called pedal pushers, and they looked a lot like Capri pants, the Mary Tyler Moore type, but to us they were clam diggers. It was the perfect name. Not many clothes boast a name which fits their function. If you wore those pants while clamming, they’d stay dry and out of the mud. We never did, but we could have.

Categories: Musings
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“When you are at home, your troubles can never defeat you.”

August 24, 2012

The morning is already warm, and I’m about to turn on the AC. It’s been a noisy morning as there have been a couple of barkfests with at least four dogs joining in, including Gracie. It has also been a pain in the butt sort of morning. When I poured milk into my coffee, it was bad, not smelly, but floating on the top of the cup bad. I grabbed Gracie and went to Dunkin’ Donuts. The drive-up window line was so long I couldn’t see the little voice box for ordering. I couldn’t get out to order as I didn’t get dressed deciding to hide in the car so I was stuck in the long line. Finally I got my two cups of coffee, sighed in relief and went home to my usual coffee and the papers.

One day, only one day until my trip. I am so excited to be going back. Last year I was both excited and a bit apprehensive given the 40 years between visits, but the trip turned out so well that this time I’m just excited to go back. I know I talk about Ghana a lot, maybe too much sometimes, but it is such an important part of who I am, who I became, that every time Ghana comes to mind my heart swells and fills with memories of friends, of shared experiences, of love for another country and for the beautiful Ghanaians, their smiles and their greetings. I know there were downsides, but they were tolerable once I made up my mind that this was home. It was like living in New England and complaining about the cold and the snow.

I’m going to be meeting the current volunteers. We’ll enjoy dinner together. One of them told me they want to hear all about the old days. Now there are 13 volunteers just around the Bolga area. That amazes as there were only 9 of us in the entire Upper Region, now two regions: the Upper East and the Upper West. The region in my day was primitive with very few schools. Even Ghanaians didn’t want to teach in the Upper Region because of the climate. We didn’t know any better so we loved living there far away from Accra, far away from Peace Corps. We thought it ideal.

I have a single errand left for today then I’m going to start packing. The sports bag I bought last year to haul home the Bolga baskets is coming as are the school supplies for one of the primary schools. My bag should weigh in the hundreds as those crayons are darn heavy. My house/pet sitter is coming this afternoon to find out what she needs to do. Her son is coming with her to translate as she speaks only Portuguese and I don’t.

One day left!

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“It ain’t the heat; it’s the humility.”

July 17, 2012

Mother Nature is running amok. It is far too hot for July. The Cape will reach 88˚ while Boston may break the record and reach 100˚. It’s a bit like winter, not from the temperature but from the amount of time I spend inside the house. I am so comfortable here that I dread going out into the heat. Tomorrow, happily, should be the last of this weather, and cooler days will follow and maybe even some rain: thunder showers would be nice.

I don’t remember when heat became an issue for me. When I was a kid, every day seemed the same, a day for playing outside regardless of the temperature though I could definitely tell which days were hotter because I got grubbier: the dirt and the sweat tended to mingle. When I was a teenager, I never went out much during the day. That was when the nights were more appealing. That was when my friends got their licenses, and that was when we’d drive around at night with no destinations in mind. We’d chip in our quarters to get a buck’s worth of gas to get us through the evening. Sometimes we’d stop at Carroll’s Hamburgers where all the parking spots were filled, and teenagers milled around or sat on the hoods of their cars. Other times we just slowly drove through the lot to check out the action. Some nights, after we’d had drill team practice, we’d stop at the diner to have desserts. We’d usually walk from the field uptown to O’Grady’s then we’d walk home, leaving in all different directions. I don’t remember those nights being hot either.

At some time, I don’t know exactly when, an intolerance for extremes sneaked in and became part of me. I don’t like the really cold days of winter, and I hate feeling hot and sweaty and strangled by the humidity in summer. The thermostat has been getting higher and higher on winter days, and the central air has been blowing more and more each summer. I remember seeing old ladies wearing sweaters on a balmy summer night, and I was mystified. My mother used to keep her house so hot in winter we’d wear t-shirts and complain. My neighbors find 78˚a comfortable AC temperature and I snorted quietly when they told me, but I can see it coming. The older I get the less I seem to adjust. I’ll have to keep the afghan close for winter and put on socks in the summer when the AC is blasting. My feet get really cold.

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What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”

July 6, 2012

The air is already thick with humidity. Nothing is moving. The leaves just sit there on the branches. Even the birds are quiet. This room, at the back of the house, is still cool and dark, but it won’t be by mid-afternoon. Today the house with the AC will be my refuge.

We are spoiled. Our expectations have changed. The house is too hot? Put in central air. It’s a pain to move the hoses around the yard and garden. Time for an irrigation system. You want dinner ASAP. Put it in the microwave. Don’t want to wait for the charcoal for the barbecue. Buy a gas grill. Go from the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned store.

I remember summers when I was young. They were filled with wanderings and woods and the swamp. Being sweaty and even a bit dirty were signs of a good time, of a day well spent. I was always so exhausted I fell asleep in the sweltering heat of my bedroom. Even my father hunting and killing mosquitoes with his rolled-up magazine woke me for no more than a minute or two even though he sometimes stood on my bed to reach the ceiling. That ceiling and all the others in the house had blots which represented another kill. My father was possessed.

I lived in Bolga. It was the hottest part of the country with the least amount of rain. I didn’t even have a fan. I went to bed still wet from my shower and slept through the hot night. Later, just before the rains when the humidity came, I moved outside and slept on my mattress in the back of the house. I saw a sky filled with a million stars. I always had no trouble falling asleep.

My bedroom on the third floor with the heat from the afternoon sun was so hot I couldn’t fall asleep so for most of the summer I slept downstairs on the couch with the back door opened. Later I splurged and bought a fan. One year I finally broke down and got a window air-conditioner for my bedroom. I tolerated the hot-house downstairs but luxuriated in the coolness of the bedroom where I easily fell asleep. Then I decided it made no sense to be hot and uncomfortable or to have to sit upstairs all afternoon so I went with central air.

It seems the older I get the more spoiled I become. I have to admit, though, I’m loving it.

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“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.”

June 20, 2012

Hello Summer!

Those words seem almost magical. It wasn’t that long ago we were longing for the summer and trying to stay warm during the dark nights of winter. Our feet froze in the snow. We cursed the shoveling. We huddled on the couch under afghans. Sure, the snow was lovely falling down but then we had to contend with it for days. Would summer never come? Well, here it is in all its glory, and today we’ll usher in the new season with the hottest day so far. Boston will be at least 95°, and here we’ll reach the low 80’s. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but I don’t care! Finally it’s summertime, deck time, movies outside on a Saturday night, barbecues and outside showers.

I was on the deck earlier with my coffee and papers. It got hot. Gracie was in the shade and panting so we both came inside and the house felt wonderfully cool. This room gets the afternoon sun so it’s lovely in the mornings. From my perch here, I can see out my window. The leaves on the trees by the deck are barely moving. The sunlight is dappled. The sky is azure. Mother Nature did herself proud.

The beginning of summer always reminds of all those last days of school when we were finally free. The day felt like a holiday, not as good as Christmas but still high on the list of kids’ favorite days. No more getting up in the mornings and being grumpy at having to walk to school despite the weather. No more coats or hats or mittens or even spring jackets. The bike could stay out of the cellar until it started to get too cold again. Every day for the next couple of months was ours: unplanned and waiting to be filled with all the fun of summer. The street lights didn’t come on until really late so back out we’d go after dinner. I still remember the  sounds of those summer evenings: the shouts and laughter of all the kids in my neighborhood, including me, as the day disappeared and the summer night was upon us. It was time to watch for the fireflies.

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“Spring makes everything young again except man.”

April 17, 2012

I’m sorry about yesterday, but I worked the Boston Marathon and the standing and the heat got to me. My job is volunteer lunch distribution at Copley Square where the marathon ends. We put bags of chips and stuff together, pass them and sandwiches out and feed around 1000 people. The tent was quite warm in the 85° heat. Luckily it was going to become an auxiliary medical tent so they started air-conditioning at eleven, and that felt great. We had to be finished our jobs by noon, and we did. I then walked to the T at Arlington, rode to Quincy, got my car and drove home. When I got home at 2:30, having left at 6:40, I weighed writing Coffee against taking a nap. You know what won!

The city was filled with people. All the outdoor cafes had no empty tables, and people were just meandering or heading to the Sox game or going to watch part of the marathon. The Public Garden had people sitting on benches enjoying the coolness of the shade from trees overhead. I sighed as I sat down in the air-conditioned T car. It was just too darn hot for mid-April.

The Cape reached the low 70’s yesterday and is 73° right now. The sun is hot. No rain is in the forecast, and everything is really dry. A red flag alert has been posted which means we have critical fire weather conditions. My lawn water system was turned on today as my grass is already brown in spots where there is no shade. I remember complaining a few weeks back about three days in a row of rain, and I guess Mother Nature took it to heart.

When I was working, I used to go Europe every April vacation. I went a few times with my sister and several times with my parents. We seldom had a set route or destination. We’d mostly stay in one country the whole week and stop when we were tired. My favorite country was Portugal, but my favorite trip was the one with my parents and my sister when we traveled to Belgium and the Netherlands. We laughed a lot especially after we got stopped at a border station by a very angry guard. It seems we had driven back and forth through the border three times trying to find our road. We explained, but he was not amused. We looked solemn enough while he reprimanded us, but once on our way we had to laugh at the whole adventure. There he was sitting in his guard-house watching us fly by him not once but three times. Good thing we were just stupid tourists!

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“You can’t make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.”

October 7, 2011

Last night was one of those I can’t get to sleep nights. After the Tigers-Yankee thriller, I watched a few DVR’ed programs, played on my computer and still couldn’t get to sleep. Finally, about 3:00, we all crawled into bed. This morning Gracie woke me up by ringing her bells to go out around 9:30. The house was so cold I ran back upstairs and under the covers but not before I turned on the heat. Yup, I have heat.

I am an idiot. When the hall was painted last week, the painter turned off the emergency switch, and it only cost me $95.00 to turn it on again. While the service guy was here, I figured he might as well change the filter in the furnace, and when he did, he turned off some switch which caused the heat to stay off. I called the answering service and some woman questioned me about the switches. Not a tech person mind you, but an answering person. I finally got her to take the message and stop the inquisition. The service guy called and profusely apologized. He knew just what he had done and was on his way back here. I now have heat, just in time for the 70+° weather due this weekend.

My sister was born on Columbus Day, the real one, not the fake one enacted to give us all a long weekend. She loved having that day as her birthday because she was guaranteed a day off from school. I swear when she was young she thought we all had the day off in her honor.

As a kid, my favorite time of the year, besides summer and no school, was from October through the beginning of January. During those months we had Halloween, legal holidays off from school and holy days off like November 1st, All Saint’s Day, and December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception though we had to pay for those days off by attending mass. I guess it was a fair trade-off. We also had the school vacations of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

School was never painful those months. We knew a day off was never far away.

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“Handwriting is civilization’s casual encephalogram.”

July 23, 2011

Yesterday, at 103°, Boston was the hottest it’s been since 1926. We were close, in the 90’s, which is unusual for us, but the ocean breeze had totally disappeared. Gracie and I stayed inside almost the entire day. The few times I went on the deck the heat and humidity sucked my breath away. Today I have to go to a bridal shower, and I am not the bridal shower type. To make it even worse, if that’s at all possible, it will be hot. It’s only 10 and already the temperature is 83°. I’m going to practice my oohing and ahing before I go. I’m a bit rusty.

I remember learning the Palmer Method. First we had to learn to hold our pencils a certain way and then we did exercises. We were taught to use our hands and arms in making circles then lines. My circles were never very neat, but I was great at lines. I remember my hand moving up and down on the paper as I made my lines, and I remember the sound of hand against paper and the scribbling sound of the pencil. The nun would walk around and reposition pencils or make comments about the circles and lines.

Across the front of the room, over the blackboard, was a set of the alphabet in Palmer Method cursive writing. It was ornate with all sorts of loops. The R in my last name was one circle. It was the same R my grandmother always used. The K in my first name had a loop. I think my favorite letters were X, Q and Z. They were strange looking, and if you hadn’t learned Palmer method, you would never recognize the Q. We practiced all the time on lined sheets of paper. The capital letters went from the bottom of the line to the top. The small letters were about half the size and were easy to recognize, even the q, which looked a lot like the one my keyboard has except it’s missing the loop.

I read in the paper that schools are phasing out the teaching of cursive writing. The keyboard is replacing it. It reminded me of all that is fading away. My newspapers are ceasing to exist, bookstores are closing at a rapid rate and now cursive writing is disappearing. I’m afraid to venture a guess as to what’s next.

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“Never run in the rain with your socks on.”

July 19, 2011

The front page of The Cape Cod Times said the heat is heading our way. Generally the ocean keeps us cooler than off cape, but by Thursday we’ll be in the high 80’s closing in on 90. I expect to hibernate inside with the air conditioner on. I have to go to Falmouth this afternoon so I’ll stop and pick up a few books on the way. I can’t imagine anything worse than hibernating with nothing to read.

We had thunder and lightning last night during the rain storm. Neither was all that dramatic, always a disappointment to me. I love loud storms with torrential downpours.

When I was a kid, we used to love to stay outside during a summer rainstorm, the plain old rainstorms without any dramatics. I remember the rain was always softer in summer and seemed to invite us outside. We’d splash each other from the puddles and run along the sidewalk gutters filled with water. My hair and clothes would get soaked, but I never minded.

Running through the sprinkler was the next best thing to a rainstorm. We’d jump over it with long strides and arms spread as if we were competing in an Olympic event. The bravest among us would stand beside the sprinkler and get pelted by the cold water as it circled. Arms would be held close, crossed over our chests, as if to ward off the cold. We’d take breaks and lie on towels spread on the grass in the sun until we were warmed then it was back to the sprinkler. Our dog, Duke, loved to stop the sprinkler with his paw to drink the cold water. We’d watch him hold a sprinkler arm, slurp his fill and think him the smartest of dogs.

The sprinklers which go round and round have disappeared. Many of us have irrigation systems, and the only sprinklers I see are long and have one bar which sends the water back and forth. That wouldn’t have been any fun.

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“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat”

September 9, 2010

The other day I read an article where a woman of 65 was described as old. I was taken aback because I remember wanting to be old. I remember wanting to be sixteen. It seemed the perfect age. You could drive at sixteen, go to the movies at night and even sit in the balcony. Streetlights no longer set a curfew. I could go to bed when I wanted, and I wasn’t forced to eat vegetables. Life was getting more and more interesting. It’s funny how age becomes relative over time.

Air conditioning is being installed today. Most summers have been tolerable, but this summer was so humid that even reading a book caused me to sweat, and I refuse to go through that again. I wanted the air installed earlier, but it seems a huge number of people had also reached their boiling points, and I had to wait my turn.

When our choices are limited, we seem to be far more tolerant. I didn’t even have a fan in Ghana, in Bolga, and it got so hot a candle melted without ever being lit. I’d stand up from my living room chair and the imprint of my body would be left  in sweat on the upholstery. I went to bed still dripping from my shower so the air and water would cool my body enough so I could fall asleep. I never complained. That was life in Bolga.

I have been back here far too long. I am now spoiled. My expectations are grand. I don’t need to be hot. I don’t need to be cold. Every discomfort has a solution.

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