Posted tagged ‘humid’
September 18, 2018
Logy is the first word of the day. A heavy wind blows, but the humidity is still oppressive. I’m sweating and Henry is panting. Neither one of us wants to move. Inert is the second word of the day. The air is so thick and muggy my granite countertop is damp to the touch. Rain is coming.
Yesterday I finished my errands then came home, got comfy and read all afternoon. I had one book left and finished it, an Obama-Biden mystery. I bought it out of curiosity. Biden is the narrator. It is his friend who has died under mysterious circumstances. The two of them, Obama and Biden, are sort of a Holmes-Watson duo. Biden is Watson.
I know every sound my house makes. The ice dropping into the bin, the creak of the floors, the rattle of the doors and the tapping of Henry’s claws on the wood floors are easy to identify. Usually I am in bed when I hear a sound I don’t recognize. I pause and listen. Most times I don’t hear the sound again so I go back to sleep. Gracie used to sleep through noises. Henry doesn’t. He barks and howls but stays on the bed so I don’t investigate. Last night I heard a crash then nothing. Henry didn’t move so I went back to sleep. This morning I found a picture had fallen. The sound was it hitting the floor. Why it fell is a mystery.
I’ve been into cereal lately. I just finished a box of Raisin Brand Crunch. Most times I added Maine’s wild blueberries. They are surprisingly good with cereal. I usually add bananas, but I think blueberries are now my favorite. When I went hunting those sweet blueberries, there were none at the store yesterday. I was bummed, but I bought cereal anyway and a couple of bananas. I think I might try blackberries next.
I can hear the leaves blowing in the wind. My room is really dark. The only light comes from the computer keyboard. I like dark days with lots of wind and rain. That’s just what I need to pull me from this funk. Come on rain!!
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Categories: Musings
Tags: bananas, cereal, humid, inert, logy, Maine blueberries, muggy, Obama-Biden mystery, Raisin Brand, rattles, scratches, sounds
Comments: 4 Comments
July 6, 2018
The world is back. I have turned off the air conditioning and opened the doors and windows. There is a stiff breeze and so much humidity my granite countertop is damp to the touch. Thunder showers are a possibility for later. I can believe it as the sky is cloudy dark. I’m glad I got all my deck pillows put away yesterday or I’d be scurrying today.
I can hear the birds, and I heard the truck idling in front of my neighbor’s house. It was a Dennis DPW truck. It’s gone now. Only the birds are left.
I am watching Forbidden Planet, one of my all time favorite science fiction films. It was released 62 years ago, but it is still an excellent film. The setting is a planet far from Earth. Robby the Robot thinks and has a personality. Morbius and Altaira, his daughter, are the only people left from the Earth expedition sent there 20 years earlier. Altaira is young and naive and knows nothing about men and allows herself to be kissed as an experiment. After all the kisses, she doesn’t get the hype promised by the lieutenant.
I looked up the movie’s cast members in the information provided on the screen. There was a picture of each cast member and the two writers. One writer was Cyril Hume and the other was William Shakespeare. I like Shakespeare getting credit. The plot of this movie is supposedly analogous to The Tempest.
I have a few maybe or maybe not things I can do. My laundry sits in the dryer wrinkling. My trash bag is full and waiting to be put in the trunk. Clumps of white dog hair need to be cleaned off the floor. It is all over the hall, den, stairs and kitchen. I am amazed at how much hair Henry loses.
I have bought some old postcards. One is of Main Street Hyannis in the days when it was a downtown filled with stores like Woolworths and Liggett Drugs. It is easy to date by the cars parked on Main Street. Another is a market scene in Ghana. It could be 50 years ago or it could be yesterday. Two others are of the cape in bygone days. A cranberry bog is being harvested by hand and Thompson’s Clam Bar is filled with diners. The last one is a black and white card of the angel in front of St. Patrick’s Grammar School. It was there when I went to school, and it is there now. My sister and I figure it was put there in 1910 when the school was built.
I get nostalgic for the old days when I look at the postcards. They chronicle the world I remember from when I was a kid. Sometimes I truly miss those days.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: cloudy dark, humid
Comments: 13 Comments
October 24, 2017
Last night I just couldn’t fall asleep. I tried to watch television, but that didn’t work. On Netflix I saw the start of several movies but couldn’t get interested in any of them. I then watched most of my DVR’d programs and got the number winnowed to two, both Dirk Gently’s. To watch that program I need a different mood. At 3:00 I turned off the light and tried to sleep. At 3:30 I turned the light back on. Finally, at 4:30 or so I fell asleep. Television is definitely a wasteland late at night but not enough to lull me to sleep.
Today is dark and windy, but surprisingly warm. It will rain later tonight. We could get inches of rain. My mother would call it a deluge.
Unlike Mother Hubbard, my cupboard is full. Peapod came yesterday.
My coffee maker loses water all over the counter. My washing machine won’t spin. I had to put towels on the line in the cellar. They were heavy with water. I hand wrung them, but they were still soaked. The other clothes went into the dryer. I hate when stuff starts to fall apart. I have ordered another coffee pot and will call an appliance man with hopes the washer can be fixed. Both are essential.
We live in the toss it and buy another age. Stuff is not build to last anymore. It is often cheaper to replace than repair.
My mother always made pea soup after we’d had a bone- in ham for dinner. The soup was thick and green. It was my father’s favorite, but because I liked it too, my mother would save some in jars and freeze it for my next visit. I reciprocated and made chicken soup. I always brought my mother some. She loved my chicken soup.
My mother used to come down to visit often. We shopped, went out to dinner and sometimes out to lunch as well. At night we’d play Big Boggle, her favorite game. We played countless times. She used to fill her trunk with shopping bags. The joke was she’d only bring in a couple when my father was home. He always remarked about little she’d bought. When he went to work, she’d empty the rest of her trunk.
It has started to rain. I heard it dripping from the eaves onto the deck. The wind is stronger, and the biggest branches on the oak trees are swaying. I was going out as I do have one errand, but now I’m staying home, cozy and dry.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: Big Boggle, coffee maker, dar, dead appliances, Dirk Gently, humid, Mother Hubbard, Netflix, pea soup, Shopping, sleepless, stuff, Television, Washing machine, windy
Comments: 6 Comments
September 28, 2017
Sometime during the night it rained. I slept through it. The street and the yard were still damp when I woke up late, close to ten. The air is wet, humid. The sky is gray. There is a breeze but it does little to clear the air. Today is the last day of the heat, according to the weatherman. Tonight the temperature will go down to the low 50’s.
I filled all the bird feeders this morning. The bottoms of a couple of them had mold and the seeds were in a clump. I cleaned every one. Last I checked, the bird weren’t back yet.
Huzzah! Huzzah! The first load of laundry is in the washer. A second load sits on the floor waiting its turn. I can’t remember the last time I had so much laundry. These two full loads are testaments to my sloth.
In Ghana, I had my laundry done when I lived there and when I visited. During training we found women in the nearest village to do the laundry. Everything was washed by hand in buckets. The irons were heated with charcoal. It was the same forty years later. On my last trip, shirts were 2 cedis, about fifty cents. Pants were four, a whole dollar. I came home with clean clothes.
I do everything I can to do nothing. My house gets cleaned and my yard is kept neat, except for the back which no one sees, and my groceries get delivered right to the kitchen. If I could afford more, I’d have my laundry done while I sat and ate bonbons.
I need bread, and I could go to the dump though I’m thinking tomorrow is the better day Just because I don’t want to go today.
I don’t mind clowns or bugs. I have a black cat. Heights don’t make me dizzy, but rides which go around and around make me throw up. Stopping at the top of a Ferris wheel isn’t a problem for me. I like the view. I don’t get the fear of spiders, but scorpions are a different story. Once I had a scorpion roaming on my living room floor, and my student killed it with my sandal. She asked permission first. I said yes because scorpions bite. Sometimes I hear noises I can’t explain. They give me pause. I lower the TV and listen. Usually I don’t hear it again. If I did, I’d pass it off as an animal or a bird. That’s the easiest answer and the one which doesn’t make me afraid.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 50's, cooler, energy, everything, Ghana, gray sky, house cleaner, humid, Laundry, loads of wash, mold, rain, sloth, washing in buckets
Comments: 8 Comments
September 26, 2017
Last night I fell into a mirror under the nose deep sleep and woke up at 10:15. Gracie woke me up earlier wanting to join me on the couch, and from next door I heard sawing and hammering, but neither was enough to keep me awake. When I went to get the papers, the sun was shining. It is already hot and humid. I need to go to Agway, and that’s it for the day.
Gracie was sick this morning. She wouldn’t even take a piece of chicken, a bad sign. I immediately gave her a pill to settle her stomach. About a half hour later she ate her breakfast, and she seems fine.
I’m watching a really bad movie, The Green Slime released in 1968. The slime, a space remnant unknowingly brought onto a space station, produces creatures with one eye in the middle of what I presume are their faces. They have octopus like arms they flail about as they walk. They each have two legs, real legs badly disguised. The movie was made in Japan but has no Japanese actors. It takes place on a space station. The women in it, nurses and a doctor, scream, put their hands in front of their mouths in horror and are frozen to the spot when the creatures get closer. The electronics are primitive, mostly levers, buttons and lights. The crew is about to destroy the space station hoping to kill the creatures who have multiplied and are now so many that they cover almost the whole outside of the station. This movie is so bad I’m going to buy it for next summer’s movies on the deck.
When I was a kid, I loved all the science fiction movies filled with space ships, monsters, giant insects and aliens but when I was ten, space became real. Sputnik was launched. I remember the scare about the Soviets launching bombs at us from outer space. Duck and cover wouldn’t save us any more. All of a sudden we were in a space race and we were losing.
Science fiction didn’t fade away after the advent of real space travel. It got more sophisticated and complex. There were still monsters of a sort, think Alien, and computers like Hal, and space ships, filled with realistic controls, and there was exploration of space, of trips to Mars. It seemed real, within reach and filled with possibilities. It was my childhood imaginings come to life. It was a wonder.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: deep sleep, fake monsters, Gracie ie, hot, humid, Mars, mirror under the nose, Outer Space, space race, space station, Sputnik, The Green Slime
Comments: 6 Comments
September 14, 2017
The humidity is making the day sticky and uncomfortable. Last night was the same. I ended up cooling the house by turning on the AC. Both Gracie and I slept comfortably.
Today is sometimes cloudy and sometimes sunny. Rain is a possibility, a holdover from Irma. I don’t mind as it hasn’t rained in a while.
Yesterday I filled all the bird feeders and washed off the deck and the deck furniture with the hose nozzle on jet. It was a power wash of sorts. The birds had left calling cards.
Today I have errands. The lens fell out of my glasses so I need to get them fixed. The old pair I’m using sits at an angle on my ears so I have to keep tilting my head when I read. It’s a bit disconcerting. I also need a few grocery items with toilet paper topping the list.
My house is still dusty, and I still don’t care.
Gracie is just fine. She scared the heck out of me last night when she barked at me. She had been standing beside me and staring for a while so I had blocked her out. The bark made me jump. It was an I’m hungry bark even though she had already eaten dinner and her after dinner treats. I tried to ignore her but it didn’t work. I got the paw, twice. I fed her another small can, and she was fine. I bow to her whims and wants.
I like ice cream. My favorite changes with my moods. Coconut was a favorite last summer. Couple it with hot fudge or caramel, both salted or unsalted, and it’s food bliss. Lately I’ve bought mint chocolate chip gelato. It needs no enhancements. Vanilla by itself is boring to me. It begs for toppings like hot fudge or peanut butter cups and maybe some jimmies (sprinkles to those of you not in New England). I like a sugar cone. It adds to the ice cream, but a sugar cone often ends up with a hole in the bottom. That means licking the ice cream from the top and the bottom. It’s a talent to keep the drips away. I’m very talented.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: barking, bird poop, cloudy, coconut, glasses, Gracie, hot, humid, ice cream, jet spray, minty chocolate chip, power wash, rain, sunny, tilt, Toilet paper, vanilla
Comments: 7 Comments
August 11, 2017
The early morning was cool. Gracie wanted out before six so out we went. It was quiet. My newspapers hadn’t yet been delivered. Gracie finished her business, and when we came back inside, both of us fell back to sleep.
The sky is gray for a while then the sun breaks though for a short time, but the grey clouds never quite disappear. The sun does. The humidity is returning today.
Next door is still noisy but not as much as yesterday. The digging has stopped. The rest of the neighborhood is quiet. Even the birds aren’t singing. I figure they feel as oppressed by the clouds as I do. It seems to be getting darker though rain is not in the forecast.
I haven’t anything to do today. My house is clean, the laundry isn’t worth washing, too few clothes, and I don’t need any groceries. I suppose I could clean things like the bookcases filled with stuff, but I figure that’s over the top and good for a winter’s day. The downstairs plants do need watering so I guess I’ve found something to do. Hurrah!
I’m seeing commercials for survival food good for 25 years. I’m going to pass.
Many of the commercials are aimed at my generation because we, the baby boomers, are a bulge on the population chart and are so much older now. Today I watched one for the stair climber. Reverse mortgage is Tom Selleck’s ad. Another one is for insurance to pay off all the bills left when you die. Local Cape ads tout retirement communities with all the amenities including a doctor on call. AARP is all over the dial, okay not the dial but the remote though it doesn’t matter, you get the idea. I chuckle at the commercials for Consumer Cellular. Every actor is older, my age older, as in the older woman who reminds us we had to go to the library to look up stuff. She uses her cell phone for a walk in a field with her friends, a GPS app I figure, and says we can learn new technology. I’m so glad to hear that!
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 'remote, ads, baby boomers, birds, cloudy, cool, dial, digging noise, early morning, humid, older people, plants, quiet, sun, survival food, to do list
Comments: 19 Comments
August 5, 2017
The air is damp yet again and makes me feel closed in, hemmed in by the humidity. Rain is predicted for late this afternoon but the gray sky doesn’t look like a rain sky. It looks as it has in days, just gray.
Our Saturday movie night is going to be Sunday movie night because of the weather, the possibility of rain tonight. I have three new movies from which to choose: a new, unbroken Four Feathers, To Kill a Mockingbird and An American Werewolf in London. I’m leaning toward the last one. It has humor and a werewolf, an unbeatable combination.
I had to go around the parking lot three times yesterday before I found a space. It was almost right in front of the store. I gave thanks to the God of parking. I was in and out quickly, but now I find I need to go back. I didn’t read all of the recipe. I missed the sauce and its two ingredients. I figure to wait for the afternoon or for the rain.
I have a project. On the bottom shelf of my large metal table are three baskets. I keep putting stuff in them but take nothing out. They are mini closets, catch-alls for stuff I don’t know where else to put. My mother always had a junk drawer in the kitchen. My baskets are my junk drawers. I’m going to use a large trash bag for debris when I go through each basket. I’m hoping to find some surprises.
When I got home from Ghana and was hoping to find a teaching job, it never occurred to me to find a job which required international travel. I don’t know why unless it was just needing to get used to home again as I wasn’t happy here for a long time. I missed Ghana, the friendliness of the Ghanaians, the fun of market day, fresh fruit at lunch, the spectacular night sky, the wonderful smell of wood burning and so much more. It took me a while to notice the best parts of home.
Newspapers are making a comeback. The Washington Post and The New York Times, among others, are booming. Last November The Times signed up 130,000 new subscribers. I remember when I was a kid there were morning and evening papers, even special editions when something happened. I also remember getting ink all over my fingertips when I read the paper. I was mostly interested in the comics. My dad read the whole paper while he was having coffee. He got the Globe when he was a democrat and switched to the Herald when he became a republican. I get the Globe and the Cape Times. As did my father, I read the whole paper, each paper except I skip the international news in the Times having already read it in the Globe. I have a cup of coffee with each paper. I am my father’s daughter.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: An American Werewolf in LOndon, baskets, cleanibng, Ghana, gray, groceries, humid, international travel, junk drawer, missing Ghana, movie night, newspapers, parking lot, project, rain, sauce, The Globe, The Times
Comments: 12 Comments
August 4, 2017
The air is dripping. The humidity is so thick it seems to coat my skin when I go outside. This morning’s gray clouds are giving way to blue skies and intermittent sun. It is already hot. Here in my den, it is still cool. It won’t get hot until the afternoon after the sun moves from front to back.
The bird feeder I filled yesterday is already half empty. The birds flying in and out seem endless. One eats and two wait. They are mostly chickadees, black capped chickadees, the state bird of Massachusetts. I like to sit and watch them. The birds fly right over my head almost close enough to touch.
I can’t seem to find a story or a memory. That is rare for me as I have a huge memory drawer overflowing with scraps and pieces of my life. I guess I’m going to visit Ghana today, and I’m bringing you with me. There are so many stories yet to tell.
One day there was a knock at my door. It was a man I didn’t know. He greeted me. I returned the greeting. He told me he was looking for a white woman and was I interested. I said no. He asked me if I knew any Canadians. I said no again. He thanked me and left.
A blind beggar was being led by a small boy. The beggar was holding one end of a stick and the boy was holding the other. The beggar stopped in front of me and asked for money. This was while I was in training. It was my first beggar. I said sorry and sent him off with good wishes as you have to give a beggar something. He called me batoria, white woman. I wonder what gave me away? I also wondered if he was really blind.
I always went to the same vegetable lady in the market. I bought tomatoes and onions from her. She gave me my change the first time I bought from her, and I put it in my bag. She didn’t speak English but indicated with her hands that I should count it. I shook my head no. That cemented our relationship. After that she would dash me extra tomatoes and onions. Once she had a small watermelon. I have no idea where she got it, but she had saved it for me. When I was leaving to come home, I went to say goodbye. She was crying and gave me a hug. She also gave me a small gift. It sits on the table here in the den. She always comes to mind when I see it.
I loved the mornings in Ghana. The roosters crowed. The air smelled of charcoal fires. I could hear water filling the metal buckets where my students waited in line to take their bucket baths. I’d sit outside my front door drinking my first cup of coffee before breakfast. I had the same breakfast every day: two eggs cooked in groundnut oil (peanut oil) and two pieces of toast toasted against the sides of the small charcoal burner. I’d watch the school children cutting through my school compound to go to schools outside the gates at each end of the school. At one end was the primary school and at the other was the middle school. I was an object of curiosity until the students got used to me then they’d wish me, “Good morning, sir. How Are you? I am quite well thank you, ” all said one after the other without a break. I’d have one or two more cups of coffee between classes.
It seems my bemoaning my lack of memories was massively premature.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: Bird feeder, blind beggar, blue skies, breakfast, chickadees, cloudy, Ghana, hot, humid, market, memory drawer, mornings in Ghana, school boys, tomatoes and onions, vegetable lady, watermelon, white woman
Comments: 4 Comments
August 3, 2017
The air is so humid it feels damp. The sky is gray. The slight breeze does nothing to clear the air. We are starting days of hot weather. I will be a hermit sitting in the cool house with doors and windows closed. The Sox game last night was rained out. There was thunder and lightning. It missed us.
My laundry is done, but the pile sits in the living room waiting to be brought upstairs. That’s progress to me and a check off the to-do list.
Ghost Shark is today’s unbelievable movie. The shark can appear in water, any water, including bathtubs and water coolers. It doesn’t eat the bodies. It is after all a ghost but it does lop off heads or cut the bodies in half. Even to me this is one strange movie.
Clowns don’t scare me, haven’t ever scared me, though the clown in Stephen King’s It is scary. I grew up with Clarabell. He honked instead off talked except he did say good-bye on the very last Howdy Doody show. Maybe it’s clown make-up which scares people or their bad taste in colorful clothes with ruffles. I guess clown shoes don’t help much either.
I admit the man with the hook scared me when I was a kid. My father told us the story with heightened drama, hand gestures and the occasional grabs of our knees which made us jump. When he and my mother once went grocery shopping, we were alone which was fine until we heard scratching on the screen and no other sounds. It scared us enough we hid under the bed probably the first spot a crazed killer would look, but we didn’t have the time to discuss the best hiding place in the house. We just ran. It was, of course, my father. He thought it was funny. We didn’t at least until we caught our breaths and our hearts stopped beating wildly in our chests.
I do like to be scared but not about real things. I never expect boogeymen in the bushes or that my house will be targeted by roving marauders. I keep my inside doors open. I have no window shades. The curtains stay open to the sun though not all windows even have curtains. If I hear a noise, I usually investigate, a little timidly but I go anyway. The other night the dog’s backyard lights were triggered. She was inside. I went out on the deck to check the yard but neither saw nor heard anything. I just shrugged at the mystery and went back inside the house. I left the inside door open.
The first place I ever lived alone was in Ghana. It took a bit of adjustment, but after a while I enjoyed being by myself. My house was right by the back gate which I sometimes had to climb over to get back into the school compound after hours. The watchman pretended not to hear me so he could stay by his bedding and his fire. My inside door was always open even then. My house was broken into one night. I was sleeping outside and slept through it all. Nothing much was stolen as I didn’t have much. My camera was found outside the house. You couldn’t buy film for it in Ghana so it was useless to the thief. I had very little money which was gone, but Peace Corps reimbursed us. I had my pocket picked at the train station and was the victim of an attempted purse snatching. Despite all of those, I was never afraid.
I have lived alone my entire time in this house. I haven’t ever heard scratching on the screen or eerie sounds at night. Gracie used to bark at sounds but doesn’t anymore unless there is a knock at the door or the bell is rung. So much for my watch dog. Regardless, I feel perfectly safe.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: Clarabell, clowns, Ghana, Ghost Shark, gray day, humid, Laundry, living alone, make-up, man with the hook, scared, school compound, scratching on the screen, sounds, theft
Comments: 8 Comments