Posted tagged ‘humidity’
July 24, 2014
Yesterday I was productive. I did errands, potted a few flowers, cleaned the deck, changed the litter, made my bed, went to the post office and went out for lunch. I wanted applause.
Yesterday was Humid, with a capital H. I put on the AC and left it cranking until this morning.
Today is dark but not so humid so I don’t have that closed in feeling. A small breeze is coming through the north window. Thundershowers are predicted for later.
The spawns of Satan have been eating acorns and tossing the pieces on the deck. I go barefoot so I have been stepping on them, yelping and then cursing. I believe the spawns know exactly what they’re doing. Every morning I clean off the pieces, and every afternoon more are back. That sounds like a plot to me. The red spawn isn’t coming around as much. I don’t think it likes the jet of water I spray at him. Now I just walk out on the deck and he’s gone in a flash. Even though I can’t reach him, I spray in his direction for effect.
My neighborhood is so quiet today. I don’t know where the screaming kids and barking dogs have gone. Yesterday my landscaper took down two dead pine trees from my backyard and hauled away the huge branch which had broken off the large pine tree. The back of his truck was filled. It had been a noisy day so today is a pleasure.
When I think back, I remember my neighborhood was only quiet late at night. During the day there were kids playing in the backyards, mostly younger kids who couldn’t go far and didn’t yet have the independence of a bike. My sisters used to play dolls on the steps right outside the back door. I remember them sitting there, one sitting on a step higher than the other. They talked through their dolls using voices wholly different from their own, voices higher in pitch, doll talk.
The neighborhood would start to quiet down around suppertime. The kitchens of all the houses faced the back yard, and I could hear dishes rattling and snatches of conversation. It was not a neighborhood for privacy. We all shared the back yard and the windows were open all summer. The night quieted as it got older; kids went to bed and I could hear the TV from the house closest to mine. That were always the last sound I remembered hearing on any summer night.
Categories: Musings
Tags: acorns, cutting down trees, dark day, dead branches, doll talk, errands, humidity, pine trees, playing dolls, playing in the yard, red spawn of Satan, thundershwers
Comments: 12 Comments
July 17, 2014
The rain was light but steady when I went to bed. During the day it had gotten heavy at times, and I had a flooded floor in the kitchen when I got back from my errands as I had left the back door open. It took a mop. By afternoon the humidity was thick and stifling so I put on the air. The house felt wonderful and I slept until 10, unusual for me. I turned the air off this morning as the day is cooler and less humid than it has been. The sun is even breaking through and the day is getting lighter. I didn’t begrudge the rain. We needed it.
Once I wanted to be Annie Oakley, a horse riding sharp shooting cowgirl who also happened to be the sheriff. I didn’t realize it at the time but she wasn’t stereotypical which is what I think drew me to her. Many of my favorite characters were girls and women who were smart, brave and daring. I loved Lois Lane though I hated those tiny hats, the suits she wore and the purse she always carried. She was dogged in her pursuit of a story and the identity of Superman, and she never let being a woman stand in her way though she did end up being saved time and time again by Superman. TV in the 50’s had few strong women characters. Most, like June Cleaver, wore dresses, pearls and aprons and had dinner ready when their husbands came home from work. Alice Kramden managed to break out a bit. She wore the apron but she was never cowered by Ralph.
As I was growing up, I knew I’d go to college. No one in my family had, but I just knew I would. It was part of the plan I had hatched when I was young, as young as ten or eleven. I’d go to college then I’d travel the world. There was neither doubt nor hesitation in my mind.
When I graduated from college, my mother told that she and my father had never envisioned that one of their kids would go to college. They were both thrilled and proud that I had. Earlier, though, they weren’t so thrilled and proud when I had announced the next part of my plan, traveling the world. My father forbade me to accept the Peace Corps invitation to go to Ghana. I mean really, here I was twenty-one, a few months from graduating, and my father actually thought he could stop me from doing what I wanted. If I hadn’t been so angry, I would have laughed at the absurdity. I ignored him, and he knew I was going with or without his support so he begrudgingly accepted my decision and gave his support.
My life has worked out even better than I had envisioned. It has been so much more.
Categories: Musings
Tags: absurdity, AC, Alice Kramden, Annie Oakley, college, Ghana, humidity, June Cleaver, life plans, Lois Lane, Peace Corps, rain, stereotypical women, stubbornness, sun, travel
Comments: 12 Comments
July 15, 2014
Every day is dark and humid, but we don’t get rain. We just get sweaty. Thunder showers are predicted for the third day in a row. The difference today, though, is a strong breeze, strong enough to sway the chimes, bend branches and swish the leaves. The birds are unusually quiet. The rental next door has people this week, and I can hear them talking and laughing. They interrupt the usual quiet of the morning.
When I was in the fifth grade, we were bussed to school in the next town over while they finished building our new school. That was the year I got Little Women for Christmas, and I remember reading it on the bus. I loved the March girls and how they called their mother Marmee. Beth’s death made me cry. I hadn’t ever read a book before where someone dies. Jo was my favorite character. I wanted to be Jo. As I read the book and got closer and closer to the last page, I remember feeling sad, feeling a sense of loss, but then I found Little Men and Jo’s Boys, a sequel to Little Men. I could stay with the March family even longer. That was the year of Alcott for me.
I still hate reaching the end of a good novel. If I had more self-control, I’d slow down and make it all last longer, but I can’t. It is as if I am possessed. Sometimes I’ll read all day and well into the night, even to the early morning and first light. One Christmas my mother gave me Alive, and I started reading it Christmas afternoon. I was in a reading frenzy, the zone where there is nothing else. There are no sounds and no people, just the pages of my book. My mother broke in and thought I should put the book down as I had just opened it that morning and wouldn’t it be a shame to finish it so quickly. I didn’t know how to answer. My mother was a reader and should have understood. A good book is savored. It trumps everything. It’s a world unto itself which draws us in so we are lucky enough to become a part of that world.
It’s still happens to me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Beth's death, humidity, Jo, last page of a good book, Little Women, rain, reading, reading frenzy, savoring books, Wind
Comments: 14 Comments
July 14, 2014
Last night the weather woman predicted a polar vortex. She was describing summer temperatures in the mid to low 60’s. I guess polar was about the best adjective she could find to describe the cool, even cold, summer days and nights. Right now, though, it is oppressively humid and totally still. I feel closed in, surrounded by the thick air. I swear I can even see it.
Gracie and I are going to the dump today. Sunday, our usual day, is, in the summer, the worst day to go. I know. I’ve been there. Cars are lined up at the gate waiting to get in, and there are no parking spots near the trash or the recycle bins. I just hope the predicted rain holds off. My luck is usually such that just as I’m arriving at the dump the skies open and the deluge begins.
I don’t remember staying in the house any day, especially on a rainy day, when I was a kid. Rainy days were fun. We’d find the biggest puddles, jump in and send sprays of water all around us soaking ourselves at the same time. We’d walk barefooted in the gutters filled with rainwater splashing and kicking water as we went. If the rain was heavy, the water ran quickly through the gutters to the sewers. We’d float leaves or pieces of bark and run along side to watch them fly through the water until our makeshift boats disappeared in the sewer grate. Then we’d go back and do it again.
I never minded getting wet or dirty when I was young. My standards for cleanliness were low. Sometimes I’d even go to bed in the clothes I had worn that day. It just seemed easier. Now I carry wet naps in my bag and in the car. I wear gloves when I pot plants or when I’m in the garden. I carry a Tide pen in case of spills. My standards now are quite high. I think that is one of the burdens of adulthood.
Categories: Musings
Tags: big puddles, Cleanliness, cold nights, cool days, dirty, dump day, gutter boats, humidity, polar vortex, rainy day, sweaty, wet naps
Comments: 8 Comments
July 8, 2014
The breeze is just about gone, pushed aside by the humidity. We will be in the 80’s today while Boston will suffer in the low 90’s. Sitting on the deck under the umbrella surrounded by trees seems a perfect spot to spend the day. After my errand, that’s where I’ll plunk myself with a book and music to sweeten the day.
Both my sisters had extreme weather yesterday. In Colorado there was rain, wind and hail. My sister said the sky got so dark they knew the hail was coming followed by the rain, a deluge. My other sister who lives outside of Boston got tremendous thunder and lightning. She was outside watching when a bolt hit close, and she realized how silly it was to be out there, but lightning is so amazing it seems to draw us to watch. I remember the same realization hitting me when I was in Ghana. It was the start of the rainy season when thunder and lightning herald tremendous rain storms. I was outside in the front of my house on the porch under a roof covered in tin. Lightning struck the ground in front of me, and I decided I best get inside before the roof attracts a bolt of lightning. I had to be happy with a window view.
Deluge was one of my mother’s weather words. It didn’t rain cats and dogs. It was a deluge. Spitting rain was another, and I always knew what she meant. It was too cold to snow she’d tell us, and I believed her never having given thought to the Arctic filled with snow and fatally low temperatures. I was an adult before I realized snow could come regardless of the temperature.
My mother used to play a game with us called Jack and Jill. She would attach a band of paper on one finger of each hand, the same finger on both hands, and place only those fingers on the edge of the table. She would say, “Go away, Jack,” and raise her hand in the air then bring it back down and put the finger on the table again. Jack, the band of paper, was always gone. She’d do the same with her other hand and finger. This time it was Jill who disappeared. We would look under the table on the floor, behind my mother on the floor and on her lap. We never found Jack or Jill. My mother would then say, “Come back, Jack,” and raise her hand again. Jack always came back. She’d do the same with the other finger and Jill would come back. I was aways in awe of my mother and her magic trick. I’d ask her to teach me, and she’d say when I was older, but she didn’t need to teach me. She knew when I was older I’d figure it out for myself and I did. In my mind’s eye I can see my mother with her fingers on the table and my brother and me watching and hoping to catch Jack and Jill. Never finding them made me love that trick even more. My mother was magical.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Come back, deluge, extreme weather, Go away, heavy winds, humidity, Jack, Jack and Jill, Jill, rain and hale, spitting rain, thunder and lightning, too cold to snow
Comments: 36 Comments
July 3, 2014
Arthur will be dropping by tomorrow bringing showers and thunderstorms. This afternoon we’ll have heavy rainfall and hail. My July 4th barbecue is now July 6th. The events originally scheduled all over the cape for tomorrow, like parades and fireworks, are either cancelled or postponed. It will be a dreary 4th of July.
Today’s weather is so humid I swear the wicked witch would melt. I can even imagine hearing her cackling as she melts and becomes a puddle on the deck. My air conditioner is blasting wonderfully cool air. I turned it on yesterday afternoon when I began melting. I, however, did not cackle.
July 4th is the holiday which has changed the least over the years. Towns, big and small, still have their parades and fireworks. Barbecues are lit in backyards everywhere, and the air is filled with the smell of food cooking. We used to have hot dogs and hamburgers when I was a kid. Now I have ribs, chicken and sausages. Potato salad is still a necessity. Mine this year will be sweet potato salad, and I’ve found a great fruit salad I might just add. Corn on the cob slathered with butter will round out the meal. I always think of corn on the cob as the great American vegetable.
My sister won a prize in the July 4th doll carriage parade. She was a hula girl wearing a grass skirt. My mother made a similar skirt for the doll carriage and the doll. My sister even got her picture in the paper, but black and white didn’t do her justice. She was Hawaiian colorful. Only once did I take part in the decorated bicycle parade. I didn’t win a prize, but my bicycle was great looking with colorful crepe paper wound around the wheel spokes and hanging off the ends of the handle bars. In Colorado my grand-nephew is going to be in the decorated bicycle parade. I believe crepe paper is involved. He is quite excited at being in the parade. I know that feeling.
On July 4th some movies are a must see. If you want the patriotic route, there is always the musical 1776. I, however, think the best of all movies to watch is Jaws. It even takes place on the busy holiday weekend when, because of the vacationing crowds, the mayor wouldn’t close the beaches that is until the little kid got eaten. The second movie to watch is Independence Day when aliens screw up the holiday by trying to vanquish the population of Earth. As if that would happen!
Today I will stay home. The roads will be crowded with people looking for something to do to occupy their rainy day. I don’t have enough patience to deal with that.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barbecues, bicycle parade, corn on the cob, Crêpe paper, doll carriage parade, hail, humidity, Jaws, Potato salad, rainy July 4th, ribs and chicken, wicked witch
Comments: 10 Comments
September 3, 2013
Last night I finally gave up and turned on the AC. I was sweating in the humidity which made little sense so on went the AC, and within a short time both Gracie and I were nice and cool. Today is much the same as yesterday though the humidity is a bit lower: no clouds, no possibility of rain, but my resistance is also lower so the AC may be on shortly.
I was awake until four this morning. It was just one of those can’t get to sleep nights. I went upstairs at two after having watched Carrier, a series about an aircraft carrier in the Gulf in 2008. I watched two installments. The pickings for TV watching are lean in the wee hours. Syfy was offering sharks again, but I just couldn’t face the two-headed shark and Sharknado again with all the craziness and mayhem. Given the choices, Carrier was pretty interesting.
When I was young, all the channels stopping airing around midnight. Each had a different sign off but each sign off included the national anthem. One channel had the Blue Angels flying in formation and doing maneuvers while the anthem playing in the background. I remember the trails of smoke behind the planes as they turned in unison, an image that has stuck in my head all these years. I also remember when the anthem was finished. The test pattern then took over for the rest of the night into the late morning. The pattern which sticks in my head was the Indian wearing a full headdress. He was at the top of circles and boxes which I guess was the actual test pattern. I never thought about those test patterns. I just figured they were there to fill the empty spaces where programs should be. Come to find out they were meant to help calibrate and align the cameras.
TV never goes off now, but I still feel a bit of nostalgia about the Indian. Given a preference, I’d choose that or any test pattern over the infomercials which crowd the airways after midnight. Some of the gimmicks being sold are intriguing, but I haven’t yet been tempted to buy one and get a second free if I just pay shipping and handling!
Categories: Musings
Tags: AC, align the cameras, Carrier, channel sign offs, humidity, Indian test pattern, infomercials, national anthem, sharks, Syfy, warm day
Comments: 25 Comments
August 22, 2013
The humidity is so thick I can almost see it in the air so the slight breeze has little effect. The sun bobs in and out, but all it does is highlight the haze. The last two days the AC was on so this morning I turned it off and opened the doors and windows to freshen the air in the house. Gracie likes the back door open because she is able to go in and out her dog door, but once the panting starts, Gracie is in and the air conditioner is on.
Last night, a red fox darted across the road in front of my car. Luckily it was quick as I wouldn’t have been able to slam on my brakes in time had it been just a touch slower. The fox was small, probably young. I haven’t seen a fox in a while, but the Cape has many. Come to find out, it also has bobcats for the first time since Colonial days. An iPhone film of one was taken by a man who saw the bobcat in his yard. He highlighted it in his headlights, and the bobcat stood long enough to be filmed. Wildlife experts have confirmed that it was indeed a bobcat, Lynx rufus. They are common in other parts of the state but were designated rare to absent here. The experts figure the cat probably walked across the bridge. They think this one is a juvenile because of its size. Last year it was bear; now we have bobcats again.
I have probably told my story before, but the sighting of a bobcat reminded me of my wild animal sighting in Ghana, and it’s a great story, worth the retelling. It was mid-morning, and I was on my motorcycle riding on a dirt on my way to a small village to visit a friend for the weekend. The road is so untraveled that the only car I saw stopped to ask me if I was lost. I guess a white woman on a motorcycle is as rare a sighting there as the bobcat was here. I told them where I was going and they said I was on the right road. That kind of made me chuckle as it was the only road. I kept riding until I saw what I first thought were men crossing road, but I stopped to get a better view and noticed these were hairy men on all fours. I knew right away they were baboons; there were about five or six of them. I was totally enthralled by the sight. I mean, really, in Africa riding on a motorcycle on a dirt road and seeing baboons would make anyone fascinated. I watched them crossing the road and was, I thought, far enough away, but one of them stopped, turned and looked at me. I didn’t move but immediately formulated an escape plan just in case it became a bit more than curious. It didn’t. The baboon joined the others and all of them left across the grassland and out of sight.
That is one of my favorite memories of Ghana. I knew there were wild animals, even elephants, still roaming the savannah grasslands of the Upper Region and around Bolga where I lived, but I never expected to see any of them. I often rode my motorcycle on the dirt roads just for the ride, but I never saw any animals close to where I lived. That was an adventure, an unexpected wonderful adventure.
Categories: Musings
Tags: AC, baboons, backroads, bobcat, Bolgatanga, dirt roads, humidity, Lynx rufus, motorcycle ride, Peace Corps Ghana, red fox, savannah grassland, small villages, Upper Region of Ghana, wild animals
Comments: 10 Comments
August 18, 2013
This morning I woke up early to go to the bathroom. The bathroom window was open so I rested my arms on the small sill and looked out. It’s the same view as from this room but so much higher, a third floor view. I was in the trees. I could see movement in and around the branches, but I couldn’t see the birds. I could smell the morning air, a combination of so many things. I could smell dampness, not the sort a moist cellar brings, but the sort which comes from humidity and a wet driveway and dewy grass; the sweet aroma of flowers was strong, mixed as it was with the dampness. It seemed to circle me on all sides and come from all the gardens. The best smell of all, though, was the one only a morning brings. It was the smell of freshness in the air, the smell of a new day, of another start. I stood for a bit at the window, took it all in then went back to bed. The morning was still too new, too early. Fern and Gracie hadn’t moved. They were both still asleep in the same spots on the bed as when I’d left. I slid in between them and fell back to sleep.
Today is dark, cloudy dark, with a chance of rain, but I don’t think it’ll rain. Today will stay humid and close. Right now nothing is moving in the dense air, and it is quiet except for Gracie’s every now and then bark. She sounds so loud I keep wanting to hush her. I want the quiet I love so much.
When I was little, my dreams were enormous. I thought I could do and be anything. The worse part of growing older was learning I had limitations. Math was out of reach. Once it got too complicated for my fingers, I knew it wasn’t for me. I loved nature and bugs and snakes and all sorts of crawly things, but I didn’t want to learn about them from books. I wanted to watch them crawl and slither. I learned early, third grade, that I couldn’t hold a tune so singing was out. I had begun whittling the list of what I could do and be. Amazingly I wasn’t disappointed that some doors had closed for me because I figured there were plenty out there just waiting for me to find them, and when I did and turned the door knobs, I knew I’d find treasures. I started to like some things over others and was better at the ones I liked. I tolerated the ones I didn’t. Soon enough, I got to pick, and I chose to study English. It was the best of all choices for me. It gave me the world.
The first time I ever taught was in Ghana. I remember those first few months. I was awful. I stood in front of my students day after day, and they had no idea what I was saying. I spoke too quickly, and they couldn’t hear my English accent though they spoke English. I was having the same trouble but in reverse. Somehow, though, over time, I stumbled into teaching so that we all learned. Franciska still remembers much of what I taught her. The best thing she said was I told them the sky was their only limit. They could do and be whatever they wanted. They just had to keep reaching.
I still do that-I still keep reaching.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barking dog, Bolga Women's College Students, closeness, Clouds, cloudy dark, Dreams, flowers, freshness, Ghana, humidity, limitations, morning, opening doors, reaching, smells of the day, stillness, studying English, teaching
Comments: 22 Comments
August 8, 2013
Unlike the past few days, the weather this morning is humid and cloudy with intermittent rain, a soft rain you barely notice, but the paper does say a chance of thunder showers throughout the day and has predicted them for tonight and tomorrow, but right now the sun is working its way from behind the clouds seems to be struggling, maybe even losing the battle for today’s weather. The breeze is a bit stronger, always a bad sign on a cloudy, damp day.
Yesterday I earned a blue ribbon. I did my laundry, finally, all two loads, watered the inside and outside plants, paid all my bills, did four errands, filled the bird feeders and took all the stuff off the walls in the bathroom which is right now being painted and then around 6:30 met my friend for dinner. Today I have one stop, to buy more flowers for the front garden and some bird seed, then I’m going Peapod on-line grocery shopping. I think I have been the ant, not the grasshopper, for the last two days and deserve a few days of rest which I will gladly take.
We never needed back to school clothes except for a new pair of shoes and one outfit, for the first day, as after that we wore uniforms. My mother was glad for those uniforms as they saved her so much money. Outfitting four kids was expensive. We didn’t care about wearing them because that’s all we knew and all our friends wore them too. Even in high school I had a uniform; all Catholic high school students wore one sort of uniform or another.
My students in Ghana had three different uniforms. Most bought the cloth and had the dresses made. The classroom uniforms were lilac and all the students wore same style and color, regardless of which level they were. I remember watching students iron the uniforms using a charcoal iron. The uniforms were always stiff with starch and wrinkled easily. The students also had their afternoon chore dresses, and there were four different patterns, each one designating the graduation year of the student. The dresses were simple: one piece. Their Sunday bests, wore for church service and into town, were traditional, generally three pieces, and were also four different patterns. You could identify whether the student was T1, T2, T3 or T4 just by the pattern. The patterns followed the students from one year to the next so they only had to buy whatever they had grown out of or worn out. The incoming T1’s would have their own patterns.
I thought of my students when I saw Harry Potter and his friends go into town for the day, for the one day they were allowed off grounds. For my students it was Sunday. They could have visitors come or the older students could go into town to do some shopping, and usually a photographer or two came to the school and took pictures of students into their spiffiest clothes. I have a few of those pictures which were given to me as gifts so I wouldn’t forget my students. They did the same thing at the ceremony last summer. They had a photographer come and take pictures of the event and individual pictures of me with one of them, and they ordered copies. This time it was so they wouldn’t forget me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: back-to-school clothes, bird feeders, Bolgatanga Women's Teacher Training College, errands, Ghana, humidity, Laundry, rain, school uniforms, sun, working
Comments: 12 Comments
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