Posted tagged ‘nap’
October 16, 2015
I am alive though well would be a stretch. Last night won’t go down in the annals as one of my better. I woke up at 2:30 unable to catch my breath. I was about to hop into my car to go to the emergency room when the coughing slowed down. I returned to bed, propped up with pillows behind me and finally fall asleep. This morning I found my inhaler and that has made a world of difference. I have to chuckle though as my table looks like the side table of some old lady’s bedroom filled as it is with bottles, kleenex boxes and used kleenex. I should be wearing a quilted bed jacket and a lacy cap.
I just woke up from a nap, a three-hour nap. Now I’m singing the theme from Gilligan. Yikes, I’m sicker than I thought.
All my body functions and parts are failing in tandem. First was my eye-hand coordination. Last night I tipped over a full glass of sticky orange juice on my table which is filled with books. Though I cleaned it up, my fingers still stick in places I missed. When I get up, I feel a bit dizzy and do pirouettes, ungracefully I might add. I am getting quite tired of blowing my nose.
My mother was the best when I was sick. I’d lie in bed and she’d bring something to nosh like juice and crackers, sometimes Saltines or Pilot Crackers, spread with butter. Lunch was usually soup and maybe a half sandwich: tomato soup and grilled cheese was the favorite of the sick room crowd. Dunking the sandwich into the soup was rather tasty.
I loved the attention from my mother. Every other day I had to share her but not when I was sick. Sometimes being sick, but not all that sick, was worth it.
My friend Clare brought me whoopie pies and apple cider donuts yesterday. She left them on the steps put off by the quarantine signs in the windows.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bed hat, bed jacket, blowing my nose, bottles, dizzy, grilled cheese., inhaler, nap, nosh, old lady's table, orange juice, pills, still sick, tomato soup.
Comments: 17 Comments
April 23, 2015
Lately I have been a bit bored with the outside world. Nothing much is going on. I stayed around the house yesterday, chased the spawn a few times and watered my plants, the highlights of my day. I also read a while and took a nap. The weather has settled into the 50’s every day, some days cloudy, some days sunny and some days both. Today so far is a both day. I woke up to sun and now it’s cloudy.
When I was a kid, I’d go for a bike ride to while away some time. I’d ride up town and check out the lobsters swimming in the tank in the window of the fish market. I’d watch the cobbler tapping the soles of shoes with his little hammer. He always wore an apron. I’d look through the window of the bakery and wish I had some money. They made the best lemon cupcakes. I’d stop at the pet store and check out what was for sale. They never sold cats or dogs but mostly lizards, chameleons and fish. Next store was the sub shop, and I could smell the stuff of subs like the meat and condiments. Mr. Santoro, the owner, spoke English with a heavy accent, and if he made my sub, I didn’t always understand what he was saying. Sometimes I pointed.
I always rode in the same direction on my bike, toward the zoo. I don’t know why I seldom headed the other way, toward Reading. I just never did though once I did ride to Reading with some friends to my seventh grade teacher’s house. She wasn’t happy to see us but pretended she was. We all agreed on that. She was a bit of a cold fish, a description my mother would use. Her name was Mrs. Cochran, and even before the ride wasn’t a favorite of mine. She was the one who told me girls shouldn’t play basketball.
I guess I should take the hint from my younger self and go for a ride, a car ride this time as I suspect Gracie would love to join me. I’ll do back roads, and they’ll be a bit like my store windows with stuff to see. I’ll go slowly so I don’t miss anything.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bakery, bike ride, bored, car ride, cloudy, cobbler, cold fish, lemon cupcakes, lobsters, nap, pet store, reading, Santoro's, sub shop, sunny, teacher, window shopping
Comments: 10 Comments
January 4, 2015
Happily it isn’t snow. Last night it poured, and it’s still raining. Dreary is the best description for today and most of last week. The sun appeared one day but brought no warmth, just light, though I was thankful for the light.
My adventures have been limited. Actually, they have been non-existent. Staying inside warm and cozy is pretty much my whole day. You’d think I’d be busy putting away my Christmas stuff but it is still sitting on the couch, and my usual obsession with putting things away has been buried, deeply buried. I did get out of the house yesterday to do my errands. I even found a parking spot near CVS, but that should have been a red flag. When I got inside, I became the 9th person in line at the pharmacy. It got as long as 12. The dump run was the same as it usually is with its three stops, the last being the trash, though I didn’t meet anyone I know, an unusual occurrence. Agway was the last stop, and I filled my trunk with huge bags of pine litter and dry dog food, canned dog food, canned cat food and dog and cat treats. These animals eat better than I do.
When I wake up, I have to remember which day of the week it is as they are all pretty much lumped together with little to differentiate them. By the time I get up, I’ve usually figured out the day by remembering the day before. I have PT sessions twice a week and plan my errands for the same days. I guess I’d have to describe myself as half-hibernated or to use the rhyming names: semi, hemi or demi-hibernated. I’m still working on the name but leaning toward semi. Maybe I’ll give it more thought just before my afternoon nap.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Agway, CVS, day of the week, dog and cat food, dump run, long lines, nap, no adventures, parking spaces, PT errands, rainy day, semi-hibernated, warm and cozy house
Comments: 20 Comments
February 6, 2014
The snow came early yesterday morning starting around four. It covered the trees and the roads and was pretty for a while then the rain came, and the snow wasn’t pretty anymore. Under the trees the snow was pock-marked. On the streets and the walkways snow became slush. My plow guy came, shoveled the snow and pushed the slush to the side then spread Safe for Paws De-icer on the tops of the steps to keep them from freezing overnight. During the snowstorm I went out and filled the feeders. They were popular all afternoon.
The snow is crusty from freezing overnight. My paper had skidded down the driveway so I had to walk through the snow to get it. The top of the snow was slippery. As I stepped, cracks fanned out from my footprints. I was cautious. On my way back up the driveway, with papers in hand, I stepped in my footprints.
The sun is now trying to break through the clouds, but it won’t be a warm sun. It will be a bit of light on an otherwise grey day.
This will be the third day in a row I haven’t left the yard or done much with any purpose. I put away my laundry and did some frantic furniture polishing, but mostly I’ve been idle. I read and even took an afternoon nap. Falling asleep warm and cozy under the down comforter seemed an act of defiance against winter.
I generally accept the weather. It isn’t as if I have any control over what happens. Getting grumpy and cursing it only frustrates me. It’s winter. Snow is inevitable. It will be cold. That’s what winter is: snowy and cold. Every now and then we do get an unexpectedly warm day. I always think of it as Mother Nature fiddling with our heads. She’s probably sitting somewhere laughing and planning the next big snowstorm. That woman has no heart.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, cold and snowy, cozy and warm, crusty snow, freezing rain, grey day, Mother Nature, nap, slippery, slush, Snow, winter
Comments: 20 Comments
October 6, 2013
The sun is gone to regions unknown. It is a chilly, damp day. I always think Sundays should be bright and sunny. A beautiful warm day would make me optimistic about the rest of the week.
This morning I didn’t tarry for a look at the garden. I grabbed my papers and came right back inside the house. I know a few flowers are still blooming. The other day the bees were all over them. That morning I stopped and watched. I think it’s time for the front storm door.
The week seems to have an empty dance card, the same as last week. I liked it. One book was finished and another begun, and the odd places in the house were cleaned and polished: bookcases, knick-knacks, lamp shades and the tops of books. I lemon oiled the old wooden surfaces and cleaned tiles. I was possessed.
I still hold for quiet Sundays. When I was a kid, I complained there was nothing to do, and there wasn’t, but that has changed. Sunday is now the same as any other day except the newspaper is thicker. That seems wrong, not the paper of course, but the rest of it. We all need a day to enjoy life, even to do nothing which is enjoyable in itself. Lie on the couch and read or watch football, even take a nap. Most things can wait until tomorrow.
My boys won again yesterday. The Red Sox are now up 2 games to none. Big Papi hit two home runs. What made the win especially sweet was they beat Price. I love the post season.
Tonight is games, appies, The Amazing Race and dessert. Sounds like a perfect Sunday night to me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cloudy, cold day, damp, empty dance card, frenzied cleaning, nap, quiet Sunday, Red Sox, restful day, Storm door
Comments: 15 Comments
July 21, 2013
A cooler day with no sun but lots of humidity is today’s weather. I turned off my air and opened all the windows and doors. The house needed the fresh air after being closed up the whole week. It. looks like it rained for a few minutes earlier this morning. I was expecting thunder showers and am disappointment by the rain’s poor showing. Gracie and I are going to the dump today.
Yesterday I bought some vegetables at a couple of farmer’s markets. I also bought some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and corn chowder base. It was in the early morning, but the heat became too much too quickly so I hurried home to the cool house where I did two loads of laundry. Last night I had dinner at my friends’ and neighbors’ house and got home around ten. It was by far my longest and most productive day in over a month. Today I’m pretty much done in. I see the dump, a shower and a nap in my future.
I remember when I was twelve I had a white visor I wore all the time. It was like a girl’s version of a baseball cap. I have a few pictures of our family vacation that year, and in every picture I’m wearing the visor. In one picture I am leaning against a tree and have a hand in my pocket and one leg bend at the knee resting on the tree trunk. The white visor is, of course, on my head. It was obviously posed, but in it I see the first glimmers of a teenage me. I think it was the pose I chose and the look on my face. I wasn’t a little girl any more, and I knew it, white visor and all.
When I’d meet relatives I hadn’t seen in a long while, usually my parents’ aunts and uncles, each identified me as George’s oldest or Chickie’s oldest (the name my mother was known as since she was a little kid). I don’t think any of them ever knew my name. They identified me by the parent to whom they were related and my birth order. Just after I got out college for the summer, the one before my senior year, a car stopped by the house. In it were Aunty Madeleine and Aunty Clara, two of my mother’s aunts, my grandmother’s sisters. They asked for my mother. I explained she and my father had gone away for the weekend. They stayed in the car, and we conversed through the window. Aunty Clara right away wanted to know who was taking care of us. I told her I was. She was shocked and couldn’t imagine my parents had left us alone. I told her I was nearly twenty-one and quite old enough to babysit for a weekend. She didn’t say anything, just frowned. Aunt Madeleine said good-bye, and they drove away. I don’t think they even knew who I was. No one asked if I were Chickie’s oldest.
Categories: Musings
Tags: aunty, birth order, cooler day, couldy, dinner with friens, family, farmers' market, fesh vegetables, humidity, nap, pre-teen, relatives, tired, visor
Comments: 13 Comments
March 25, 2013
This morning the alarm woke me at 4:30. That’s right, 4:30, the most ungodly of hours, which is a bit of a play on the day as I got that early so I could leave at 5 to go to the 20th anniversary mass for my father. It is nearly beyond belief to realize he has been gone that long. I think of him often, and we still miss him every day. The mass was in a church about an hour and a half from here, close to where he and my mother used to live. My sister from Colorado is here for a few days and came especially for the mass. I left at 5 and arrived at the church about 5 minutes before the mass ended. A traffic accident on the expressway kept me in bumper to bumper traffic. I celebrate birthdays, the Fourth of July and a Christmas or two before the traffic broke, but once I knew I was going to be late, I was patient sitting in the car, so unlike me, but I hadn’t any other choice. I listened to the radio and learned all about the fiscal crisis in Cyprus, the snow coming my way and traffic updates on the 3’s. I’m hoping someone opines about Cyprus so I can jump in with my opinion. The ride home was just as awful. Another accident kept me in bumper to bumper traffic before I even reached the city, but once through the mess, I whizzed my way home. I had an errand which I didn’t care to do and, instead, went straight home and back to bed. I just woke up.
We all went to breakfast after the mass. Three of my cousins took the day off so they could go to mass and breakfast then they’ll spend the rest of the day with my two sisters. I like my family. I am much older, and though they are closer to my two sisters and spend lots of time together, I always get the hug and the kiss when we see each other. We are a family of huggers and kissers, even the guys. That’s a cool thing.
Two inches of snow are coming my way. I swear my sister brought it as she left over a foot of it behind in Colorado. The snow won’t last, according to the six or eight weather forecasts I heard, as it will be warm enough to melt the snow the next two days. I think the words were seasonably warm which didn’t get my heart thumping.
Well, that’s it for today: not much happening when you spend most of the day sitting in a car moving at a snail’s pace and listening to a combination of NPR, WBZ news radio and WEEI sports. Did I mention I found out that a 15th seed has made it to the sweet 16 for the first time?
Categories: Musings
Tags: breakfast, bumper to bumper, Cyprus, family, hugs and kisses, memorial mass, nap, NPR, Snow, traffic, WBZ, WEEI
Comments: 30 Comments
October 8, 2012
I woke up to a blue sky and a sunny morning. It was late, as late as I’ve slept in for a long time, but I didn’t go to bed until close to three. It was just one of those nights when Hypnos and Morpheus were elsewhere. I didn’t mind. I kept busy.
It’s a stay home day with lots to do around the house. I have to pay the bills, a drudgery I hate, and I need to take the screens off both doors and replace them with glass as the back door stays open so Gracie can come and go, but it was really chilly last night so I eventually had to close that door. Gracie, of course, then wanted out over and over again. She rang her bells and kept ringing them until I got up. Sometimes she didn’t even go out. The rest of my chore list includes changing the litter boxes, watering the plants and doing the laundry. It’s a long list, and somewhere in there I’d like to fit in a nap, maybe I can put off the laundry.
It rained most of last night. I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and I could hear the rain on the roof. It wasn’t a heavy rain, but it was a steady rain.
Last night, with all that time on my hands, I went into my memory drawers and thought about when I was in grammar school. I remembered my first couple of grades when we had desks which probably dated from the opening of the school in 1910. The desks were wooden and were attached to the floor by screws through the bottoms of their metal legs. The chairs were also wooden but had metal parts which ended in circles flush with the floor and these were either screwed or nailed into the floor so they didn’t move either. We had trouble finding our books which were stored inside those desks. We had to bend over to look and sometimes we’d have to pull out a book or two before we’d find the right one. On the top of the desks were the grooves for our pencils. We didn’t use pens in the early grades. On the floor, below the chair, was where we’d put our lunch boxes. Our jackets were always in the cloak room.
When we got older, our rooms had newer desks. Those desks were also wooden, a blond wood, but the tops lifted and we could see everything kept inside but then so could the nuns. They weren’t happy with messy desks, with desks filled with crumpled papers or pointless pencils, so we had periodic clean our desk afternoons, usually late on Fridays when the nun had probably already lost our attention. One boy would slowly walk up the aisles holding the basket, and he’d stop at each pair of desks to give us time to throw everything away. The basket would get filled so the basket boy would have to take it to the basement to the trash barrels then he’d come back and do it all over again: up an aisle and stop, up an aisle and stop then back to the basement. I always wanted to be the basket person who got to leave the room, and I’d raise my hand and wiggle it in the air hoping to be chosen, but the nuns never chose me or any other girl. It was not a fit job for a young lady.
Categories: Musings
Tags: chores, cool day, desk cleaning days, Hypno, Laundry, Morpheus, nap, neatness, school desks, wooden desks
Comments: 10 Comments
July 22, 2012
Another beautiful day today: it’s cool and sunny and bright. I was up early and even had time for a dump run before I went out to breakfast. I need to do a few errands later as it is movie night, and we’re out of malted milk balls. They are essential for movie viewing. We’re going to watch the one we didn’t see last week: The Night of the Hunter.
It is so quiet today. I don’t know where everyone has gone. I don’t hear a single kid or even a barking dog. Gracie just came inside the house. I think it must be morning nap time. Fern is already asleep in the sun from the front door. She is stretched out in the way only cats can stretch. I don’t know where Maddie is, but I suspect she’s on my bed. That is her favorite nap place.
My breakfast spot is busy every Sunday. All the breakfast spots are busy every summer Sunday. I go early to snag a booth as my friend doesn’t believe in waiting. She’d drive right through at the sight of a line. Today for breakfast I had dropped eggs on toast as my mother always called them. I didn’t learn until I was older they’re called poached eggs, but I still prefer calling them dropped eggs. It is far more descriptive and leaves no doubt as to how the eggs will arrive.
Other than in England and Ireland, my father hated breakfast in Europe. He thought cold cuts and cheese were lunch, never breakfast. I remember once in the Netherlands when an egg arrived in an egg cup. My father’s delight was evident in his smile and he immediately went for the egg. He tapped it with his knife the way he always did when served a boiled egg. Nothing happened so he tapped it again. Nothing happened the second time either. My father picked up the egg and tapped it on the table. That was when he found out it was hard-boiled. He put it on the table and never touched it again.
On many of my trips I had no idea what I was eating. I didn’t know the language so I couldn’t read the menus or the signs. Sometimes I had a book of English to whatever language, but usually I didn’t carry one as it was just extra weight in my back pack. I pointed and hoped for the best. Luckily I don’t remember ever hating what was placed in front of me. I also think not only probably had its advantages.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, dropped eggs on toast, Fern, foreign foods, Gracie, nap, Night of the Hunter, Poached egg, strange foods
Comments: 10 Comments
October 11, 2011
Today is quite the contrast from the weekend. The temperature is down 20° and the sun is intermittent. I’m even wearing a sweatshirt though I’m still clinging to sandals. Shutting in my feet seems the last resort before admitting summer is really gone.
Last night was perfect for sleeping, far cooler than it’s been. I kept the window opened and could feel the night as it chilled. I’m looking forward to snuggling under covers on cool nights.
This morning I had a library board meeting. Only one other member is younger than I so the rest make me feel young. Two of the members are 90. Only one of them was here today; the other forgot.
I have no ambition whatsoever today. I won’t even make my bed as I feel a nap coming on a bit later and there’s no sense messing a made bed. Yesterday I did a little shopping so the animals and I have some food to tide us over, and I don’t have to cook for any of us. For them, it’s just open the cans and also fill the dry food dishes. For me, the chicken is already baked, the salad made, and I bought cheese, hummos and pita bread. Life is good when the larder is filled.
I think a cloudy day makes me lazy. Nothing is inviting when the world looks dark even in the daylight. Rain never stops me nor does snow. I love to watch them both. I got a couple of books when I went to the library so I can see myself prone on the couch reading with the light on beside me giving me a cozy feeling, a drowsy feeling. No question I’ll easily succumb to a nap.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: books, Chicken, cloudy day, Hummus, larder, nap, reading
Comments: 8 Comments
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