Posted tagged ‘rain’
December 9, 2014
The wind is howling and the rain is falling sideways. My backyard trees are again dancing in the wind, back and forth and back and forth. The rain has flooded roads and is falling so heavily that even a quick dash means getting cold and wet. This morning I made four stops. First was the library board meeting, then the post office, then PT and finally the store for life’s essentials: bread, cat food, chicken and a chocolate bar.
I am so happy to be back inside my warm, dry house. When I finish writing, I’m going upstairs and put on my cozies. I bought some clam chowder for dinner. It seemed perfect for a day like today.
Yesterday I brought up a few Christmas decorations from the cellar and later today I hope to decorate some more. The tree in the dining room is lit. I like to go the long way around to the stairs so I get to see the tree. I can hardly wait for the big tree, but now I have to hope for a couple of dry days.
The gold finches have braved the rain and are at the feeder though it swaying in the wind. The red spawn doesn’t seem to like the rain. He is probably in a cozy nest snacking on my sunflower seeds. If he were a character in The Wind in the Willows, his nest would have comfy furniture, a fireplace and a filled pantry. He’d be sitting by the fire with his feet on an ottoman as he drinks afternoon tea from a dainty China cup.
The last wind storm took down several of my outside decorations. I had to go down the side hill which is covered with brush, thorns and branches. Getting down is never the problem. Getting back up always is as I have nothing to hold on to help pull myself up. The other day I threw the ornaments I had retrieved onto the grass above the hill so I could have both hands free. I made it safely up the hill, a major accomplishment for me.
Now to my slippers and my cozies and maybe, just maybe, a nap.
Categories: Musings
Tags: chilly day, Christmas decorations, clam chowder, cozies, cozy, dancing trees, errands, getting soaked, rain, red spawn, Tree, warm nest, Wind, Wind in the Willows
Comments: 12 Comments
December 6, 2014
The rain started last night and continued into this morning. The day is dark, the sky a pale grey. It’s a stay at home day. I’m thinking I’ll do my Christmas cards and maybe bring up a few decorations from the cellar. Last night I was able to get all the outside lights to work with the timers. One comes on just a few minutes later than the other, but I can live with that. My street looks beautiful as so many houses are decorated with lights. One house has a lighted train car on its lawn which looks as if it’s moving as the lights flash around the wheel.
When I was a kid, I didn’t care about the weather except for snow. I remember getting excited watching the first few flakes. They were usually small and took their time falling to the ground. Every kid wanted those small flakes to get bigger and multiply to cover the ground with inches of snow. It wasn’t just for a snow day but for the fun the snow would bring. We could make caves, have snowball fights and go sledding down our street, a giant hill. The TV didn’t list closed school announcements in those days. The fire department blew their no school signal around seven, and it could be heard all over town. I swear the shouts of joy right after could also be heard all over town. If the snow was still heavily falling, we waited inside until my mother would let us out. I remember when the snow finally stopped and the sun came out. The world was at its most beautiful. The snow was untouched, no footprints, no car tracks. The sun glistened off the snow and lights twinkled and shined from the tops of drifts as if diamonds had been strewn about.
It didn’t take long before the snow had footprints and the marks of sled rails. The first few sled marks were rusty but the snow quickly cleaned them. We all had wooden sleds with metal steering in the front you could turn left and right. You took off running and jumped stomach down on the sled, legs from the knees down in the air and you hoped for the ride of your life.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas lights, lighted train car, no school announcements, rain, Sledding, Snow, snow day, snow fun, snowball fights, the sun, twinkling drifts
Comments: 12 Comments
November 25, 2014
I am getting use to these warm days, a mistake. Winter is the slyest of seasons. One warm day can be followed by frost and even snow. Today is dark. Rain is coming and tomorrow will be an ugly day.
For the last few days a box or two has been delivered. Inside is a Christmas present or some stocking stuffers. I have been computer shopping. It is not as much fun as wandering through stores, but it is less expensive. I find all sorts of sales and free shipping. One item was close to $30.00. With free shipping and a coupon I found on-line it was only $19.00. Next I’ll make a list of what I still need and with list in hand do some shopping on small business Saturday. I’ll wander on 6A and see what I can find. One stop will be for me. In Orleans is a henna shop, and I was thinking my hands could use some decorating for the holidays. They’ve been painted twice before with henna: once in Morocco and once at a fair. They looked exotic and I loved the patterns.
Traditions are important to my family especially at the holidays. Certain dishes have to be on the table to make the meal complete. We get to open one door a day on our Advent calendars. My sister gets a Life Safer book just as she did in her stocking every year. I give my niece and nephews small bags with a few gifts including a new ornament, toothbrushes and fun soaps. That started when each of them turned three and I sent a filled piñata for Christmas Eve fun. They are now filling piñatas for their nephews. I love that I started a tradition.
Some of my neighbors have already put up and lit their Christmas lights. I don’t think it’s too soon. Darkness comes early, and the lights makes us almost forget we have a long winter ahead of us.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 6A, Christmas shopping, henna hands, piñatas, rain, small business Saturday, traditions, warm days, winter
Comments: 12 Comments
October 23, 2014
The visit was spectacular. We laughed and reminisced. We ate the great food Peg brought and I had made. We went up Cape sightseeing, stopped at the Coast Guard Museum, the Old Jail and in Sandwich for lunch. The weather cooperated, and we missed rain everywhere. They left yesterday afternoon and the house got too quiet. I miss them. Gracie does too. She loved her walks with Bill.
We always easily connect. I think it is the friendship of years and the experience we shared in Ghana. The other night we listened to a song called Poop in a Hole about being a Peace Corps volunteer. The country wasn’t Ghana, but it didn’t matter. It was a universal experience we all accepted and mastered. The three of us laughed several times. I have no other close friends who would think that song funny, gross maybe, but not funny. Bill, Peg and I are experts at pooping in a hole.
Last night the rainstorm and the wind were tremendous. As I was going to bed, I saw lightning through the windows on the front door. The thunder was next. It was loud and it rumbled often. The rain was heavy and I could hear it hitting the windows and the roof. When I woke up this morning, it was sunny, but now it is cloudy again. It is warmer than I expected.
Pine needles cover my grass. They are all brown and would have fallen eventually but they were rushed by the wind. For some people on the Cape, pine needles are their front lawns. They buy and spread them mostly at seasonal homes. Crushed white sea shells too act as lawns. When I was young, there were very few lawns. Keeping them healthy and green was just too much trouble. The house I lived in had a weedy front yard so it was a lawn of sorts, the same with the back. I don’t know remember when grass reared its ugly head and having a beautiful lawn became a matter of pride. It was like importing suburbia. I do have a beautiful lawn now, but I also have a landscaper who takes care of it. I write a check and take compliments on how green and lush my lawn is: that’s my only contribution.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Clouds, good food, old friends, Peace Corps, poop in a hole, rain, rain on the roof, thunder and lightning, visits, white seashell lawns
Comments: 12 Comments
October 17, 2014
We are still in that warm cycle of weather. I have my front door and a couple of windows opened. It rained all Tuesday night and most of yesterday. Lots of leaves fell in the wind so the lawns and sides of the streets are multi-colored. Today is sunny and a bit breezy. The streets are drying.
Getting a new pair of shoes was a big deal. Usually I’d get two new pairs a year: one for back to school and one for Easter. My school shoes were always sturdy and practical while my Easter shoes were dressy, sometimes patent leather. After Easter, they’d morph into church and special occasion shoes. I never wore my school shoes anywhere but to school because they were expected to last the whole year. In late August my mother would herd us all to the shoe store. Until it was my turn, I’d wander the store looking at the shoes on the racks. If I found a pair I liked, I’d bring one shoe to my mother who would decide whether or not I could try that pair on. Back then, most of the shoes were tie shoes and sturdy didn’t usually mean fashionable, but I was young enough not to care about fashion. My mother stretched her budget and bought expensive shoes for us because they were more likely to last. I remember Buster Brown and his dog Tige and the picture of them on the inside heel of the shoe. I never did question the long hair and the funny cap. That was just Buster Brown.
I loved looking at my feet in the x-ray machine and having the shoe salesman measure them with that silver slide. He’d sit on the odd-looking stool which was close to the floor and close to feet. It had a front part where you put your foot to be measured and where the man would put the shoes on your feet when it came to trying on the new pair.
I walked up and down the length of the store to decide if the shoes felt good on my feet. I’d also stop at the foot mirror to see how they looked. If they passed both tests, my mother would buy them for me. I was thrilled to carry my new shoes home. They made me feel proud somehow.
Categories: Musings
Tags: colored leaves, foot x-ray machine, funny shoe stool, new shoes, rain, school shoes, shoe shopping, shoe store, sliding measure, tie shoes, warm weather
Comments: 12 Comments
October 16, 2014
Last night it rained and today it is supposed to rain again, heavily. The sun is popping in and out of the clouds. The temperatures of the last couple of days have been in the 70’s with mild nights in the 60’s. My windows are opened and the front door still has its screen. Gracie sits there and looks out for the longest time. I wonder what keeps her interest as my street is a quiet one. I stand with her every now and then just to keep her company.
All my life I have had morning rituals. During my childhood the weekday mornings were always the same. Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, do teeth then walk to school. For breakfast I always drank cocoa. My mother gave us toast and eggs and in the winter we had oatmeal, the sort which always has lumps. When I was in high school, I had to get up earlier and getting the bus was added to the ritual. In college, I grabbed breakfast on the way out, and every morning my friends and I would sit together in the canteen, drink coffee and race each other in finishing the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. Usually we worked in teams of two. When I was in Ghana, I had the same thing every morning: horrible coffee, two fried eggs and toast. The eggs were cooked in peanut oil, and they were the best fried eggs I ever had. If I had a break in classes, I’d walk to my house and have another cup of coffee and sit on the porch to drink it. Breakfast never varied. I had margarine on my toast as butter was imported and not in my budget. I’d sometimes add groundnut paste, the Ghanaian version of thick, thick peanut butter which needed to be mixed with peanut oil to make it spreadable. The Ghanaians used it as a soup base. Those mornings in Ghana were amazing, every single day.
When I started teaching, I got up 5, had two cups of coffee, read as much of the paper as I could, got dressed and left for school at 6:20. On the way to school, I’d stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a medium coffee. I did that every weekday until I retired.
In retirement I haven’t changed much though now I get up whenever. I feed the cats, fill the water dish, fill the dog’s dry food dish, let the dog out, put the coffee on and get the papers in the driveway. Sometimes I have toast and sometimes I have a bagel but mostly I just have coffee, usually two cups, one with each paper. I take my time reading the papers. I then check my e-mail and finally start writing Coffee.
I think of my mornings as ritual, as almost sacred.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad coffee, breakfast, Eggs, fried eggs, Ghana, Ghanaian mornings, groundnut paste, margarine, morning paper, morning ritual, oatmeal, rain, rituals, Toast, up at 5, warm day
Comments: 6 Comments
September 26, 2014
The rain fell for most of the night, but it wasn’t nearly enough to wash away the drought. The sky is still cloudy and the day is dark though the sun is supposed to make an entrance later, hang around for a while and give tomorrow some summer warmth. I’m thinking it may be warm enough for the last movie on the deck night.
When I was a kid, I was not a girly girl. My sisters were. They played with dolls, wore dresses with pouffy slips underneath and loved hats and patent leather shoes. I didn’t. I wore skirts and blouses when I was forced to get dressed-up and had to wear them to school and church. Slacks and sometimes sweaters were my weekends and after school ensembles. I went through the wearing the cardigan backwards fashion craze. I suppose that made me a bit stylish or at least current. I remember stretch slacks with the loops on the bottoms for your feet. They were popular for a while, and I got a pair for Christmas one year. I also got a pink fuzzy sweater the same year. They too were popular. I loved that outfit and wore it until the fuzz disappeared.
I don’t get dressed up much any more. I wear nice pants and blouses or shirts when I go out. If it is somewhere special, I pull out one of my three dresses. Because my entire professional career was spent in dresses or skirts, I figure I’m entitled to wear what I want. I do make sure everything complements each other so I’m never messy or odd, just comfortable.
I think there is magic age where you can mix and match whatever you want. That black and white striped shirt is just fine with the yellow plaid capri pants, the blue ankle socks and the white sneakers with velcro. You just have to be old enough to pull it off.
Categories: Musings
Tags: backwards cardigans, cloudy, comfortable, dark, deck movie, Dresses, fuzzy sweaters, looped pants, patent rather shoes, pouffy slips, rain, skirts, sun, warm day
Comments: 8 Comments
September 25, 2014
I am back to myself again. The only aches and pains come from age.
The morning is dark, almost ominous. Everything is still. The house was cold when I woke up, down to 64˚. I broke my no heat vow. The house is now comfortable, and I am in my winter garb including slippers and a sweatshirt. I’m thinking it might be time to replace the back door screen with glass. That’s where Gracie’s dog door is, and when it’s cold, I have to keep the inside door shut, and Gracie can’t come and go at will. I’ve added that to my to do list for today. I’m also going to put a blanket on the bed. I was cold last night, and I know Gracie was too because she was leaning against me. It wasn’t comfortable.
Duke, the boxer I grew up with, was not allowed on furniture, including beds, but he always figured that only held true when we could see him. At night he’d sleep on the couch. We could hear him getting off when we walked down the stairs in the morning. When we went somewhere and Duke was home alone, the bedspreads would miraculously get circles in the middle, the sort a dog makes when turning around and around. We never did catch him at it. He was one smart dog.
Yesterday was computer day from hell. My Mac screen stayed black. The keyboard lit and the cursor worked, but the screen would die just after the apple appeared. I went crazy. I got my iPad and went hunting. One site told me to hold the shift key so it would open in safe mode. That didn’t work. I’d read my book for a while, but I kept stopping to stare at the computer. I hate computer problems, and I have this overwhelming need to solve them. I’d put my book down and try something else suggested by some poor computer illiterate with the same problem. I went from forum to forum. I felt like Diogenes wandering with my lamp looking not for an honest man but for a solution. I actually found one. It was five steps, and the woman who posted it had gotten the solution from Apple. The comments after the steps were from people thanking her which gave me encouragement and also let me know the problem was not the machine. It was a glitch from an Apple system automatic update that never quite got past the login screen. When my desktop appeared, I was Rocky running up the stairs of the art museum in triumph: computer 0, me 1.
Categories: Musings
Tags: animals on the bed, dark day, Dog, furnace, heat, off the bed, rain, Storm door
Comments: 12 Comments
September 14, 2014
The morning is again chilly. It is almost officially the fall so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. All the doors and windows are closed so I’m comfortable here on the couch even with bare feet. The red spawn was at the feeder this morning, but it ran away as soon as I got on the deck. The spawn knew the hose was next.
It was raining last night when I went to bed. It wasn’t a heavy rain but was enough for Gracie to get her business done quickly. She didn’t even go far enough into the yard to trip the sensor lights. She was back in the house almost immediately. I totally understand.
When I was a kid, TV was still bit of magic. I never questioned how Superman flew. I just knew he did, and he always flew to the same music. Glasses were the ultimate disguise. I knew Perry Mason would never lose. That didn’t bother me at all. Perry Mason was the hero. Poor Hamilton Burger was just hapless. Lieutenant Tragg always wore a fedora out side. I do remember Perry losing one, but he exonerated his client just as she was going to the electric chamber. Of course he did. I didn’t watch all the westerns. I did watch Roy and Dale, the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy. The whole family watched the Wild, Wild West. I remember Dobie Gillis, Sergeant Bilko and Joe Friday. We watched all the Quinn Martin productions. I remember the voice announcing at the beginning of each show,”A Quinn Martin Production.” The Invaders were one of my favorite shows. David Vincent went all over the country looking for people with weird, stuck out little fingers. By the end of each show, he had convinced another person to believe that aliens on Earth existed, that they were dangerous, and that he needed their help. The Fugitive was another QM production. Dr. Kimball is chased all over the country by Lieutenant Gerard. Kimball is really a good guy trying to find the real killer of his wife. He is hunting the one-armed man. Like David Vincent, Dr. Kimball was usually able to convince someone that he was innocent, and they usually help him getaway just before Gerard shows up. We all wanted him to find the one-armed man.
On Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the crew leaned to the left or the right when their ships were fired upon. The camera moved with them. That was an old time special effect. I never made fun of it, never even questioned it, though I do chuckle a bit now.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cool morning, Perry Mason, Quinn Martin, rain, red spawn of Satan, Siperman, The Fugitive, The Invaders
Comments: 20 Comments
August 22, 2014
Just as I went to get the newspapers it started to rain, not mist but heavy drops of rain. I went anyway. I got wet and I got chilly. The rain has since stopped though it is still a bit dark, but every now and then I can see the sun fighting its way through the clouds. I think it will be a sunny afternoon.
We never had to do much back to school shopping. We wore uniforms so new clothes weren’t necessary. We got new shoes, new socks and new underwear. We had to go to the shoe store and have our feet measured before my mother could buy the shoes. They were always sturdy shoes which had to last as long as possible. I’d show my mother what I wanted, and she’d shake her head and show me what she wanted. We seldom agreed. I always lost. The socks were white or blue to match the uniform. The underwear was always cotton and always the same brand, Lollipop, a strange name for underwear. The underwear was never stylish, but it wouldn’t have embarrassed my mother had I been in an accident.
The best school shopping was for supplies. We’d buy a school bag usually one of those square ones with buckles and a couple of pockets, a notebook and some lined paper. My favorite new supplies were the pencil box and the lunch box. Those took time to choose. It couldn’t be just any lunch box. I wanted a character lunch box, maybe somebody I watched on TV like Annie Oakley or Rin Tin Tin. My mother never objected to whichever one I wanted. The pencil boxes had illustrations on the front usually of kids walking to school or sitting at their desks. The insides of the boxes were mostly identical: pencils, a 6 inch ruler, a small pencil sharpener, colored pencils, maybe an eraser and always a protractor, a complete mystery to me. I had no idea what it was and why it was. I had a ruler so I didn’t need it to draw straight lines. We never used it in school for anything. Once in a while in art I’d make a circle using it, but that was it. It mostly just took up space.
I used to look at my supplies and open and close the pencil box a few times. I’d put the supplies in my school bag, put the bag cross my shoulder and pretend I was going to school. It was a dress rehearsal of sorts. I was never sorry to go back to school.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Lollipop underwear, lunch box, new shoe, passable day, pencil box, rain, school bag, school shopping, school suplies, sunny
Comments: 10 Comments
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 