Posted tagged ‘rain’
February 23, 2018
Earlier this morning the sun was bright and was set in a blue, cloudless sky. Since then the clouds have taken over and hidden the sun. I’m beginning to think Mother Nature is really upset with us and is being vindictive, but I don’t know why. All I can hope is the sun fights through those clouds.
Last night we must have had a few flurries as the deck chair cover still had a bit of white on top this morning. It may rain tonight or the flurries might return.
I have a doctor’s appointment today which will get me out of the house again. I’m thinking afterwards I’ll go the long way home and go down Route 28. Maybe an open store will catch my eye, and I’ll stop.
I get bored with winter around this time every year. I’m tired of hibernating. I sit around most days in my comfy winter lay around the house outfit and read, go through cook books, randomly dust or polish and sometimes nap. All my laundry is even clean, all three bags. I also look through catalogs and check out the winter sale items. I bought a flannel shirt for myself yesterday and a Christmas present for a friend.
A favorite fish restaurant is now open for the season. I’m salivating at the thought of fried clams and onion rings. I’m thinking that my Route 28 excursion could very well end at that restaurant.
I’m watching a really bad Japanese movie from 1965 called Invasion of Astro-Monster. The only non-Japanese cast member is Nick Adams. He speaks English while all the others speak Japanese. The movie is dubbed. I think by watching this I have sunk to a new level of bad movies.
Two things are missing. One is the cat’s ceramic dish. I put it away somewhere and can’t find it. I looked in all my usual places and a few crazy ones like the oven and the napkin drawer. I was actually glad the dish wasn’t in either spot. The other missing item is a decorative tin which was once filled at Christmas with peanut butter balls. It was on the top of a cabinet for weeks then I moved it. I have no idea where it is, probably with the dish.
Broken bones and memory lapses!!! I’d better print my name and address on the tags in all my shirts.
Categories: Musings
Tags: catalogs, clean laundry, Clouds, flurries, hibernating, Invasion of Astro-Monster, Japanese movie, Nick Adams, rain, sun
Comments: 42 Comments
February 22, 2018
For two days Boston has hit 70˚. We hit a high of 55˚. The sun has deserted us. It is cloudy again and damp and chilly. Last night it rained a little. I was lying in bed reading and heard what I thought at first was a mouse gnawing. It wasn’t. It was the patter of rain falling quite slowly at first then more heavily, but it quickly stopped.
Yesterday I went to the deck and did a bit of cleanup. I also filled the bird feeders. The cover for the barbecue has disappeared. I checked the yard from the deck but didn’t go under the deck. My first thought was an army of squirrels has set up camp somewhere close and my cover, which already had a huge section chewed off, was perfect for their tents. Two bricks were on the top to prevent the cover from blowing off. I found those on the deck. Maybe a spawn of Satan will be back to get the bricks for their camp walkway.
I actually cleaned most of this room. I polished and washed all the curios on shelves. I did such a good job I need sunglasses now because everything shines. I also caught up with the laundry. I feel accomplished.
When I sleep, I look a bit like a question mark as I still make room for Gracie to sleep beside me.
When I was a kid, my town was my world. I never thought it was small. Uptown had wonderful stores, and the library and the post office anchored the beginning and the end of the square. Some days the square smelled like fresh bread from Hank’s Bakery or popcorn from the candy makers behind the square. O’Grady’s Diner was across the street from the library. Once in a while, my father took me to breakfast there. We sat at a booth with red vinyl seating. I used to beg for dimes or a quarter to play the juke box. Every booth had a small box, and I’d turn the pages in our booth to find a favorite song. On Saturday mornings seats at the counter were mostly filled with all men. Saturday was their errand day with stops at the Chinamen, the barber and maybe the drug store or the Redmen then finally the diner. I loved my little uptown
Categories: Musings
Tags: 55˚, Barbecue, booth, cleaned, cloudy, deck, diner, dust, dusted, juke box, Laundry, rain, spawn of satan, squirrels, tents, washed
Comments: 6 Comments
February 19, 2018
When I got the papers this morning, I expected a warm day, but I was disappointed. It’s a chilly day. The sky is cloudy and rain is predicted for tonight. I do have a couple of errands to do later.
This morning, while my coffee was brewing, I had a surprise burst of energy. I polished a shelf, swept the kitchen, washed the cat dish and cleaned the sink and counter. That’s the most housework I’ve done in a few weeks. I’d like to think this burst of energy will be a rare event.
I treated myself this morning and had two lemon biscotti with my coffee. I love the taste of lemon so much I could live on lemon squares. Lemon meringue pie tops my list of favorite pies. I think we were one of the few families where a lemon meringue pie was traditional for Thanksgiving. I even learned to cook a few dishes with preserved lemons.
I’d never turn down anything made with pineapple except maybe pizza. In Ghana I ate pineapple just about every day as part of my lunch, always a bowl of fresh fruits. I like Thai food with pineapple. I almost don’t care about the other ingredients. In my cook book from Peace Corps Ghana was a recipe for pineapple upside down cake. I always wanted to make it, but I had no oven, only a charcoal burner. A couple of old cook books from the 50’s have pictures of a finished pineapple upside cake. They are perfect and have a cherry in the middle hole of the pineapple.
When I was kid, only a few fruits were available all year. My mother bought bananas, oranges and apples. The apples were always red. The oranges had seeds. In the summer we had watermelon and grapes, green grapes. At Thanksgiving we had tangerines, our parade snack. I didn’t even know fruits likes mangoes and papayas existed. Coconuts were on tropical islands in the books I read. We were fruit deprived.
Categories: Musings
Tags: apples, biscotti, cloudy, coffee, cold, energy, housework, lemon, lemon biscotti, lemon squares, oranges, Peace Corps, Peace Corps Ghana, pineapple, preserved lemons, rain, Thai food, upside down cake, watermelon
Comments: 8 Comments
February 18, 2018
The predicted snow stayed north of us. My sister who lives 14 miles from Boston got 5″. We got rain. The rain storm started around eleven and was still going strong at 12:30 when I fell asleep. Today is bright with sun. The blue sky is almost cloudless. The breeze is strong, and the pine branches are swaying and bending enough to make noise. It is a chilly day.
Tonight is game night, and we’ll also celebrate Chinese New Year. One year we did origami and folded the different color papers into dragons and kites and other symbols. I was horrible at it. I thought I had folded the papers just right according to the illustrations, but the finished produces had no resemblance to the pictures of them. It was frustrating, but I knew it would be as I had learned from experience I can put almost anything together by following the word directions and not the picture directions. There’s that old left brain in action.
When I was kid in elementary school, we had art every couple of weeks. It alternated with music. There was no music teacher and there was no art teacher. The teacher or the nun I had did it all. Sister Hildegarde, my eighth grade teacher, had music class more often than once every other week. She had a keyboard which one of my classmates played. She also had pitch pipe which was round and had the keys listed next to the hole to blow. She’d blow the note then start us off with the first line. She sang so badly we had to hide behind our music books so she wouldn’t catch us laughing at her. I think it was also in her class I learned Gregorian chant notes. We even had tests of reading and writing chant.
I don’t remember much about my art classes. The only one I remember is when we made paper mâché puppets. We also had to write a small play and team up with classmates. I made a devil, and it was the best thing I ever created in any art class.
As I grew older, I found out that words strung together in the right way created beauty, a beauty of language which conjured images and memories and feelings. It was my talent.
Categories: Musings
Tags: art class, chilly, chinese food, Chinese New Year, game night, Gregorian chant, left brain, music class, origami, puppets, rain, sunny, windy
Comments: 10 Comments
February 16, 2018
Last night it rained. I was still watching television so it was early. The rain was intermittent. It was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep.
I have had a few false starts this morning. First I wrote about obituaries. The one of the woman described as loving to shop had caught my eye. I wondered if she’d approve of that legacy. I wrote about the man who bowled, his favorite pastime, and wondered about my own obituary, but then I got stuck so I stopped, thought a bit then went on to another subject. Yearbooks were next. I always felt bad for the kids with nothing under their pictures. They spent four years of high school being phantoms. From there I jumped to still waters run deep, the classic description of the shy kid no one knew well. At that point I stopped and deleted what I’d written. I began again.
Today is still. Not a branch is moving. Even the dead leaves on the oak trees are still. The sky is white cloudy. The bare pine branches stand stark against the light sky and look almost like fingers grasping for something. It will be a warm day, the last warm day before the cold comes back tomorrow. Snow is possible at the beginning of the new week.
My broken bone has been the perfect excuse to do nothing. I still can’t lift anything if it has any weight. The downside, though, is trying to read a hardcover book in bed. I rest it on the bed and hold it with my left hand but then I have trouble turning the pages. I gave up after a short while.
I thought I was at the stage of my life where I didn’t really need anything new. Old clothes are comfortable and old shoes fit my feet best of all. I wear a sweatshirt during the day to stay cozy and most of them are so old they’ve lost their shape. I do save a few good ones to wear in the world at large mostly because I don’t want to be the eccentric old lady wearing tattered, misshapen clothes who mumbles to herself in the grocery store. Now I can add a new shirt to my ensemble. I bought two flannel shirts on sale. Both have patterns in muted colors. They are warm enough for days like today, in the 40’s; however, they don’t help with the mumbling.
Categories: Musings
Tags: branches, broken bone, cloudy, flannel shirts, oak trees, pine trees, rain, still, sweat shirts
Comments: 10 Comments
February 15, 2018
Last night it rained. I heard it when I was in bed, and it was still raining when I fell asleep. Today is the aftermath of the rain, a cloudy, dismal and damp day. I’m glad I have nowhere to go.
The furnace was fixed by the time my house was down to 56˚. Maddie stayed beside me on a section of the afghan. Her fur was chilly to the touch. It didn’t take long for the furnace to start blowing that wonderful hot air.
My arm still hurts. I yelp out loud. The worst was on Tuesday when I ordered food delivery, clam chowder and a BLT. I couldn’t get the top off the chowder. I tried to do it one handedly. The top didn’t move. I tried my scissors but my left hand had no idea how to use scissors. I finally used a church key. That worked. I have learned I am totally inept without my right arm. I have an appointment with an orthopedic doctor on Tuesday.
When I was a kid, we did duck and cover to protect ourselves from an atomic blast. We ducked under our desks or against the walls in the corridor. When I started teaching in the high school, we did fire drills. We left our belongings in our rooms and followed the arrows outside. We waited for the all call to go back inside. The drills were timed. Much later we did shelter in place drills. The teachers locked doors, put out the lights, drew the blinds, covered the door window and directed students to go to the safest spots in the classrooms. They then waited for the all clear. Kids did what they were supposed to but many didn’t take the drills all that seriously. Needing them seemed remote. That’s no longer the case. Schools have become targets. Since Columbine, 150,000 students in 170 schools have experienced school gun violence. President Trump has continued to say mass shootings are a “mental-health problem,” not a gun problem yet he signed a measure into law that rescinded an Obama-era rule aimed at blocking gun sales to certain mentally ill people. He rescinded the law because it violated due process. I don’t know what to say except it only happens here.
Categories: Musings
Tags: church key, cold, damp, dismal, doctor, duck and cover, due process, fire drill, furnance, guns, orthopedic, rain, right arm, school shooting, shelter in place, yelps
Comments: 6 Comments
February 12, 2018
The rain started yesterday morning and continued into this morning. It was at times gentle and at other times fierce torrents. Puddles formed in the lower parts of some roads. The cars in front of me alerted me to the puddles and I drove slowly. One puddle was so high it was almost up to the top of my tires. The cape has no sewer systems so the rain has nowhere to go. Yesterday afternoon I had to brave the deluge and run to my car. I got soaked. I sat there just a bit when all of a sudden there was a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning. I love thunder storms
Last night the wind was tremendous, and the rain pounded my roof. Had I been Noah, I would have hoped the ark was ready.
I did go to the dump yesterday during a lull from the heavy rain; however, as my luck would have it, the rain started just as I got to the first recycle bin. But the guy there told me to stay in my car, and I did. Next stop was the trash bins. I unloaded my trunk and asked the guy there to throw them in the bins as the bags were too heavy for me to do that. Why were they too heavy you might ask. I have the answer.
Almost two weeks ago I slid out my door and fell. I used my right hand to brace myself when my left foot went sliding. I sat on the step a while until my leg and my hand mostly stopped hurting. Well, they never really did stop hurting. Sleeping has been intermittent. The pain from movement wakes me up as do my own groans. It took a couple of days before I could use my hand. The swelling mostly went down. The problem was I couldn’t lift any thing with that hand, and I had to find a comfortable position so it didn’t hurt. Saturday and Sunday my hand was so painful I decided to have it checked. I went to Urgent Care where I had x-rays. I have a fracture. That totally surprised me. The doctor wants me to see an ortho in case I need surgery. My hand is now encased in one of those velcro sorts of casts. I’ll call my doctor for a referral.
This is the first time I ever remember sliding. I am the falling sort. I guess I have falling down pat as I haven’t ever been hurt. Now I’ll have to work on sliding.
Categories: Musings
Tags: deluge, puddles, rain, thunder and lightning, torrents
Comments: 27 Comments
February 11, 2018
Today is a dismal dark day. The rain started last night around eleven, and it’s still raining. The weather report says rain on and off for most of the day. The only saving grace is the warmth. It is 47˚. I have to go to the dump. I’m thinking it will be quiet. The rain keeps people away.
When I was a kid, I mostly walked to church on Sundays. Sometimes, though, I’d go with my father to an early mass where he was an usher. I always wished I was an usher, but only men were ushers. My father stood in the back of the church waiting until the right time to pass his basket. He never kneeled. The baskets were at the end of a long pole which reached to the halfway point of the pew. My father would pass the basket then move to the other side of the church to get the rest of the pew. I always had a dime for the offering. After church my dad bought his paper from the guy in front of the church who was always there. The guy had a gray cart with a cover so he could protect his papers from the rain. After that my father and I sometimes went to get donuts to bring home. My father only ate plain donuts which he buttered. He’d also buy jelly, lemon and glazed donuts. I loved butternut, but he never remembered. My father kept with the traditional donuts. It made choosing easy.
I love eggs and their versatility. My favorite breakfast is two eggs over easy, crispy bacon and toast, usually rye. Eggs are often dinner for me, and once in a while I make an egg salad, but only if I have celery and lettuce to add as egg salad by itself is a bit bland. I love deviled eggs. My mother made them for all her barbecues, and my friend Clare often does the same. Most people have a favorite recipe for potato salad, but for just about every recipe, eggs are a critical ingredient. Coloring Easter eggs is a family tradition. You not only get to decorate the hard-boiled eggs but you also get to eat them.
St. Patrick’s drill team used to take part in the Halloween parade in Woburn, a town next to my own. We all hated marching in it because during the parade we’d get egged. I remember getting hit in the leg and having the egg slide down into my boot. It was gross marching on shells and uncooked eggs. I was glad when the decision was made not to march.
In Ghana I was close up and personal with eggs. I had chickens, and I also bought eggs in the market and sometimes from some small girls selling door to door. If I wasn’t careful in buying the eggs, I’d sometimes crack an egg the chicken had sat on for a bit. I was never bothered by that. It was just the way it was in Ghana sometimes.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 47˚, bacon, Basket, breakfast, dark, dismal, donuts, dump, eggs over easy, getting egged, Ghana, Halloween parade, Mass, Peace Corps, rain, St. Patrick's drill team, Sunday, Sunday paper, usher, warm
Comments: 8 Comments
February 10, 2018
I saw the sun this morning. It appeared for about five minutes. It was as bright and beautiful as I remember. The weather calls for 48˚ and clouds, but we do have a bit of a breeze, always chilly this time of year.
The street was wet this morning as was my walkway. It must have rained, but I didn’t hear it. We have those whitish clouds again.
I don’t have to go anywhere today. I could go to the dump, but I don’t feel like hauling the trash to the car. It is sitting on the kitchen floor. I walk around the two bags. I can’t put them outside as critters open the bags and trash gets all over the deck which I have to pick up. It’s gross with coffee grounds, cat food and garbage. I could put them in the trunk, but my car begins to smell. I have to go tomorrow as the dump then closes for three days. I do better with deadlines, and I don’t want the trash sitting there until Thursday.
When I was a kid, my mother told us all sorts of lies, for our own good perhaps but still lies. Take the gum lie. I believed that it took seven years in my stomach before the gum dissolved so I didn’t swallow my gum. I didn’t want some giant elastic like wad sitting there for years. I think my mother believed the gum story too, but I know she didn’t believe the lie about ears and potatoes. When I was a little kid, I spent some time at the bathroom mirror contorting myself so I could see if potatoes were growing in my ears. Rather than risk it, I let my mother clean them. I never liked it when she did, but I liked the idea of potatoes growing there even less. There was also the watermelon seed garden growing in my stomach and my going blind from sitting close to the TV or not eating my carrots. I never went out in the cold or to bed with wet hair. The consequences were life threatening. I never crossed my eyes either. I couldn’t imagine living that way the rest of my life. Growing up had its own risks back then.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 48˚, couds, dump, going blind + TV, gun, potatoes, rain, sun, trash, warm
Comments: 5 Comments
January 29, 2018
The sun is on vacation. Every day is dark and cloudy.
The sides of the street were wet this morning so it must have rained during the night. It is also going to rain this afternoon, and later the rain will be replaced by a few stray snowflakes. Tomorrow has the same forecast. A total of one to two inches is expected.
The world is catching up with me. I prefer cocooning, but sometimes I have no choice but to go out. Today I have errands, those mundane little chores which I generally eschew. Actually, I have a few days worth of errands. Little stickies are all over the house reminding me what I need, and the stickies have no room to grow. I’d much rather rummage through the cabinets and the freezer than go grocery shopping, but I need to get some cat food Maddie might eat. I cooked the last of the chicken for her this morning, and I could also buy a few groceries for me, quick foods which take little effort to cook. I need to go to the hardware store for some strange round light bulbs for the upstair’s hall light and I want nails for hanging pictures. The last stop will be the library to return and pick up books. I can’t successfully cocoon without books, without diversions to help pass the time.
I have been going to bed late, usually no earlier than two. It’s just a weird phase. I read, watch TV or play around on the computer. I’ve found the late night commercials are the worst. I figure stations think they have a captured audience so they throw on all the locally produced ads and the infomercials. Many of these late ads tout the talents of local attorneys who guarantee a pay day or you owe them nothing. Last night I saw two of these commercials, over and over. The stars of each were the attorneys themselves. In one, the attorney wore a suit and a cowboy hat, a really big cowboy hat. In this part of the country, cowboys are rare, practically nonexistent, so I wondered why the hat. I was speculating about it so much I never did hear the commercial. I figured the attorney was trying to be folksy or maybe he was thinking metaphor and hoped we’d jump to him corralling the bad guys. After all, the hat was white. But then again, I might just be giving him far too much credit. The second attorney had fake hair, a rug which looked a bit like a helmet. He sat at his desk, looked right into the camera and was heartfelt. He had clients give testimony to his skills and talents. My favorite client was an old lady who waxed eloquently about her experiences with the firm. She said they were more than attorneys. They were human beings. I’m still laughing.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cat food, cloudy, cocooning, damp, dark, errands, library, rain, Snow, sun, winter
Comments: 14 Comments
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