Posted tagged ‘Snoring’
June 2, 2017
Yesterday stayed warm and beautiful. It didn’t even rain. I was outside reading for a while in the sun, and before I came inside, I emptied the water from the deck furniture covers so they’d dry and be ready to store for the summer. Today is just as lovely as yesterday, sunny and warm. The tiniest of breezes barely stirs the leaves. I have only one item on my to-do list: buy my garden and deck plants.
Gracie slept well last night. I didn’t. First off, she was snoring while I watched TV so I kept nudging her. She got annoyed and went to her crate where she fell asleep. I could hear her snoring from all the way down the hall. At 11:30, I turned off the TV and fell asleep. Around midnight, Gracie woke me up so we went outside. Other than my house, every other house on the street was lost in the darkness. The star on my fence was still lit and illuminated the way to the gate. After we came inside, Gracie got on the couch and fell asleep. I couldn’t get comfortable so I kept moving my feet hoping for a comfy spot. I didn’t find one: not on the floor, the table or the couch under the dog bed. Gracie slept while I tossed and turned. I’m tired. She’s sleeping again.
I wish I could make things, build stuff. I’d make some sort of ride for Gracie to go down the outside deck steps. It would be similar to those people chairs that go upstairs. Gracie would enjoy going and coming whenever the mood strikes her.
Today is national donut day. Dunkin’ Donuts will give out a free donut with each drink. My favorite is a butternut donut, but it goes fast. I sometimes have to make do with a Boston Cream. Make do and Boston cream seem incongruous.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: couch, darkness, dog crate, lights, lovely day, national donut day, nighttime, outside, Sleep, Snoring, sunny, tossed and turned, uncomfortable, warm
Comments: 10 Comments
November 12, 2016
As silly and as childish as it sounds, I want to shake Gracie and Maddie so they can’t sleep. They managed to keep waking me up last night. Gracie was snoring and Maddie was howling. Right now both of them are enjoying their morning naps. They are deeply asleep. I’m tired.
The weather is consistent. Every day has been in the mid 40’s. Last night the wind howled, and, sure enough, my lawn is covered again. Today is still. It is as if the wind has worn itself out. Later in the week, it will get warmer, to the high 50’s, Indian summer weather.
I am finally getting tired of seeing the laundry bags by the cellar door. I add more wash every day so the bags are filled. It’s time to do the dreaded chore.
Some days I actually have the wherewithal to attack and complete the chore list, maybe because the list is small or maybe because I feel guilty about putting things off for so long. Nope, it isn’t guilt.
The dump is on our list for tomorrow. My trunk is getting filled and more trash bags are still to come. I have to clean the cat box and add it to the trunk load. I’ll be very careful as last week the litter bag opened and the trunk was filled with the loose litter from the bag. My newspaper and catalogue recycle bags are heavy. Every day I get huge numbers of catalogues. I go through most of them in case something catches my eye though I haven’t much Christmas shopping left to do. I just like looking.
My deck is still open only because Skip, my factotum, hasn’t gotten here yet. I have called, but he hasn’t called me back even though his wife said she’d take of it. I’m thinking it is getting close to Christmas lights so he might as well do both at the same time. I always hate it when the deck is closed. It is the acknowledgement that summer and the warm days of fall have ended. The deck looks so deserted with most of the furniture and the two umbrellas covered. The Christmas lights, though, do brighten the deck and the yard. They keep me going until Little Christmas. That’s when the whole yard is winter: deserted, cold and dark.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 40's, catalogues, chores, dump, guilt, high 50's, howling, morning nap, shopping for Christmas, Snoring, spilled litter, still and quiet, trash, trash bags, trunk, weather
Comments: 4 Comments
October 15, 2016
The morning came late for me, finally. I woke up at 7:30. The day is chilly but the sort of chill you know won’t last. When I went out to get the papers, I saw smoke from my neighbor’s chimney. She had turned on her heat to ward off the cold of last night. Another neighbor was returning after walking her dogs. We exchanged pleasantries and commented about the chill.
I have a few things to do around the house: a wash, putting in the second storm door and watering plants. Life is back to the humdrum.
Gracie and I are heading to the garden center. It is pumpkin time. I’ll buy a few for my front steps, a few different size pumpkins. I’ll also buy some gourds, the last of the garden fresh vegetables and some bread.
Gracie is snoring and sleeping on the couch. The two cats are sleeping in their usual spots. Their morning rituals never change.
Moxie is an acquired taste. It is like drinking medicine. I don’t know anyone who drinks it. A lot of people never even heard of it. I don’t like Dr. Pepper either. I love A&W root beer, and I love how it foams when you pour it. Right now my drink of choice is fresh apple cider. It is the drink of fall.
When I was a kid, I always had a school bag. When I was really young, my school bag was almost like a briefcase, square with buckles to close it and a strap which went across my body. It was sometimes plaid. When I was older, my school bag was the green one with rubber inside to protect the books from the rain. It had a drawstring. When I was teaching, I had a blue briefcase. I always liked carrying it. It made me feel a bit important.
When I became an administrator, I stopped needing a briefcase. I switched to a backpack and used it as a handbag, a purse. My first one was nylon. Now my backpacks are leather. The one now was made in Vermont, is black, and the leather is soft. It is my winter bag. My summer bag is canvas, a messenger bag. It is getting close to switching time.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: A&W root beer, briefcase, cold, Dr. Pepper, heat, humdrum, morning, morning ritual, Moxie, plants, smoky chimney, Snoring, St. Patrick's Day, walking the dog, wash
Comments: 10 Comments
February 26, 2016
Gracie snores, and last night she snored so loudly she kept waking me up. My bedtime was late enough without being disturbed by her multiple snores and an occasional snort. I’m tired and it is only 11 o’clock. Gracie, of course, is having a morning nap. The poor baby must be tired.
Cold day today, it is in the high 30’s, but the sun is shining so I’m not going to complain. When I went to get the papers, I heard birds singing to greet the morning. It sounded like spring to me.
I have random memories which loop through my mind. Some I see only once while others recur. Some of my memories of growing up are faded and worn while others are so bright they could have happened yesterday. My grey jacket reappears out of one my memory drawer every spring. It was my favorite jacket because I started wearing it only when the weather got warmer. It had no lining. It did have pockets on each side, and it had a zipper. My brightest memory is wearing that jacket and skipping on the sidewalk on my way to school.
I still remember biology and dissecting a frog. My memory drawer has a picture of the frog lying on its back on a silver lab tray. It looks washed out, too long preserved. My lab partner wanted nothing to do with that frog and the scalpel. It was left to me. She took all the notes. That was our deal. Making the first cut took me a while. I had to forego the urge to gag. Dead frogs didn’t bother me, but their insides were better left inside.
My first Ghana memory is of the morning after our arrival. My room was on the second floor of a school dorm. I remember walking outside, standing at the rail and looking at what was spread out below me. I saw greenery everywhere. I could see rusty tins roofs. I remember the awe. I was in Africa.
My memory drawers overflow. Some I can’t even open; others I can’t shut. The sad memories have their own places. Sometimes they come unbidden. They are not always welcome.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: biology, cold, dissecting a frog, Ghana, greenery, memory drawers, random memories, sad memories, singing birds, Snoring, spring jacket, sunny day, tin roofs
Comments: 9 Comments
November 6, 2015
My friends have left. The house is just so quiet without them, but luckily Gracie is snoring which is sort of keeping me company. We had a wonderful time together. The weather was perfect, nearly 70˚ each day. Today is raining but ever so lightly. It is still warm. I have had the heat off and windows open the last three days. The cold will start returning tomorrow.
On Wednesday we rode around Hyannis and Hyannisport. We went by the Kennedy Compound then drove a different road back, all the more to see. That night we had dinner at Karoo’s, a South African restaurant with a cuisine quite different from Ghana’s. Two of my other friends joined us. We stayed talking and laughing long after we had finished dinner. Yesterday we went to the Kennedy Museum and the Kennedy Memorial then I took my friends to lunch at Jerry’s where I’ve been eating since high school days. The original Jerry is long gone, but the name and the good food remain. I showed my friends where my family lived, and we did a nostalgia tour. Last night was dinner at home.
The three of us, Bill, Peg and I, will be going back to Ghana together next October. We’ve already started talking about the trip. Grace, a former student, is building a house in Bolga and hopes to have it finished so we can stay there. We’re making a list of places we want to see. I mean, really, it’s only a year away!
Being with my friends is always comfortable. They are family. We shared a unique experience which created a bond so strong that time can never break it. We have stories which still make us laugh and we have a history. We met during staging in Philadelphia at the Hotel Sylvania. Staging is when the trainees get together for the first time, meet each other, have all our paperwork checked and see slides and hear lectures about Ghana. Bill and Peg were my kindred spirits as we skipped the large group events and went sightseeing. In Ghana we were first posted far apart as Peg was pregnant and PC wanted her near a decent hospital. They stayed there for a year then I talked my principal into asking Peace Corps to transfer them to my school. The three of them, Bill, Peg and Kevin, came and we lived in a duplex. That was the beginning of all our adventures.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: friends, Hotel Sylvania, Hyannis, Karoo's, Kennedy Memorial, Kennedy Museum, old friends, quiet house, sightseeing, Snoring, staging
Comments: 10 Comments
August 7, 2015
Today is truly another day in paradise. The weather is sunny, dry and in the high 70’s. The breeze, coming from the north, is cooling. It ruffles leaves and sways the smaller branches. It is nap time here. Fern, Maddie and Gracie are sleeping. The cats are each on a different couch and Gracie is snoozing in her crate. I can hear her snoring. I’m thinking an afternoon nap might be just the thing.
The Globe gave me a few chuckles this morning. A video, part of the robbery at the Gardiner Museum, has been released. From the night before the heist, it is possibly a dress rehearsal for the real event the next night. It shows Guard Richard Abath opening a door to let the man inside the museum. The next night it was Abath who opened the door to two men dressed as police officers who went inside, subdued Abath and tied him up. There are other issues connected to Abath, but my chuckle came from a man who was a student with Abath back in the day. The man, Knight, called Abath “a very nice guy, very intelligent, very well-read.” Knight recalled Abath said it was an honest mistake letting in the men posing as officers. Knight went on to say, “I hoped he was not involved in this. It would certainly cast him in a different light if in fact he was proven beyond a reasonable doubt he was guilty. That would alter, in my mind, his overall character significantly.” Do you think?
Another article described the top Argentinian officials facing charges in a 1994 bombing. “On a day of heavy rain, several of the 13 men were ushered into court…”I have no idea why we needed to know it was raining, but once we did I wanted more. Did they wear raincoats, use newspapers to cover their heads or have umbrellas? I want the full story!!
My favorite of all is the SJC (the state’s Supreme Judicial Court) has tossed out a law which made it illegal to lie in political campaign material calling it “inconsistent with the fundamental right of free speech.” The court explained, “Citizenry, not the government, should be the monitor of falseness in the political arena.” So what happens when your opponent fills the air waves with lies about you? According to Justice Cordy,”That solution is counter speech.” In other words, tell your own lies. Let the people figure it out the truth on their own. How scary is that?
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Categories: Musings
Tags: a day of heavy rain, beautiful day, Boston Globe, cool breeze, counter-speech, full story, Gardiner heist, Laundry, let the people decide, napping, Richard Abath, SJC, Snoring, top Argentinian officials facing charges
Comments: 12 Comments
December 19, 2014
It is quite late for me because I had several errands. I also treated myself to lunch in between as I had a half hour wait before I could finish my last errand. Today is a still day, a windless day. It is dark and cold. Everyone was bundled up and was moving quickly from store to store.
I need to get out of my public clothes into my cozies. I’ll be glad when I’m really old because I’ll wear whatever I want in public and people will chalk it up to old age.
The Christmas tree lot at Stop and Shop is gone. A few trees are on the ground, the leftovers I expect. Agway is still open but has very few trees. I remember my mother talking about her Christmas tree and how it was decorated when they were in bed on Christmas Eve. They’d wake up in the morning to a glorious tree and gifts from Santa. I like having the tree around longer. I get to admire it in the living room, and I get to sit and read surrounded by Christmas. Both trees are lit now. They have given the day its only color.
Fern has taken to sleeping on the tree skirt. She falls asleep warmed by the lights and sleeps so deeply she snores but ever so slightly. I have to listen closely to hear her. Gracie, on the other hand, snores loudly, like a grown man, a big grown man. She snorts as she sleeps. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep for the racket. Boxers tend to be snorers.
A few Christmas jobs remain. I have my baking to do, presents to wrap for my Cape friends and Christmas dinner to plan. I ordered a pork roast from the butcher, but that is as far as I’ve gotten. I know I’ll do an apple dish and some sort of potato, and I’m thinking baby carrots for color and one more vegetable yet to be decided. I’m going to do a relish tray. My grandmother always had one on her table when we ate there. I was always drawn to the celery. I have the perfect dish to use: a very old glass sectioned plate just like the one my grandmother had. The old touches are always great memories to add to the table.
When I think of dessert, I think of the Cratchits and their Christmas pudding. The flame was always so dramatic and such a splendid finish to dinner.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: cat under the tree, Christmas Eve, Christmas trees, cold, cozy clothes, dark day, decorating the tree, errands, planning dinner, relish tray, Snoring, still day, tree lights, wrapping presents
Comments: 10 Comments
November 17, 2013
The dog’s snoring and my back screaming woke me up this morning. I’m not sure what was worse, but I’m leaning toward the snoring. It was relentless. Each snore had different levels of multiple snores and on a couple of spectacular snores her jowls fluttered. I could take the noise only so long so I dragged myself out of bed. Gracie is now on the couch beside me, and yes, she is snoring but single snores, quiet snores. Those I can handle.
As for my back, I think it had to do with the way I was sleeping with my body contorted and curled around the dog and cat. I don’t start out that way as we all go to bed in our traditional spots, but when I’m asleep, they usurp. Gracie is the worst.
Yesterday my neighborhood was a hub of activity. The house on the corner was getting a new roof. From my deck, I heard the sound of the old shingles being removed. There was an odd scraping sound then a short interval then the scraping again. The time between the sounds was always the same length as if the man was working from a score. I heard the rhythm of the nail gun. It was four notes, a pause then four notes again repeated over and over. I was hearing the symphony of work.
The birds are many today. My chickadees are back. Several were at the big feeder while another was at the suet feeder. I love that I can see those feeders from my kitchen window. I usually wash my favorite cup and glass so I can have them the next day, and the birds are my amusement. Washing dishes is never work. It’s bird watching.
As one of my birthday presents, my friends gave me wooden books ends with a zebra on each end. I carried them around the house looking for a spot knowing that when I add anything, the domino effect comes into play. My house has no empty spots so it becomes a question of where does everything go when you add something. I put the bookends on the microwave and then searched for and found 5 or 6 cookbooks of African food to go between them. One of them is Ghana Chop, the cookbook Peace Corps gave us. To put all of this on the microwave, I had to move a double enamel coffee pot, a cup and saucer with a candle, a very small candelabra, a small glass with a candle and two other large glasses with candles. I walked around the house carrying them trying to figure out spots for their new homes. The two large glasses went back on the microwave, the small one on the butcher block, the cup and saucer also went on the butcher block and the coffee pot went on the floor beside the bookcase; however, I had to move an old glass milk bottle to make room. That last one stymied me. It just didn’t fit anywhere so I ended up hiding it behind something on the bookcase. It was my only failure.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: bad back, candles, domino effect, loud snores, moving things, nail roof, napping, new shingles, rhythm, Snoring, symphony, zebras
Comments: 10 Comments
November 15, 2013
No sun today and a fairly strong breeze, but the day is warm for November, in the high 50’s, and will be the same all week. One day may even reach 60˚. I’m thinking the deck with my face to the sun.
My back is screaming loudly from my over-doing. I am not a slow learner but just figure I can do what I always used to do. I can’t. Yesterday I hauled out the heavy litter. It is biodegradable pine litter which turns into sawdust when wet, and the bag was heavy. I carried it downstairs, outside to the car and then lifted it into the trunk. I also went shopping for my dinner ingredients and toted three heavy bags of groceries into the house. I left the stout in the car and thought I was being cautious. I wasn’t. I spent the whole middle of the day and the afternoon getting dinner ready. All of the dishes were ready to cook, and because I just had to put two of them into the oven and reheat the carrots, I got to spend the evening sitting with my friends rather than in the kitchen. I thought getting everything ready was a great idea. I was wrong. I never thought about all that standing while I worked.
Dinner was perfectly planned from appetizers to dessert. I, however, didn’t plan for my back, but luckily for me my friends did the clean-up. I just sat and gave directions. It sort of made me feel like the lady of the manor.
I slept little last night between Gracie’s snoring and my back aching. I didn’t even go upstairs until 2 AM. I most decidedly see a nap in my future.
I have wonderful leftovers for dinner tonight.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: bad back, Clouds, dinner, grocery shopping, leftovers, perfect dinner, Snoring, toting and carrying, warm day
Comments: 13 Comments
September 19, 2013
Lots to do today but around the house lots to do, my least favorite sort of today. This room resembles a haunted house, one left to dust and cobwebs. It was in disarray because some electrical work had to be done, and the desk had to be moved out-of-the-way. All the books on the shelves and the drawers ended up in the living room. Behind the desk, an area not seen in decades, was a bit of Miss Haversham’s room. That area was cleaned but now everything on the desk is filled with dust. I’m tackling that today. I should wear a full length apron, a scarf on my head, rubber gloves so my hands will stay soft, a dress, and, of course, my pearls. For some reason, that’s how I imagine the dusting look. Wait, I forget the feather duster!
Today is another beautiful autumn day with blue skies, lots of sun and warmth. Last night was cool, perfect for sleeping weather, and the weatherman has kindly predicted a whole rest of the week of the same. Both doors are opened and Fern is lying asleep in the sun. Gracie is on the couch for her morning nap and is snoring. I didn’t get to sleep until around three o’clock this morning so I’m thinking a nap sounds perfect. I imagine Fern and Gracie will join me.
I had the two bathrooms painted, got a new shower curtain made of Ghanaian cloth and had some Ghanaian cloth send to me by one of my former students so my friend can sew bathroom curtains. I bought a new bedroom spread, curtains and throw rugs. I figure with winter coming it’s like I’m getting the house ready for hibernation, changing the scene a bit to stave off boredom. I go through recipes planning menus in my head. They all have a different theme. I’m thinking Hawaii for a dead of winter party with only flowered shirts allowed. Poi will not be on the menu. Chinese is another choice and only chopsticks will be used for eating. The planning is fun. For now, though, I’ll just enjoy the weather and keep getting ready to hibernate. I’m trying to decide what room will be next.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: autumn weather, changing decor, cobwebs, disarray, Dusting, feather duster, Miss Haversham, morning naps, naps sleeping in the sun, planning dinners, ready for hibernation, Snoring
Comments: 10 Comments
