Posted tagged ‘sunny’
August 21, 2015
Gracie and I are outside. The air is cooler and far breezier than it has been. The sun comes and goes. Rain is a possibility for later, but that has been the forecast on and off for the last week, and we haven’t yet had rain.
There is a cricket which has taken up residence in my house. I swear it follows me from room to room like the eyes of a creepy picture. My hope is either it finds the way out or has a short life span.
It is noisier than usual out here. I hear dogs barking from all different directions. From the grouchy neighbor’s house I hear voices and things being moved around on the deck. The birds are singing and the fountain is gurgling or whatever it is that fountains do. Lots of birds are enjoying the feeders which I filled yesterday.
Since the class reunion last Saturday I’ve done some thinking about people and time. I hadn’t seen most of those people in over fifty years yet we still had a bond of shared experiences and memories. We were fourteen, still young, when we met. We hadn’t yet figured ourselves out let alone other people. We gravitated to classmates who had similar interests and senses of humor and, for me, a willingness to try new things and an appreciation for the ironic though I didn’t know that’s what it was until I was older. My friends and I were, in a small way, rebels. I remember reading books from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, forbidden books for those of you who weren’t lucky enough to have four years of Latin. I didn’t like the book. It was the forbidden part which drew me. Mad Magazine was a favorite of ours, and we bought it every month. We roamed Harvard Square. We rang doorbells for SNCC.
You can say my friends and I grew up together as parts of me were born during those days. Without those funny, irreverent friends I believe my life might have been very different. I would have missed so much!
Categories: Musings
Tags: barking dogs, breezy, class reunion, cricket, noisy, shared experiences and memories, sunny
Comments: 2 Comments
June 13, 2015
Yesterday in the late afternoon when I went to get my mail, I noticed the fog rolling in, a hazy mist moving down the street. The air got chilly and damp, but I stayed outside drawn by the fog. The end of the street began to disappear and was soon lost in the mist. Later, in the early evening, I went to the door to check the fog and found it was raining, a gentle rain so quiet I never heard it.
This morning was overcast and damp. It reminded me of vacation mornings near the ocean. I was usually the first awake and the first to go outside. Everything was quiet, no one else was stirring so the world belonged only to me. I had that same feeling this morning only I was sharing the world with Gracie who stood beside me patiently waiting so we could go inside.
The morning breeze has blown away the clouds, and we have sun and blue skies.
The TV has been bountiful for me this morning. The first gift was a film called Satellite in the Sky. I won’t even get into the special effects except to say it was 1956 so just imagine the smoke and the fire from the engine, the missing weightlessness and the arrays of buttons and switches. The plane, sort of a rocket ship, carried a full crew and a stowaway, a woman reporter. Luckily she had found the perfect hiding place where she also found a uniform which fit her as if it had been sized. She added a scarf around her neck for the sake of fashion. After she was discovered, her next scene was when she brought coffee to the crew. Now the ship was complete with a stewardess. Later she also brought sandwiches. She and the captain, originally at odds about the ship, both agree that the Tritbonium Bomb strapped to the bottom was wrong. A kiss sealed their agreement.
The second gift was one part of The Batman serial from 1943. The only actor I recognized was J. Carrol Naish as the villain, a Japanese spymaster named Dr. Daka. He had a machine which turned people into willing to do anything live zombies. After their transformations, they all wore contraptions on their heads which looked like colanders with antennae. It was through these contraptions the zombies received Dr. Daka’s orders. My favorite tidbit is The Batman (always The Batman) and Robin usually rode in the limo driven by Alfred, even when as The Batman and Robin. Their hero outfits were worn under their clothes. The bat cave was accessed through the grandfather’s clock in the spacious living room. This week’s episode ended when The Batman, a captive locked in a wooden box, is dropped to the hungry crocodiles. The last thing you hear is a scream. Will The Batman be saved or he is really lunch meat? You’ll have to wait until next week to find out!
Categories: Musings
Tags: 1956, Alfred the butler, blue sky, buttons and switches, dampness, Dr. Daka, fog, gentle rain, mist, overcast and cloudy, Satellite in the Sky, sunny, The Batman 1943, Tritbonium Bomb
Comments: 6 Comments
May 31, 2015
Clouds dot the sky this cool morning. A breeze comes and goes. The sunlight is bright. Today is another in a string of perfectly lovely days.
I didn’t do much yesterday other than potting a plant. Today I’ll plant the rest of my new flowers and sweep the deck. I do have to get a few things to make my dessert for game night, and I’ll go shortly. The morning is the best time to shop once the tourists arrive.
Last night I watched To Kill a Mockingbird. It is among my favorites and a superb movie. I used to teach the novel to ninth graders. Prior to their reading it, I gave my students a sense of the time and the place, essentials to understanding the events of the novel. Usually my kids were pulled into the book, and they found they liked reading it despite themselves. For some it was the first novel they ever finished. I remember how indignant they were with the outcome of the trial. Their senses of right and wrong were dependent on circumstances, not race or color.
My first encounter with a person of color was when I was three. My mother and I were in an elevator at a Sears, the big Sears near Fenway Park which has been closed a long time. Three of us were alone in an elevator, the other person being a woman of color. I had only seen white people all my life so I asked my mother about the woman’s color. The woman took offense and started screaming and calling us names like white crackers and white trash. My mother was embarrassed. I was scared. I didn’t understand why she was screaming. I was only three.
I don’t remember what my mother said to me afterwards, but whatever it was both comforted and reassured me, just what I needed right then.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a breezy day, bright day, lovely day, Person of color, sense of right and wrong, sunny, To Kill a Mockingbird
Comments: 10 Comments
May 29, 2015
I looked up perfect day in the dictionary and found a picture of today. The morning is cool, the sun bright, the sky the darkest of blues and the leaves on the trees sport the look of newness which comes in spring. Both the sky and the leaves are so lovely you’d think they were painted from a palette filled with the brightest colors.
Mostly I never think about making memories. They just sort of stick and now and then something brings one out, and I am flooded with a forgotten memory. I suspect my memory drawers are overflowing because I only get snippets of that memory before it all comes back. I remember getting on the bus to high school and I remember the smell of the bus. On the route was a huge hill, and we went down it on the way to school. We took a left at the end of the hill and a bit further on was a corner store and a few houses which looked alike. On the left side of the road was a beautiful house seemingly out-of-place as all the other houses lack the stateliness of this one house, but as we rode further into Winchester beyond the downtown, all the houses were beautiful and huge. The last thing I remember of that trip I took every day was a stop where Liz got on.
We used to visit my aunt the nun once a year in Connecticut. I have several single pictures, memories, of those visits. Every time we went we’d stop on the Connecticut Turnpike at a brick rest stop. My mother would check us all to make sure we were clean, our hair was combed and our clothes were neat. I remember sitting in the visitors’ living room. We whispered because the convent seemed to engender whispering. A nun always brought us cookies and something to drink. She never made any sound. My aunt didn’t know what to do with us so a tour of her school was a part of the visit. I remember the smell of chalk.
I remember standing outside my room in Winneba, Ghana at the start of training. My room was on the second floor, and from there I could see the rusted tin on all the roofs and the greens of the trees and bushes. If I close my eyes, that scene still comes back to me.
Not all my memories are happy ones, none of us are that lucky. I think the saddest of my memories have their own drawers. Those memories come unbidden at times and bring with them the pain and the sorrow. They remind me that life is a farrago, a mix, a jumble of feelings.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a palette of colors, beautiful day, bluest sky, bus ride, Cookies, light green of the leaves, memories, memory drawer, my aunt the nun, sunny, visiting Connecticut, Winchester, Winneba
Comments: 8 Comments
April 24, 2015
Today is yesterday and it’s the day before that. The temperature is in the 50’s and it is sunny and cloudy. The breeze, almost a wind, makes the day feel colder. I have things to do so Gracie and I will be out and about including a trip to the dump where it will feel like winter when the wind whips across the dump’s expanse.
My father loved to go to the dump. He usually went every Saturday and always asked for someone to go with him. There were few takers. That dump was a dump of old with high piles of trash and seagulls flying overhead squawking the whole time. The piles and the seagulls could be seen from the highway. I always told people coming to visit to keep their eyes peeled for the dump as we were the next exit.
My father would be disappointed at the dumps now with all their recycle bins and trash bins. The fun is gone and so are the seagulls.
I always found nuns mysterious and a little bit scary. I used to wonder what their hair looked like under their habits, and I also wondered why they had white handkerchiefs stuffed up their sleeves instead of in their pockets. I thought it was sort of gross. My first nuns had white blinders so they couldn’t see sideways without turning their heads. It was always to our advantage that by the time the nun turned we weren’t doing anything. She could hear the whisper but not pinpoint the source. The nuns also had a piece, sort of a half veil, across their foreheads just below the wimple. We got quite the shock when we went back to school when I was in the eighth grade. The blinders were gone and all that was left was a little visor across the top. That nun could see everyone and everything. Nuns 1, kids 0.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blinders, cold, dump run, habits, nuns, piles of trash, recycle bins, seagulls, sunny, wimple
Comments: 8 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
April 12, 2015
Today is glorious. The sun is bright, the sky a lovely dark blue and it’s warm, in the mid 50’s. The morning is loud with the songs of birds. I stopped out front with papers in hand just to smell the sweet spring scented air. The daffodil buds are bigger, closer to blooming. Purple croci have bloomed in the front. I swear my grass has shoots of green instead of just winter brown. I finally believe in spring.
The Globe had a column this morning in the travel pages about a woman who went to Togo to visit her Peace Corps son. She described where it was in West Africa, that it is a Francophone country and you spend French African francs (CFA). She was struck by the poverty, the trash and the lack of infrastructure. Many of the roads are unpaved red dirt which covers you and everything you’re carrying in red dust when your bush taxi takes you away from the coast. She went to the Grand Marché In Lome and described it just as I remember it. The building is concrete. The cloth market is on an upper floor. On the bottom floors are the food markets. The Grand Marché was always one of my stops during my frequent visits to Togo, an easy bus ride from Accra along the coast. You rode to the border at Aflao, got off the bus and walked across to Togo under an arch which says Bye-Bye Safe Journey. The other side of the arch says Welcome to Ghana.
In Lome I ate ice cream and pastries and rock lobsters from a grill on a hotel’s patio. I ordered bifteck and pomme fries using my halting high school French. I burned the bottoms of my feet running on the hot beach sand. Once I was swimming and a dead pig floated beside me. I took my life into my hands by renting a moped and driving on the crowded city roads. I went up-country on local busses.
I never thought of living in Africa as an adventure. It was home for 27 months, and always felt comfortable. I was never lost but easily found my way from one place to another. My French got better, and I could give or ask for directions, order more than steak and French fries and bargain in the market in French. Without realizing it, I became a traveler. That has held me in good stead all of my life.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, Crocus, daffodil, Francophone country, Grand Marché, living in Africa, Lome, loud with birds, sunny, Togo, warm day
Comments: 12 Comments
March 6, 2015
When I opened the front door, my eyes were blinded by the sunlight glinting like strewn diamonds on the foot of snow in my yard. The world is bright and sunny and oh so white. The Cape got hammered yesterday, more than anywhere else in the state. The only no school announcements were for Cape schools. This morning they have a two-hour delay. I am, for the meantime, stuck in my house until Skip comes. The paper is somewhere in the snow. I think I saw its drop point. Yesterday’s mail is still in the box across the street. Gracie jumped over the two steps outside the backdoor as she can’t see them but did go down the flight of stairs to the yard. She won’t use her dog door. The snow is too high on the top step. She scratched the door to come inside the house. I think it is the first time she’s ever done that.
I heard a noise out front and went to check. It was Skip. I have been freed. He just finished shoveling and plowing. I then threw de-icer on the back steps and stairs and on the front walk. My car is clear of snow and frost so I can hit the road after I finish here. Knowing I can go about my business makes having snow a bit more bearable, but only a bit. This last storm has taken away any forbearance for winter.
Today is cold, 24˚ cold, though there are drips as the direct sun is strong enough to melt the thin layer of snow on the roof but nowhere else is dripping or melting. We even had ice and snow on the roads and in our yards from the last two storms. The mound in front of my house will be there until May.
We turn the clocks ahead this weekend and March 20th is the first day of spring, but that doesn’t really mean spring. Between now and next Friday only one day will reach as high as 40˚. Winter stays holds sway, and I hate winter this year.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bright, cold, Dog door, mound of snow, no school, plowed, shoveled, snow and more snow, sunny, sunny day
Comments: 8 Comments
December 27, 2014
Okay, yesterday I was a woman of my word. I didn’t even get dressed. Most of the day I lolled. Today I need to get my laundry out of the dryer where it has sat for at least a week then I can do another laundry which will also probably sit for a week. I woke up at 10:20 this morning because I didn’t go to bed until three. I just wasn’t tired. Mostly I watched Doctor Who and then finished my book.
Winter sunlight is muted and seldom warm but still welcomed. It is here again today with its frame of blue. I was out on the deck to stop a barking Gracie, and though it isn’t as warm as it has been, it is still warm for late December. Gracie has been out most of the morning enjoying the yard. She has yet to take her morning nap, a most unusual occurrence.
One of favorite Christmas presents was my bike. I was around nine or ten. When I came downstairs Christmas morning, I saw it beside the tree leaning on its kickstand. I knew it was mine, not my brother’s, because it was a girl’s bike. I remember that was the Christmas of no snow, and on Christmas morning I was glad. I’d get to ride my bike. When I took it outside for the first time on the day after Christmas, my mother took a picture of me standing beside the bike holding it by the handlebars. I have the biggest grin on my face. I remember how proud I was riding my new bike.
Every year we’d get a new game. On Christmas day, after dinner and seeing family, we’d set up the new game by the tree, lie on the rug and play. If we didn’t know the game one or the other of my parents read and explained the directions as we went along.
I give my friends a new game every year, my way of keeping the tradition alive. It’s getting more and more difficult finding real put your hands on the pieces games instead of video games, but I usually am lucky to find a couple.
I love game nights, our weekly get-togethers. We have appetizers and drinks. We have moaning and cursing. Sarcasm rules the evening. Someone is always dubbed the loser with finger L on forehead. Sorry and Phase 10 are the usual games. Phase 10 is civilized. Sorry never is and never has been. That’s the fun of it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Board game, Card game, Christmas, Christmas presents, cursing, game night, games for Christmas, lolling, loser, new bike, Phase 10 card game, Sorry game, sunny, warm day
Comments: 9 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
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