Posted tagged ‘traffic’
September 8, 2017
Today is a delight. It will be in the 70’s during the day and the mid 50’s tonight. The breeze is ever so slight. The sunshine has a fall look about it. I stayed outside with Gracie a little bit this morning so I could watch the birds. The goldfinches love the new thistle feeder, and there were four of them on it at once. One got a little possessive and chased a chickadee away. I have a new thistle feeder I haven’t put out yet, but I will in a bit as I have to fill the sunflower feeders again. Luckily I bought new seeds the other day: mixed, sunflower and thistle. I’m ready for the onslaught of the birds. Where’s Alfred Hitchcock?
This has been a busy week for me. I was out every day but yesterday. I even lost track of the days. This morning I had to think about yesterday in order to remember today. I double-checked my guess by looking at the calendar. I guessed right.
My neighborhood is noisy. I can hear lawn mowers, hedge clippers and blowers from next door. They’re probably due here next. What I don’t hear are voices or even cars. The kids are in school, and the traffic has lessened since Labor Day.
My garden has flowers in bloom. They are beautiful. Three of the four front fence pieces are covered by white clematis. I keep the gate open as the flowers have spread and have started covering the gate space. I have to sidle through. When I do, I worry a bit about the bees, but they don’t seem to care about me. They have the flowers. I added red hibiscus two weeks ago to the back of the front garden, the only bare spot. The flowers were on sale so I took the chance. The first few days I hand watered, but then it rained and it rained again. The flowers took hold. The buds have blossomed. They are tall enough to be seen from the road and add a wondrous color to the garden. Now I want more color for the few here and there spots needing flowers, but that will be for next year unless, of course, I find another great sale.
I think I’ll go to the farm stand. I’d like some home-grown tomatoes. I’m also still hoping for Thai food. My taste buds crave coconut shrimp. It is probably not a coincidence that the farm stand is on the way to the Thai restaurant.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 70˚, aschool, bird feeders, birds, chickadees, clematis, coconut shrimp, delightful day, fall sun, farm stand, goldfinches, hibiscus, homegrown tomatoes, noisy, sunflower seeds, sunny, Thai food, thistle, traffic, what day?
Comments: 8 Comments
August 13, 2017
The rain fell most of the day yesterday. Sometimes it was heavy and other times just misty. When I first woke up this morning, it was cloudy. When I woke up a second time, it was still cloudy but the sun poked through a couple of times giving me some hope for a nice day. It will be warm, low 80’s, but less humid.
Gracie and I did a couple of errands yesterday. We took 6A, but it too was filled with traffic, tourists looking to while away the rainy day.I learned in Ghana to see the bugs as protein I stopped at the candy store to get some peanut butter cups and chocolate peppermints for movie night. That shop was filled with more people than I’ve ever seen in there. I guess there is no better cure for a rainy day than chocolate. Actually, chocolates are a panacea for whatever ails us.
The other evening I was having a bowl of cereal, Rice Krispies, when I noticed a small bug swimming on top of the cereal. I flicked it out of the bowl and kept eating. I learned in Ghana to see bugs in my food, especially flour, as added protein. It is one of the strange things I learned.
I like Life Savers, but my favorites are made by Reed’s, root beer closely followed by cinnamon. Wintergreen is my favorite flavor of Life Savers. In a package I got in Ghana from my mother were a few rolls of Life Saver’s tropical fruits. I guess she figured they were a fun choice. The colors were the same as the fruit colors, even that green of honeydew melons and the light orange of cantaloup. The coconut was my favorite. We sat one night guessing all the fruits. It was our evening’s entertainment. It didn’t take much to amuse us.
My friends and I play games once a week. In the winter it is on Sunday night then we watch The Amazing Race which was DVR’d on Friday. We didn’t like it on Friday so we continued with Sunday. Creatures of habit I guess. Now it is Saturday night, movie night. We have some appetizers then play Phase 10 before the movie. If we have time, mostly in the winter, we also play Sorry. We never seem to tire of either game. We even keep a list of winners from each week. There is usually a bit of gloating. I was the gloater last week.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 6A, bug, cereal, Chocolate, chocolate shop, games, gloating, It seems, Life Savers, mist, peanut butter cups, Phase 10, protein, rain, Reed's root beer, Sorry, sun, traffic, Tropical Fruit Life Savers
Comments: 14 Comments
August 1, 2017
The day is beautiful but warm and getting warmer. Gracie and I spent the earlier morning on the deck. I read the papers and watched the birds. Sometimes, though, I was so taken I put the paper aside and just watched. The chickadees are the most numerous. I saw two chasing each other. I don’t know if they were amorous or angry. A few nuthatches and tufted titmice also flew in for a few seeds. They waited patiently on branches for the chickadees to leave. I could hear a woodpecker at a pine tree. The fountain, filled with water, splashed and burbled. Gracie thinks it’s a bubbler, a water fountain, so I have to keep filling it. The loud sound of a mower from next door broke the magic of the deck so Gracie and I came inside.
I have to leave the house today to do three errands. I’m hoping they won’t take too long. I have mapped the route, a summer necessity to avoid traffic though today is too nice a beach day to expect tourists on the road.
It will be hot today. It is already 82˚ but won’t get much higher. Tonight will be in the 60’s. If I controlled the weather, I would make today just the way it is and the way it will be tonight.
I brought my camera with me to the deck and took pictures of the deck and the birds. The flowers in the clay pots are blooming. They are mostly on the long rail, but a few big ones are the deck where it ends. I love the look of the clay pots and the wooden flower boxes planted with herbs which are on one smaller rail. When I sit at the table, I can smell basil.
I’m still watching shark movies on Syfy. With most television programs being reruns, I watch baseball or sharks. The Sox won last night and so did the sharks until the end of the movie. We get to watch them devour people before the sharks are blown up which seems to be the only way to kill dinoshark, atomic shark, ghost shark, ice shark, roboshark and so many others, all man eaters. That five headed shark, Sunday’s movie, shared the victims. One head ate a half while another head ate the other half. The front end of the shark had four heads so I felt gypped until they showed the fifth head on the tail. It never seemed to eat but its jaw kept opening and closing.
Jaws was made in Cape waters, and when the first great whites showed up off the coast, there was a sort of Jaws frenzy. Last year 68 various kinds of sharks were spotted off Cape Cod. If they ever start feasting on tourists I may do nothing, but that could prickle my conscience so I’ll explain from my Syfy experience that blowing them up is the only solution.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 82˚, basil, birds, bubbler, burble, camera, chickadees, clay flower pots, cool night, deck, errands, fountain, garden, mower, Nuthatch, route, shark movies, Syfy, titmouse, traffic, weather, wooden flower boxes
Comments: 10 Comments
July 25, 2017
I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but I have been trying to find out why my new computer keeps telling me it has run out of application memory. I have been deleting files like crazy. I found pieces of files I thought I had wiped from my computer were still lurking in a variety of places. I went looking for duplicate files and found several. I don’t know if I have solved the problem, but I’m hopeful.
This morning when I woke up neither Gracie nor Maddie was around, and my stirring did nothing to alert them. I got worried. Gracie started moving in her crate when I called her. Maddie didn’t respond to my calling her or making that come here cat sound with my lips. I went upstairs and found her sound asleep on my bed. I was so relieved.
Today is dark and damp and really cold. The only word which comes to mind is ugly. It rained most of yesterday, and I got wet taking Gracie into the yard. She dried quickly. I didn’t.
We have to go out in a bit and one stop is at CVS for Gracie’s pills. I’m thinking the parking lot will be filled with cars, and I’ll have to park miles away. I curse tourists on days like today. On sunny days, I can be patient and tolerate, but my mood on a day like today mirrors the weather.
It isn’t bad enough I have to stay up to watch a Sox game from the West Coast which doesn’t start until 10, but I also have to watch them lose. Such misery and pain!
The Patriots have started training camp. Tom Brady just turned 40. He lives for football and his whole regimen, his whole diet, is meant to maximize his physical well being and strength. I, on the other hand, believe that life without ice cream is barely worth living.
The trap in the kitchen is still empty. Maybe the four mice I caught are the end of the infestation. The other two floors, upstairs and the cellar, have no evidence of mice, no poop. Now, if I could only get rid of the spawns. I still haven’t put up my new backyard lights. I miss them as the yard is dark when I take Gracie outside before bed. Last night I heard a noise. Gracie did too. We both looked in the same direction. I kept looking. She went and peed. I took that as all is well.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: calling my pets, cat and dog, computer mess, damp, dark, dark yard, errands, noise, Patriots, Red Sox, school, Tom Brady, traffic, training Camp
Comments: 8 Comments
July 6, 2017
The last couple of days have been beautiful: sunny, clear and free of humidity. The nights have been wonderfully cool for sleeping. The weatherman is predicting rain for tomorrow. I’m fine with that as we haven’t had rain in a while.
The tourists have descended. The weekend started Thursday night and lasted until yesterday when the line of traffic wanting to cross the bridge reached back 6 miles. Local traffic too has been horrific. Trying to get out of a parking lot and cross a line of traffic is nearly impossible. Yesterday I sat so long that I finally went right when I really wanted to go left. I pulled into a street on the left and turned around so I could converge with the single lane of traffic. It does seem silly this roundabout route but waiting is futile and even sillier. My patience will be constantly tried until after Labor Day. My vocabulary will be reduced to four letter words.
I’m back to watching MSNBC. My short hiatus made me hungry for news especially with Mr. Trump in Germany meeting with Merkel and Putin with no script, just off the cuff. I find that scary. He has little command of English vocabulary and reverts to simplistic words when specific words would carry so much more weight. My favorite Trump quote today is that the US will confront North Korea’s, “Very, very bad behavior.” Is a time-out an appropriate response for bad behavior? Sometimes, but I’m not sure it is enough for, “Very, very bad behavior.” That sounds like cause enough for being grounded.
Gracie has an appointment today off-Cape with an internist, a specialist. Other than the weakness in her back legs and the head tilt, everything else is back to normal. Her vet said there are brain lesions probably causing the two issues.
I have a few things on my to-do list. I finally bought replacement flowers for the dead ones in the pots. I’ll plant them when I get back from the vets. The deck still has a bit of caterpillar poop that needs cleaning so I’ll water the pots then spray the deck.
The premier for 2017’s movie night will be this Saturday. For opening night, we always have dinner first so I have to figure out what to serve. Also, the red carpet has to go down, the corn needs popping and I have to choose the movie candy. I have three or four new movies and will let my guests decide. I’ll let you know.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: bad behavior, beautiful day, four letter words, grounded, long weekend, movie night, MSNBC, patience, Red carpet, simplistic language, sunny, time-out, tourists, traffic, Trump, very bad, weather
Comments: 10 Comments
June 23, 2017
Right now the day is beautiful with a breeze and sunny skies. The clouds will be intermittent, and there is a possibility of rain. I love days like this. The daytime is perfect, and it rains at night keeping the grass green and the flowers bright with color.
I have to go to Agway to pick up a flat of annuals. Four of the same plants in clay pots on the deck are dying. I also need dog and cat food and treats. I’m going to have to resist the temptation to buy more flowers.
Gracie has done well the last two days. She has eaten dog food and a whole bag of treats. She hasn’t had the dizziness and nausea of the previous three nights, and that is the best of all as she has slept through the night. I, however, am still exhausted. I don’t sleep deeply as I listen to check her breathing.
July is when all the hoopla begins here. The highways will have backups of cars trying to exit. The main roads will be filled with gawking tourists riding in slow motion so they don’t miss anything on either side of the road. It is even worse when it rains. I never leave the house in the summer on a rainy day because running into a traffic jam is cause for my swearing aloud and occasionally whacking the steering wheel.
I remember going to Islesboro, Maine one summer. We had to take the ferry as Islesboro is on an island. One day we went into nearest town, and my dad gave each of us some money to shop. I roamed through the store filled with postcards, individual inflatables, and all sorts of touristy kitsch. I ended up buying small dog magnets. One was white and the other black. They were both Scotties. I had them for years. They always reminded me of that vacation.
My deck is again a mess. It is covered in leaves and frass, the official name for caterpillar poop. I don’t even want to be out there under the trees, usually the perfect place as it is shady and gets any breeze. Now it also gets something else.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: Agway, beautiful day, caterpillar poop, dog and cat food, feeling better, flat of flowers, flowers, frass, Gracie, main roads, rain, rainy day, tourists, traffic
Comments: 12 Comments
April 7, 2017
We’re back from the appointment for Gracie at the vets. The good news is she didn’t have a stroke. The head tilt is probably from a lesion on her brain which may cause problems down the road, but she is fine for now. Her weak back legs are just that, weaker than her front. I should continue what I am doing to help her get around. Gracie was given a refill of her pain meds and got shots which were due anyway.
I had my MRI, but it is too early to hear the results. I figure there won’t be anything there, my lower back, as the earlier MRI’s showed nothing.
The most painful part of the last two days has been the $700 the two appointments cost me. I won’t ever be cured of that.
Yesterday it poured all day, a deluge to use my mother’s description, but today is the loveliest of days. The sky is a deep blue. The sun is bright, an almost need to squint bright. It is warm. When I left the house at nine, it was already 48˚. It is flannel shirt weather, a downgrade (or maybe an upgrade) from sweatshirt weather. I could do my outside work today. I still have that list, but I don’t want to for no reason except maybe relief. I was worried about Gracie. I still am, but it is a general worry about keeping an old dog healthy. The dread is gone. I just want to enjoy the afternoon, maybe sit on the deck with the sun on my face.
Lots of green shoots are appearing in my front garden. I saw the bumpy bud of a hyacinth this morning. Its color is starting to appear, a light purple. Daffodils are blooming. The yellow ones are first. The white ones are budded and waiting their turn. On my trip down Cape last Tuesday, I sat in a line of traffic on 6A. It was a long line so I had time to look around. I saw a tree with tiny, tiny buds. They were red and easy to see. I was thrilled. For me, that is the second sign of spring, after the bulbs flower.
My grass is squishy with mud. The ground wasn’t frozen when the days of rain began last week so the extra water just stayed right there, right on top, making the grass muddy. Footprints stay when you walk across the lawn. I try to avoid that.
I’m getting sucked in. I can feel it. Today makes me want to believe it’s really spring, but this is New England, and there are no guarantees so I’m still a bit skeptical, but the weather report is so amazing I can feel that skepticism draining away. By mid-next week, we may hit 60˚ and 50’s all the way to get there. That’s spring. No doubt about it.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 50˚, 6A, buds, daffodils, deck, deep blue sky, flowers, green shoots, hyacinths, lesion, MRI, mud, outside work, rain, relief, spring, squint, sun, sunshine, traffic, vets, warm
Comments: 10 Comments
August 25, 2016
Yesterday was perfection. It was sunny, cool and dry. Today is August weather, humid and hot. The sun comes and goes. It hides behind the clouds, but the clouds have no rain. They just obscure the sun. The weather report says maybe tomorrow for the rain. I am skeptical.
Yesterday I went to Hyannis. I couldn’t believe the bumper to bumper traffic heading to Main Street. Why weren’t those people on the beach?
I actually got a few things done yesterday. I had a doctor’s appointment, got my hair cut, changed the bed and watered the plants. That’s the most I’ve done in a single day for a long while. It was all because I had read an article which said that you should have only five or fewer things on your to-do list. You prioritize the items, start from the top and what you don’t finish goes on the list the next day and you only add an item if you have fewer than the five. Having this list requires you to single task, to focus. The whole story is here: https://getpocket.com/a/read/1389934087
It is time to Peapod. The larder is empty. I don’t think I can have eggs one more night even with bacon.
I am so very late today as I made my bed, did an errand, called and spoke to my sister as it is her birthday, tried to fix a couple of lamps and started my laundry. Lee, one half of my cleaning couple, came and he fixed both lamps for me as I couldn’t. Come to find out I can fix a split infinitive or a dangling participle but not a lamp.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: chores, cloudy, errands, fix it, hair cut, hot, humid, Hyannis, late, prioritize items, sunny, to do list, traffic
Comments: 4 Comments
November 29, 2015
Well, I did get some names crossed off my list from shopping yesterday. I mostly went to shops in Dennis. They were filled with people. In one small shop the whole crowd walked in a single line counterclockwise as the aisles were so narrow. It was like being on a chain-gang. I figured we all should be singing the Sam Cooke song. Stopping to look made it even worse as it caused a traffic bottleneck. But despite the line, this hearty shopper managed to spend a lot of money there because their stuff was unique. I even found some wonderful stocking stuffers. I would have spent more time roaming except it was too crowded, and I could hear Gracie barking out the car window.
When I got home, I carried in my bags, checked my e-mail then I napped, a long nap. Shopping is fun but exhausting. Today I will do my laundry and call it an industrious day. I will watch the Patriots and hope all their injuries won’t have as giant an impact as we all fear.
The weather has been amazing. Yesterday was 58˚ degrees despite the rain. Today is 42˚, still too warm for the end of November. The sun is shining. It’s a pretty day.
On the first day of December we got to open door one on the Advent calendar. We all took turns otherwise we’d end up fighting about it: his turn, my turn, she did it yesterday sort of squabbling. That drove my mother crazy. Taking turns usually worked though we did argue on who would be first to open a door. I always said I should be as I was the oldest. My sister said she was the youngest so she should open it. Most times it ended up being me. For everything else we did wrong, my mother would pull out the Santa card. She’d remind us there were two lists and nobody wanted to be on the naughty one. Sometimes if we still didn’t stop misbehaving, she’d tell us we each had just lost one present. Santa sees everything. That subdued us for a while.
I once gave my sister a Santa report card to use with my nephew. He’d get gold stars or black stars in the columns underneath things like brushed his teeth, obeyed his parents or cleaned up his toys. My sister when forced to give him a black star would remind him Santa would see his report card because it was going to be left under the tree on Christmas Eve. Usually he’d start to cry and beg her not to it. He’d swear he was going to be good, and most times he was. That report card to Santa was the best motive ever to be nice.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: Advent calendars, being naughty or nice, bottleneck, Dennis, nap, naughty or nice, open the doors, Santa, Santa report card, Shopping, small stores, stocking stuffers, traffic
Comments: 10 Comments
July 2, 2015
The rain was unbelievable yesterday morning. In only ninety minutes we received 2 1/4 inches of rain. Roads were flooded, trees knocked down by lightning and thunder rumbled overhead the whole time, sometimes close, sometimes far way. When the storm ended, the humidity was stifling, but I had to do some errands so I left right away. Everyone else had the same idea. The dump was crowded and cars were bumper to bumper on the main roads. I sat in traffic and observed what was happening, none too patiently. I decided it was easy to determine the start of tourist season. The parking lot, the grassy areas on the other side of the road and any available space at the movie theater is filled on a rainy day. Two light cycles is the average waiting time at any red light. People curse you when you’re already on the rotary after you nearly hit their cars when they jump into rotary traffic. It is obvious the rules of a rotary are foreign to many people. Four way stops? Nope, no etiquette there. We all take turns at the stop signs, but not the man from Connecticut. He went right through a few seconds after the car in front of him. After two cars nearly hit him, they honked, and he looked bewildered. Cars on 6A go slowly and the driver and passengers gawk and swivel their heads from one side to the other. They point. Supermarkets run out of carriages. They are strewn all over the parking lot. Beaches fill by ten. Restaurants serving seafood fill by 6. We have learned to eat dinner at 5. Yesterday my last stop was Agway, a joyful spot, a place totally ignored by tourists.
When I got home and brought everything inside, I was sweating from every pore in my body. My shirt was soaked in the back, and my hair was curling from the humidity. I shut the windows and turned on the AC. I took a shower. a barely warm shower. My feet eventually got cold. That was a delight.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 4 way stops, beaches, dump run, gawking, inches of rain, lightning, rain, rotary traffic, thunder, traffic
Comments: 22 Comments
