Posted tagged ‘warm day’
December 24, 2014
It’s raining, and it’s 50˚, but none of that matters. It’s Christmas Eve. When I was a kid, it was the longest day of the year. The clock never seemed to move. I remember begging my mother to let me go to bed around six or seven. Tired had nothing to do with it. I was filled with anticipation, and I remember believing sleeping the night away was the quickest way to get to morning and to Santa’s surprises. It, of course, was always the one night I could never get to sleep. I remember having conversations with my brother down the hall while both of us were still in bed in our own rooms. Periodically my mother would yell up the stairs for us to stop talking so we could go to sleep. I used to wonder why she didn’t realize sleep was far away on Christmas Eve. Hers was a silly request.
Every year my mother put a few presents under the tree. Every year my sister Moe poked tiny holes in each present to see what was there. It was during these hole poking days she developed an aptitude for guessing exactly what each wrapped present was. Holes were no longer necessary. One Christmas is legendary. She was going to a Christmas party with Rod, my brother-in-law, and had nothing to wear. She felt a few presents from my parents and found her outfit, felt a few more and found new earrings to match her dress. She called to thank my mother who then became the tale bearer of my sister’s latest Christmas miracle.
We could open one present on Christmas Eve, but we never got to pick the present. We always had to open the pajamas. New pajamas were part of our Christmas tradition.
I can still see the tree at 16 Washington Ave. in its usual corner with the wrapped gifts underneath, the ones from my parents and grandparents, the ones with the tiny holes. The lights in the windows seemed especially brilliant on Christmas Eve. TV Santa, the one from New Hampshire we watched every afternoon, wished us a Merry Christmas, waved and left for his big adventure around the world. We hung our stockings on the railing going upstairs. We had no chimney. We watched a Christmas show or two on TV then we went to bed. Eons later we all fell asleep.
Today is still all about tradition. This morning I opened number 24 on my Advent calendar. It is the crèche scene, the same as it always is. This afternoon I will work on tomorrow’s dinner, and tonight my friends and I will build gingerbread houses, eat some appies and have a drink or two. That’s one of our favorite Christmas traditions.
Happy Christmas Eve! I hope you’re all on the good list.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas Eve, gingerbread houses, guessing wrapped gifts, hanging stockings, lights in the windows, new pajamas, open one present, poking holes in presents, rainy day, tradition, TV Santa, warm day, wrapped presents
Comments: 14 Comments
December 16, 2014
Today is warm even without the sun. I woke up early, around 5:30. Though I tried to go back to sleep, I couldn’t so I came downstairs, brewed my coffee and checked out the TV news. I heard the thud of the papers hitting the driveway a little later and wandered outside still surprised at how warm a day it is.
This morning I have to bring goodies to the library’s Christmas open house and I have PT at 11. After that I get to decorate my tree. It is not as tall as usual but is beautiful and fresh. I ran my hand up and down the needles just for the pine smell. The tree is sitting in the middle of my living room all ready for the lights.
One snippet in the paper caught my attention. Yesterday the police arrested a drunk driver on the highway. He was also cited for an unsafe car. It seems he was riding on three tires and a rim. When asked about it, the driver said he hadn’t noticed.
Every Christmas Eve my mother and I were always the last to go to bed. We’d sit, have a drink and chat and exchange one present, one special present. One year my present to her was a replica of a framed picture which used to hang in the bathroom when I was young. It had a small boy wrapped in a blue towel and a poem with started, “Please remember, don’t forget never leave the bathroom wet nor leave the soap still in the water…” It was hung on the wall across from the toilet, and I used to read it every time I went to the bathroom, and it is permanently etch into my memory drawers. We saw it in a house in Ireland, and my mother tried to buy it but wasn’t successful. I found the replica on-line. She loved it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas Eve, Christmas tree, don't forget, newspapers, Please remember, special present, three tires and a rim, TV news, warm day
Comments: 10 Comments
December 1, 2014
You might wonder where I have been all day. It is quite a story. The guys came to put up the lights. First thing was they broke the floodlight by dropping it on the floor in the hall. They couldn’t find the dustpan, but I was assured they had cleaned up the shards without it. I was skeptical for good reason as later I found several pieces, and I also found the dustpan they couldn’t. It was on the stairs, and they went right by it several times. The next problem was an order I had placed on-line with Amazon. I love Amazon and have bought many items from them, and this is the first glitch. Yesterday they verified my order by e-mail. Today I found another e-mail from Macy’s that they had sent my order. I hadn’t ordered from them. They were sending similar items, not quite the same and not the right number and the cost was higher. I called Amazon. They are flummoxed. The man I spoke to for a long time said that order was not given to Macy’s and is coming directly from Amazon. All the information I had given Amazon was there. The guy thought it could be a scam, and I have a virus. The e-mail was not a scam, and I explained about my MAC, but the tech guy just couldn’t figure out why the Macy’s order and wanted me to run a virus scan. I had to download Norton and am running it now, but there won’t be a virus. Amazon is on this as they haven’t ever seen anything like it before. They told me to have my sister, the recipient of the order, refuse the Macy’s order. I had an another problem with a different company but that was far more easily solved. I’m exhausted and I haven’t done a darn thing.
Today is beautifully warm with muted sun. I’ve been on the deck a couple of times just to enjoy the day and will go out again to fill the feeders. Gracie has been outside a good part of the day. She didn’t even take her morning nap.
I am so excited my Christmas lights will be lit tonight. I’ll go outside just to admire the house. Later I’ll bring up the dining room tree, the scraggly scrub pine I always put in the corner and decorate with vintage ornaments. The house will be a multi-day task, a few things at a time. I get excited when this time of year rolls around. Like so much of my family I am a Christmas bug as my mother used to say. We all caught it from her, and we’ll all glad we did.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Amazon, broker bulbs, Christmas lights, on-line shopping problems, outside lights', warm day
Comments: 10 Comments
November 24, 2014
Last night or rather early his morning, at 1:30, I sent Gracie outside and went with her. I stood on the deck a long while taking in the quiet of the night and watching Gracie wander around the yard. It was so warm I didn’t want to come inside fearful that winter would sneak back while I was sleeping. It didn’t. Today is rainy and dark, but it is still warm.
This morning I was ten again. I turned on Cozi Tv and watched The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger and The Roy Rogers Show. The Cisco Kid was resplendent in a black shirt with gold designs on the front and back. His cowboy hat was a sombrero. Pancho, his sidekick and comic foil, was more than I remembered. He was quick to draw to save Cisco and was silly but not stupid. He too was Mexican in dress and was wearing a brown billowy shirt and a sombrero. Spanish was thrown in here and there. Adios amigos was the last line as they rode out of sight. Tonto may have mangled English as a 1950’s stereotypical Indian, but he was smart and knew what needed to be done. His stunt double and he did not at all resemble each other. I wondered if I noticed that when I was little. I got a chuckle out of the discussion between Tonto and the Lone Ranger. Tonto wanted to know why the man was wearing perfume. The Lone Ranger explained it wasn’t perfume but cologne, perfume for men. I figured Tonto was right. Anyway, that would be the clue which later solved the murder of the government man.
Dale and Roy had a hit with the song The Bible Told Me So. That should have warned me. Dale talked to one of the characters about how right it was to put your faith in God and how wonderful it was to attend Sunday school. I forgot how much they proselytized. I only remembered Roy was a natty dresser.
In all three westerns fist fights never resulted in bloody noses, split knuckles or hats falling off into the dirt. It was easy to root for the white hatted hero, never the black hatted bad guy who was doomed to lose anyway.
I enjoyed my step back in time.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Cisco Kid, Cozi TV, Lone Ranger, rainy, Tonto, warm day
Comments: 10 Comments
November 23, 2014
Such a lovely day it is today, a gift after the cold and before the rain. I ventured out on the deck for a bit to enjoy the warmth. A small breeze was blowing the hanging leaves together, and I imagined unseen spirits walking in the yard on the bed of crisp, brown leaves. Gracie stood beside me and surveyed her kingdom. Though she was ever alert, nothing caught her eye and we both came inside together.
I have been watching the Hallmark Christmas movies. I joke and say I’ll have to be more cautious about my sugar intake, but I am such a sucker for happy endings.
The other night my headlights shined on a small cat in the middle of the road. I stopped. She gave my car a quick look, saw she was safe and returned to the task at hand. She was chasing a mouse. I could see both of them in the light. The mouse went only so far before the cat pounced and dragged it back. They did that again and again. At one point I could see the tail of the mouse hanging from the cat’s mouth then the mouse was back on the ground running. I decided to do a u-turn so the cat warily watched the car moving losing track of the mouse but only for a bit. Once she realized I wasn’t going her way, the hunt was back on and the cat chased the mouse into the underbrush. That was the last I saw of both of them.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cat and mouse game, Christmas movies, crunchy leaves, Hallmark Channel, headlights, warm day
Comments: 16 Comments
October 16, 2014
Last night it rained and today it is supposed to rain again, heavily. The sun is popping in and out of the clouds. The temperatures of the last couple of days have been in the 70’s with mild nights in the 60’s. My windows are opened and the front door still has its screen. Gracie sits there and looks out for the longest time. I wonder what keeps her interest as my street is a quiet one. I stand with her every now and then just to keep her company.
All my life I have had morning rituals. During my childhood the weekday mornings were always the same. Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, do teeth then walk to school. For breakfast I always drank cocoa. My mother gave us toast and eggs and in the winter we had oatmeal, the sort which always has lumps. When I was in high school, I had to get up earlier and getting the bus was added to the ritual. In college, I grabbed breakfast on the way out, and every morning my friends and I would sit together in the canteen, drink coffee and race each other in finishing the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. Usually we worked in teams of two. When I was in Ghana, I had the same thing every morning: horrible coffee, two fried eggs and toast. The eggs were cooked in peanut oil, and they were the best fried eggs I ever had. If I had a break in classes, I’d walk to my house and have another cup of coffee and sit on the porch to drink it. Breakfast never varied. I had margarine on my toast as butter was imported and not in my budget. I’d sometimes add groundnut paste, the Ghanaian version of thick, thick peanut butter which needed to be mixed with peanut oil to make it spreadable. The Ghanaians used it as a soup base. Those mornings in Ghana were amazing, every single day.
When I started teaching, I got up 5, had two cups of coffee, read as much of the paper as I could, got dressed and left for school at 6:20. On the way to school, I’d stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a medium coffee. I did that every weekday until I retired.
In retirement I haven’t changed much though now I get up whenever. I feed the cats, fill the water dish, fill the dog’s dry food dish, let the dog out, put the coffee on and get the papers in the driveway. Sometimes I have toast and sometimes I have a bagel but mostly I just have coffee, usually two cups, one with each paper. I take my time reading the papers. I then check my e-mail and finally start writing Coffee.
I think of my mornings as ritual, as almost sacred.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad coffee, breakfast, Eggs, fried eggs, Ghana, Ghanaian mornings, groundnut paste, margarine, morning paper, morning ritual, oatmeal, rain, rituals, Toast, up at 5, warm day
Comments: 6 Comments
October 12, 2014
The sun is back and 70˚ will be here by Tuesday. This is such a weird time of year, one which can’t quite figure out what season it is. Am I still fall or late summer or early winter? My heat went on this morning. It was set for 65˚ so the house must have been quite chilly, slippers and sweatshirt weather. We did go to the dump yesterday in the rain, Gracie and I. There were three cars counting mine. It was a brilliant move on my part. Today will be filled with cars parked hither and yon and people wondering why they didn’t go yesterday in the rain.
I got an e-mail about my 50th high school reunion next year. I was eleven when I graduated. Okay, I’m lying. Anyway, there was a bland questionnaire which even asked about pets. There was a list of deceased classmates, nine of them, but I know it is incomplete as a name I remember is missing. He was struck by lightning. One of the questions was favorite memories. I remembered my English classroom which had two doors, one in the front and one in the back near where I sat. When Mrs. Baker, called Ma Baker by us, was facing the board I used to sneak out the back door. I’d wander a bit or head for the library. When I figured I was gone long enough, I’d sneak back in. Once I wanted my friend to sneak out with me. She was afraid of being caught, but I cajoled and convinced her. I went first then signaled when she should follow. We didn’t get caught. I always wondered how Ma Baker never noticed two empty seats attached to desks with books.
My friend Marie, who has been my friend since I was ten, claims I have always gotten away with everything. She’s right. The key was to step confidently over the line in plain sight. Sometimes I’d say, “Watch this,” and over the line I’d go. The adult, right there with me, never said a word, never castigated me for line stepping. I think it had to do with me being the least likely to step over the line. I never caused any trouble or sassed anyone, was smart in school and generally did what I was told so whatever I did was never suspect. Even now it drives Maria crazy because she always got caught. I still laugh and make fun of her. That too drives her crazy.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 50th high school reunion, Ma Baker, nice day, sneaking back inside class, sneaking out of class, stepping over the line, the dump, warm day, what season?
Comments: 8 Comments
October 7, 2014
Today is the best of fall with a warm breeze, a sunlit light blue sky and scattered clouds for contrast. The temperature should reach 70˚. It is a day to be out and about. I have a couple of errands including getting Miss Gracie’s nails trimmed, and she’ll be glad for the ride. I’ll also take her with me to the library as I can park the car in the shade. After that, she’ll stay home while I finish the rest of my list. It won’t take long.
When I was a kid, old people had a particular style of dress. I never once saw my grandmothers wearing pants. They both wore flowery house dresses lacking any particular style. They always wore hosiery though one grandmother used to roll hers down to her ankles. She mostly wore slippers with the backs flattened by her feet. In the kitchen, both always wore full aprons, the ones with bibs. Those too were flowery, and the flowers were always small. One grandmother was very tall and the other was very short, under five feet. The tall grandmother stooped. I always guessed it was because my grandfather was much shorter than she was. When I watched All in the Family, Edith reminded me of that tall grandmother.
My grandfathers mostly wore suits. They each wore a topcoat in the winter and a fedora every season. One grandfather always wore white shirts, even around the house. He was my mother’s father, and every year for Christmas some of his gifts from her were white shirts. Once in a while my other grandfather wore casual clothes, mostly when he did yard work. I remember his maroon jacket with a gold zipper. It was worn only in the yard, not in public. Later, after my grandfather had passed away, my father wore that jacket. He didn’t mind wearing it in public. I have a picture in my mind’s eye of my dad wearing it while he was standing next to a pile of burning leaves.
I am glad there is no longer an older lady’s dress code though I do admit two of the dresses I have are flowery.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful fall day, fedoras, flowery dresses, full aprons, hosiery, house dresses, slippers, suits, sunny day, top coats, warm day
Comments: 12 Comments
September 27, 2014
Yippee! It is a deck day, warm and lovely. Summer just isn’t ready to leave yet, and I’m glad. Both doors are open and the air smells like cut grass. Early this morning it smelled like the ocean.
When I went to get the papers this morning, I noticed yellow leaves on the bush across the street and red leaves on my burning bush by the driveway. It seems fall is making its presence known a bit at a time.
The best part of being a kid was taking delight in so many things. I mostly remember being happy. Many adults see the world through darker glasses and have learned to be cynical and sometimes distrustful. A kid is wide-eyed. Snow is a joy not an inconvenience. Rain means puddles to run through. Grass is soft and cool and lying on it gives the best view of the summer’s night sky. A bicycle takes us away. A nickel is a king’s ransom, a treasure. Finding a bottle is another nickel, another treasure.
Being a teenager was a lot of work. I had to endure those horrific rollers in my hair, sometimes even overnight. The right clothes and shoes were a necessity. Boys got important. I seldom noticed the weather except for rain. It ruined my hair. School meant hours of homework. I did have fun with my friends and I was out most weekends, but the future was always looming.
College was work but it was fun. We partied a lot. Some weekends passed in a daze. I was far too busy with classes and weekends to notice much about the world. I had choices to make my senior year. I chose the Peace Corps, and I am forever thankful for that. All of a sudden it was a new world and I was wide-eyed again. I stopped and looked and slept outside under a billion stars. I was a little kid again.
I still stop and notice. Once relearned, it isn’t ever forgotten.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a bit of summer, being a kid, Burning bush, college, cut grass, high school, Peace Corps, rollers, smell of the ocean, teenagers, the joys of life, warm day, wide-eyed
Comments: 8 Comments
September 26, 2014
The rain fell for most of the night, but it wasn’t nearly enough to wash away the drought. The sky is still cloudy and the day is dark though the sun is supposed to make an entrance later, hang around for a while and give tomorrow some summer warmth. I’m thinking it may be warm enough for the last movie on the deck night.
When I was a kid, I was not a girly girl. My sisters were. They played with dolls, wore dresses with pouffy slips underneath and loved hats and patent leather shoes. I didn’t. I wore skirts and blouses when I was forced to get dressed-up and had to wear them to school and church. Slacks and sometimes sweaters were my weekends and after school ensembles. I went through the wearing the cardigan backwards fashion craze. I suppose that made me a bit stylish or at least current. I remember stretch slacks with the loops on the bottoms for your feet. They were popular for a while, and I got a pair for Christmas one year. I also got a pink fuzzy sweater the same year. They too were popular. I loved that outfit and wore it until the fuzz disappeared.
I don’t get dressed up much any more. I wear nice pants and blouses or shirts when I go out. If it is somewhere special, I pull out one of my three dresses. Because my entire professional career was spent in dresses or skirts, I figure I’m entitled to wear what I want. I do make sure everything complements each other so I’m never messy or odd, just comfortable.
I think there is magic age where you can mix and match whatever you want. That black and white striped shirt is just fine with the yellow plaid capri pants, the blue ankle socks and the white sneakers with velcro. You just have to be old enough to pull it off.
Categories: Musings
Tags: backwards cardigans, cloudy, comfortable, dark, deck movie, Dresses, fuzzy sweaters, looped pants, patent rather shoes, pouffy slips, rain, skirts, sun, warm day
Comments: 8 Comments
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