PoemADay-May24 #3 No restaurant like home

 

My May 3rd poem

NO RESTAURANT LIKE HOME

Whole wheat and rolled oats with flax, 

golden in the hot pan

cook one side then add to the top:

Red red raspberries, crunchy chopped walnuts.

Add remaining batter on top. Wait.

Wait some more. Flip. Wait. Then Flip some more.

When you think it might finally be cooked inside

Cut it in half and look.  Make sure!

Get out the maple stuff.

Pour the coffee.

Be grateful. 

Know how improbably lucky it is to have a meal at all.

PoemADay-May24 #2 Shake, Rattle and Groan

Not sure I like this poem.So rest assured it will change. The picture though, is a weird little sculpture I made decades ago. It's of polymer clay, painted and dressed in a doll wig. Title: The British Invasion -50 years later.

My May 2 Poem:

SHAKE RATTLE & GROAN 

Dodgy old rocker's burning with fever

back pain, disc flips, muscle relaxers, pain relievers, 

Flu  bunions, Reluctant hips and knees,

 ill-fitting dentures Vertigo, allergies, 

Swollen eyelids, reflux with fries

The “golden” years?  Marketing lies!

PoemADay-May24 #1 The Hiding Habit

Well, I missed out on Poem a Day in April, National Poetry Month,  so right here in my own weird little blog - I'm going to post a poem a day for May. Although it's a beautiful month - it's been a very sad one as both my parents died in May.  Below is my response to sadness I guess. I used this picture as my poetry prompt. My response is really kind of sketch and what is here might change over time. 

When this photo was taken, the windows were wide open and there was a crew of roofers working on the block  After a while I noticed my three cats were missing. I hunted under and behind everything until I found them. They were  lined up in a straight row in the narrows behind a dresser, hiding from all the noise. Glad I had the camera nearby, as I could never get them to line up like that for a photo.

My May 1st Poem:

THE HIDING HABIT

When the world shouts obscenities

and the winds of change roar in the trees,
move low to the ground to the hiding place.

When fear is strong, pay attention.
Sit in stillness, in silence and listen.
Wait. Think. You don't have to move yet.

Pay attention. 

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Purr to comfort yourself.

When there is something you must do,

flash into view and do it.

When quiet evening comes again - emerge. 

Look around. Sniff the air .Stretch. 

You are still here! Pay attention. 

The apple's proximity to the tree

The apple and the tree: seeds of secular liberalism planted by parental example?

The Parent As A Child

Planted pinks on the parent’s graves last week. Both died in May, 30 plus years apart.  Usually I go with geraniums. Couldn't find any. Too early, or out of fashion, I guess.  

This post is about Mom, who died just shy of 87 years old. She was a life long Republican, but oddly, something of a social liberal who leaned left as she aged, who admired Hillary Clinton.

For 25 years Mom worked as what they now call an "admin" at a state police troop and then when they moved that troop out of town, she worked for a few years at a second one that was closer. She was a discrete and loyal an employee as they could hope, never spoke about work things at home. There was a little hint once.  

While working at the barracks she got a call for jury duty, Years afterwards she said the case involved a motorcycle accident and she relayed a few of the jury selection questions. Had she ever ridden a motorcycle or knew anyone who had? Why yes, her husband. Before they married they rode around on an old Indian machine until they were hit by a car.  Hmm. Because of her job, they asked another question.  Would she always take the word of a police officer over anyone else's?  That would depend, Mom said, on which police officer.  She was dismissed, not sure which side objected.

 Mom had a regular New Years Day Open house and invited relatives, friends and associates from work to stop by. Among the annual attendees was a police dispatcher named Minnie who was usually the only black face in the crowd. Minnie commented on this each year, and she was pretty comedic about it.  To help us see it from her point of view, Minnie invited Mom to a summer barbecue at her house in Bridgeport where Mom would be the only white face in the crowd. Mom agreed to go and asked me to drive.  We were indeed a minority of two. And we were treated  as all Minnie's friends and kin were treated: with mint ice tea and welcoming smiles.  We stayed all afternoon and went away slightly changed.  

It wasn't the first time Mom surprised me. Years before there had been a gay member of the police auxiliary who invited folks from the barracks over to his house for lunch. This was many years ago, another time really and not one of the officers  agreed to go, so the boss asked Mom and the troops only police woman to go. On the day, even the police woman backed out. Unwilling to be so rude, Mom went to his luncheon by herself. 

I was in my early 20s maybe - and I'm afraid I didn't even know what gay was at the time..  She explained without fuss or judgement, very matter-of-factly that it was when certain men liked other men instead of girls, that this man lived with a male friend, and it was like they were married.  She said he was a lovely man, lunch was very nice and she was sad for her host that no one else went. 

There was another thing as well - Mom never voluntarily went to church unless there was a wedding or funeral involved.

I asked her about this several times over the years. She always told me she didn't know what she believed. In later years I pressed her and she said she didn't know if she could know if there were a god or not. Maybe there was maybe there wasn't.  Yet she told me didn't want to fight about it or even think much about it. If someone said 'pray for me,'  she would nod sympathetically.  She would never tell them. And now that she is gone, none of them really believe me. Oh well.

I'm AWAKE and WATCHING YOU WORLD!

 

I haven't posted in a while. After the events/ insurrection of Jan 6, which happened the very next day after my Goodbye 45 poem posted - I was horrified and speechless. 

After a few heat pump posts, and a lot of silence,  I’ve been thinking - that I’d like to make a post here every day until my death. According to actuarial tables that’s a while. I could get annoying if anyone actually read these and if I actually follow through! 

Nonetheless - I’m going to start on May 1st and post A May 2024 Poem-A-Day…

I declare this blog open and active again!

3 Month review of the heat pump

 

It's New Years Eve and I've now had three months of electric bills with the heat pump. Remember I'm heating around 950 square feet with a Fujitsu Halcyon- an 18,000 BTU mini-split for cold climates.

So I'm going to offer my last three months of electric bills.  My normal electric bill is around $50. (I don't use much juice I guess. No large TV or stereo, no cable modem or TV controller, I never use the stove - i'm a microwave, rice-cooker person.)  So I'm figuring any amount in excess of $50, we can chalk up to the heat pump.

The first month hardly counts as it was early fall: the bill for September,-October, (mostly milder weather this year) was $67. I ran the thing constantly as the advice was to set it and forget it so that's what I did.... So $17 for a little heat.

For October-November, a colder time at the end, my bill was $102.  So $52 for heat. Not bad.

November-December had some really cold spells. My bill was $202. So $152 for heat. I would have had an oil delivery by now. So $152 compared to $400-$945 for a load of #2 heating oil, depending on the price of oil.  

UPDATE: Feb 6, 2023 - I now have the Dec-Jan bill also a bit higher but still better than a tank of oil - $272 minus the baseline $50 so $222 for heat. 

(I have water filled heat pipes in three rooms not heated by the mini-split. If temps are freezing, say in the teens for several days straight - I am sporadically running a electric space heater on low in two rooms to keep those rooms about 50  degrees. The cost of running them is included in the electric bill.  For three days when temps were in the single digits, I ran the furnace over night - for just for three days to warm up that unused space so the pipes don't freeze. 

So far so good. I still have most of the oil delivered here in March at an exorbitant price. (I have hot water off the furnace. Dont use much of that either I guess!)  The electric company will up rates in January. We'll see how that pans out. :)

Heat Pumps - a gentle, steady warmth

An air-to-air, ductless minisplit heat pump is a kind of sneaky device. 

It works very quietly extracting little bits of heat from the cold air outside and adding them to the inside air.  And quietly, gradually, without out fanfare or glare or anything burning or glowing - your house is warm - and it stays warm too.  All at 3 times the efficiency of "resistance" heaters.

Conventional thought says you pull your chair up to a heater, warm your hands on it.  But new-fangled air-to-air heat pumps really aren't like that. At any given moment the indoor fan might be pushing out a sort of lukewarm air, occasionally warmer - but nothing like a wood stove or an infared heater. Yet your home is quietly warm. Very strange.

Pictured above at right, is the outside unit - a Fujitsu Halcyon Inverter installed a month ago. This heat pump installation is designed to heat the areas I actually live in - a core area of bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room. And as it gets colder its proving its worth. I'm waiting for the first month's electric bill. (This time last year I was heating with electric space heaters instead of using the furnace.) 

And I will be quite happy not to buy more #2 heating oil for a while.  Instead of six tankfuls a season I'm hoping the full tank I have (delivered in MARCH when I didnt need it and when prices were skyhigh) will last a lot longer. I  will not turn on the regular heat until it's really frigid outside, to keep the pipes in the unused rooms here from freezing....