My life, of late, has been mostly routine. The weather hasn’t changed in the last few days. We still have sun and a blue sky. It is 50° and will stay 50° all day. I have been a sloth wearing my cozies most days, reading and eating bonbons, but yesterday I did a few chores. My sloth screamed. I started putting my winter clothes away. My bedroom is in disarray. Folded winter clothes destined for bins are on chairs. I just have to substitute winter for summer in the bins. Today I started cleaning my dining room. I’ll finish that and the living room. I’ll also water the plants. I’m thinking I already need a nap.

My dance card for the week is uke heavy. Today is practice, tomorrow is my lesson and a concert and another concert on Thursday. The big concert is Saturday at Margaritaville in Hyannis for the Parrot Head Convention. I’ll use my Hawaiian uke and wear my favorite Hawaiian shirt.

I am a collector. I define that as three or more similar items. I have lanterns, baskets, decorations, glassware, special Christmas ornaments, commemorative tee-shirts, cake decorations and, one of my favorites, cook books with recipes from literature. I have too much from Ghana to list, but I think of them as memories, treasures.

When I bought my house, my parents came down to see it. My mother brought some of my childhood memories with her. One is a wooden chair. My grandmother’s brother made it for me when I was around three. It has been painted white. It has survived all of us. Yellow ceramic chickens from Fannie Farmer always held soft boiled eggs. My mother would cook the eggs, put them in egg cups and slice off the tops of the eggs. She’d served them with toast cut to fit the eggs. It was one of my favorite breakfasts. She brought down a few of the chicken and rooster cups. A couple have no beaks. They are on the window sill in the kitchen. I still use them. My mother brought my childhood books. Many were gifts while others I bought with my fifty cent allowance, leaving me a penny. Those were mostly girl detective books like Trixie Belden and Donna Parker. The classics too were in the pile, books like Heidi, Treasure Island, Black Beauty and Zorro. I bought a bookcase just for those books.

One of my siblings, who shall remain unnamed, lacks sentiment. The treasures my mother brought down were junk. I didn’t bother to explain. They are way beyond my sibling’s ken.

It is another delightful day, warm in the mid 50’s. The blue sky is striking. The sun is bright. I stood outside on the deck for a while. The dogs were running in the yard. Nala took the lead. I noticed how much trash was in the yard and decided to take my prisoner stick and clean up. I picked up all sorts of trash, compliments of Nala. She had one bread wrapper in her mouth and teased me with it. I filled a bag with trash.

When I was a kid, I remember the trash truck. It was loud. Two trash men hung off the back holding on to their barrels, big plastic, filthy barrels with one hand while holding on to the truck with the other. They’d fill the barrels with trash from the sidewalk barrels then empty the trash into the back of the truck. From the top of the back a presser would slowly drop to the trash and crush it. That was my favorite part.

Yesterday I went to the dump. When I was pressing down the trash in a bag before I left, I slashed my finger, a thumb, on what I figured was the lid from a can. It bled a lot.

My mother colored better than any of us. She could shade the colors so that one crayon was many colors. I was a bit jealous. My colors were always bright, never muted. I got new boxes of crayons every Christmas and most Easters. The number of crayons varied. One box even had a crayon tip sharpener. It looked a lot like a pencil sharpener. We almost never threw a crayon away. The pieces went into a cigar box. The problem was we ripped off the color descriptions when we sharpened. The nuances disappeared. Brick red was just red. Burnt orange was just orange.

I have some boxes I never opened. They are special boxes. One is the last box with some colors soon to be discontinued. Another is a Crayola anniversary box. The last box my mother put in my Christmas stocking has 96 colors and a sharpener. I still have it. Last Christmas my sister gave me a coloring book and crayons. The title of the coloring book is My Coloring Book, Ghana. It has cute animals, African masks, a map of Ghana divided into regions and the Ghanaian flag. On the opposite side of the drawing is place to write the date of completion. On the back cover it says, “For children under 8.”