We’re still stuck in the mid 80’s, but the day is hazy, cloudy. The breeze is strong at times. I feel subdued. My muse is napping on the couch oblivious to my pleas for help, for inspiration. Last week I mostly stayed home. My most exciting trip was to the dump. How sad!

Henry came in the dog door twice yesterday. He stuck his head in the door, checked around, made some noises, then decided to go it alone. The key, I’ve found, is to wait him out, but I usually give in first as he sounds so plaintive, even abandoned. He knows how to work me.

My mother taught me how to play jacks. I used to get a set of them in my Easter basket and my Christmas stocking. We’d sit on the floor and play. We used to keep track of where we were by calling the steps onesie, twosies, threesies and on from there to tensies. The key was in how you threw the jacks: the higher numbered the turn, the closer the jacks needed to be to each other. I remember the next rounds added different steps. One was clicking the jacks after you picked them up.

We were a game family. Every Christmas we always got new games. We always played both board and card games. My parents taught my brother and me whist when we were young. We had girls’ versus boys’ tournaments. We girls usually won. My favorite game was Sorry. Nothing was better than sending an opponent’s man back to start. We were never sorry. I have the game Go to the Head of the Class, the exact one we used. The board has rows of desks and the desks have colors indicating the type of questions. You move up the board to the head of the class when you answer questions correctly. The questions are different levels of difficulty so we could play with my parents. I loved the names of the pieces like Cowboy Joe, Dimples, Butch and Buttercup. My parents always used the Mommy and Daddy pieces.

The Christmas boxes my mother sent me when I was in Ghana always had a game or two in them. We played Password so many times we knew all the words on all the cards. We competed in paddle ball every night after dinner. You know the one, the wooden paddle with the red rubber ball on an elastic. We were devastated when the elastic broke. We played word games with pen and paper. We entertained ourselves.

The day is a pretty one again, but it is also a hot one again. We are in the mid to high 80’s every day. The dogs pant. Their morning naps are now on the cool tile of the kitchen floor, quite the change for my couch dogs. Despite the heat I did go to the dump yesterday. That means today I can loll. I have become quite adept at lolling.

I lived in a hot country. It was especially hot during the dry season, but I abided the heat. It was expected. Here, I grouse when it is this hot. I even grouse out loud though there is no one to hear me. The weather report predicts this same weather will hang around all week. I’ll get even more dramatic. I’ll swoon on the couch overcome by the vapors.

When I was a kid, I lived in a dark house. My mother pulled down every shade to keep the sun at bay. My sisters ran through the sprinkler. They laid out towels on the lawn as if they were at the pool or the beach. The sprinkler water was cold so they screamed and laughed. I sometimes went to the pool, but it was at the other end of town. I always got hot walking home. Sleeping was difficult. The upstairs never cooled down. I tossed and turned before I finally fell sleep. It took a while.

Every now and then I’d sleep outside with my friend in her backyard. It had a fence on the backside of the grass separating it from the big, white house on the street behind it, on Green Street. Close to the fence on the other side were pear trees. We’d eat the fallen pears. They were always hard. We’d put my father’s old, stiff tarp on the grass and sleep on top of it. I’d bring my sheet and pillow. I remember lying on my back looking at the sky filled with stars. They brightened the night. They cut through the darkness. Their light made shadows on the grass. I could see the old man in the moon. He was always smiling. Those were magical nights.