Even though it is 60°, I’m wearing a sweatshirt and socks. The house is so cold the butter hardened. The day is quite ugly. The sky is filled with clouds. It is an inside day.

I can hear a lawnmower disturbing the morning. A few cars went up my street. Somebody walked by the house. Henry barked. He always barks.

When I worked, Saturday was my chore day. I changed the bed and cleaned the house. I grocery shopped. Some Saturday nights I’d get together with friends. We’d eat and play games. Saturday has always been my favorite day.

When I was a kid, Saturday was the day to do whatever I wanted. On warm days I’d ride around. I never really had a destination. I’d ride by myself. None of my neighborhood friends were big on bike rides. My closest neighborhood friend didn’t even have a bike. I couldn’t imagine life without my bike, without the freedom of the ride. Nothing came close to the sound and feel of the wind as I rode down a hill as fast as I could. I’d take my feet off the pedals and hold my legs out. I’d let the hill propel me. It was as close as I came to flying.

I don’t like plain black licorice. I do like black jelly beans, Good and Plenty and black Necco Wafers. I used to buy a box of Good and Plenty for a nickel at the movie theater. Sometimes the pieces were stale. The outsides cracked when I bit them. I didn’t really mind, mostly because I had low standards. Candy is good almost no matter what. Besides, the stale pieces lasted longer than the fresh ones did. They were a workout for my jaw.

I remember eating TV dinners. They were a treat. The dinners came on aluminum foil divided sort of dishes and were baked. I remember chicken, mashed potatoes, peas and a cherry dessert. The package had a picture of the dinner on the front which looked delicious. The only thing I was keen about was the hot pie desserts.

The bookcase in my bedroom goes from side to side on one wall. It is plain wood. A friend build it maybe forty years or so ago. On it I keep, beside books, some treasures. The only Barbie doll I own is on the top shelf. Barbies came after my childhood. This one is a Ghanaian Barbie wearing Kente cloth, the handwoven cloth from Ghana. There are nostalgic pieces on the shelves like small plastic Howdy Doody, Mr. Bluster and Dilly Dally toys. A stuffed Mikey Mouse is there as are a few small tin toys. That filled bookcase is my of my favorite pieces of furniture because of those treasures and memories it holds.

I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but it has been one of those mornings. The pine pollen has started. It covers my windshield and most of my car; consequently, I am wheezing and having trouble breathing. I guess, though, that too has a weird sort of upside. If I do anything requiring exertion, I have to stop to breathe. I figure I’ll just have to relax for most of the day except I do need to put bags in the trunk, but for that I’ll use my carriage, the one for hauling all my uke stuff. My nose is permanently clogged. I should probably carry a handkerchief in my back pocket the way my father did or stuffed up the cuff of my sleeve the way the nuns did.

Henry has a vet appointment for Tuesday to check the reason for his limp and to get the medication for his eye allergy.

We are back to needing sweatshirts. The high today will be 59° while the low will be 50°. The sky is mostly cloudy but a glint of sun is managing to break through.

When I was a kid, my dog was Duke, a boxer. He gave me a love for boxers which has never diminished. Henry is my first non-boxer, but the tradition continues with Nala. Duke was scrabby and stubborn. He was also protective and loving. Nobody would have dared mess with us if Duke was with us. The house down the street had a dog Duke hated. They went after each other when they could. The dog was bigger than Duke who was small, the runt of his litter. One fight was horrendous. Duke got the worst of it. His neck was torn. My mother wanted him taken to the vet. My father said Duke would take care of it, licking it and cleaning it. That was when my father was away working all week so while he was gone, my mother took Duke to the vet where he got medication against infection and his wound cleaned. He got small stitches below his neck. You could’t see them. When my father got home, he mentioned how great the wound looked, how well Duke had done. My mother said nothing.

When I was growing up, I believed most things I was told. My mother had her admonitions about blindness, balls of stomach gum, giant knuckles and death from drowning, and I never questioned her. The nuns too had their warnings about sin and hell so I stayed on the straight and narrow rather than risk the devil and eternal hellfire.

My weekend dance card is empty except for a dump run. I figure I’ll go on Sunday as sort of paying homage to my father.