When I asked Alexa the weather around 2 this morning, she told me the rain would start in 11 minutes. She was off by only a few minutes. The rain started quietly. It was still raining, a little more heavily than last night, when I woke up this morning but has since stopped. It is a damp, cloudy 72°.

Sunday has never been my favorite day. When I was a kid, I was stuck. I had to go to mass then hang around the house until Sunday dinner and then maybe, after dinner, travel to my grandparents’ house. With school the next day, I had to go to bed early. I never understood that. Every other weekday night my bedtime was later. I guess my mother figured my routine had been disrupted by later to bed Friday and Saturday nights so I needed to be retrained. Sunday was a ruin of a day.

In grammar school, I had nuns every other grade except both sixth and seventh when I had regular people both years. I had some really good teachers and a couple of bad. My first grade teacher, Sister Redempta, was scary. Nobody talked and nobody moved without permission. Everything was regimented. My classroom was on the first floor of the old school. The room had two doors, giant windows and a cloakroom right outside the classroom. There were so many of us desks filled every available space. You had to walk sideways up and down the aisles. We moved row by row to form a line when we went anywhere like to the bathrooms down in the cellar area, or to the schoolyard for recess or to the cloakroom at the end of the day. Nuns seemed to embrace the line as the best mode of movement.

My eighth grade teacher, Sister Hildegard, was the worst. She was also the oldest, too old for eighth graders. We ran amok. One kid, whose name I think was Luke, used to spill milk in the waste basket, show Sister Hildegard and volunteer to wash the basket. Out he’d go with the sabotaged basket. He’d be gone for an hour. Sister Hildegard never noticed how long it took or that it happened sometimes three times a week. I admit I also took advantage. I’d hide my lunch then leave for lunch. I’d arrive back late. Other times I’d ask permission to leave early telling her I needed to go to the library. She always let me go.

She hated all of us. She told outlandish stories, sort of a nun’s version of Aesop fables. I remember she told us about a couple of kids who skipped out of mass and both were hit by a train. Another story was about a girl who was not a Catholic who stuck her tongue out at the Blessed Sacrament. Her tongue stayed stuck out until she converted. Sister Hildegard told us she was going to write one message on the blackboard in the largest letters she could when we graduated, “Thank God they are gone.”

The rain has finally stopped, but the day is still cloudy and dark. Everything is wet, even my kitchen floor has muddy dog prints. The dogs, meanwhile, are on the couch enjoying their morning nap. They are exhausted after having been awake for an hour and a half. Speaking of dogs, I think Nala has been up to her old tricks. I noticed a mouse had taken up residence in the kitchen. I put down the mouse hotel and kept checking. I caught and relocated said mouse. I reset the hotel and kept checking. On day three the hotel had disappeared; the whole thing was gone. The choices were limited. Either several burly mice had moved it across the kitchen floor and hidden it in another room or a yet to be named culprit saw the mouse in the hotel and carried the whole thing outside. I lean toward the last guess, but the rain has kept me from checking the yard.

When I was a kid, I filled most summer days. I was always busy. The only stop was for lunch, either I went home or ate the sandwich I had brought with me, always bologna on white bread. Sometimes I included cookies with my lunch, always Oreos. Amazingly my taste hasn’t changed since then. I’m quite content with a bologna sandwich but usually on other than squishy white bread and Oreos though now I lean toward double stuffed and lemon. I always consider that lunch the grass roots of my palate.

My mother always cooked hearty foods. For supper, they’d be meat, mashed potatoes and a vegetable. She cooked what she knew we and my father would eat. He was a bit picky. To him, garlic only belonged with shrimp scampi. Mashed potatoes were served straight, no seasonings except salt. He loved canned asparagus, fresh ears of corn and green beans, canned of course. I once served him a pork roast with garlic cloves in slits around the roast, He loved it, but he caught my mother cooking the same dish, and he had her remove the garlic. He wouldn’t eat it he said. It was mind over matter.

When I was in training in Ghana, getting sick was part of the experience. Early on, during the first two weeks, we had so many shots at one time most of us got reactions. I watched a line of red travel up my arm. I had a fever. Diarrhea was common among us trainees because of the different foods we were eating and the water we drank, but I did not get it. I survived six weeks of fairly good health, but then it happened. It was so bad I sat outside the bathroom doors all night as I knew I’d never make it from my room even at a run (pun here). It lasted only a couple of days, but would reappear occasionally during my two years. At no time was the culprit ever identified.

I have an empty dance card today I’m going to stay in my cozies and be comfortable. I have a book I’m reading and a jigsaw puzzle to finish. I am now back in control of my TV. The new remote came yesterday. I do not have to watch Midway again.