The rain started around 2:00 this morning, and it is still raining and will keep raining. It is a dark, menacing day. The temperature is only 67° and it won’t get much warmer. I’ve shut a few windows in what feels like a vain attempt to keep the chill out of the house. I’m wearing long sleeeves.

I have a few errands. I was also adding the dump to my trip, but I’ll wait for a dry day, probably tomorrow. Elsewhere on the home front, My TV remote refuses to remote. It won’t work the TV at all. I am stuck on one channel, and wouldn’t you know, I have seen all the movies it has been airing. Right now it is on round two of those same movies. I tried everything to get it to work but failed so I have ordered a new remote which should arrive today. Meanwhile, I am watching Midway again. I wonder who wins?

Things have changed. Here I am complaining about a remote which doesn’t remote while when I was a kid, I was the remote. If my father wanted the channel changed, one of us would get up and change it. When I was in Ghana, I made do. I didn’t bring anything electric except my cassette player. I had to use a hand opener for cans. The iron was charcoal heated. I had no stove but rather a charcoal burner, sort of like a hibachi but round. I survived all of those and decided I really didn’t need all the electrical appliances. That didn’t last long. The electric can opener came first. I have a microwave, no charcoal necessary. I have an electric coffee pot, no more instant coffee and boiling water for it on the charcoal. I didn’t even have a fan in Ghana. Now I can’t live unless I have my fan and my AC after it gets repaired. I fell into the trap of easy living. It is a pleasant, easy trip. I have no regrets. One thing, though, is the same. My electric can opener died, and I didn’t replace it. I use the silver hand opener the world used to own. I suffer through it.

The day is hot, in the low 80’s, and it will stay hot tonight. That August heat is the reason it is my least favorite summer month. Adding to the misery of the heat is the humidity, thick damp air which just hangs. My father always described it as so thick you could cut it with a knife. Right now it is sunny. but rain is predicted for this evening, an 88% chance of rain.

I never dreaded going back to school. By the end of August, summer had worn down. The playground was already closed, and I was left to my own devices to fill the days. My mother had taken us school shopping with stops for new shoes, a new skirt and blouse for my school uniform and new school supplies. We were just about ready. The last thing was the bath, an out of time bath, a bath on a Tuesday night.

One of the skills I learned in Ghana was how to pluck a chicken. I haven’t plucked one since. One year we bought three or four chickens for Thanksgiving because we could only find one turkey, not enough to share. Someone else dispatched the birds. We put their caucuses in a metal container about the size of a small trough. They didn’t run around without their heads, but a few bodies kept jumping out of the trough. A few even flapped their wings. We knew the biology behind it, but it was creepy nonetheless. After all that activity, we plucked their feathers, pulled off the pinions and got them ready for the fire.

This is the month of the spiders. Even the tiniest of them is weaving webs, but, unlike Charlotte, mine don’t weave messages. I’ve never been afraid of spiders. I think it a bit silly that people scream and run when they see spiders. I save them. Sometimes I have to move a spider from the sink if it gets trapped. I do clear webs as they seem to be everywhere joining anything. One giant web hung down from the ceiling, and others went across the lintels of the wooden doorways. Some of the webs remind me of the end of the movie The Fly, the original movie from 1958. The fly with the head and one arm of the scientist is caught in the web. The spider is inching toward that fly which is screeching, “Help me. Help me.” The spider didn’t look all that real, but the abject fear on the man’s face was horrifying. I can still see it in my mind’s eye.