The morning is rainy, damp and foggy. Thunder showers are predicted for the afternoon. The humidity is so high I sweat, excuse me glisten, from doing little. The dogs were out until the rain started with a vengeance. Poor Henry had to wait until I let him in the house. He still doesn’t come in the dog door.

Nala is an eating machine. She watches where in the kitchen the treats come from then noses around hoping to find treasures. Henry takes his treats and, like the gentleman he is, goes to eat them on the hall mat. He eats slowly savoring every bite. Nala gobbles. The other day she tried to eat Henry’s biscuit. That did not go well.

My dance card is almost empty for the week. I am in my summer hibernation mode. If I go out, it is to the dump or the grocery store. On a big week, I go to both places and sometimes add Agway just for the fun of it. Today’s big adventure will be to the grocery store. I can barely contain my excitement.

Yesterday I did do a small bit of housekeeping. I vacuumed three rooms and polished the furniture in two of them. I changed the cat litter. I then rested after my labors and watched Jaws again. As soon as I hear the shark music, my whole attention is rapt. Even though I know what will happen, I watch anyway. Great whites love Cape Cod and summer here every year, mostly in Chatham where dinner, the seals, loll and swim. A couple of years ago a surfer died, the victim of a shark attack. There have also been other close calls. Jaws is a slice of reality here.

I have a special shark week t-shirt. It has a kiddy plastic pool filled with water on it and a shark fin in the pool.

I like a rainy day with the pattering of the rain on the roof and on the top of the metal bird seed container just below my den window. I keep my house lights muted. I leave windows open. The rain is comforting.

When I was a kid, summer was always busy. My bike was my favorite way to spend the day. The bike routes were in different directions, and on a whim, I’d choose one. There was the route to Winchester, but I usually turned around at the bridge over the highway. That was far enough. In the opposite direction was Reading. It had trains every day, and I’d stop and sit at station hoping to see one. The lake was in another direction. My favorite ride was to Spot Pond, a reservoir, and then on to the zoo, but every time I went in any direction, I found something new.

I do the same thing now but in my car. I take random roads in random directions. Sometimes I stop at some store or another. I have no destination. It is the roaming I love.

Fifteen minutes ago, the morning was lovely. Since then, clouds have arrived. It is 73˚ right now and feels less humid than it has been. No rain is on the horizon, for a while anyway.

I have a new house theme, The Tumbling Tumbleweeds. Dust balls fly in the air when I walk down the hall. My choices are to ignore them or vacuum. Ignoring them means they’ll grow larger and reproduce. Okay, not really reproduce, that’s a theme from a black and white B science fiction movie, dust bunnies grow teeth and attack, but they’ll definitely be more of them so I’m going to bite the bullet and vacuum.

My father used to keep what he called a tucker in his wallet. It was a hundred dollar bill. He kept it for emergencies. When I was young, I always wanted to see it. A hundred dollar bill was a rarity. I remember my father would open his wallet, pull out the bill, unfold it then show it to me with a flourish. I’d hold it for a bit then he’d take it, fold it and tuck it back into this wallet.

In my mind’s eye I can see all of the places where I’ve lived. The kitchen in the house where I grew up was small. The sink was across from the door. My mother kept a dish rack on the counter and a triangular shaped garbage holder in the corner of the sink. That had to be emptied into the in-ground garbage bin. I always hated emptying it. The fridge was beside the sink. It was skinny and had one of those small freezers which always seemed to be covered in ice. The stove too was skinny. It was across the room from the fridge. The appliances were white. On the counter was the turtle bowl. It was shaped almost like a wave you’d draw in art class. The turtle could swim or rest on an island of sorts with a palm tree, a plastic palm tree. My mother usually fed the turtle in the morning when she was preparing breakfast. In the summer time the turtle got stunned flies to eat. He loved those the most. I used to do my homework at the kitchen table. The back door was across from the table. The screen door always slammed. That drove my mother crazy. The rest of us never noticed.