The sky is cloudy, and the leaves on the oak trees are swaying, blown by the strong wind. It will be cooler today and tonight, but the air is so humid the outside back door windows are wet. The dogs come in panting after only a short time in the yard. I do have to go out today to the dump and to the store for a few groceries. I have a concert tonight on the Hyannis Green if it doesn’t rain, but I expect it won’t. We haven’t had rain in weeks.

When I was a kid, summer rain showers meant running outside getting wet. I’d walk in the gutter and kick the water left and right as I walked. I’d get soaked, so soaked my sneakers bubbled at the toes. My hair dripped down my face. I’d stand on the lawn with my arms spread to the sky, and I’d feel a sort of freedom standing there getting soaked. I became a lover of rain.

I turned the AC off and opened my back door. The dogs can come and go. The chimes hanging from one of the tree branches sweeten the air when the wind blows. The whirly gigs spin so quickly they almost seem to be part of a moving picture. I am a lover of wind.

When I was growing up, I wondered what it was like to be old, old like my grandparents. I now know the answer. You don’t feel old, but you do recognize age brings changes. It is not like you have a choice. I have a few infirmities, but most, other than my back, are minor and merely inconveniences. Stuff in my head, stuff like names and places, take longer to retrieve. I really do forget why I am in the kitchen sometimes. I walk back to the den and remember then I go back to the kitchen. At least I am getting a bit of exercise.

I love BLT sandwiches. Use home grown tomatoes and add some avocado, and they elevate the simple BLT to rarified air, to the upper echelons of sandwiches.

I’m a pasta fan but not so much a spaghetti fan. I love the different shaped pastas. Often I make a marinara sauce and freeze it in individual bags. I also love pasta with a bit of butter and garlic. Don’t get me started on Alfredo sauce. I’d wax poetically about each morsel.

This morning I had only two cups of coffee, but now I’m hungry. It’s time to defrost that marinara sauce.

The morning is cloudy. A cooling breeze comes and goes, but the heat continues, and the day will get as high as 87˚. A couple of plants need to be potted, but that’s it for my to-do list. The heat makes me loll.

When I was in the sixth grade, one of my classmates had a grandmother who lived in England. He went to visit her every few years. I oozed jealousy. Never did I imagine I could see the world, but I wished I would. My family, including all the aunts and uncles, didn’t travel overseas for pleasure. My father saw Europe during the war. His ship was in Rotterdam, and he remembered seeing the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium. I told people I suffered from Barrett’s Disease, named after that classmate. I didn’t explain it and nobody asked thinking perhaps it was serious or even life threatening. Had anyone asked I would have told them it was my vow to out-travel my classmate, and I hold vows as promises.

The first country I visited was Canada. It didn’t seem all that foreign, but it was still first on my list of countries I’d visited and was the only country on that list for years, through high school and college. Ghana was second on the list. Never did I think I’d ever visit let alone live in Africa, but after a while, it seemed a cheat because I felt so comfortable in Ghana it stopped feeling like a foreign country. I traveled the countries bordering Ghana, and my list got longer. I always thought it the most amazing list, and I was just getting started.

When I chose Peace Corps, I never thought it would be the best decision I’d ever make. It was both exciting and scary. What I knew about Africa came from books and movies, but none of it really prepared me. Ghana was exotic, even magical. Those pictures from my geography books came alive. Women carried huge loads on their heads. On markets days, sellers and shoppers vied for space. I always thought the markets had a bit of carnival about them. The sides of the roads were filled with women sitting in the shade selling their goods, selling fruit and cooking food for sale. I didn’t know what I was eating, but I was adventurous enough to try. I tasted plantain, Guinea fowl, yam chips, mangoes and pawpaw (papaya) for the first time. I loved them all and more.

I haven’t added to my list of countries in a long time. My last three trips were back to Ghana. Before that I visited Morocco. When I added it to my list, I didn’t realize Morocco would anchor that last spot for such a long while.

I still suffer from Barrett’s disease so I’m itching to travel, the only way to mitigate my symptoms.

The heat is unrelenting. Today may be the hottest of all here. The temperature is already 87˚. I was going to do some planting but have decided to stay in the house until later in the afternoon when it might be just a bit cooler. The dogs go outside, do their business quickly then run back into the house and collapse in the cool air.

When I was a kid, Saturday was the best day of the week. I’d eat my cereal in the living room so I could watch TV. I always sat on the floor in front of the TV cabinet. Saturday morning TV was kid-centric. I remember Rin Tin Tin and Rusty, both of whom lived at an army post. Rusty would yell at ease and Rinty would let go of his prey, the bad guy. We tried to train our dog Duke, but he was a free spirit and never listened. In the winter, I watched until later in the morning. On warmer days I was gone early, usually for the whole day, mostly on my bike.

I loved exploring my town. Sometimes I would walk through the square and window shop. I always stopped to watch the lobsters floating in the pool at the fish market, but I hated the smell which hung in the air outside the store. I checked out the windows at Woolworth’s and Grant’s. I liked Woolworth’s better. My dime went a long way. I’d bike to the outskirts of my town in different directions and sometimes into the next town. I’d ride on the dirt beside the tracks. I knew where one side of the tracks ended, but I never reached the end of the other side. The tracks just kept going. I’m still curious about that. I did search but didn’t find the answer. It is still a mystery but not one worthy of Nancy Drew’s talents.

When I was older, in my teens, and still too young for cars, my friends and I walked. We had stops like O’Grady’s diner for a brownie topped with ice cream or one of the drug stores for a Coke. I preferred a vanilla Coke. We had drill practice either at the field, Recreation Park, until it got dark or in the school yard under lights. It was always dark when I walked home. I was never afraid in my town.

This is a late morning for me. I slept well. The house is comfortable and cool. Even the dogs hang around and nap a lot. The heat is still with us. The temperature is already 88˚, the high for the day. I have to go out to pick up some dog food and some replacement basil. I wish I could loll.

My friend Bill, of Bill and Peg fame, friends starting from my Peace Corps Ghana days, remembered it was 108˚one morning, around 8 am. It was the dry season when over 100˚ is common for many days in a row. The only saving grace is the heat was dry. I remember everything was brown. The fields were bare. Farmers had lit the fields on fire to burn away the brown grass and the stalks of harvested millet. I used to watch the progress of the fires burning almost in a straight line across the fields. The air was filled with smoke. Add the heat and breathing was laborious. I remember when the humidity started and pushed away the dry air. The rainy season was coming. The farmers readied their fields for planting. After the rains started, I loved seeing the tiny green growth sprouting in the fields being my house.

Each time I have gone back to Ghana it has been during the rainy season. The millet is tall in the fields. On the back roads, you can’t see houses or compounds beyond the millet on each side of the road. The once hard-packed dry roads soften in the rain making travel on some roads difficult. I remember going to Ougadougou during the rainy season and having to get out of the car so it could pass through mud holes and not get stuck. It rained every day.

The morning is overcast. A slight breeze blows every now and then, but the breeze does little in the humid, hot air. It is 79˚, a cool day, at least in comparison. My friend Bill commented about the heat. He brought me back to Ghana when he remembered one day during the dry season when it was already 110˚ in the classroom at 8:00. I do remember those days. The only fan I had was human-propelled. I used to take my shower, always cold water, just before bed and never towel dried. I’d throw on my robe, go inside and go to bed still wet from the shower. I felt cool. Illusionary? Probably.

The day is so very quiet. The heavy air dulls sounds. I don’t even hear the birds. Both dogs are asleep, Henry on the floor and Nala beside me on the couch. I have nothing planned to do today. My back is protesting all the work of the last few days. It hurts but only when I move.

Two things have died, my basil and the H on my keyboard. The basil is easy, the keyboard not so easy. I figure I planted the basil too close together so I’ll buy more basil and singly plant them in clay pots. As for the h, I wrote both small and capital H’s on a new note, always kept open so I can copy and paste. Somehow that feels archaic.

When I was a kid, we used pencils in the first two grades. My pencil boxes always came with an eraser, a pink eraser. It quickly became my go to eraser because the ones on my pencils got used so often they sometimes didn’t erase but left black marks or tore holes in my papers. The pencils wore down and needed sharpening but, luckily, that pencil box came with a small sharpener. I remember one year it was yellow. Every time I used it, I had to put a paper under the sharpener to catch the shavings. I used to sharpen so much I sometimes broke the point as soon as I used it so it was back to the sharpener. The pencils became stubs.

I use pencils still, but they seldom last to the stub point. Nala steals them and chews them into small pieces. I hide them but sometimes don’t remember the last hiding place because I use so many places hoping to keep everything out of the clutches of my consummate thief. My current pencil has Jack-o-lanterns on it, wrong season but darn festive.

I am behind closed doors. My air conditioner is blasting. The high today will be 87˚ and the low 72˚ though I can’t imagine in what world 72˚ is a low. A hot breeze is blowing. We had no rain yesterday despite a threatening sky and ugly humidity. The heat will be around until the weekend. I’ll be out on the deck later to water the plants.

When I was a kid, I don’t remember the heat ever bothering me. I was out every day. On the hottest days I sometimes went to the pool. It was on the other side of town, a long walk. The pool was often crowded. On the concrete sides of the pool, I remember couples, teens, spread out on towels next to each other. Girls had to wear bathing caps. I wondered why not boys. One time, when I dove from the board, I went straight down and hit my face on the bottom. I split my lip which swelled right away. The lifeguard checked me out then drove me home. I hated the split lip but I loved the ride.

When I was in Ghana, my friends had a pool near them. I used to kid them that they lived in the lap of luxury. Once in a while when I visited, we went to the pool, no bathing caps necessary.

I remember one Sunday when I was in Accra during a school holiday. A few of us got together and went to a resort on the beach. We were there all day. I remember a walk down the beach and a game of beach baseball. We used dead palm branches as bats and a coconut for the ball. It never went very far. I got the worst sunburn that day.

My dance card has a few items so I’ll be venturing out of the house. Today and tomorrow I have uke and Friday night I have a play. I still have a few things to put around the deck and two chairs to lug up from the cellar. I’m waiting until it is a bit cooler in the late afternoon, until the low of 72˚.

Right now it is cloudy and breezy. We’re all on the deck, the dogs and I. Out here is wonderfully pleasant. The breeze is so strong the whirly-gigs are blowing, and the small flags in the planters are fluttering. Nala is taking her morning nap on the deck. I don’t see Henry now. I suspect he went inside to the comfy couch for his nap, but he’ll be back. He is not keen on being alone in the house.

We have the possibility of rain late tonight but long after my ukulele concert in Hyannis.

Last year I didn’t open my deck. I sat out there on occasion but left the umbrella furled and the table and the rest of the furniture covered. This year I decided I needed the deck. I needed the beauty of my private space. I love how it looks with all the pots filled with herbs and flowers and with several candles on the rail and a few hanging from tree limbs. On the wall are pictures and my wooden shark which is surrounded by a hanging fish and some coral. I have more to hang on the walls, but they stay inside until I have company as they won’t tolerate rain and wet.

When I was a kid, I never minded staying around all summer. Mostly we did stay at home vacations as going away was too expensive. We went to museums which whetted my appetite and gave me a love of museums for the whole of my life. Even in Ghana I went to the museum my first free weekend in Accra. My favorite museum was the one at Harvard. I still remember the monkey heads in glass jars filled with formaldehyde and the out-rigger canoe hanging from the ceiling. At the Museum of Fine Arts, I didn’t like the paintings all that much, but I did love the room filled with sarcophagi. They were so enormous. I wondered about the mummies. On other vacation days we went to the beach or to a lake. I remember a lake with a slide into the water and a zip line. I rowed a boat for the first time there. I kept going in a circle.

My mother made the best picnic food. Her peppers and eggs were my favorite sandwiches, always in a roll. My father concocted the bug juice for the red tartan cooler. Orange was my favorite. Oreos were for staving off hunger, always a new bag emptied by the time we left for home.

We had summer cook-outs. My mother was the hunter gatherer, the shopper. My father was the cook. I think that is when I became a hot dog fan. My mother used to cut slits on the tops of the dogs. My father cooked them to perfection with grill marks. I suffused my dogs with yellow mustard and even piccalilli back then. My mother made a potato salad, the only salad we ever ate, even when we were grown.

Yesterday I bought hot dogs and potato salad.

Today is another hot day, in the low 80’s, with no breeze, just ugly still air. It will be partly cloudy. Thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow, and we desperately need the rain. I just hope it won’t rain on my parade, my Monday uke concert in the park.

We have a Liz update. She had another MRI which showed less brain activity than the first one but is still hopeful. She has been moved to a level 1 trauma hospital. Liz is  breathing on her own and is occasionally opening her eyes. She reacts to pain in her fingers and toes, but she is still sedated. They are hoping to bring her out of sedation slowly.

Yesterday I cleaned the deck, put white lights on the fence, sanded and painted the small table, watered all the plants in the pots, switched out the storm on the back door and did yard clean-up. By the time I had finished, I was sweaty and exhausted. I swear I am too old for all that. I should have been sitting in the shade of the umbrella with a cold drink in my hand. Today is dump day.

When I was a kid, I was forced to visit my aunt the nun who lived in Connecticut. We had to wear dressy clothes. I remember we always stopped just before seeing her so my mother could make sure we were spruced and ready for the visit. Luckily, we only went once a year, more than enough. Even though she taught, she seemed to have trouble conversing with us. She had stock questions. How was school? What were our favorite subjects? She always seemed a bit bored. Every visit, my aunt took us on a tour of her school and classroom. I always thought the best part of the visit was when another nun brought us cookies and a drink. After that we’d sit for a bit more then it was time to leave. Sometime later, she transferred to Baltimore, and our once a year visits stopped. None of us really missed her.

When I lived in Ghana, I always wore sandals. Everybody did. In Bolga, during my first dry season, the heels of my feet split. They were so painful I had to walk on tip-toes until callouses formed and hardened, and the skin on the heels of my feet became thick and ugly. I was glad. I could finally walk without tip-toes.

I’m thinking after the dump, I’ll camp on the deck. All that’s left to do is wash the table and bring out the other two chairs stored in the cellar. It is time for dinner and a movie on the deck, actually passed time. What movie, I wonder, is perfect for the red carpet premier?

Today is another delight. It will be hot, Cape Cod hot, at a high of 81˚. I have yard work I didn’t finish yesterday which includes trash picking the yard. I’m missing a container of nails. It was on the deck then it wasn’t. I need to water the flowers on the deck, put the screen in the back door, wash the big table, bring out more chairs and sand and paint the small red table. I figure when I’m done I’ll deck it for the rest of the day.

I’ve never believed in ghosts. I think aliens are more likely though I doubt them too. Most aliens are quite unfriendly according to the plots of the black and white movies I’ve see, and they want our planet. I used to watch The Invaders where aliens disguised themselves as humans, but the aliens were easy for David Vincent to find. They had a weird finger. After that, I used to look at peoples’ hands. I never caught an alien.

When I was a kid, Saturday was chore day for my dad. He brought his shirts to the Chinese laundry, got a trim at the barber’s just up the street from the laundry, cleaned the yard and mowed the lawn.

Sometimes we went to the drive-in on Saturday nights. When I was younger, I wore my pajamas as did most kids. If we were early, my brother and I would go to the playground in front of the concession building. Sometimes we would sit on one of the benches and watch the movie from there. I’ve mentioned before how my father wanted to beat the line of cars leaving so he’d leave before the end of the move. I hated that. One time, when I was really young, I went to the bathroom by myself and, afterwards, couldn’t find the car. I walked up and down lines of cars getting more and more panicky. I somehow ended up in the concession building. They announced over the car speakers, “Would the parents of Kathleen Ryan please come to the concession stand.” It wasn’t my finest moment.

The early morning was cool, in the 60’s. Now it is 72˚ and getting warmer. The sky is partly cloudy. The light breeze is cooling. Today is a deck day, not for lolling but for decorating. I want to finish putting all my pictures and doo-dads on the back shingles. I also need to clean the yard, and I think I have to fill in a couple of holes. Nala has dirt on her face, not a good sign.

When I was a kid, my dog Duke followed us everywhere. He also used to roam far and wide, sometimes with his son Sam. Duke was a smaller boxer, a brindle, while Sam was a fawn and far bigger than Duke. He was also not as smart, but he had the best grin. My mother used to get phone calls about the dogs. One time the dogs wouldn’t leave a yard so the lady called complaining she couldn’t leave her house because of the two dogs. She was afraid they’d attack her. Come to find out her dog was in heat, and both dogs were hoping. My father went and got them.

When I was growing up, I had favorite places. The field below my house was one of them. I remember one year when the whole neighborhood had an Easter egg hunt in and around the field. I got the big prize. I found the golden egg. I loved running through the field when the grass was high. I chased the grasshoppers jumping in front of me. They were all brown. Paths in the field led to the swamp, the blueberry patch and the water tower. I always ate the blueberries. The swamp was a stop where I checked the water, watched the tadpoles and later watched after they had become frogs. If I kept walking passed the swamp, I’d be on the street where the cemetery was. Later my parents moved close to the cemetery, and they could see the cemetery’s metal fence down the short hilly street in front of their house. My father used to tell us when he died we were to roll him down the hill and bury him.

My dance card is empty until Monday. This was a full week, and I was busy, out of the house busy, from Monday to Thursday. Today is stay at home busy. I like it. I get to stay in my cozies.