The rain is heavy and loud. I heard it as soon as I woke up. The dogs balked about going out into the rain. Nala poked her head out the dog door then she backed into the house. Henry ran out, his need greater than his dislike of the rain. When I went to get the paper, I was pummeled by the rain. I put up my hood. It did little good.

Despite the rain, I need to go out to pick up a few essentials like cat food, cream for my coffee and something to sweeten my day. I’m thinking anything chocolate. I was going to the dump, but today is not a dump day. It is not even a going out day, but I haven’t any choice.

When I was a kid, a rainy day was the worst. I hated walking to school and getting wet. My shoes and socks got the wettest. They were usually soaked. I left footprints when I walked in my socks.

In Ghana, during the dry season, we used to joke about the weather, the same weather we got every day, hot and dry. Many mornings, we’d look at the sky and say it looks like rain. We did it in all seriousness even though we were kidding. We knew, of course, that rain was months away.

The first rain storms after the dry season were spectacular. Small bushes were bent to the ground by the fierceness of the wind, a sign of the rain to come. The sky darkened for the first time in months. It really did look like rain. The drops came in waves. Lightning struck right in front of my house. The road through the school ended at the back gate, by my house. It was a dirt road. It only took one storm for the heavy rain to cause crevices through the dirt. The rain ran like a river through those crevices and turned the dirt to mud. The mud slid.

I loved having a whole season of rain. Unless it was torrential, it never stopped me. I walked to the classroom block. I walked through the market in the rain. In Bolga, being wet was short lived. After the rain, the sun came back, and it was hot. I dried in no time.

The morning is foggy, damp and cloudy. The only thing to commend it is the warmth of 42˚. I have already been out and back to an early morning dental appointment just to have my teeth cleaned, but they found something. I have a fractured tooth. I’m going back in a couple of weeks to have it filled. It seems parts of me are falling apart, a piece at a time. It happens to old cars and now it’s happening to me.

When I was kid, we never went to the dentist unless there was a problem, but I did start with an orthodontist when I was seven. His office was on Comm Ave. in Boston. On appointment day, my mother had to find a babysitter for my sisters. We walked uptown to take the bus to Sullivan Square, and, from there, we took the T. We walked from the T station to the office. I have pictures in my head of the office, the room and the furniture. His waiting room was enormous and filled with oversized furniture like giant puffy chairs and sofas covered in flowers. One giant old wooden desk sat near the door. In my memory drawer the desk is as large as the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. The nurse was there to check me in for my appointment. My mother and I sat for a bit then I went into the office. Dr. Nice was oldish. He wore a white jacket with buttons on the top which opened a flap. On the old Dr. Casey TV show, the brooding Dr. Casey wore the same white top only he kept the buttons unbuttoned. Dr. Nice had white hair which stuck out in places. His office was at the front of the house. It had a bank of windows which kept my attention. I watched the cars. I don’t remember the appointments too well, just the windows and the chair in the center of the room and the going and coming. We took the T back then waited at Sullivan Square for the bus home. My mother usually bought me a treat from the station kiosk. We’d get to Stoneham Square where my mother would buy me lunch. The two of us then walked to school. She was my late note.

My house feels chilly even though the heat is cranking. I have forced hot air. When I was a kid, we had radiators and forced hot water. I loved the hissing of the steam and the gurgling of the radiator. One was in my room under a window near the foot of the bed. It was the sound I heard when I was falling asleep.

Today is drab. The sky is covered with grey white clouds. It is warm but only by comparison. The road is slushy in-between the ruts. The icicles on the roof are melting. Snow is falling off the branches of the trees in the backyard. It is an ugly winter’s day.

My plans for today are simple. I’m finally going to tackle that laundry. The basket in the hall is overflowing. I have just about run out of my cozies, an impending catastrophe needing to be averted, so laundry it is.

When I was a kid, my favorite pajamas were blue. They were made of jersey material and had cuffs. They always kept me warm. Every day, when I got home from school, I had to change into play clothes. In the winter, when we couldn’t go out to play, I’m get home and put on my cozies, my pajamas. That’s where my love of cozies began.

The Xfinity guy is coming with my new cable box, and my Agway order is ready for pick-up. Yesterday I had groceries delivered. My uke practice was on Zoom. Other than a hand-off from a delivery person, I don’t see people any more. I might as well be a hermit living alone in a cave in the desert and wearing an animal hair shirt for atonement.

My bedroom is a mess with storage boxes looking for a home, but my living room is back to normal for the most part. The only difference is my rug has been chewed in two places. As for the perpetrator, I figure you already know. It’s too easy a guess. I love that rug which I bought many years ago at the Topsfield Fair. It will be difficult to replace. I’m already in mourning.

Life is slow. I have a dentist appointment this week and my usual uke lesson, and that’s it. I’m expecting no visitors. The cable guy has come and gone. He replaced the old box. We chatted a bit. He is originally from England. His father has had Covid twice but is okay. He and I agreed that we do miss spending time with people, face to face, but I am content.

My street is quiet. Nobody goes by the house either in a car or walking. My dogs are the only live noises I hear. Henry barks. Nala whines. They go and in out the dog door at will, even Henry. Both dogs love the snow. Maybe we should be more like the dogs and romp and gambol in the snow. Maybe we should build a fort or have a snowball fight. Follow the dogs. The dogs know joy.

The sky is the deepest blue I think I have ever seen. It is stunning. The air is wonderfully clear. Everything is quiet, nothing is stirring. Even the smallest branches are stillheavy with snow. Icicles hang off my roof line. They break when I open the front door. It is cold, at 26˚, but warmer than it has been. The dogs are loving this weather. They chase each other around the yard. I don’t love it as much.

Skip is coming to clean up the front, uncover my mailbox and shovel the back stairs. He’ll put the cow away until next Christmas. I can handle the donkey. I’ll also have him take some of the trash from the car as his dump is open. I wish he did laundry.

I am going out today for a curbside pick-up of dog food and a few cans of cat food. I’ll order from Agway. Curbside is my second favorite right behind delivery. I don’t even have to get dressed.

When I was a kid, my mother grocery shopped on Fridays. She didn’t drive back then so my father had to take her. We loved it after she shopped. The larder was filled. There were cookies galore. We even had choices of cookies, at least for a couple of days. Oreos were a staple. Sometimes she’d buy chocolate chip cookies. I also remember Pecan Sandies. They were my mother’s favorite so she used to hide them from us. I remember Nilla Wafers. I always thought they were called Vanilla Wafers. It was a shock to find out otherwise. My mother also bought the week’s school lunch desserts which we were not allowed to touch upon pain of death.

School is out on the cape today. Many roads and sidewalks have not been plowed or have only been lightly plowed. Skip was out doing his big plow jobs yesterday. He said the snow was horrific. He got stuck a few times, and the snow was so heavy it was slow going moving it. Today he is doing the houses. I am third on his list.

My cable box is still not working. Xfinity called yesterday to see if it was still not working. I said yes and that it was stuck on the welcome page. The disembodied voice asked the same questions I’d already be asked and had already answered twice before. The man decided to restart it. What a surprise. He said it is working as we are on the welcome screen. I told him again that the box stays on that screen. I told three times. He tried to start it one more time: nothing but the welcome screen. He said he’d try again and call me today, but if I wanted, I could return the broken box and get another. Nope, I’m staying with that appointment. I also think I might just define insanity for him, about expecting different results.

The snow is beautiful. The topmost flakes are diamonds glinting in the sun. The sunlight reflecting off the snow is blindingly bright. The sky is a gorgeous blue. We got less snow than predicted, but the snow is so heavy everything is covered, and the lowers branches of the oak trees sag under the weight. Bushes are laden and are bending to the ground. I saw one plow much earlier on the street beside mine but not on mine which still has a layer of snow. Two of my neighbors are out and about, their driveways shoveled. I will wait for Skip, my factotum. I did cancel an early dentist appointment tomorrow in case I am low on Skip’s list.

One of my neighbors is here shoveling my walk and car so if I need to go out, I can. I am thrilled for this kindness.

We all survived the storm, that is all except my cable. The box has stopped working, but I was fine last night. I watch a Hallmark movie on my computer. In the middle of a raging blizzard, nothing is more comforting than a Hallmark movie. They always have happy endings.

I read in bed for a while last night. Nala joined me. Henry stayed downstairs until early this morning when he wanted into the bedroom. I let him in and he joined Nala and me on the bed, on my double bed.

Nala loves the snow. She eats it. I watched her burrow her muzzle into the snow and start chomping. She comes back inside with her muzzle, nose and the top of her head covered in snow.

Henry was upset last night and this morning. The holly tree, overladen with heavy snow, covered the deck stairs. Nala got through the branches and Henry went through one way, down. He wouldn’t up through the branches. He tried both sets of stairs, no luck. Henry is weird in this way. He’ll go out the dog door but hates to come in through the dog door though he is getting better. He went down through the holly but wouldn’t go up. I grabbed a broom and used the stick to take as much snow as I could off the holly branches. They lifted enough for a clear passage underneath. I swear I saw Henry smile as he walked up the stairs to the door.

The wind is tremendous. The snow is heavy and wet. The bushes near the house are bent to the ground. The branches from the oak tree by the deck have bent so much under the weight of the snow the smallest branches at the ends tap the backdoor and sound like fingers scratching the glass. Every niow and then the dogs and I raise our heads and look. The dogs were out chasing each other in the snow. Nala comes inside with her nose and head covered in snow. Both are wet and exhausted and are lying asleep on the couch, one beside me, the other behind me. Running in snow takes energy. 

The snow started last night around 11. I don’t know exactly how much snow we have, but I’m guessing around 4 or 5 inches with much more yet to come as many as 18 inches here on the cape. Everything is ladened with snow. The wind gusts have been as high as 60 MPH. The snow is drifting. 

The internet is down for the third time, but the electricity stays on so the house is warm and cozy. I might have had a Globe but the snow, falling so quickly, a couple of inches an hour, probably covered it. Still, I do love my paper so I decided to go check. It was ugly out. The wind was howling. My face got whipped by the snowflakes blown sideways by the wind so I gave up and ran back inside the house. I figured I’d read the paper online. Nope, I’m not on-line quite yet, but I am hopeful. 

I miss Shelby Scott. She was the reporter from Channel 4 sent out in the worst weather to do live updates. She was famous for her snow reports while being blown and buffeted by the wind and weather. Storms like this need Shelby. 

The cow and the donkey are safely in the house. Both beasts are in the living room. I triaged the cow’s hanging leg. Last night I lit my Christmas lights. The snow seemed to demand it. The colored lights looked beautiful. I will light again in a while. 

The electricity flickers and sometimes goes off for a minute or two. The internet doesn’t easily recover. It had gone down went down for the fifth time. When the electricity comes back on, there are beeps from Hey Google. Tree branches, heavy with snow, scratch against the windows. It scares Henry. He starts to shake. I hold him for a while and Nala sits beside him. A biscuit make him feel better but then it happens again, the same sequence of events: electricity off, electricity on, cable and internet gone, Hey Google back on with beeps, branches scratching the window, the back window this time, Henry shaking and getting as close to me as he can, even to my lap. I tried a treat again, and it helped for a little while, but he is staying close. He is still nervous. 

The electricity has been blinking on and of. The internet is far away. I will post this when I am no longer chiseling on stone. 

The Internet is back, but the cable is not. I turned off the light. Henry is better.

Today is cloudy and damp. It rained a bit during the night so paw prints on the kitchen floor are back. It is warmish at 42˚. I went out on the deck while my coffee was perking. Pieces of different sized white paper, torn white paper, are strewn about the yard, the part of the yard I’ve already cleaned. The backyard is beginning to look like a vacant lot. I don’t know what the pieces used to be. I’ll find out when I clean the yard. (I just found out when Nala, of course, tried to steal more. She brought out and ate all the cat treats. I had not closed the gate well enough, my fault).

This morning has been almost perfect. I slept late. Everything is quiet, not a person or a car anywhere on the street. The coffee was delicious, both cups of it. Nala is now asleep, resting from her morning antics.

I took my time with the paper. It was filled with all sorts of news I just had to read. I noticed the overthrow of the president of Burkina Faso by the army. I used to go to Ougadougou, the capital, for the weekend. Back then the country was called Upper Volta. I loved Ougadougou. First, it had a great name. It also had a great market, below the street in the center of the city. I bought some unique metal pieces in that market. We always stayed at a nice hotel. With three of us splitting the cost of one room, we could. Breakfast was Yukka soda and small baguettes. We always ate dinner in a nice restaurant. A couple of times, it was the one in the center run by nuns. Ouga always felt small in a comfortable way.

I have no plans for today. Groceries are being delivered shortly. I can’t remember the last time I was in a supermarket. (Ring doesn’t count as a supermarket because it is many stores.) Mostly I ordered essentials, like cheese, and some odd things like chopped dates and chocolate croissants. I’m good for a while on supermarket stuff.

I think the most amazing experiences in Ghana are on market day, every third day in Bolga. When I lived there, I loved market day. It was a carnival without the rides. All the stalls were filled with sellers. The paths through the different offerings sometimes had so many people you had to walk sideways through the crowds. I bought my fruit and vegetables first. There were lots of fruits but few vegetables. I went to my favorite onion and tomato lady. She always dashed me some of each. Next came the eggs. I went to the same egg man all the time. He never gave me a bad egg. The beef came from the meat market which was disgusting, but only in the beginning. After a while I didn’t even notice. The meat came wrapped in leaves. The chickens were tied by one leg to a thick rope or string on the ground. There were rows of chickens. I’d look for the fattest and buy it. The chicken man tied the chicken’s legs together and handed the chicken to me to carry by those legs. It felt odd at first to be carrying a chicken. After a while, it felt day-to-day.

Any lifetime when carrying a live chicken by its legs is just part of the day is a life filled with the unexpected becoming the usual. It is living in Africa, in Ghana. My day-to-day didn’t even seem different after a while and neither did the chicken. I just slung it over the handlebar of my moto and drove home where it was destined to be dinner.

The morning is cold but gives hint of a warmer day. The sun is bright, the sky a cloudy blue. The air has the aroma of burning wood. I was struck right away by how much it felt like a Ghanaian morning during the harmattan when the air was downright cold and filled with the sweet smell of burning wood from the compounds outside the school grounds. They were my favorite mornings.

My car had a dusting of snow on the windshield and the back window but barely enough to cover. There must have been flurries earlier. The high today will be 34˚. The wind is slight.

I made no lists for today. Yesterday I was busy in the house, and I also hauled boxes and bags to the trunk which had finally defrosted. The dump is closed until Wednesday, and my larder is full so I have no reason to go out and about. I have a new book I got for Christmas just waiting to be read, the new Patricia Cornwell. I have everything I need.

I used to like to color. Every Christmas I always got a new coloring book and crayons. Sometimes my mother and I would sit at the kitchen table and color together. She beautifully shaded the crayons so there were light and dark colors. I was a bit blunter with my colors. My favorite colors were the reds. My least favorite color was white. You could never see it on the paper, only feel it. I only remember using it for Santa’s beard and fur and for clouds.

We always had construction paper in the house. We’d use it for all sorts of crafts and projects. I remember we used to draw on the different colored papers then we’d cut out our drawings. We’d glue popsicle sticks to the backs of our cut-outs using more than enough white glue, and we’d make puppets of a sort. I remember stick figures were my specialty. Females wore skirts, the only way to differentiate between my male and female stick figures.

I always liked sticking my fingers into the bowl to mix flour and water to make paste so we could sculpt with the papier-mâché and strips of newspaper. We used balloons covered in papier-mâché to make piñata’s one year. They were deep and round, and we decorated using crepe paper.

I am so much older now and much has changed. One thing, though, has not. I still draw stick figures. The females still wear skirts, colored skirts now.

The morning started later than usual. The dogs, especially Nala, no surprise there, got impatient and jumped on me to wake me up. I let them out then gave Gwen her insulin and me my coffee.

It is cold. I saw sun for a brief time earlier then it went behind the clouds, but it didn’t disappear. I can still see the light. Maybe it will be a nice day after all.

I haven’t any plans for today. Sunday is the day of rest. When I was growing up, it was Sunday dinner and visit the grandparent’s day. It was a formal day of sorts except in summer when Sundays were more relaxed. We sometimes spent the day at the beach. It was never a day to work.

When I was a kid, I had no interest in baking. I only liked the results. My mother made the best brownies. I loved that she always frosted them with chocolate frosting and chocolate jimmies. I’m a corner of the pan sort. I like the crispy sides of the brownies. My mother made chocolate chip cookies. She always followed the recipe on the back of the package. We used to snag cookies straight from the oven. They burned our hands and mouths, but we didn’t care. The cookies were warm and the chocolate still melty.

When I was in Ghana, I made sugar cookies for the first time ever. I had to ride a hundred miles each way to Tamale to fill the propane tank for my stove. I never used the stove or oven as there was no place in my town to fill the tank, but I needed the oven for my Christmas cookies, for what I hoped would be Christmas cookies in recognizable shapes. My mother, in the Christmas decoration package she had sent, included Christmas cookie cutters, stuff to make frosting and colored jimmies for decoration. I found a recipe in Ghana Chop, the Peace Corps Ghana cook book of the day, and bravely faced the ingredients. I even splurged on canned Australian butter, an expensive treat. I used a Star beer bottle to roll out the cookie dough. I had bought some flat metal in the market for a cookie sheet. It worked. The cookies were perfectly baked. They had a bit of brown on the bottom just as they should. I decorated every cookie. There were trees, stockings and Santas. They were masterpieces of a sort, being the the only decorated sugar cookies in all of Bolga, of that I am sure.

When I woke up, I thought it was yesterday. The sky is grey, and there are snow showers just the same as yesterday morning. It is still cold, 30˚, and the wind makes it feel even colder. I’m glad I have nowhere I need to be.

Nala woke me up. She was lying beside me whining. It was boxer speak for get up and let me out. I did. I am nothing if not obedient.

I have been lazy of late. Each morning I make a few tentative plans then I make the same plans the next morning. Today, though, I did bring my laundry to this floor from upstairs.

Both dogs are sleeping beside me on the couch, one on each side. Nala has her head on my lap. Henry is twitching. He is dreaming. Every now and then he stretches. Nala snores.

I used to wear slipper socks. My mother bought each of us a new pair every Christmas. The soles were leather, and we used to drive my mother crazy by shuffling our feet when we walked across the floor.

When I was a kid, we had yellow egg cups from Fannie Farmer. They were chickens and roosters and a single duck. Some school mornings my mother made us soft boiled eggs. She always sliced off the top of the eggs and put one egg in each egg cup. She also made toast and sliced it into four pieces, the perfect size to dip into the eggs. When I moved into my house, my mother brought down the egg cups. Some have missing beaks, but I don’t care. They are filled with memories.

We always called them dropped eggs on toast. When I was older, I found out they are officially poached eggs. My mother used to put the eggs in a pan with boiling water and swish them around. The cooked eggs were odd shapes, but they tasted the best. Later she got a special pan to cook the poached eggs. Each egg was perfectly round. They didn’t look like dropped eggs on toast anymore.

I used to like oatmeal, the old fashioned sort you had to cook on the stove. My mother made it in the winter so we’d be fortified for the walk to school in the cold. I usually sprinkled sugar on my oatmeal and added milk or my favorite, maple syrup. The oatmeal was always lumpy.