The rain continues. The day is dark. The wind strong. The ground is littered with leaves and twigs and small branches. It is a day to stay close to hearth and home, to wear comfy clothes and to read the day away.

I’m glad I live alone, not for me but for my non-existent roommate. I am grumpy, another day without my morning coffee. I should go out to get it, but that seems such an exertion. I want the coffee fairy to wave her wand then abracadabra coffee would appear in all its glory on the table in my den. I wouldn’t complain if her wand also delivered a butternut donut.

I like the rain. I love being surrounded by rain falling on the roof and windows. Last night, actually early this morning, close to 3:30, the wind howled. I could hear branches against the windows. Jack, my cat, was alert to the sounds but not for long. He went right back to his treats.

I remember walking to school on rainy fall mornings. The sidewalk was covered in yellow leaves pasted to the ground by the rain. Cars splashed as they rode by me. I didn’t have rain boots, only snow boots, so my shoes and socks always got wet. Sometimes water bubbled out of the tops of my shoes. My shoes would eventually dry still on my feet.

On the walk home from school, my shoes and I would get wet again. I’d change quickly after I got home but usually into my pajamas. There was no need for play clothes.

I grew up with categories for clothes. All of us did. Back then, I had school clothes, play clothes and church clothes. Pajamas were on their own. Now, I mostly just have play clothes.

Where I lived in Ghana has distinctive rainy and dry seasons. The rain comes almost every day. It never interferes with life, with daily living. No one has umbrellas or raincoats. I’d walk to the classroom block, go to town and shop in the market in the rain. If it got torrential, I’d take refuge under a market stall overhang. The aunties in the stall were always welcoming. My house had a tin roof. It made music when it rained.

Today is chillier than it has been, and last night was downright cold. I woke up during the night really cold. Half of me was uncovered. Nala had more covers than I did. I got up, rearranged the dog and took back my covers. Today I’m putting a blanket on my bed.

I have no coffee. I had no cups of coffee this morning, a bad start to the day. I get coffee by mail, and it will be here in a couple of days so I didn’t want to buy more so, instead of living in misery, I decided to have coffee delivered from Dunkin’, two cups. The delivery was free. I added CVS and Tylenol, also free delivery.

Even I am surprised I survived yesterday. I wanted to put the storm door in the back door as I have to leave it open for the dogs. It was a process. First, I had to take everything off the top two cellars steps: the step ladder, the hand vacuum, the pail with all the floor washing supplies inside, a cooler and a metal container. Next, I went down cellar to get the back door storm. I also collected a small plastic bin filled with small glasses, the Halloween garden flag and a replacement dog door flap. I decided to make one trip upstairs. I went corner to corner step by step to take up the heavy storm. I put the bin on the step behind it. Move the storm, move the bin, move me.

With everything up stairs, I next took out the door screen. That was easy, but the storm is so heavy I had trouble putting it in the door. I used my heavy step ladder to get at the top sort of flaps, but it took me four attempts to get the storm in the door. I cursed the first three tries. Next I took out the old dog door flap. I couldn’t remove two of the screws and had to hammer them. I really needed the hammering. I sat on an outside step and took off the door. When I was done, I had trouble getting up from the step, another round of cursing. I have the new flap on the door but it’s missing two screws. I’ll do that today.

That I didn’t fall or harm myself in any way is a miracle.

The morning is chilly. It is in the low 50’s, fall weather. The rest of the week will be warmer, in the 60’s, but the nights will be cold. Constantly chilly weather is closer every day. I am not one to brag about how long I go without turning on the heat. I choose not to be uncomfortable and layered in my own house.

When I was a kid, a black oil tank took up on one side of the cellar. Near it was a small window, just a bit above ground. I remember when the oil truck would come. The man would pull the hose to the window, lower it inside and start to fill the tank. What I most remember about that is the smell of the oil and the sound of the truck pump. I used to watch from the cellar.

Oh where have you gone Waldorf salad? The recipe for it was in the first cookbook I ever bought. I remember making Waldorf salad for Thanksgiving a few times. I thought it was delicious. I haven’t made it in years. My mother used to make us Rice a Roni, the San Francisco treat. She never added anything. I remember the two colors, the white rice and the brown vermicelli. It was usually the side for chicken. We had green bean casserole at Thanksgiving and maybe Christmas, but I’m not sure. I made it a few years back, but I used fresh green beans and a bechamel sauce.

I have never been a fan of Jello. I remember Jello salads, some sort of Jello flavor with floating vegetables. It was frightening looking, almost as if an alien had concocted the recipe. It was made in a mold as if it were an exquisite dish.

We never had salads at dinner. The only salad we ate was my mother’s potato salad. It was a summer dish served mostly at barbecues. One dish I dearly miss is creamed onions. It was a Thanksgiving staple. It is easy enough to make so I don’t know why I haven’t.

When I was a kid, I only ate a few vegetables, some of them, like carrots, reluctantly. My mother hid the carrots in the mashed potatoes. They were also mashed. I grew up thinking mashed potatos were orange and white.

Now, I only don’t eat a few vegetables. You know my aversion to beans. I also don’t eat beets. I’ll eat many others vegetables if they are served to me, but I’ll not make them for myself. Ghana introduced me to vegetables like okra and garden eggs, which are baby eggplants. I never ate beans there either.

Like the White Rabbit, I am late; however I don’t have an important date. It is just a regular Tuesday. The sun was here but now is gone, replaced by clouds. The weatherman says cloudy most of the day. I’m thinking today’s clouds are a rehearsal for tomorrow’s rain. The day is breezy and warm at 74°.

The backyard chimes are ringing and sweetening the air. I love the sound. It echoes throughout the whole yard. The only other sounds are the birds. How lovely is that.

When I was a kid, I was a dreamer. I wanted my life to be exciting. I didn’t want to be average. I wanted to explore the world. I wanted to meet new people, eat strange foods and go to places I’d read about in my geography books. I never told anyone my dreams. I held them close. I remember seeing PSA’s about the Peace Corps on TV. I always felt they were directed at me. I never told anyone that either. I sort of dreamed in secret.

My life has slowed. I haven’t traveled in a while, but life is still interesting. I actually play the ukulele, the first musical instrument I have ever played. That still surprises me. Every day, I take it easy, something which took me a long while to learn. So what if I don’t vacuum today. The dust can wait. The only day I set an alarm is on Wednesdays when I have a uke lesson.

I have a major dream. I want to go back to Ghana as a gift to myself on my 80th birthday. That gives me two years to make it happen.

I woke up to another lovely, sunny warm day. It is 74°. The windows are open. The air is sweet. Fall on Cape Cod is the best season.

I am grouchy today. I was restless last night. At one point some noise woke me up. It sounded as if something heavy had fallen to the floor. Henry is my barometer. He announces with the loudest barks any odd sound or any people near my house. He didn’t stir so I didn’t choose to investigate and went back to sleep. I found nothing today but the search was cursory.

When I was a kid, my father told us the story of the man with the hook. He said it wasn’t real, but it sounded real to me. I imagined some guy with a hook for a hand scratching screens and windows looking for victims. He wore ragtag clothes and a dark fedora. That last part, his wardrobe, is what I imagined. He came only at night. I remember one Friday when my parents went grocery shopping. My brother and I stayed home. We watched TV. It was then I heard the scratching on the screen. I heard it again and was so scared I went behind the couch to hide. I made the mistake of yelling we’re calling police. I was brave. I was also stupid giving away my hiding place. The front door opened. I was nearly catatonic. It was my father pranking us. I don’t think I have ever been as scared as I was that night.

I remember watching a really bad horror movie. I love them, the worst the better. In this one, some college students had bought a big, cheap house to rehab. They didn’t know it had been the site of a murder, and that a vengeful grandmother was a ghost there. She killed them one by one. I remember a window with only the glass at the bottom decapitating one of them, but the scene I remember most is similar to my having threatened to call the police from behind the couch. Along the stairs, the whole wall was covered in dripping blood. That would have sent me running the other way. Nope, they decided to go upstairs. You can guess their fate. I tried to find the title of that movie but I didn’t.

Movies don’t scare me much anymore, but I did jump when, in Jaws, Ben Gardener’s head suddenly appeared in the window of his sunk boat, and in Alien when the creature burst out of John Hurt’s stomach.

I do like a bit of a scare. I always smile afterwards.

Today is a perfect day. It is 77°. The bright, bright sun is framed in a deep blue sky. Every now and then a leaf is ruffled by a slight, transient breeze. The dogs are napping. They are exhausted from eating a few treats and visiting the yard after a long sleep. I want to be my dog.

Bugs never bother me, have never bothered me. I am not a fan of mosquitos. I don’t understand why they exist, the same with flies. I remember being in awe of a praying mantis. It appeared in the garden by the front door. I thought it the strangest, most amazing looking bug I had ever seen. In Africa I saw my first centipede. I knew what it was and quickly moved away. They bite. A scorpion I didn’t see was running across the floor of my living room. One of my students saw it, grabbed my sandal and did away with the scorpion. I saw fire ants. They were fast and were running in what seemed an endless column of ants. I was so mesmerized I stood and watched for longest time. I was late to tech my class.

When I was a kid, my world was filled with wonder. Just steps away from my house was the field. In the summer it was filled with tall green grass and inhabited by brown grasshoppers. We used to run to make the grasshoppers jump. I’d wcatch them with my hands and put them in a jar with holes in the top. My hands would get brown spots. I figured it was grasshopper poop. I never kept the grasshoppers. The game was to see how many I could catch. I always let them go back into the grass. On one side of the field was a copse. It was where we found a shack which had a pile of girly magazines. We were still so young the pictures shocked us. We didn’t stay there long. In the back the field ended at the dead tree. It was just a trunk and a big limb which was still attached but on the ground. We could go around it, but we never did. We climbed over it. No self respecting kid walked around it.

We followed a path from the dead tree to the swamp which was in an opening surrounded by woods. The path continued beyond the swamp and ended at a paved street. Much later, long after I had moved, the field, the woods and the swamp were replaced by elder housing. My father used to call it wrinkle city.

The morning is lovely, pretty. The sun is shining, and it will be in the 70’s. The air is still. I have noticed more red leaves on the oak trees, and a few odd trees with just one branch of red leaves as if it were practicing for the full array of fall. My yard has had its fall cleaning. Bushes and trees were trimmed, the yard was raked and the pile of branches in the backyard was cleared. Even better, they took three bags of trash.

I can hear a lawn mower, the summer Saturday sound I most remember. It was as if the fathers in my neighborhood had had a pact to mow at the same time every Saturday. The sound, though, was different than today’s sound. It was the clipping sound of the hand mowers.

Yesterday I had a concert and didn’t have time to write. I have another concert today, but I was up earlier than yesterday and have no Cape Times to read. Because I have become a night owl, I tend to sleep away the morning. The dogs sleep in along with me.

When I was a kid, Saturday was my busiest day. This time of year I was out and about. Mostly I was on my bike. I have pictures in my memory drawers of that bike. It had been a Christmas present. I couldn’t wait so I even rode it on that snowless Christmas Day. My mother took a picture of me standing by the front door holding my new bike by its handle bars. It was blue. A basket was attached to the front. I remember that when I went over bumps whatever was in the basket bounced up and down. Books sometimes even bounced out of the basket. I held on to the bread and milk when my mother sent me to the store.

In my mind’s eye, I can see the whole route to the white store. Some of the houses were big and old. One house, the newest house, was sandwiched on a hill. The garage was on the side under one part of the house. I knew the people who lived there. The mother was French. I can see the route I took: first street on the left from my house, across the road, down the straightaway then a turn to the right, a stop by the busy road then across that road to the store. It has probably been at least 65 years since I last took that route, and I can still see it all. I wish I remembered why I was in the kitchen this morning.

Today is fall on Cape Cod. It is 61° and sunny bright with only a few white clouds. The breeze is ever so slight. Nala has her grassy spot in the sun while Henry is less inclined to stay outside. He is a couch dog. Nala brings the outside in and the inside out. I see kitchen trash n the yard and chewed pine cones in the hall.

At my uke lesson yesterday I whined about this being week 6, and my leg is still hurting especially when I have to lift it. They did say 3-5 weeks. I was asked how old I am, 78. Two of my uke buddies snorted, ”You’re old. It takes longer!”

My sloth is in charge. I look around and see all that needs to be done, cleaned or stored, then I just turn my back or close my eyes. The fur balls can fly and the spiders can weave.

The one thing I still want to do is skydive. I’ve ridden or flown in almost everything else on my list. My favorite experience was the balloon ride with the glider a close second. I am sorry I missed the Concorde. If I could go back in time, I’d ride the PanAm clipper and an early flight of the Hindenburg. I’d choose to miss the Titanic.

In my travels I have ridden all sorts of vehicles. In Ghana, I rode a tro-tro, a cheap ride, about a pesewa (think penny) a mile. It was a truck with an open back where you sat on a wooden bench. The hardest part was climbing up the side of the truck to get in and out of the back. I took tro-tros mostly in Accra though I did take a few from Bolga to Bawku, a 48 mile ride. If I had the money, I’d fly from Tamale to Accra. It was a prop, and we flew so low I could see everything. I loved the ferry from Yeji across the Volta Lake to the Northern Region. Back then it was the route all the busses took. I loved the trains in Ghana. I rode first class which was fairly inexpensive. When I saw the Harry Potter movies, I recognized the cabins with the sliding doors. That’s where I rode.

I have had other amazing rides, but I’ll save those for another day and keep you in suspense.