Today is like yesterday, hot and humid. The sun is out for now, but the clouds will be back. It is one of those days. The strong breeze is still here but infrequently. Thunder showers are supposed to come tomorrow. I have my AC blasting, and the house is wonderfully cool. I am not happy about having to go out later, but I must. The car is filled with dump day trash.

When I was a kid, I loved to color. Every Christmas I’d get a new coloring book and a new set of crayons, always Crayola crayons, in my stocking. The number of crayons in the box went up as I got older. The colors got more complex. My first box had 8 crayons. My last Christmas box of crayons was given to me when I was an adult. It is a collector’s tin with 72 crayons in one box and 8 crayons in a reproduction of the first box. All eight crayons were retiring colors like maize, raw umber, orange red and lemon yellow. I didn’t know colors retired until then. I never noticed what was missing nor did I notice when new colors were added. Colors like vivid tangerine, jungle green, cerulean and fuchsia were added, and the new boxes got bigger. The count now is up to 120 crayons. Just imagine finding that box in your stocking.

Crayons were so valuable that we almost never threw a piece away no matter how small the crayon. New boxes came with crayon sharpeners, but they hardly worked for me. We used to keep all our crayons, whole and stubby, in a communal cigar box. There were crayons of all colors and lengths. The shorter the crayon the less we knew about it. When crayons got sharpened, usually with a knife of sorts, the paper was torn away. By the end, there was no paper. Where had fuchsia gone? How about apple red? Nope, the crayons were now simple common colors like red and green and yellow. Subtlety was lost on us.

The morning is hot, almost as hot as the day will be, at 79˚. My house is so cool and comfortable I hate going out at all, but I do have a couple of things on my errand list. I’ll wait until the afternoon if even then.

The dogs drive me crazy. They chase each other up and down the hall and jump on the couch for the turnaround, the same couch where I’m sitting. I get bounced around and whacked by Henry on his u-turn. The floor between the den and the kitchen is again filled with dust balls because of the dogs. I vacuum it just about every day.

Nala brings sticks into the house. I was alerted to this when she had too wide a branch to take through the dog door. It made a lot of noise. She figured it out and brought the branch in sideways. I watched her then threw the branch back outside. I’m tired of vacuuming chunks of bark and pieces of white branch. Nala always chews her sticks on a rug. How neat.

When I was growing up, my town was the world to me. We never went far for family vacations. If anywhere, it was north to Maine for a weekend, and I remember one week we spent in Vermont when I was young, maybe around 8. I didn’t mind staying home in the summer. My friends too stayed home, but I didn’t see them much once school was over. My wanderings were usually when I was alone. I liked to stop and sit for a bit. I’d drink water at one of the bubblers, often the one in the park. Sometimes I had a nickel or a dime for expenses on the road. The nickel meant candy and the dime meant Hostess. I never bought any particular Hostess. That depended on my mood, but I was partial to Hostess cupcakes, It was the cream middle I loved. It was also the chocolate. Sometimes I’d buy a Sno-Ball. It had everything: a cream middle, giant coconut frosting topper and chocolate. I don’t remember the last Hostess anything I bought. I did buy a cupcake at the bakery which they labeled as a Hostess cupcake. It even had the white squiggle across the frosting on the top, but it wasn’t Hostess.

I have always wondered about the frosting on Hostess cupcakes. We used to have to lick the frosting off cupcakes my mother made but never Hostess cupcakes. The frosting came off in one piece. That last part of the cupcakes, the frosting, was the best part so I’d take the frosting off and put it aside then I’d eat the cake. The frosting was the last treasure from a Hostess cupcake.

Last night I slept easily and for a long time. I think my various wounds are healing so I don’t groan and wake myself up as often. Nala slid off the bed this morning because the top egg crate had drifted and a bit was over the edge. She looked shocked. Henry leapt off from the bottom of the bed. That dog can jump. I took my time getting out of bed. When I did, I was pleased to find my side didn’t hurt anymore. That’s progress I’ll take.

I have no appointments today so it is a stay in my comfies day. I was out three days this week, more than enough. I do need a dump run so maybe tomorrow though it is supposed to rain.

The day is already hot, 84˚, but the humidity is so bad the day feels far hotter. My AC is blasting. Tonight will get cooler, down to 69˚. I hope the humidity is gone.

Life continues in a different way. I wear a mask in medical places. I don’t need to wear it anywhere else by choice. Some people still wear masks in grocery stores. I wonder if they are unvaccinated or just being extra safe. Neither one gives me second thoughts. I just finish shopping and then go home. I prefer home not because of the pandemic but because my home is my favorite place. I love how casual it is. Dinner is never timed. Nobody needs my table. There is no dress code. I get to stay in my summer comfies. I can eat whenever. The kitchen never closes. I like staying home.

Last night felt right, almost ideally right. It was a good night. The house had cooled from the air conditioning. The dogs were sleeping, one on each side of the couch. Jack had come down almost to the bottom of the stairs to get some loving, some head scratches and pats. I went back to reading my iPad. The TV was blaring for background noise. Nothing was on I wanted to watch. I was missing watching the postponed Red Sox-Yankees game, but I found a few movies on Tubi filmed just for me. I had what I call a catch as catch can dinner. I just checked the fridge and use what I find. Last night it was some cheese and crackers and some tabouleh on pita. Nothing took time to cook, just to open. Dinner was delicious, perfect.

The weather and I are twins of a sort. Every day the weather has been damp and cloudy and sometimes rainy. The sky is a lighter grey this morning but still no sun. The weather and I share a rut. Every day I drag myself out of bed, ask Alexa the weather and go downstairs. I let the dogs out, yes I am the one, and I make coffee. I read the Globe and save the Cape Times for when I’m done writing.

This morning feels closed in hot because of the high humidity, 83%. Outside is already in the mid 70’s, but my house is holding the night’s cool for a while. I’ve decided to have a bagel for breakfast, the same bagels Nala stole but I saved.

The sun is making as break of it from behind the clouds. It comes for a bit, gives hope of a lovely day then disappears again. It has done that a couple of times.

My movie genre of choice of late has been disaster films, mostly meteors, a couple of lava spewing volcanoes and real cold, the turning everybody into Lot’s wife cold. The conversations about the dinosaurs caught my attention because there are none. My choice for planet wide destruction would be a meteor: I’m thinking quick ands easy. Just to calm your fears, most of us survived the variety of disasters. They are, after all, only movies.

Right now a meteor is destroying the Earth a little at a time, a few shards here and there. The water is bad, and drinking it will give you a painful death. Just keep walking.

When I was a kid, we never watched TV during the day except on Saturdays. That morning was devoted to kid’s programming. A lot of the half hour shows were westerns. I got my fill of good guys and bad guys. The black hat signified a baddie. Conversely white was a good guy, and that hat pretty much stayed on our hero’s head during fisticuffs. I don’t even think it got dirty. We never watched all the programs. Saturday was calling.

During the week, the late afternoon was TV watching if we had our homework done. Superman and The Mickey Mouse Club are the two I remember the most. Sometimes dinner was too early, and I had to sit at the kitchen table and crane my neck to see the end of my programs. Such were the trials and tribulations of a kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s.

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.

Yesterday’s rain stopped in the late afternoon. The sky cleared, the sun arrived and the wind disappeared. It was a whole new day. Today is humid, damp and cloudy. Not a leaf is moving in the still air. The early morning smelled of the salt and the ocean. The forecast says maybe rain. That is the weekly forecast as well, the possibility of rain every day for the next week. The high today will be 71˚ with 87% humidity.

Nala is into everything. Trash picking is the least of it. That I can handle. Last night she took a pillow, a pen, a crewel kit, paper bags and plates, cake decorations and a box of honey cornbread mix. I caught that last one before she got beyond chewing the box. Later, I went outside and found empty boxes, folded boxes from my recycle bin. Most things she sneaks outside so checking the yard is part of my daily chores.

I bought cereal the other day. My favorite Rice Krispies was in a gigantic box meant to feed a family of ten so I passed it by. They didn’t have Raisin Bran Crunch, my second favorite. I ended up buying a variety of small boxes. I had never tasted most of the cereal. The only exception was Sugar Pops, Annie Oakley’s favorite cereal. I tried the Fruit Loops. They were okay. Next was the Cocoa Puffs. Those I liked but I wasn’t destined to finish those Puffs. On the way to the couch, I tripped on a box on the floor. I didn’t fall but the full bowl of cereal went everywhere. Nala helped by eating what she could find. Henry never has gone on that side of the room so I felt bad for him. He ended up licking the bowl and eating the few Puffs left. I had to move some vinyl, a couple of baskets, some bags and a big piece of pottery so I could wipe up the milk and gather the Puffs.

When I was a kid, I could never imagine a Saturday staying at home unless a wild storm was raging, and my mother wouldn’t let me out no matter how much I begged. Now, I relish days at home, even Saturdays. As for today, I have no ambition. I am a sloth. I am happily a sloth.

The dogs woke me up at seven so I let them out, and I waited until Henry wanted in so I could open the door for him. After I did, I went back to bed. Nala joined us and her fur was wet so I knew it was raining by then. I woke at 10, and it was windy and pouring. The rain stopped for a bit then came back with a vengeance. The wind is even stronger than earlier. The pine trees are swaying. The dogs went out but are now chasing each other up and down the hall. All I hear is panting and growling, nice growls, fun growls.

My plans for the day are to hunker down at home, clean the dining room and living room and try to ignore the dogs’ paw prints in the kitchen and down the hall. My cleaning music will be Joni. The Reprise album came yesterday. A sing-a-long is definitely in order.

When I was a kid, my whole world was my house and my small town. I was usually alone when I biked except for that trip to East Boston. When I walked, my brother was sometimes with me. We walked the tracks or to the pool or the zoo. One part of the tracks ended at the depot, a brick building which had a variety of lives once the trains stopped running. The other part kept going. We never walked to the end. I still wonder where the tracks led.

I love trains. My dream when I was young was to take the train across the country. I wanted to fall asleep to the chugging of the train on the tracks. I never made it, but I have taken some spectacular rides.

Ghana used to have passenger trains. I took them whenever they fitted into my itinerary. The one to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana, was the train I took the most. I always went first class which wasn’t expensive but was always comfortable. Each first class compartment had four leather seats. Most of the time I was by myself. Looking out the window was my favorite way to pass the time. I could see the backs of compounds and small houses. When the train stopped, women and small girls were at the window selling fruit, bread and bush meat on a stick. The only way to eat the heavily peppered bush meat was to wrap it in bread.

I once went down coast from Accra to Takoradi which is the oldest port in Ghana. From there I had to switch to tro-tros or lorries as the train went no further down the coast. That was the infamous train ride when the cars jumped the tracks. I almost fell out of bed, my comfortable first class bed. I remember walking from one side of a trestle bridge to the other. That was one crazy experience.

The last train I took was the Cape Cod Railway from Hyannis to Buzzards Bay. My mother and I took the train together a couple of times and once with my aunt the nun. We’d get off in Sandwich, shop and have lunch then re-board the train to go home. I love those memories.

The morning is a delight. The air is dry and cool. The breeze, from the north, is constant. The weather report predicts thunder storms and a high of 77˚. There is a tropical storm warning in effect.

I have to go out again for the third day in a row. I am not a fan of leaving the house. The roads are clogged, and I have to sit through a few light cycles to move left or right off the main road. I curse the drivers who have no idea where to go and go slowly while they look. The nuns would call driving on Cape Cod in the summer an occasion of sin, but I think of the cursing as a tension breaker, a reliever from the stress of driving behind cars from everywhere but here.

When I was a kid, my favorite road for a family ride or trip north was Route 1. I remember looking out the window almost the whole trip. I didn’t want to miss a thing. The dinosaur at the miniature golf course was one of my favorites. I always wondered if the course meant sending my golf ball through the teeth of a dinosaur. While on the road, we never stopped to eat. My mother packed picnic lunches, but I would have loved to have stopped at the Ship restaurant. It was huge and looked out of place. It was landlocked. The Prince Pizzeria had a leaning Tower of Pisa and a full parking lot. We drove right by it despite our pleas to eat there. The Kowloon Restaurant had a tiki on the front. It was everything a 50’s Chinese restaurant had. Drinks came in tiki glasses. Inside there was a waterfall, and the decor was big on plastic tikis. Russo’s Candy House was the one stop I most regretted watching disappear through the rear car window. I remember Adventure Car Hop and Woo Woo Ginsberg on the radio as it was one of his sponsors. It looked like the drive-in restaurants in American Graffiti but without the roller skates. You just sat in your car for the waitress to bring your food. I don’t remember exactly when The Adventure Car Hop disappeared and was replaced by some sort of business. I remember driving by and thinking it still looked like The Adventure Car Hop without the food.

Even now, should I choose to venture north, I would use Route 1 and Route 1A. If something caught my attention, I’d stop. I wouldn’t pack a lunch. I’d eat at some small drive-up. I’d probably have a cheeseburger and fries with a chocolate milk shake. Such are the joys of the road.

The wind is blowing, the air is humid, the sky is cloudy and it will be hot today. Thunderstorms are predicted for late this afternoon. Last night there was rolling thunder. Henry looked up from the bed but decided he was in no danger so he went back to sleep. Nala never noticed.

I have more trash than I have room for in my car so I’ll take a trip to the dump this afternoon. I have an appointment in Hyannis after which I’ll do the dump run. The rest of the trash is upstairs and is from the kitty litter boxes in the cats’ room. The pile gets bigger every day. The bags get heavier. I’m too old for this.

I remember how awful the barrels smelled when I was a kid. Flies were inside those barrels and circling around the covers. When my mother asked me too empty the kitchen basket, I groused. I knew when I lifted the barrel cover the flies would escape, and I’d be in their flight paths. We did have a garbage container in the backyard, what today would probably be a compost pile, buried except for its cover which was metal and flipped open when you pressed the pedal. The flies were even worse there, and I vividly remember the maggots, crawling white gross little worms all over the bananas peels and half-eaten apples. I used to watch them for them a while. They never attacked me the way the flies did.

In Ghana, flies were ubiquitous. At first, I was grossed out, but later, recognizing a losing battle, it didn’t take long for me to stop caring. I’d just wave my hands to keep the flies off me and my food. The market was fly heaven. The aunties, the local entrepreneurs who sold produce in the market, used straw fans to keep the bugs at bay. My house had screens so few flies could broach the interior. Other bugs could but not flies.

Every Saturday night was entertainment night at my school. Houses competed in plays and singing competitions. Tribal dancing was my favorite Saturday event. Sometimes we’d watch a movie. My favorite was a cartoon about the dangers of flies carrying disease. The large cartoon flies, about the size of birds, flew into pit toilets, covered their legs with feces and then stopped on food. My students were grossed out as was I. Solutions were offered, none viable. My favorite was to put screen covers over the food, but few Ghanaians had screens in their houses so this was totally impractical. I didn’t have covers for my food either. I never even thought about having some made.

When I went back to Ghana, I easily fell back into ignoring the flies. I guess it had become inherent. I’d notice them when they landed on food, but I’d just waved my hand as a matter of course, and the flies would leave for the meantime.